In collaboration with the Center for International Peace Operations in Berlin, PeaceRep has developed recommendations for those involved in peace processes on how to make peace negotiations more climate-sensitive (Epple & Overmann 2025). By ‘climate-sensitive’ mediation we mean mediation policies, strategies, and practices that:

1. are designed based on a deep understanding of the reciprocal relationship between climate change and conflict; that
2. maximize opportunities for mediation offered by climate change and climate action; while
3. minimizing their unintended negative consequences for mediation, and vice-versa.

The research has highlighted some common challenges in making peace mediation more climate-sensitive (Epple & Overmann 2025), including in relation to the risk of overloading peace negotiations with another topic, particularly if it is not considered a priority by the conflict parties. Other challenges include unfavourable mediation environments, for example those where ‘softer’ topics such as climate change are nowhere near the agenda due to a focus on ‘hard’ security issues, unsuitable framings of ‘climate change’ in negotiations, as well as a lack of funding and interdisciplinary exchange between climatologists and peacemakers.

Key recommendations for mediators include:

1. Centre concerns of those most affected by the climate crisis and conflict in mediation policy and practice.
2. Avoid overloading peace negotiations by adding on climate change as an additional topic if it is not already a suggested by conflict parties and civic actors as a priority issue.
3. Develop guidance on integrating climate change into analysis and mediation efforts.
4. Adapt funding volume and modalities to the climate-mediation nexus and fund interdisciplinary research and mediation projects.
5. Expand training and capacity-building measures in the field of climate, peace and security, and to establish a stand-by roster of climate experts that mediators can rely upon.
6. Champion the climate-mediation nexus at international and national levels.
7. Mainstream climate change issues into domestic and international mediation policy and practice, while supporting deconflicting and coordination of mediation efforts in the climate-mediation space (Epple & Overmann 2025).

PeaceRep research has examined the links between decarbonisation (as a key plank of the green energy transition) and peacemaking, focusing on the impact of unstable and falling oil prices, and the related decline of political finance in ‘political marketplaces’:

1. Oil is key to political finance, and decarbonisation is therefore potentially destabilising. In fragile states where governance institutions are weak, politics often centres on transactional bargains among the elite rather than the rule of law. Access to or control over oil rents is key to elite actors’ ability to achieve and maintain political power. The global transition away from fossil fuels risks upsetting these elite deals in contexts where governments are least well-equipped to manage the transition (Spatz, Sarkar, & de Waal 2023).
2. Availability of discretionary oil rents impacts patterns of peacemaking. Evidence from PA-Xsuggests that comprehensive peace agreements tend to happen more often when oil prices are higher and more funds are available for political elites to divide. Similarly, more limited peace agreements happen when such political funds are scarce (Spatz, Sarkar, & de Waal 2023). While the period of high oil prices in the mid-2000s was characterised by several significant peace deals that attempted comprehensive settlements (in settings such as Sudan), the decline of oil prices in the years from 2013 to 2021 has led to a new era of turbulence. The reasons for these patterns were the availability and subsequent decline of political finance that enabled elite buy in at a large scale in ‘big tent’ politics, as well as the rise and decline of strategic interest in geopolitical stability by international powers (Pospisil 2023).

Research conducted through the Afghanistan Research Network, PeaceRep has examined climate action, including climate mitigation, adaptation, and finance, in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover in 2021 (Malyar 2023). The research highlighted how climate action had been progressing, albeit slowly, before the Taliban came to power, and makes a range of recommendations on how to advance climate action under the de facto authorities (such as the establishment of an Afghanistan Climate Emergency Working Group and a reconnecting between domestic and international climate institutions).

Drawing on its South Sudan Public Perceptions of Peace Survey data, PeaceRep has been able to establish, for the first time, that across South Sudan, people are not just aware of climate change, but that they also experience adverse effects of climate change on livelihoods, displacement, and conflict (Deng et al. 2024). The data has shown that there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between climate change and conflict:

1. On the one hand, armed conflict, particularly through its impact on food security and displacement, increases the population’s vulnerability to climate extremes.
2. On the other hand, climate extremes reinforce conditions of marginalisation, exploitation, and social disintegration that are conducive to intercommunal violence.

