Data for Peace: Climate & Conflict–Big Data Applications for Climate-Conflict Research & Action

The 2021 October Data for Peace dialogue discussed the results of the Ecological Threat Report 2021: Understanding ecological threats, resilience, and peace, recently published by the Institute for Economics and Peace; and different ways the peacebuilding and prevention community can use data and data-driven approaches for climate-conflict research, prediction, and prevention.

- Climate change is often looked as one of the greatest risks for peace in the 21st century. Although climate change itself is rarely a direct cause of conflict, its impacts inhibit peace by undermining human security and increasing the impact of other drivers of conflict and fragility. Rising temperature and sea levels, droughts, and intense weather disasters are affecting lives of people throughout the world. In fragile and conflict affected settings, these impacts can especially compound economic, social, and political drivers of conflict, making vulnerable populations less resilient to risks of violence and conflict. Eleven of fifteen countries with worst environmental threat scores are currently classified as being in conflict. Climate change and natural disasters are fulling conflict, and in return, conflict leads to further resource degradation.

- 'Big data’ analytics is having a transformative impact on scientific research across disciplines and bringing some positive impacts on climate-conflict research. There has been a significant progress in data availability and quality as well as development of models over the years. Although using Machine Learning (ML) in modeling the global climate systems is not new, ML techniques are still emerging in the socioeconomic aspect of climate change, including climate-conflict research, where many anticipate immense positive impact.

SPEAKERS

Lea Perekrests, Deputy Director of Operations, Europe & MENA at Institute for Economics and Peace
Barbora Sedova, FutureLab (Co-)Leader, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Yared Lemma Hurisa, Data Science Researcher, American Institutes for Research
Paige Arthur, Deputy Director, NYU Center on International Cooperation
Branka Panic, NYU CIC Non-Resident Fellow, AI for Peace Founder