Localising Climate, Peace and Security: A Practical Step-by-Step Guidance Note for Local Peacebuilders

This practical step-by-step guide supports peacebuilders in documenting, assessing, and addressing climate-related security risks at the local level. It offers concrete guidance on how to incorporate local and indigenous knowledge into climate risk mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Why localised climate security risk assessments matter

Localised climate security risk assessments are a critical tool to help identify, collect evidence of, and prioritise responses to risks at the local level for the safety and security of people, communities, and societies. The step-by-step guide provides peacebuilders with the guidance needed to conduct an assessment, in the process demonstrating how climate change and security are interconnected and emphasising the need to understand climate hazards, community vulnerabilities, and local adaptive capacities when designing programmes.

A practical guide for local peacebuilders

The step-by-step guide outlines five key steps to help local peacebuilders document context-specific climate security challenges and address gaps in climate and conflict responses: defining local climate security issues, uniting key actors around shared objectives, developing data collection and analysis methods, identifying risks and solutions, and effectively communicating findings to local, national, regional, and global decision-makers. 

GPPAC members in Gwanda (Zimbabwe), Mecufi (Mozambique), and Kaabong (Uganda) successfully piloted the step-by-step guide. In all three cases, the approach helped translate local and indigenous knowledge into early warning and conflict-sensitive adaptation activities addressing context-specific causes of fragility such as resource competition, food and water insecurity, and the dissolution of public services.