CiR2P Option 3 | Enact preventive diplomacy

DISCUSSION:

All diplomacy is in a sense preventive with core tasks involving the management of differences, addressing potential disputes, and at a senior level, resolving real conflicts before they become violent. But since the 1990s, the concept of ‘preventive diplomacy’ has gradually become a distinct approach with its own set of tools to help stop wars before they get started.

Preventive diplomacy tools include:

• the direct “good offices” role of the UN secretary-general and his staff,
• fact finding missions,
• eminent persons commissions,
• conciliation and mediation,
• friends’ groups,
• and non-official ‘second-track’ dialogue.

To take one example, the UN DPPA is the main operational arm for the conduct of the secretary-general’s “good offices”. The DPPA’s central mission is to sustain peace and prevent conflict. To achieve this, it develops and deploys a variety of conflict prevention and resolution strategies usually in collaboration with other UN agencies, and regional and in country partners.

Since his appointment in 2017, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly warned that climate change threatens peace and security. This view is reflected by the DPPA Under Secretary-General, Rosemary DiCarlo, who believes that ‘climate change undermines our core objectives of conflict prevention and sustaining peace.’

To keep pace with the threat posed by climate change, the DPPA has increasingly centralised climate change in its operations. For example, and most prominently, in 2018, the DPPA, jointly with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), established the Climate Security Mechanism (CSM) – with the UN Department of Peace Operations (DPO) joining in 2021.

The CSM aims to advance a ‘common approach to the analysis of climate-related security risks and shape integrated and timely responses’ by drawing on the expertise from more than 20 UN entities, and a variety of think tanks, academic institutions and practitioners from regional organisations. A practical achievement in this respect was the development of a ‘climate security toolbox’. The tools include climate-informed security risk assessments, conflict-sensitive climate adaptation programs, climate-sensitive peacebuilding initiatives, and climate-informed mediation.

See for example, the DPPA’s 2022 landmark publication: The Implications of Climate Change for Mediation and Peace Processes. The publication details a variety of practical suggestions that conflict mediators should consider – such as undertaking climate-informed risk assessments on environmental assets and leveraging climate finance frameworks – when negotiating a peace agreement between conflicting parties.

Western governments have begun to integrate climate change issues into their on-the-ground preventive diplomacy, including mediation.