Credit: UNICEF/Gema Espinoza Delgado

By Caroline Delgado
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Nov 14 2025 (IPS)

The urgency of linking climate action with social and wider environmental priorities is clear. Climate change, environmental degradation and violent conflict are often deeply connected and even mutually reinforcing. At the same time, climate action can either support or undermine efforts to improve social justice and halt environmental degradation.

These connections are nowhere more visible than in global food systems, where environmental pressures, social inequality and economic shocks converge. And Latin America, where COP30 is taking place, could be central to the solution.

Climate change, violent conflict and economic crises are major drivers of food insecurity, while food production itself contributes to more than one-third of global emissions and accelerates biodiversity loss through land use change.

Despite steady growth in agricultural production over the past two decades, hunger persists: in 2024, around 8 per cent of the world’s population faced hunger, many of them small-scale farmers in crisis-affected regions.

Latin America’s paradox: ecological abundance amid social and environmental fragility

Latin America embodies the contradictions at the core of the global climate and development agenda: vast ecological resources and food production capacity coexist with significant inequality, environmental degradation, and social unrest.

Its ecosystems regulate carbon and water cycles essential to planetary stability and the region is the world’s largest provider of ecosystem services. Latin America also holds the greatest per capita availability of agricultural land and water, making it both the world’s largest net food exporter and a carbon sink.

Yet these assets face mounting pressure from deforestation, land-use change, and extractive industries. The degradation of forests, soils, and watersheds not only accelerates emissions and biodiversity loss but also deepens local grievances over land, livelihoods, and access to resources. This, in turn, heightens the risk of social tension and violence in a region marked by extreme inequality, widespread violence, and the world’s highest number of environmental conflicts.

Unequal land distribution and the expansion of extractive and agricultural frontiers perpetuate a cycle of degradation and displacement. Environmental decline erodes resilience to droughts, floods, and other climate impacts, undermines food security and increases competition over dwindling resources.

Climate change exacerbates these challenges: extreme weather events reduce crop yields and fuel migration, while the destruction of ecosystems diminishes the capacity of nature to buffer against future shocks.

Many of the region’s environmental conflicts stem from disputes over territory, water, and the impacts of large-scale projects that privilege short-term, growth over sustainable livelihoods. Criminal networks and weak governance exacerbate instability through illegal mining, logging, and land grabs, whereas violence against environmental defenders deepens distrust in state institutions.

Agriculture and governance at the crossroads

The agricultural sector lies at the centre of this nexus. It is a cornerstone of Latin America’s economy and a major source of global food supply. Agricultural exports grew 1.7 times between 2010 and 2023, generating a trade surplus of US$161 billion. Production and trade are projected to expand further by 2031.

Yet, if expansion continues to rely in deforestation and exclusion, it risks deepening insecurity, fuelling new conflict and ecological collapse. Without inclusive governance and environmental safeguards, economic growth will remain fragile and unsustainable.

Breaking these cycles requires an integrated approach that links governance, environmental justice, and sustainable land use. Strengthening land governance, protecting environmental defenders and supporting small-scale and Indigenous producers are essential to building resilience.

Secure land rights and respect for collective territories reinforce local autonomy and reduce pressures for extractive expansion. Protecting defenders safeguards those facing repression and violence in resource conflicts, while inclusive, locally rooted development pathways sustain livelihoods and reflect diverse worldviews for many rural populations, to which land is not only a resource but also a cultural identity.

Promising developments

The Escazú agreement provides a framework for embedding these principles in practice. Entering into force in 2021 and ratified so far by 18 Latin American countries, it is the region’s first legally binding treaty on environmental governance. Its three pillars – access to information, public participation, and justice for environmental defenders- make it not only an environmental agreement but also a democratic one.

By strengthening transparency and participation, Escazú promotes accountability and peaceful resource governance, helping to prevent the very conflicts that undermine climate resilience.

