Exploring the intersection of armed conflict, climate risks and mobility: the ICRC’s experience

In the last few years, the issue of displacement in the context of climate change has increasingly been the topic of policy debates. However, the focus has been mostly on climate risks and environmental degradation as drivers of displacement, with climate- and conflict-related displacement being tackled as parallel and distinct situations. Building on the operational experience of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Afghanistan, Mozambique and the Sahel, this article provides a more nuanced perspective on the intersection of armed conflict, climate risks and mobility The ICRC uses the term ‘mobility’ to refer to all types of internal and cross-border movements of individuals as survival, coping mechanisms or resilience strategies. These movements include internal displacement, planned relocations, migration (which, according to the ICRC’s operational description of who is a migrant, also includes cross-border displacement), as well as other forms of movements (such as pastoralist transhumance and seasonal movements). This article adopts the same definition. , describing it as complex, non-linear and constantly evolving. This article also reflects on the challenges related to developing an operational framework to effectively integrate climate risks and mobility considerations in analysis and the humanitarian response to conflict-affected people.

The interplay of armed conflict, climate risks and mobility

Climate variability and extreme weather events may not only directly lead to displacement – they often amplify and compound other factors contributing to people’s mobility. Countries at war are disproportionately affected by the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, as armed conflict weakens the capacity of institutions and people to adapt to and mitigate the negative impacts of climate shocks and extreme weather events. This means that when disasters hit those countries, their consequences, including displacement, are more severe. It also means that, for communities living on the frontlines of war, violence and destruction, especially those enduring protracted armed conflict, climate risks may act as vulnerability multipliers and contribute to people resorting to mobility, either in-country or cross-border.

A case in point is Afghanistan, a country heavily impacted by climate change effects as well as decades of armed conflict. Here, the rise in global temperatures has diminished ice and snow reserves, augmented heavy rains, and depleted surface and ground waters. Droughts and floods have become more frequent and intense, affecting the majority of the country’s provinces and more than half of the population. With risk reduction, early-warning systems and adaptation measures being weak to non-existent, recent years have witnessed large-scale internal displacement caused by sudden extreme weather events. At the same time, as the country is largely dependent on agriculture, water scarcity has been progressively and negatively altering food production and livelihood. Uncontrolled deforestation and usage of underground water have amplified the damage caused to crops by floods as well as soil degradation. Thus, all over the country many families have had to leave their villages – sometimes after selling their lands – and move to urban areas (like Kabul) or abroad. Alternatives to mobility for those families were scarce and would have entailed adopting harmful coping mechanisms likely to expose them to further risks related to the conflict, such as taking part in the hostilities, or engaging in illicit activities.

Looking at the 3.25 million internally displaced people (IDPs) within Afghanistan and the fast-growing 5.2 million Afghan refugees and asylum seekers abroad, it is hard to clearly separate and quantify the reasons for people’s displacement. In a country that has seen more than 40 years of war and violence, economic decline, recurrent natural (including climate-related) disasters, and where more than half of the population needs humanitarian assistance, particularly food support, distinguishing between climate risks and environmental degradation on the one side, and armed conflict and insecurity on the other, as drivers of displacement is practically impossible. As confirmed by United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) border monitoring in the first half of 2023, there are many interconnected reasons for people to leave Afghanistan, including the lack of access to essential services and livelihood opportunities, alongside droughts, violence and insecurity. Mobility – whether leaving home or the country – may be the best available option for many Afghans to find safety and/or better prospects for a dignified life for themselves and their families.

