Open Session on Climate, Peace and Security
Open Session on Climate, Peace and Security18 February 2026
Tomorrow (19 February), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is expected to convene an open session on the ‘Nexus between Climate Change, Peace, and Security in Africa.’
The session commences with opening remarks by Obeida A. El Dandarawy, Permanent Representative of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for February. This is followed by an introductory remark from the AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace, and Security (PAPS), Bankole Adeoye. A presentation by Moses Vilakati, AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment may also feature. In addition, statements are expected from AU Member States, representatives of the Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs), and representatives of the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU).
This meeting builds on the PSC’s long-standing engagement with the climate-security nexus since its 585th session in March 2016, through which the Council committed to holding annual deliberations on climate change and peace and security. In the past two years, the PSC has gone further, dedicating two sessions to the theme each year. This will mark the PSC’s 18th such session, including its 1301st Session(September 2025) and 1263rd Session(March 2025), both of which reaffirmed climate change as a risk multiplier that exacerbates political, socio-economic, and governance vulnerabilities, rather than a direct conflict trigger. Quantifying this effect, recent analysis of data from 51 African countries spanning 1960 to 2023 highlights the profound socioeconomic and political risks linked to rising temperatures. In the continent’s poorest nations, a 1°C increase is associated with a 10-percentage-point higher likelihood of exacerbating existing vulnerabilities, sometimes leading to civil conflict, whereas wealthier countries show no comparable vulnerability. Moreover, higher temperatures are linked to slower economic growth, reducing GDP growth rates by up to 4 percentage points in hotter years relative to cooler ones.
These trends are consistent with global scientific assessments, particularly findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which indicate that Africa is warming faster than the global average and is experiencing increasingly frequent and intense extreme climate events, including heatwaves, droughts, floods, and cyclones. Additionally, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reports that climate-related disasters in Africa have increased fivefold over the last 50 years.
The peace and security implications of the combination of political, institutional and development fragilities and tensions on the one hand and this climatic trend are stark. It is this interplay, not climate change in itself, that explains why 12 of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) 16 epicentres of crisis, countries marked by intertwined climate vulnerability, extreme poverty, and armed conflict, are in Africa. This underscores the need to prioritise the factors that perpetuate these vulnerabilities, account for climate impacts, and address climate change through broader policy processes.
Climate stress increasingly intersects with armed conflict, weak governance, livelihood loss and displacement, deepening instability in regions such as the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and parts of Western, Central and Southern Africa. As of early October 2025, OCHA reports that severe flooding in South Sudan had affected more than 639,000 people across 26 counties, intensifying competition over land and water already strained by drought and deepening post-conflict fragility. These climate-driven livelihood losses are fueling intercommunal violence and the growth of armed rivalries, reinforcing cycles of insecurity amid rising political tensions among rival political forces in the country.
Yet the relationship between climate and security is not one-directional. War and conflicts, as well as political instability, also contribute to making climatic stresses much more devastating. Thus, on this flip side, the ongoing conflict in Sudan has intensified the effects of prolonged drought, devastating crops and livestock, and gravely eroding livelihoods and survival capacities.
These continent-wide dynamics are increasingly manifesting in specific national contexts, where climate-induced environmental stress directly amplifies localised tensions and entrenched security threats. For instance, recent research indicates that the degradation of land and water has heightened competition between farming and pastoralist communities in Nigeria, and the research further highlights that ‘the clashes over scarce resources now claim more lives annually than the Boko Haram insurgency itself’. The caveat in this respect is that it is not merely the climate change impact in intensifying competition over resources that makes the ensuing clashes deadlier. What made climate-induced inter-communal clashes over scarce resources deadlier is their combination with the widespread availability of small arms and light weapons.
Against this background, the PSC’s previous sessions, particularly the 1301st session of September 2025, were notable for situating climate change firmly within a broader climate policy framework anchored in development, justice, and equity, focusing on loss and damage, adaptation financing, and the differentiated vulnerabilities of least-developed and conflict-affected African states. In this regard, the Council is expected to discuss the implications of anchoring climate-security responses within a broader justice-oriented framework. This includes ensuring effective implementation of COP29 commitments on adaptation, loss and damage, and associated financing.
Another dimension of the climate-security nexus relates to access to climate finance. As shown below, fragile and conflict-affected countries, which are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts, have the most need for climate finance. However, their risk profile means that they have the least access to climate finance. It is therefore of particular interest for the PSC to reflect on how access to climate finance can be expanded, paying particular attention to fragile and conflict-affected countries.
