Zambia includes climate security perspectives in its new National Green Growth Strategy 2024-2030 to preempt climate-related risks to peaceful growth.
Zambia’s Ministry of Green Economy and Environment has included social cohesion, peace, and stability as guiding principles in its New National Green Growth Strategy 2024-2030 to foster a low-carbon and socially inclusive economy. These principles are informed by the CGIAR Research Initiative on Climate Resilience (ClimBeR)’s research and engagement with local communities and national stakeholders. The strategy lists enhancing institutional capacity as a key enabling condition, and its implementation plan provisions for research and training on climate, peace, and security.
In 2024, Zambia experienced the worst drought in four decades. This crisis caused food insecurity for more than a million people, cut off hydroelectric power supply, adversely affected the economy, amplified vulnerabilities and inequalities, all while compromising social stability.
To avoid the human, financial, and political costs of emerging climate-related risks to peace and security, Zambian policymakers integrated preventative and mitigative measures into the new National Green Growth Strategy 2024-2030. The strategy builds on ClimBeR research that connects local and national experiences.
ClimBeR researchers conducted fieldwork in Zambia’s Southern Province in 2023 in collaboration with the country’s Ministry of Agriculture. They found that even though Zambia has avoided climate-related violent conflicts so far, climate change impacts are already challenging social cohesion and peaceful co-existence in some places and within certain demographics.
Applying a community voices methodology, ClimBeR researchers discussed current climate challenges and local solutions with 49 community members from Muchila in Namwala district and Lusitu in Chirundu district in Southern Province. These discussions revealed that climate change impacts are driving important social changes that can potentially impact social cohesion, community stability, and even peace, particularly if urgent climate action is not taken. Community members also proposed solutions such as improving equitable access to water through collective-action institutions.
ClimBeR subsequently organized a stakeholder consultation workshop, which brought together 45 experts and representatives from civil society, academia, regional and international organizations, and national ministries, to integrate the challenges and solutions identified by local communities into national policies. The workshop was co-hosted by Zambia’s Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Green Economy and Environment, the CGIAR Research Initiative on Fragility, Conflict, and Migration, and the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD).
Based on insights from the community discussions, workshop participants identified four pathways that can potentially cause climate-related risks to peace and security, including the risk of localized tensions: mobility (i.e., rural-urban or rural-rural migration); competition over water; intensifying conflicts over land; and worsening livelihood conditions that may propel people toward maladaptive strategies. Participants also agreed on the need to rethink national policies and frameworks for climate action by integrating a sustainable peace lens.
Following these discussions, the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment requested ClimBeR researchers’ insights on priorities and plans for addressing the social impacts of climate change to inform the new National Green Growth Strategy. The Ministry also asked ClimBeR researchers to provide Zambia-specific definitions of “climate, peace, and security” and “climate-related peace and security risks” to be included in the strategy’s glossary. These definitions, developed in collaboration with ACCORD, provide a shared reference for how to articulate the climate, peace, and security nexus, not only as it relates to reduced social cohesion and risk of tensions, but also as an entry point for peace-positive growth.
In line with the priorities set out in the National Green Growth Strategy, ClimBeR in October 2024, in collaboration with ACCORD, hosted a training workshop to introduce ministerial staff to conflict management and climate sensitivity concepts and tools, including ClimBeR’s Climate Security Observatory, an online decision-support tool that pinpoints climate security risks and mitigation options. The training was intended to enable decision-makers to develop climate policies and practices that prevent conflicts and foster peace.
Upcoming field research is planned in Zambia’s Southern Province, in collaboration with Zambia’s Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Copperbelt University. This work will be carried forward under CGIAR’s upcoming Climate Action Science Program, and it will focus on gendered differences in climate resilience and investigate the potential for collective action and local strategies for adaptation led by women and youth.
“With the climate change impacts that we are currently facing, especially with the current drought, we are experiencing conflicts over water and energy. That’s why it is so important to include these aspects of climate, peace, and security as we aim to grow our green economy.”
Philippa Hamakasu, Senior Green Economy Officer-Projects at Zambia’s Ministry of Green Economy and Environment.
