Policy Summary: The Nexus of Fragility and Climate Risks

The research, summarized here, does not seek to establish a causal relationship between climate exposure and instability. Instead, it identifies the locations where fragility and climate risks cooccur around the world. It assesses key global fragility and climate patterns and country-specific risks to assess how these dynamics may coalesce to foster instability, strain state capacity, and undermine human security. Since places with compound fragility-climate risks may be more vulnerable to governance failures and other crises that foster humanitarian emergencies or instability, understanding their distinct fragility and climate challenges could present opportunities and focal points for intervention and risk management.

It is hoped that the measures and metrics developed here provide new tools for assessing compound fragility-climate risks and associated opportunities for intervention. This study is the first publicly available quantitative effort to map the intersection of fragility and climate risks globally. It builds on the groundbreaking work commissioned by the G7 that developed an integrated framework for assessing compound fragility-climate risks.1

Source: USAID
Year: 2019