7 November 2025

The event

Which key issues were discussed

The discussion examined how climate change is reshaping the operational realities of UN peace operations, affecting mobility, logistics, and protection efforts in missions like UNMISS, UNISFA, and UNAMA. Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heat are disrupting humanitarian access, intensifying intercommunal tensions, and undermining core mandates such as civilian protection, DDR, and governance support. Panellists emphasised that climate change-related evolving operational conditions require adaptive planning, anticipatory preparedness, and integration of climate risk analysis into mission strategies. Speakers also explored how environmental peacebuilding (eg, community cooperation to manage a shared resource) can serve as an entry point for dialogue and reconciliation.

What is being done/to do about them

Missions are incorporating climate-security analysis into early-warning and operational planning, mapping flood-prone zones, identifying high-lying areas where relief can be provided during flooding, and redesigning mobility strategies with all-terrain and riverine assets. UNMISS’s dedicated Climate, Peace and Security Advisor and UNISFA’s adaptive deployment practices were highlighted as emerging models. The UN Secretariat, through DPO’s Policy and Best Practice Service, is developing guidance for climate-sensitive mission planning and resource management. Participants called for stronger collaboration between missions, T/PCCs, and humanitarian actors to anticipate environmental shocks, integrate climate data into PoC and DDR work, and leverage partnerships with local and regional actors to turn disaster response into opportunities for peacebuilding and trust-building.

What implications emerged for the UNSC and UN HQ

The discussion underscored the need for the Security Council to integrate climate-security considerations systematically into mission mandates and reporting. Mandates should explicitly recognise climate impacts on the ability of operations to achieve protection, sustain mobility, and maintain support for humanitarian access, while allowing operational flexibility to adapt to environmental disruptions. At UN HQ, departments were urged to mainstream climate-risk assessment in planning and performance frameworks, deploy climate-security advisors across missions, and strengthen inter-agency coordination with UNEP, FAO, and OCHA. Participants stressed that proactive adaptation—rather than reactive crisis management—will determine mission effectiveness, making climate resilience a core criterion for mandate design, resourcing, and accountability going forward. It was also stressed that integrating a climate-lens into mission planning and operations is not an additional task, but adaptation of existing practices in response to the effects of climate change.