However, its transformative potential remains uneven. The majority of the region’s countries have yet to ratify it, whereas implementation in those that have is hampered by limited technical capacity, weak crisis response mechanisms, and, in some cases, a lack of political will. These obstacles, compounded by democratic backsliding in parts of the region and the declining global prioritisation of environmental issues, threatens to blunt its impact.

Yet, fully realising the promise of Escazú could provide the region with a solid foundation for more equitable resilient, and sustainable, food systems built rooted in transparency, inclusion, and accountability.

As COP 30 unfolds, Latin America’s experience offers a critical lesson to the world: climate action cannot succeed without social justice, transparency, and peace. The region’s experience shows that safeguarding ecosystems and empowering those who defend them are inseparable from ensuring food security and global stability.

Building resilient food systems and sustainable economies depends on empowering those who defend the land and ensuring that environmental governance benefits both people and the planet.

Dr Caroline Delgado is Director of the Food, Peace and Security Programme at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

COP16 in Rome, February 2025. Credit: Vatican News

By Caroline Delgado
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 3 2025 (IPS)

With global temperatures continuing to break records and every global indicator of the health of the natural world showing decline, the need to quickly move away from fossil fuels and environmentally destructive practices has never been more apparent. But as has often been pointed out, how this ‘green transition’ is achieved matters.

Besides the self-evident benefits of a healthier, more liveable world, the green transition opens up huge economic and employment opportunities. It also has the potential to usher in a more just, more equitable, more peaceful world.

But without deliberate interventions to make sure that happens, the green transition could instead deepen injustice and division.

Indigenous Peoples and peasant communities have played little role in causing climate change or environmental breakdown—in fact, they are often innovative and effective stewards of the natural environment. Nevertheless, they are among the groups most vulnerable to these crises, as well as to the potential negative impacts of green projects.

A just, and successful green transition must see both the benefits and the burdens shared equitably across regions and communities—including among Indigenous and peasant communities.

The United Nations Biodiversity Conference, COP16, which started in Cali, Colombia, in October last year and finally closed on 27 February this year in Rome, produced some important steps in this direction.

Global frameworks and the green transition

The 2015 Paris Agreement and the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework are the main frameworks setting the level of ambition and timelines for the green transition. The Paris Agreement calls for a 43-per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, while the Global Biodiversity Framework calls for halting and reversing biodiversity loss by the same date.

These commitments are driving change in many sectors. Two categories of commodities play key roles in current strategies to achieve these goals: ‘energy transition minerals’ used in clean technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and electric batteries—and biofuels.

Demand for both is expected to surge. This presents both opportunities and significant challenges in terms of equity, human rights, economic justice and environmental sustainability.

Unequal distribution of benefits and burdens

The benefits and burdens inherent in the green transition are not, for now, evenly distributed. Only 10 per cent of the $2 trillion in energy transition-related investments made in 2023 went to 150 developing countries that together represent a third of global GDP and are home to half of the world’s population.

Wealthier countries and households tend to gain more from green infrastructure, and green investment, while in contrast large-scale renewable energy projects may bring job losses, worsening energy insecurity and displacement to low-income communities.

The extraction of ETMs often exacerbates pre-existing vulnerabilities in surrounding communities and increases the likelihood of environmental conflicts, especially in low-income countries. More than half of the potential ETM reserves are located on or near the lands of Indigenous groups and peasant communities.

Likewise, biofuel production has significant implications for land use, ecology, food security and rural communities. Latin America, South East Asia, and North America are already major biofuel exporters and intend to increase their output.

Yet expansion of fuel crop production often takes place on land that belongs to or is used by Indigenous and peasant communities, even if this fact is not always recognized in official land use data.

Indigenous and peasant communities in the green transition

Indigenous Peoples make up 4–6 per cent of the world’s population and traditionally own, manage, use or occupy a quarter of the world’s land. Peasants (including some Indigenous communities) constitute approximately 40 per cent of the global population.

