Climate change is affecting every country in the world, but its impacts are often most severe in places already facing fragility or conflict. In these settings, climate shocks such as droughts, floods and extreme heat interact with existing pressures, exacerbating water and food insecurity, placing additional pressure on natural resources, contributing to migration and displacement and overwhelming public systems. This can create overlapping crises that are increasingly complex to manage.
In places where institutions are under pressure, climate change adaptation is rarely straightforward. Technical capacity may be limited, climate data may be incomplete or unavailable, and coordination between line ministries or local authorities can be disrupted by insecurity or shifting political priorities. In some cases, conflict itself restricts access to communities, making it difficult to conduct field assessments, convene stakeholders, or gather the evidence needed to inform long-term planning.
Moreover, fragility and conflict-related impacts are not always experienced uniformly across a country. For example, even when conflict is concentrated in one region, it can create ripple effects elsewhere through migration, internal displacement, increased pressure on resources, and shifts in national and local priorities, financing needs and response capacities. Ministries that were previously focused on long-term climate planning may suddenly need to redirect staff, budgets and attention towards humanitarian emergencies, waste management challenges or food and water shortages linked to population movements.
These realities can make adaptation planning significantly more difficult. Even the early stages of a National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process, that bring together government representatives, civil society organizations, local communities and technical experts for stakeholder consultations or inception workshops, can become challenging in fragile settings. Read full photo story here.