A majority of survey respondents, and particularly men, have reported that climate change affects conflict, including by increasing disagreements over resources such as land and water, exacerbating violent conflicts between farmers and herders. Climate change is also seen as a factor in increased cattle-raiding and politically motivated conflicts.

PeaceRep has examined these particular dynamics in more detail (Muorwel, Pospisil, & Monoja 2023). Flooding, intensified by climate change, has contributed to the migration of Dinka Bor herders from Jonglei State to the Equatoria region of South Sudan, resulting in conflict between migrating herders and local farmers over livestock destroying crops and encroaching upon hunting grounds of host communities. The research has further shown that, while the national government has made some efforts to mitigate climate-induced displacement and conflict, comprehensive climate action policies are lacking, and resource constraints hinder larger peace dialogues organised by civil society.

Looking at climate action more broadly, PeaceRep research has illuminated the evolution of the SIDS, a group of 39 States, located in the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea, as global normative actors (Moens 2025). The research has shed light on how SIDS pursue their interests through strategic alliance-building and participation in intergovernmental organisations, contributing, in particular, to advancements in the law of statehood in response to climate change-induced sea-level rise that threatens the statehood of low-lying SIDS.

PeaceRep’s key findings series presents a top-line overview of findings from the breadth and depth of the consortium’s data-driven and in-country research between 2021 – 2026. The findings presented here represent our main contributions to the field, but are not necessarily exhaustive of all PeaceRep work on each thematic and geographic area. To view all PeaceRep publications, visit the publications database. To cite these findings, use the suggested citation below. 

Researchers involved

Elisa D’Amico, Alex de Waal, David Deng, Sophia Dawkins, Tim Epple, Idrees Malyar, Marie Moens, Veronica Igale Monoja, James Kunhiak Muorwel, Christopher Oringa, Jan Pospisil, Aditya Sarkar, Benjamin Spatz

Citation

Epple, T. (2026). PeaceRep Key Findings: Climate Change. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.

References

D’Amico, E. (2025). Conflict in a Warming World: How Climate Shocks Impact Rebel Demands and Peace Agreement Outcomes. (PeaceRep Report: Climate & Natural Resources). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.

Deng, D., Dawkins, S., Epple, T., Oringa, C., & Pospisil, J. (2024). Climate Security in South Sudan: Findings from the 2024 Public Perceptions of Peace Survey (PeaceRep and FES Policy Brief). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, South Sudan Office.

Epple, T. (2025). Peace agreements in a changing climate: Three ways in which climate change and peace processes interact. Environment and Security, 3(3) https://doi.org/10.1177/27538796241310298

Epple, T., & Overmann, A. (2025). Peace mediation in the climate crisis: Opportunities for Germany to advance climate-sensitive mediation (ZIF Briefing). Center for International Peace Operations.

Muorwel, J. K., Pospisil, J., & Monoja, V. I. (2023). Caught Between Crises in South Sudan: Flood-Induced Migration of Dinka Bor Cattle Herders into the Equatoria Region (PeaceRep and FES Discussion Paper). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, South Sudan Office.

Malyar, I. (2023). Managing Climate Change under the De Facto Authorities (Afghanistan Research Network Reflection). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.

Moens, M. (2025). Statehood Guaranteed? Contributions of Sinking Small Island Developing States to Global Governance [The Future Voices Series]. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.

Pospisil, J. (2023). The New Era of Turbulence: Peacemaking Trends in Post-Carbon Times. Somerville, MA: World Peace Foundation.

Spatz, B., Sarkar, A., & de Waal, A. (2023). Decarbonization and Conflict Resolution: New Patterns of Peacemaking in Political Marketplace Systems and its Implications for the Clean Energy Transition (PeaceRep Policy Brief). PeaceRep: Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.