How can adaptation programmes catch conflict risks early?

In Cinzana, Mali, a Climate-Smart Village (CSV) helped farmers increase their yields, build stronger farmer groups and get access to training and credit.

Alongside it, a separate decentralisation project built roads to connect villages in the area, and one of those roads opened up a forest close to the CSV. According to one community member, the roads also made it easier for large trucks from Ségou to enter the villages and stock up on wood from communal forests.

People from outside began illegally cutting the forest, and local communities did not have the authority and the rules to control how it was used. This increased pressure on the forest, as well as tensions within and between communities.

The road was not the problem. What was missing were clear tenure rights, legal enforcement and environmental governance to manage the new access.

The Climate Security Sensitivity Tool (CSST) designed by CGIAR Climate security, identifies gaps like these. It helps people designing agricultural adaptation programmes examine how their plans could interact with conflict in rural, fragile and conflict-affected settings.

How does the CSST work?

The CSST begins with the risks already present in a location. It uses data from the INFORM Risk Index to identify relevant conflict and insecurity risks, then considers six mechanisms through which an adaptation programme could respond: economic development, institutions, trust and cooperation, resource sustainability, knowledge, and capacity and resilience.

The next step is to examine the programme itself. How much of each mechanism is already there? Is it fully included, partly included or absent? Placing the local risks beside the programme design can reveal which assumptions need checking and where safeguards or additional work may be needed.

In 2023, CGIAR Climate Security researchers tested this process on Climate-Smart Village interventions in Jirapa, Ghana, and Cinzana, Mali. The study combined a desk review, expert workshops with 20 local specialists in each country, and focus group discussions with women, men and young people in each Climate-Smart Village and a neighbouring community.

Where the programmes could be strengthened

The fieldwork found strong foundations in both programmes. Community members described how village committees, cooperatives and local mediation structures helped people share resources, resolve disagreements and prevent disputes.

In Jirapa, five of the six mechanisms matched what the context required. The CSST found more room to strengthen institutions, particularly land tenure security and the fair distribution of adaptation benefits and responsibilities. It recommended participatory mapping, clearer tenure arrangements and more inclusive governance of land and natural resources.

In Cinzana, the CSST found room to strengthen two mechanisms: institutions and economic development. On institutions, the programme design had little to secure property rights, clarify tenure or strengthen local governance of natural resources. These were the same gaps that left communities without the authority and the rules to manage the new access to the forest. On economic development, the CSST pointed to public services: extension services, resource regeneration and public finance management.

Some of these reforms may exceed the mandate and capacity of a Climate-Smart Village. The CSST therefore recommended adding programme components that clarify tenure and connect formal and informal systems for managing natural resources.

What national data can miss

The CSST measures a location's conflict risks using the INFORM Risk Index, a global dataset. For Ghana, the index only had figures for the country as a whole, so the tool's picture of Jirapa reflected national averages. Local experts saw Jirapa as far more conflict-prone than those averages suggested, and rated almost every mechanism as more important than the tool had.

This is why the study paired the tool with local experts and communities. They can confirm what the tool found, correct it or add risks the data leaves out, so that its recommendations reflect local conditions.

Applying the CSST

The CSST is most useful while a programme is still being designed. At that stage, it can show teams which assumptions need testing, where safeguards may need strengthening and where an intervention could do more to support cooperation. Across a portfolio, it can point to the programmes or locations that need closer review.

With its high level recommendations, the tool gives teams a sharper set of questions to take into the field, questions which need local answers.

The next steps are more field validation, better local risk data and stronger ways to combine global indices with local knowledge.

Read the full study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

Header photo: P. Casier (CGIAR)

This work was carried out with support from the CGIAR Initiative Accelerating the Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research in Africa (AICCRA) as well as the CGIAR Climate Action and Food Frontiers and Security Science Programs. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: https://www.cgiar.org/funders/.