Their dependency on the land for their livelihoods, coupled with entrenched marginalization and—in the case of many Indigenous populations—deep spiritual and cultural ties to nature make them particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental conflicts.

ETM mining and large-scale energy projects, including fuel crop plantations, frequently results in land grabs, forced evictions and other human rights violations, and environmental degradation, threatening their lives, livelihoods and food security. Around a third of the environmental defenders killed each year are Indigenous Peoples.

Because of issues like these, there are widespread calls for the technical aspects of the green transition to be implemented in ways that promote social equity, ecological justice and structural political change—a just transition.

However, interpretations of exactly what this means vary. For many Indigenous Peoples and peasant communities, a just transition entails shifting away from exploitative extractive models to prioritize sustainability and social equity, restore Indigenous governance and self-determination, and recognize cultural practices and land rights.

Progress and institutional recognition

COP16 made key steps towards institutionalizing Indigenous and local communities’ role in implementating the 2011 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and has been hailed by Camila Paz Romero, spokesperson for Indigenous Peoples at the conference, as ‘an unprecedented occasion in the history of multilateral environmental agreements’.

Landmark decisions at COP16 included adopting a work programme for provisions of the convention related to Indigenous Peoples and local communities and establishing a permanent ‘subsidiary body’ that will ‘enhance the engagement and participation of indigenous peoples and local communities in all Convention processes’.

The work programme prioritizes the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity; full and effective participation; and a human rights-based approach.

Another major breakthrough was the provision that at least half of the resources collected in the new Cali Fund will go to the self-identified needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This should enhance these communities’ ability to lead conservation and biodiversity restoration efforts.

The Cali Fund, which was officially launched on 25 February, is to consist of contributions from major companies making commercial use of digital sequence information on genetic resources.

Towards an inclusive and sustainable future

The agreements reached at COP16 are milestones worth celebrating. But they do not ensure a just and sustainable green transition for the world’s Indigenous Peoples and peasant communities. That requires recognizing and engaging with these communities as equal partners when it comes to decisions and actions that affect their lands and resources.

This is particularly important when their interests and ambitions are in competition with more powerful economic and geopolitical imperatives. The meaningful inclusion and participation of these groups should lead to more equitable policies.

In addition, states need to recognize legal land and property rights for Indigenous and peasant communities. They need to allow self-determination, and safeguard these communities against displacement and environmental harm. Ignoring these principles risks deepening socio-environmental and economic injustices and escalating conflicts—not to mention incurring substantial financial costs when, for example, suspending operations at a mine can cost millions of dollars a day.

Equitable resource distribution, democratic governance and local leadership are essential to avoid top-down approaches that have a tendency to marginalize local actors, especially Indigenous and peasant communities. In that regard it is imperative that companies are incentivized to contribute to the Cali Fund.

Giving Indigenous Peoples and peasant communities the resources to scale up locally led biodiversity conservation, restoration and resource-management initiatives could both strengthen their agency and help to ensure long-term ecological and social resilience.

Ultimately, treating Indigenous People and peasant communities as equal partners improves the chances of winning the fight against climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental injustice, with no-one left behind.

Caroline Delgado is a Senior Researcher and Director of the Food, Peace and Security Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). She is lead author of the report Environmental and Climate Justice, and the Dynamics of Violence in Latin America.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Women sell fruit and vegetables on a sidewalk in the Philippines, where workers in the informal economy are in danger of having their livelihoods destroyed by the impacts of COVID-19. The UN will be commemorating World Food Day on October 16. Credit: ILO/Minette Rimando

By Farah Hegazi and Caroline Delgado
STOCKHOLM, Oct 13 2021 (IPS)

Hunger, violent conflict and the visible impacts of climate change are all on the rise. World Food Day, October 16, is a reminder that we need to talk about the intricate ways that these challenges are connected—and how to tackle them together.

