This year’s International Day of Peace comes as the pursuit of world peace feels more distant than in recent memory. The war in Ukraine has brought large-scale war back to Europe, and ongoing conflicts in Ethiopia, Eastern Congo, and Mali have worsened in recent months. So far 2022 has registered the lowest level of peacefulness in 15 years according to the Global Peace Index, and the highest number of globally displaced persons ever recorded. The relevance of our multilateral institutions and the effectiveness of our traditional tools for peacemaking and diplomacy are being questioned. International peacekeeping and humanitarian aid continue to be drastically underfunded. Democracy is under threat, with nationalism and authoritarianism on the rise. Fears of a new Cold War and the emergence of a new, less stable world order are emerging. Meanwhile, pandemics and increasingly severe climate impacts demonstrate pan-global threats for which we are collectively unprepared.
As the world’s conflicts evolve, so too must the tactics and tools that we use to promote peace.
In the case of climate change, the countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts tend to be the most fragile and conflict affected places in the world, located primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. These countries bare little responsibility for global climate change, yet they are on the front lines of climate impacts. From extreme drought in Somalia, to record flooding in South Sudan and Pakistan, climate change is increasingly overlapping with the drivers of conflict and displacement. These countries are not currently benefitting from meaningful climate finance flows nor seen as priorities for climate-related investment, as the global response to climate change remains focused on the worst polluters rather than the worst-affected. Here lies the opportunity: climate solutions create new entry points for preventing conflict and promoting peace, and the world’s leading climate solution is renewable energy.
However, while renewable energy is changing the energy landscape in much of the world, it is not reaching the places that stand to gain the most. This is particularly true in fragile and conflict-affected countries, where limited access to electricity and the absence of functioning grids often results in dependence on diesel generators and reliance on fossil fuels. Yet in many conflict-affected countries, the diesel and fuel supply chains overlap with local war economies, reinforcing the conflict. For example, in northern Mali, where rural electricity access is as low as 2 percent, access to diesel relies almost entirely on fuel smuggled through supply chains controlled by armed groups. In Somalia, which has some of the highest electricity rates in the world, the militant group al-Shabaab levies taxes on diesel fuel and other goods through a series of checkpoints across the country, funding their insurgency. We have found variations on this theme in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Syria. These linkages have largely been ignored by international actors, who are themselves overwhelmingly dependent on diesel generators for power in fragile states. The war in Ukraine is raising awareness of the high security costs associated with fossil fuel dependence, but these lessons are not yet leading to meaningful change in policy or funding priorities in fragile states.
There are reasons for optimism, however. First, climate and finance mechanisms do exist, but they must be adapted for fragile contexts. For example, over the last few years we have developed the Peace Renewable Energy Credit (P-REC) as a way to connect international renewable energy markets and corporate sustainability initiatives with high impact renewable energy projects in fragile states. By the end of the year, we expect P-REC transactions to have unlocked nearly $1 MN from leading corporate buyers in support of first-time electrification projects in the DRC, South Sudan, and northern Uganda.
Second, we are seeing increasing interest from the United Nations to accelerate the renewable energy transition of its peacekeeping operations. UN peace operations account for over half of the UN’s total emissions, and the largest polluters are the operations in Africa where most missions rely on diesel generators for power given the lack of reliable electricity grid infrastructure. The result is that some missions are the largest single power producers and consumers in their host countries. Transitioning the UN peacekeeping missions in Central African Republic, DRC, Mali, Somalia, and South Sudan to renewable energy offers a unique and meaningful entry point for introducing renewable energy projects into some of the most fragile and energy poor places in the world, while creating opportunities for external investment and extending electrification to local communities. These projects can contribute to better environmental, economic and social outcomes such as cleaner air, new jobs, and increased security from nighttime streetlighting, while helping to mitigate conflict drivers such as the illicit diesel and charcoal economies that often sustain conflict. In Mali, for example, renewable energy investment would directly support a provision of the 2015 peace agreement that called for investment in solar energy in the north of the country. UN peacekeeping energy transitions would also allow missions to leave behind a positive legacy in the form of renewable energy infrastructure that can serve as peace dividends and contribute to peace and development in the post-conflict phase.
Third, we are seeing more corporate interest for supporting renewable energy projects that have a positive social impact, and we have begun to capture the pro-peace benefits of these projects. Last year, Microsoft was awarded a prestigious Green Power Leadership Award for its P-REC purchase from a solar mini-grid in eastern DRC; the purchase funded the installation of new streetlights in a neighborhood with only three percent access to electricity. We subsequently documented meaningful improvements in the community where the project had been installed: a 9 percent higher level of peacefulness in the neighborhood, compared to a similar neighboring community without streetlights; improved sense of nighttime security, with particularly beneficial effects for women and girls; and improved economic environment as businesses were able to stay open later. Other actors are also beginning to look at new solutions around creative financing for peacebuilding, such as the Investing for Peace Initiative, and efforts to develop a Peace Bond.
In this time of increasing uncertainty, when numerous challenges to global stability appear daunting, these examples demonstrate the need to look beyond our traditional approaches to preventing and resolving conflict. The threats to peace that we face today may be unprecedented, but solutions like renewable energy, which we have successfully developed to fight climate change, offer us new tools to promote peace and stability and a reason to remain optimistic about our capacity to manage the peace and security challenges of the future.