Integration Conundrums: Framing and Responding to Climate Security Challenges in Development Cooperation

• Main Authors: Veronica Brodén Gyberg, Malin Mobjörk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: climate security; aid; development; integrated perspectives; climate change; environment
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2582

This paper contributes to the burgeoning research on the integration of climate-related security risks by organizations. Development organizations have an important preventive mandate and can mitigate climate security challenges in low- and lower-middle-income economies, but they have a complex task, contending with power asymmetries and a very wide set of policy-making processes occurring in tandem. We explore how climate security challenges are being addressed in development organizations through focusing on the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), which has worked with integration of cross-sectoral issues since the 1980s. We narrow in specifically on how the overlaps between two separate policy areas at Sida—climate and conflict—have been framed and responded to in recent years. The study finds that the integration of these two areas is prioritized on a general policy level but that there are obstacles when translating policy into practice. Challenges include conceptual diversity, tensions between expert and general knowledge and differing organizational preconditions. Despite this, integration does occur between the two policy areas on several levels, ranging from a macro-level general awareness of potential overlaps with a “do no harm” ambition, to micro levels of integration in which strategies and interventions are adjusted.