ABSTRACT
Climate change is transforming the peace and security landscape, creating new opportunities for violent extremism to emerge. Therefore, climate change must be considered when efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism efforts are planned, implemented, and evaluated. This chapter analyzes the relationship between climate change and violent extremism, assessing ways that environmental peacebuilding approaches can contribute to preventing and countering violent extremism in countries such as Afghanistan, Mali, and Somalia. Climate change adds additional stressors to food and water security. This exacerbates existing vulnerabilities, undermines social cohesion, drains social capital, and weakens community resilience. However, climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives can also create new entry points, resources, and opportunities that humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding initiatives can utilize to strengthen social cohesion and build community resilience. The chapter will argue that actions to prevent or respond to the effects of climate change can also contribute to preventing and countering violent extremism, and vice versa, that environmental peacebuilding initiatives that aim to prevent and counter violent extremism can, at times, also strengthen the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change.
Keywords: Climate Change, Environmental Peacebuilding, Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE), Peace and Security, and Agency