Despite steadily increasing global harvests, more than 150 million people were acutely food-insecure in 2020, and 41 million people were reportedly on the edge of famine this summer. The main drivers of this food insecurity were violent conflict and extreme weather events.

With the number of active armed conflicts at an historic high, the impacts of climate change intensifying rapidly, and the world economy reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to find sustainable solutions to the dangerous interactions between hunger, conflict and climate change impacts could not be more pressing.

Hunger, conflict and climate change: a lethal cocktail

Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Zimbabwe together accounted for the 10 worst hunger crises in 2020. In the preceding decade, they accounted for over 72 per cent of all conflict deaths globally. Most of these countries are also highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

This is no mere coincidence. Both conflict and climate change impact people’s ability to produce, trade and access food, often through complex interactions.

Attacks on food production are a regular feature of war, whether it is placing landmines in fields, burning crops, looting or killing livestock, or forcing farmers to switch away from food crops to more lucrative illicit crops such as coca leaves.

Disruption of transport routes makes it harder to distribute and store food, especially more perishable types. And when food is short and formal markets fail to deliver, black markets can thrive, with profits often going to one conflict party or another and thus helping to prolong the fighting. Not surprisingly, lasting food insecurity is among the principal legacies of war.

Climate change can also disrupt food production—from the immediate damage from floods and droughts, to slower impacts such changing rainfall patterns and rising temperatures that make it harder to grow current crop varieties.

These impacts can devastate the livelihoods of farmers and herders. The risk of conflict breaking out increases as they compete over viable land and water resources or migrate. They may also be courted by armed groups promising security and brighter prospects.

In Mali, for example, nearly a fifth of the population is food-insecure because of greater variability in rainfall and more frequent and severe droughts linked to climate change. Extremist groups have been quick to use this to their advantage, providing people with food in exchange for support and thereby further fueling conflict.

South Sudan is facing a similar situation. In flood-affected pastoral regions such as Jonglei, cattle raiding has become more frequent and more violent.

Combined solutions

On the positive side, these links between hunger, climate and conflict provide entry points for action that addresses all three—and does so more effectively than programmes trying to tackle them separately.

As an example, in a region of East Africa known as the Greater Karamoja Cluster—spanning parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda—there have been violent clashes between groups of migratory herders during protracted drought.

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization have managed to reduce these conflicts, and boost the herders’ livelihoods and food security, by helping them negotiate deals on the use of pasture and water resources.

Even small-scale, highly localized programmes can catalyse wider change. In Colombia, a country highly vulnerable to climate change and scarred by the legacy of a long-running armed conflict, the revival of traditional indigenous knowledge is gaining momentum.

This includes using natural early warning signs like the appearance of certain migratory birds, which can help locals to prepare themselves for climate impacts, as well as reviving sustainable farming, fishing and hunting practices. In the process, it brings together communities fragmented by the fighting.

The rise of hunger and conflict—reversing decades of progress—along with intensifying impacts of climate change all call for urgent action, from the United Nations down. But they are connected issues, compounding each other at dire cost to people and nature.

Although it recognized that conflict and climate are linked to food insecurity, the recent UN Food Systems Summit missed the chance to discuss in depth how these connections work or how to address them.

Another chance for real progress is coming with the imminent UN climate summit in Glasgow, COP26. It is to be hoped that the discussions on climate change adaptation and loss and damage will explicitly look at how to decouple hunger, conflict and climate change.

Dr Farah Hegazi is a Researcher on the Climate Change and Risk programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), where she specializes on environmental peacebuilding. She is part of the research team for the SIPRI initiative Environment of Peace (https://www.sipri.org/research/peace-and-development/environment-peace).

Dr Caroline Delgado is a Senior Researcher and Director of the Food, Peace and Security Programme at SIPRI. Her areas of expertise include conflict, human security and peacebuilding. She is one of the focal points for the Global Registry of Violent Deaths (GReVD).

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau