Early Warning Approach
Discussion
Early warning systems are the upshot of the need for policymakers to have-to-hand an intelligible analytical tool when making judgments about whether preventive action should be taken. They usually involve identifying the potential causes of a large-scale human protection catastrophe; monitoring and analysing the risk of a human protection situation occurring; translating high risk situations into early warnings for decision makers to consider; and converting decision making outcomes into effective and proportionate responses that mitigates the situation.
At present, an integrated climate-atrocity early warning system does not exist.
One pathway forward might be to prepare a climate-informed UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes.
Any renovated (or completely new) climate-informed atrocity early warning system could consider using the three planes (background, middle-ground, and foreground), prescribing equal importance to climate change issues as to traditional atrocity prevention issues (see Table 1 below).
The background plane could establish ‘the environment’ as a structural dynamic of equal analytical importance to the traditional political, social, and economic dynamics. An extension such as this would demand that analysts examine the broader environmental history of a given situation (eg past environmental/change-induced tensions). This should not be controversial, indeed Gareth Evans himself discusses the importance of understanding background dynamics, as does UN Atrocity Framework.
The mid-level plane would establish ‘vulnerability to climate change’ as the sixth R2P ‘factor’. Gareth Evans identifies five factors that decision makers should consider when making the call whether a country is one of ‘R2P concern’: past history of atrocities, continuing tensions, availability of coping mechanisms, receptivity of external influence, and quality of leadership. Extending the R2P factors to include ‘climate vulnerability’ helps modernise the concept by acknowledging that climate and atrocity hotspots overlap and the enormity of the climate problem.
The foreground plane would establish a variety of observable ‘signs’ (or ‘indicators’) of climate impacts to be measured alongside the many early warning signs of atrocities such as increased hate speech directed towards minorities. Drawing on insights from both R2P and climate early warning systems, each plane could be informed by a combination of data driven models and case-by-case field-based intelligence gathering and qualitative analysis, working in collaboration with international, regional, national, and subnational bodies. Developing such a system would provide the climate agenda with an atrocity-focused early warning system (which draws on existing ideas from the atrocity prevention agenda); and provide the atrocity prevention agenda with a climate-informed atrocity early warning system (which integrates technologies and approaches found in the climate action agenda).
Table 1: Example of an Integrated Atrocity and Climate Early Warning Framework
| Mass Atrocity Crimes | Climate-related Human Catastrophes |
| Background Structural Dynamics | |
| political, economic, social | environmental |
| Mid-Range Factors | |
| History of atrocities, continuing tensions, coping mechanisms, receptivity of outside help, quality of leadership | vulnerability to climate change (as in degree of exposure to climate change impacts/ hazards/ readiness?) |
| Foreground Observable Signs | |
| hate speech against the vulnerable | hotter and dryer conditions, |
| growing repression | diminishing water resources, water scarcity |
| human rights abuses | intensifying storms and cyclones |
| historical grievances | rising sea-levels |
| Acute inequality | habitat loss |
| Poor governance | migration |
| Recent social traumas | food scarcity and stress, |
| Prejudice toward health and education | malnutrition, |
| Rapid social, economic and political dislocation | related impacts on agriculture, |
| Colonial occupation, War, revolution | conflict |
In 2018, the Climate Security Mechanism (CSM) was created in the UN Department of Political and Peacekeeping Affairs. The CSM works across UN agencies on climate security issues, including on issues related to climate-informed conflict early warning systems; and seems well placed to work with UN atrocity prevention agencies to translate warnings into effective preventive policy action.