Climate risks can also create additional challenges for people displaced by armed conflict, affecting their ability to move to safety and/or access essential services in the place of displacement. Mozambique’s vulnerability to climate risks has been increasing in recent years, affecting people’s lives and livelihoods, the national economy and critical infrastructure. The impact of the non-international armed conflict in the north, exposure to climate shocks such as floods, storms and cyclones, and a lack of development have converged to create significant short- and longer-term risks for communities. People who fled from attacks in coastal cities in 2020, when the conflict in the north displaced many within the country, told the ICRC that the main land routes that could have led them to safety had been damaged by Cyclone Kenneth. Thus, most people had to take the riskier sea route by boat. In the Montepuez district of Cabo Delgado, more than 80,000 IDPs, who had sought refuge in urban areas and their surroundings, found themselves unable to cope with an environment already ranked below the national average in terms of access to safe water sources and sanitation. This resonates with the situation in large Afghan cities such as Kabul, Herat and Kandahar, where mass displacement from rural areas has posed enormous pressure on already strained water resources.

In several countries, the ICRC has observed how people displaced by armed conflict or violence often end up staying in climate ‘hotspots’ – in part, because the land that is available for displaced people is uninhabited or waste, as it is more prone to climate risks such as flooding, or has poor access to services, food and water. This is also true in urban areas where, increasingly, displaced persons live and/or seek to settle. It is also because camps and informal settlements are often built for short-term habitation, and not designed for continual exposure to climate and environmental risks. All this exposes displaced persons to the risk of secondary or multiple displacement due to climate shocks and disasters, while undermining their local integration as an interim or durable solution.

Growing climate risks and environmental degradation in areas of origin, often combined with persisting insecurity, may prevent displaced people who wish to go back home from achieving a durable solution through safe, dignified and sustainable return. These factors impact people’s safety and their livelihood options. In such circumstances, policies and practices that put pressure on displaced people to return to their places of origin may contribute to (re)exposing returnees to the risk of natural shocks and hazards, thus leading to unsustainable leaving conditions and, at times, re-displacement. In the case of Afghanistan, people displaced internally or abroad who were forced or pressured to return to their areas of origin have faced obstacles to re-establish their lives in safety and dignity due to insecurity, limited access to water, land degradation and inability to farm, thus exposing them to further displacement or other risks.

Characterised by seasonal migration, communities sharing border areas, and large areas governed by non-state actors, the Sahel region provides another good example of the complex interplay between armed conflict, climate risks and mobility, and their compounding effects. An ICRC study on the Central Sahel in 2021 showed how traditional mobility-based resilience Resilience is defined by the ICRC as ‘the ability of individuals, communities, institutions, and systems to anticipate, absorb, adapt, respond and/or recover from shocks and stressors derived from conflict/violence and hazards without compromising their long-term prospects’. (ICRC, When rain turns to dust: https://shop.icrc.org/when-rain-turns-to-dust-pdf-en.html) strategies, such as transhumance and seasonal migration, allowing people to cope with a harsh natural environment and diversify their livelihood, have been disrupted by the combined effects of armed conflict and climate-related factors and the indirect harmful impact of restrictive migration-related policies (see Figure 1). For instance, in northern Mali, herders no longer travel long distances with their animals to find grazing land and water, or to sell livestock in distant markets, due to fearing attacks by armed groups or bandits. Similarly, young men do not go to neighbouring countries to find seasonal work because of insecurity on the road, as well as reluctance to leave families alone in unsafe circumstances. In the Liptako-Gourma triangle between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, transhumant mobility has been redesigned, as pastoralists communities are pushed to take more dangerous or longer routes, or to move towards new areas where they have no social bonds with local communities, thus leading to tensions. In a region with traditionally porous borders, the shift in the last decade towards stricter border-management policies to curb irregular migration and securitise borders has inadvertently contributed to undermining transhumant mobility, be it internal or cross-border, exposing people who depend on it as a coping strategy to protection risks. From a long-term livelihood strategy, mobility has become a short-term survival mechanism. In the most extreme cases, forced displacement has become the main form of mobility.