Tomorrow’s session is also expected to get an update on the work for the finalisation of the Common African Position (CAP) on Climate Change, Peace and Security. It is to be recalled that updates provided during the 1301st session indicated that the CAP is now expected to be concluded ahead of COP31, reflecting the need for input of member states, deeper consultation and alignment with existing AU frameworks, including the Africa Group of Negotiators. The delay also underscored ongoing political sensitivities, but it also highlights the strategic importance of ensuring Member State ownership and coherence across Africa’s climate and peace architectures. Since the last session and the update from Adoye, the draft CAP was presented at a technical meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya. The technical meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya on 25-27 November 2025 under the title “AU member States Validation Workshop on the Draft Common African Position on the Climate Change, peace and security nexus (CAP-CPS)’ concluded without validating the draft. The outcome statement outlined the five-step process roadmap to finalise the work.
Financing for adaptation is also expected to feature during the session. Despite being among the most climate-vulnerable regions, Africa continues to receive a disproportionately small share of global climate finance; according to the United Nations Development Programme, nearly 90% of climate funding is concentrated in high- and middle-income, high-emitting countries, while fragile states, where climate risks intersect most acutely with conflict and governance challenges, receive the least support. This imbalance is particularly stark in conflict-affected settings, where communities obtain on average only one-third of the per-capita adaptation funding available in non-conflict contexts, and countries facing protracted crises continue to receive lower levels of climate-related Official Development Assistance despite their heightened vulnerability. Against this backdrop, the PSC is likely to revisit the outcome of COP30 in Belém, where nations pledged to triple adaptation funding by 2035, a timetable that many African experts deem too slow given the continent’s acute climate vulnerabilities, and most climate finance remains loan-heavy rather than grant-based, further risking debt stress for African states. The Council is therefore expected to focus on the urgent need to honour existing commitments, reform barriers to accessing climate funds, and acknowledge that the persistent under-financing of adaptation is not merely a development challenge but an escalating driver of fragility, fiscal stress, and long-term peace and security risks across Africa that is not without global consequences.
Loss and damage is another policy issue of urgency expected to feature during tomorrow’s session. With climate-induced floods, droughts and cyclones causing repeated destruction of infrastructure, livelihoods and ecosystems, Africa continues to incur billions of dollars in losses annually. The African Development Bank estimates that climate change already costs African economies 2–5% of GDP each year, for some even reaching double digits. The PSC is thus likely to stress the need for accelerated operationalisation and capitalisation of the loss and damage fund in ways that are responsive to African realities.
Operationally, the session is expected to advance discussions on mainstreaming climate considerations into the AU’s peace and security architecture. This includes integrating climate-conflict indicators into early warning systems, strengthening preparedness and disaster risk reduction, and framing adaptation and governance as peacebuilding strategies. Notably, previous PSC sessions have recognised mobility and transhumance as legitimate adaptation strategies, calling for improved cross-border governance and regional cooperation to reduce climate-induced tensions, an approach of particular relevance to the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Building on this evolving operational focus, the PSC is expected to articulate more concrete follow-up measures, including clearer guidance on implementing climate-security risk assessments in situations under its agenda, strengthening coordination between early warning and response mechanisms, and enhancing collaboration with regional actors to translate these policy commitments into practical preventive and resilience-building actions on the ground.
The session may also revisit the PSC’s earlier call for ensuring that climate-peace and security considerations are fully integrated into continental and global climate policy processes, including the work of CAHOSCC and Africa’s engagement in upcoming multilateral forums such as the G20 and COP31. This remains critical for ensuring that Africa’s concerns around the security dimension of climate and the requisite measures to address the security risks of climate are not marginalised in global policy processes that tend to be increasingly dominated by mitigation and market-based approaches.
The outcome of the session is expected to be a communiqué. The PSC is likely to reaffirm its longstanding position that climate change constitutes a risk multiplier that exacerbates existing political, socio-economic and governance vulnerabilities across Africa and is not a direct cause of conflicts. In this regard, the Council is expected to reiterate its call for the expedited finalisation of the Common African Position (CAP) on Climate Change, Peace and Security within this framework and stress the importance of inclusive consultations, strong Member State ownership, and coherence with existing continental frameworks and Africa’s global climate diplomacy. The PSC may also underline that climate-security engagement should complement, rather than substitute, broader climate policy processes and remain anchored in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and Africa’s development priorities. The Council is also expected to call for concrete steps to operationalise the mainstreaming of climate considerations into conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts, including the integration of climate-conflict indicators into the Continental Early Warning System, the development of standardised climate-security risk assessment tools, and stronger coordination between early warning, humanitarian and response mechanisms. In addition, the PSC is expected to express concern over the widening gap between Africa’s climate needs and available financing, and call for scaled-up, predictable and accessible climate finance, particularly in grant form and with particular attention to the needs of fragile and conflict-affected states. PSC may also call for the capitalisation of the loss and damage fund and the adoption of debt suspension clauses when a country is hit by climate-induced disasters. Finally, the PSC is expected to call for enhanced coordination between the AU, Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms, Member States and international partners, and to stress the importance of ensuring that Africa’s climate-security priorities are effectively reflected in global climate negotiations and multilateral processes, including through engagement with continental mechanisms such as the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change.