The topic de jour with nearly every conversation is about Climate Change. This is reminiscent of the early 2010s when social media empowered much of the violent extremist recruitment and then digital posts left law enforcement with evidence regarding the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its brief kinetic advance to create a caliphate. Much effort was used to address responsible understanding of these complexities. Similar concerns carry over from the 2010s on how to address the climate change and security nexus. Against this backdrop, the interplay between terrorism, organised crime, and climate change—and specifically how they appear to be fuelling violent extremist engagement—warrants our full attention.
There are now many in the African region identifying current evidence on the nexus between climate fragility and vulnerability to violent extremism. This analysis seeks to highlight the relationship between climate change and violent extremism. It points out that climate change has exacerbated factors. Another important focus is the need for consideration of non-traditional security threats. Although the link between climate change and violent extremism remains under-studied and thus a glaring research need/gap. At the end of the discussion are recommendations on what may be done to improve on the situation. The broad areas being examined include:
- What is the current evidence linking climate and violent extremism?
- Is there a direct linkage, or is the effect mediated by other factors?
- How will climate change affect patterns in radicalization and recruitment?
- What should we try to know more in terms of this relationship?
There is a common theme that we face a point requiring a resolve to action. Yet, the related question being asked by many is whether we are mortgaging our future by not focusing on the impact of climate change and how it effects such areas as conflict, gender-based violence and disaffected youth who are vulnerable to violent extremism. A recent article questions whether within foreign policy the agenda is one of extinction. At a moment when the imperatives of survival demand unprecedented global cooperation, the question preoccupying many is over how many kinetic conflicts to consider.
One would have hoped that the better part of humanity would have come out the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic with a renewed sense of purpose – tackling such challenges as climate change, lifting poverty conditions within developing countries, solving water deficits, and forming collective approaches to the loss of natural habitat for species other than humankind. The past several years added fuel to some of the decisions we made after 9/11 in the responses to terrorism and violent extremism, and; COVID-19 empowered uninterrupted “stay-at-home” time to receive excellent disinformation that fuels current disagreements in politics – now powered by climate change that creates yet another nexus concern along with such things as artificial intelligence.
While current global disagreements feed the reluctance to embrace preventive diplomacy when addressing climate change and violent extremism, there should be a forward-looking call for leadership to expand the definition of transnational and non-traditional security challenges as core work. Moreover, the linkages between the effects of climate change and the risks of recruitment to violent extremism are now well known. The evidence base has grown substantially over the last two decades, owed to a sizeable pool of experts, data, and research pointing to this nexus. We can thus move from calls to understanding the issue towards translating research into action.
As the Horn of Africa and the Sahel grapple with pervasive security threats, terrorism and climate change are working in alarming harmony. Yet early warning detection mechanisms and conflict analysis are failing to adequately capture this relationship.
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As the Horn of Africa and the Sahel grapple with pervasive security threats, terrorism and climate change are working in alarming harmony. Yet early warning detection mechanisms and conflict analysis are failing to adequately capture this relationship. The Al-Qaeda affiliated group Al-Shabaab is based in Somalia but has spill-over effects on recruitment dynamics across East Africa. The Kenyan coast and Somali border are prime examples of such high fragility areas.
Research recommendations increasingly are proposing climate-related disasters and recruitment trends could be tackled in tandem by addressing grievances and vulnerabilities, especially at the local level. Heightened marginalisation and deepening grievances—which have been fuelled considerably by the climate crisis––appear to rank at the top of community push factors favouring radicalisation. Communities, in turn, have become more susceptible to extremist ideologies in these spill-over areas.
Overall, synergies between terrorism, organised crime, and climate change are now favouring a rise in violent extremism. Equally, cross border influx occasioned by climate change is a weak link to regional peace and security. Terrorist groups in the borders are now also purportedly engaging in illicit cross-border trade which provides breeding ground for money laundering and regional extremist’s groups financing.
In the era after ISIS, a main focus was on the role of civil society in countering violent extremist messages online – because civil society was seen as a more credible messenger than governments per se. While this point of view is widely amplified by a host of efforts, it is important to not to lose sight of the role of government and parliamentarians with non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Governments and especially parliamentarians are and must be primarily responsible for the security and protection of human rights of their citizens –given the communications tools they already have at their disposal – i.e., administrative and legislative action. This places more qualitative effort back to parliaments and climate change expertise advising security officials – not security officials advising climate advocates.
The nexus work will help all to reconsider our spending priorities that still focus too heavily on traditional ‘hard’ security issues (e.g. military preparedness and non-proliferation, arms control, disarmament, and counterterrorism). If resources were to be reallocated to reflect current climate developments, these are resource limitations that can be overcome by enlisting traditional security organisations to add climate change to their portfolio of work and requesting that they ‘burden share’ by reallocating funds to addressing the range of underlying conditions and root causes. This will be a rightsising while benefiting local communities. It takes billions not millions to mitigate climate change. It necessitates developing synergies between the stakeholders seeking to mitigate climate change and those working to build community resilience.
Beyond merely shifting our security focus, we must revive the culture of cooperation among international multilateral security organisations to break up the destructive and increasingly harmonious relationship between climate change and violent extremism
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Beyond merely shifting our security focus, we must revive the culture of cooperation among international multilateral security organisations to break up the destructive and increasingly harmonious relationship between climate change and violent extremism. Despite climate change being a risk multiplier to violent extremism, we can tap on the strength of collective efforts to foster inclusivity to mitigate its effects at all levels and make the interventions relevant to local communities. It is important to continue raising public awareness on the relationship between climate change and violent extremism while at the same time institute and strengthen relevant polices and allocate adequate resources for this important course.
Tom Wuchte, Founder, Center for Multilateral Collaboration and Cooperation Leadership and Rehema Zaid Obuyi, Chief Analyst and Strategist in PVE/CT at The Integrated Initiatives for Community Empowerment (IICEP) Kenya.
This is an excerpt of a longer study entitled “Climate Change and Terrorism – A New Alliance? The Case for Reviving Multilateralism and Re-Imagining Hard Power” published by Women Without Borders available here.