Integrating climate risks into humanitarian responses in conflict settings

In May 2021, the ICRC and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) launched the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations to support and promote greater climate action within the humanitarian sector. The ICRC endorsed the Charter along with three institutional targets:

• to factor climate and environmental risks into programmes
• to reduce the ICRC’s greenhouse gas emissions and environmental footprint
• to conduct policy and legal development and influencing to promote the implementation of international humanitarian law in protecting the environment, and to call for greater climate action in places affected by conflict.

In line with these commitments, the ICRC is working to better understand how it can contribute to a collective response to climate risks. These commitments helped shift the institution’s approach to climate change, as the recognition of climate risks to people enduring conflict became clearer. It served to push all staff to overcome conceptual silos, consider how the impacts of combined conflict and climate risks may shape the experiences of affected people in exacerbating their vulnerabilities, and try to develop more holistic responses.

In northern Mozambique, for example, the ICRC in collaboration with the local water authorities has improved access to clean water in Montepuez. It helped reinforce and expand the deficient and ageing urban water system and developed a masterplan for further expansion of the network in the future. This helps to ensure that people have access to water during drier periods of the year, as well as to prevent water-related health problems that tend to be correlated with heavy rains and floods. In northern Mali, the ICRC has worked with the National Meteorological Agency to improve access to meteorological information for people living in the conflict-affected areas, and with the National Red Cross, local partners and leaders to help farmers and pastoralists use forecasts to take better decisions. In Syria, as part of its economic security operations and in response to the climate-induced spread of crop diseases such as wheat leaf rust, the ICRC trained staff from the governmental General Organization for Seed Multiplication on disease management strategies and supported its work to produce more adaptive cereal varieties.

These are concrete examples of measures the ICRC can implement to support conflict-affected communities to strengthen their resilience and adaptive capacity in the context of climate change and environmental degradation. They have yielded lessons – that effective programmes take place at the very local level, in collaboration with local authorities, communities and service providers – but they are far from sufficient alone, and an adequate response must go far beyond humanitarian action. Specific research in the Sahel and in the Middle East has also helped the ICRC fine-tune its understanding of how risks may interact and trigger displacement, or impact those already displaced, keeping in mind people’s individual characteristics, such as their gender, age, or capacity.

An institutional operational framework was adopted in 2023 with a view to supporting more systematic progress towards integrating climate risks into the ICRC’s analysis and response to people affected by armed conflict and violence. The framework outlines possible pathways and objectives for climate-risk integration within the ICRC’s operations, and provides tools, approaches and technical guidelines to facilitate climate-smart programming. Furthermore, recognising that planning, decision-making and monitoring of climate-risk integration at the ground level are crucial enablers of climate action, ahead of the annual planning exercise for 2024, ICRC delegations were instructed to incorporate climate-risk indicators to assess their progress over time. The idea is for delegations to keep track of whether and to what extent climate-risk information has been integrated into specific programmes.

All this is encouraging but still work in progress. Humanitarian actors such as the ICRC need to devote further thinking on how to enhance protection and assistance for people facing the combined effects of armed conflict and climate risks. More can be learnt from approaches to prevent displacement induced by conflict or disasters, which could help prevent displacement stemming from intersecting risks. At the same time, an exclusive focus on helping people adapt so they can stay at home overlooks the limitations that climate adaptation may have. This is especially the case for people living in conflict areas, where livelihood diversification is often a challenge, and concerns related to access to essential services, shelter, safety and security may contribute to making staying unsustainable. Therefore, humanitarian policies need to recognise that mobility, both internal and cross-border, can be an important coping or even survival strategy for people enduring the combined effects of conflict and climate risks, and as such, it should also be supported. Mobility-related considerations, informed by people’s priorities and concerns, need to be better incorporated into the design of adaptation support strategies and approaches, including in countries enduring conflict, and in efforts to achieve interim and durable solutions for IDPs and refugees.

Angela Cotroneo is Global Internal Displacement and Migration Adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Marta Triggiano is former Migration Adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The authors wrote this article in a personal capacity.