Peaceful Responses: UNFCCC brought nations together to peacefully negotiate a shared solution to dealing with climate risks

What If Climate Change Triggers Cooperation, Not Conflict? | Diana Liverman: "We have a climate convention (UNFCCC) that has brought nations together to peacefully negotiate a shared solution to dealing with climate risks and an unprecedented series of international scientific assessments - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - that brings together thousands of researchers to communicate climate risks to policy makers. Despite criticisms of lack of progress, the climate negotiations have resulted in transfer of funds from richer to poorer countries, collective efforts to reduce emissions, and intensive collaboration to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. And when climatic disasters strike, such as Hurricane Haiyan, we see outpourings of humanitarian response founded in the long tradition of cooperation across international boundaries in response to hazards and the military helping with peaceful emergency response and recovery.

So, conflict or cooperation? To decide, we need better-designed studies, more rigorous analysis and less melodramatic claims. We need studies that hypothesize peaceful resolution to tensions connected to resource competition and climate change, and statistical studies that use research designs that are open to the possibilities that climate extremes might have no influence on conflict and might, in fact, have positive outcomes. Rather than raise fears of conflict, scholars and strategists should seek best practices for cooperative and peaceful responses to the stresses of climate change."



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