A closer look at links between environment and security

Caux Dialogue on Environment and Security 2020

19/07/2021

 

Food security is a key to understanding the complex connection between climate and security, Dhanasree Jayaram, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), told this year’s Caux Dialogue on Environment and Security (CDES). Jayaram, who is also Co-Coordinator of MAHE’s Centre for Climate Studies, has been part of CDES since the inaugural Summer Academy on Land, Security and Climate in 2019. This year she addressed the plenary on ‘Climate Finance: catalyst of holistic solutions’. 

Dhansaree Jayaram

Environmental shifts often have most impact on economies that are heavily dependent on agriculture, Dhanasree Jayaram explained, saying that ‘Food security is interconnected with livelihood and employment security of the farmers.’ For example, she said, the public system in Nepal puts too much emphasis on rice in its food-supply strategies. Rice is a water-heavy crop, so attempts to use it as a primary food source lead to overextraction of water, creating drought-like situations and a ‘lopsided’ policy in an already-vulnerable population.

One of the reasons problems of food security are difficult to resolve, Jayaram said, is the lack of understanding and academic research on the issue. Another knowledge gap is the influence of violent conflict, whose connection to environmental degradation is under-researched. Jayaram believes the solution must be ‘structurally driven’, because  such an approach puts ‘less burden on the individuals who are the most vulnerable and have the least access to resources’. Farmers, who ‘work enough to meet their ends’, cannot automatically be expected to get involved.

A structurally driven approach would come from large institutions, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, but also from start-ups with the resources to contribute and help communities closer to the ground. Plenty of individual action is already taking place, Jayaram said, but structural problems keep ‘large-scale actors and actions on the sidelines and [put] too much burden on individual people’. As an example she cited the gaps in how institutional resources are allocated, which can make it difficult for communities to use them effectively to adapt and transform their systems. This is one area where institutions can get involved: by trying to understand what the gaps are, and bridge them, for a better allocation of resources.

The African Development Bank is using several models to address the gap, including calls for proposals specifically for small-scale projects from civil society organizations and NGOs, said Gareth Phillips, Manager of the Bank’s Climate and Environment Finance Division. These calls are issued by the Bank’s growing Climate Change Fund. The Bank has also launched the Adaptation Benefit Mechanism, which will be ‘accessible for small-scale, context-specific adaptation projects’ developed by community-based groups. Its goal  is to certify the environmental, social and economic benefits of transformative adaptation to climate change, by de-risking and incentivizing such investments.

Food security and transformative adaptation are only some of the ways to examine security in the context of environmental degradation, with many possible connections existing that can be researched and understood to resolve the difficult cases that exist Nepal and other agriculturally-dependent economies. However, until these connections are still not fully understood and integrated institutionally, so we must now turn to individuals to address these areas in research and bring them to wider attention.

 

You would like to participate at this year's edition of the Caux Dialogue on Environment and Security?

 

REGISTER NOW

 

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Watch the replay of the plenary on ‘Climate Finance: catalyst of holistic solutions’: 

Featured Story
On

related stories

Save the date 2023 square no date

Caux Forum 2023: Save the Date

We are excited to announce the Caux Forum will be back in Caux next summer! Find out more and save the date! ...

Summer Academy 2022 square

'First, understand the problem!'

A key objective of the ‘Summer Academy on Land, Security and Climate’ is to build an inter-disciplinary community of professionals, each of whom are each seeking to forge solutions to problems of envi...

Arpan Yagnik

Arpan Yagnik: Mountains to climb

Arpan Yagnik, a participant of last year's Creative Leadership conference and team member of the IofC Hub 2021, talks to Mary Lean about creativity, fear and vocation. ...

YAP 2021 article square

Young Ambassadors Programme 2021: Learning to listen

When Indonesian law student Agustina Zahrotul Jannah discovered the Young Ambassadors Programme (YAP) on Google she felt both excited and hopeless: excited because she hoped it might give her the skil...

Water Warriors 2022 square

Help the Water Warriors save water in Kenya

Water Warriors is a groundbreaking collaboration between experts and activists in Kenya, India and Sweden launched by Initiatives for Land, Lives, and Peace (ILLP), the organizers of the annual Caux D...

Zero waste square for social media

Sofia Syodorenko: A zero waste lifestyle is a mindful lifestyle

How did Sofia Syodorenko become involved in the zero waste movement, and what does it mean to her? Now Chair of Foundations for Freedom, she is also a representative of the Zero Waste Alliance Ukraine...

Patrick Magee 600x600

‘Where Grieving Begins – Building Bridges after the Brighton Bomb’: a live interview with Patrick Magee

The second in Tools for Changemakers’ series of Stories for Changemakers took place on 25 August 2021, with an interview with Patrick Magee, who planted a bomb at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, in 1984, w...

Summer Academy 2021 screenshot square

Forging a network of problem-solvers to build a secure and sustainable future

The Summer Academy on Climate, Land and Security 2021 brought together 29 participants from 20 countries. From Egypt and Senegal to the United States and Thailand, zoom windows opened for six hours ev...

Salima Mahamoudou 21 July 2021 FDFA workshop CDES 2021

Remaking a world in peril

The Caux Dialogue on Environment and Security (CDES) 2021 ran online from 20 July until 30 July, for the second consecutive year, comprising three open plenaries and seven workshops. This year’s discu...

CL 2021 Hope square

A Journey from Uncertainty to Possibility

2021’s Creative Leadership conference took participants on a six-day journey ‘From Uncertainty to Possibility’. Between 25 to 31 July around 150 online participants living in over 50 countries engaged...

FDFA Baobabcowherd-1 Noah Elhardt through WikiCommons square with logos

A pathway to peace and prosperity in West and Central Africa

In the context of their partnership, Initiatives of Change Switzerland (IofC) and the Peace and Human Rights division of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs organised a webinar on the them...

LPM report 2021 square

Peacemakers in the making

‘I am super happy to have been part of the Learning to be a Peacemaker course – we learned the true colours of Islam!’ wrote 18-year-old high-school graduate Nma Dahir, from Erbil, capital of the Kurd...

Choir Musical Stories

Musical Stories from Caux

‘What a magnificent presentation of stories and music’, commented one of the participants of the second in-person, by invitation, event of this year's Caux Forum Online which took place on 1 August 20...

ICBE 2021 square white background

Sustainable businesses needs purpose beyond profit

Corporations and industries need a purpose beyond profit, says Sunil Mathur, the Managing Director and Chief Executive of Siemens in India and South Asia. ‘Companies’ purposes are critical,’ he explai...

CDES CDLS 2018 credit: Leela Channer

A decade of Caux Dialogues: Impact and recommendations

This report, written by Alan Channer and made possible thanks to the support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, looks back on a decade of Caux Dialogues on Environment and Security an...