Peacekeeping in the Anthropocene: Changing Law for a Changing Climate (PeaceCLaCC)

^{UNMISS road maintenance, © Rikujojieitai Boueisho (Japan Ground Self-Defense Force), CC-BY-SA-3.0}

Description
Updates
Project team

Description

The project “Peacekeeping in the Anthropocene: Changing Law for a Changing Climate” (PeaceCLaCC), which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), started at the Chair of Prof Binder in October 2025.

Peace-CLaCC explores how the effects of climate change – the core non-traditional security challenge of the 21st century – change the deployment and operation of international and regional peacekeeping operations (PKOs). There is scattered institutional practice by a wide variety of organizations including the United Nations (UN) on this topic, matched by a patchwork of legal and policy instruments on how climate change-related effects might or must be considered by PKOs. So far, there has been no comprehensive legal analysis on what legal obligations arise in the context of PKOs through ‘a changing climate’. Peace-CLaCC – on the basis of three case scenarios – will investigate how PKOs align with general mitigation and adaptation obligations arising under international (climate change and/or security) law and assess which legal obligations this evokes. It will particularly focus on the extent to which existing international obligations can be used to support and enhance the role of PKOs in addressing the challenges posed by climate change. Through this, the project will identify areas where additional obligations or institutional frameworks may be needed to address emerging threats and challenges to international peace and security caused by climate change.

Updates

Events

"The Future of International Peace and Security: Conceptualizing the Securitization of Climate Change"

On 19 October 2026, we hosted the workshop “The Future of International Peace and Security: Conceptualizing the Securitization of Climate Change” at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich.
The workshop examined how climate change is constructed as a security concern and which legal consequences follow from different understandings of climate security. Contributions explored the distinct “grammars” and rationalities of climate securitization, riskification and threatification and their legal consequences, as well as the uneven integration of climate concerns into the international security order.
A particular focus was placed on the UN Security Council. The discussion addressed the legal basis and practical scope of Council action, but also the risk that securitizing climate change may prove counterproductive or create new institutional and political difficulties.
Further contributions considered climate-related displacement, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and the potential of international cooperation to reconcile security concerns with effective climate responses. The workshop also examined how climate-security boundaries are constructed in international investment law and investor–state arbitration.
Finally, the workshop considered the relationship between security, mitigation, and adaptation: from the possibility of understanding emission mitigation as an obligation during armed conflict to the question of whether climate adaptation measures can constitute a constructive use of the institutional consequences evoked by climate security.