Pacific Climate Security Assessment Guide

The new Pacific Climate Security Assessment guide aims to support Pacific Island Countries to collectively and individually uncover, assess and respond to climate security implications for their peoples, prosperity and peace. The Assessment Guide builds off of the Weathering Risk initiative’s methodology, and was undertaken by adelphi in collaboration with the UNDP, IOM and PIF as a part of the UNPBF funded “Climate Security in the Pacific” project.

In 2018, Pacific Island Forum Leaders stated outright that climate change is “the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific” in the Boe Declaration.

Pacific Islanders recognise that climate change affects every dimension of Pacific countries’ governance, external relations, identity and culture, with compounding threats to livelihoods, social cohesion, land, food, water, health, and economies, and poses significant risks for individual, community, national and regional stability. In some cases, these risks are already manifesting, leading to increased social pressures and disputes which threaten to erode social norms that have long guided community life. Fundamentally, climate change poses key questions around a future that seems so uncertain for Pacific countries, its communities and ways of life.

How climate and security can and will interact and converge, and any implications which result from it, is different across the vast Blue Pacific Continent. It’s up to countries themselves to uncover and explore these interactions and prioritise how to respond. If left unaddressed, climate security implications will cause further social discord, and can lead to political instability and heighten the risk of violence.

In addition to incorporating a brief regional trend analysis and limited entry points to kick start countries’ efforts to address climate insecurity, the Assessment Guide provides a “how to” for countries to undertake assessments themselves and across different levels. Anchored in the Pacific, the Assessment Guide was developed through extensive consultation with regional specialists, key regional institutions, civil society and with Forum member representatives, and is a core driver of the Regions broader ambition to help countries unpack risks so that appropriate responses can be put in place at the community, national and regional level.

Read the press release from the Pacific Islands Forum here.

The Republic of Marshall Islands Climate Security Risk Assessment can be found here. 

To read more about climate security in the Pacific, or utilise the Assessment Guide, you can download it in English below.