Blog post archive

Friday, 17 Jan 2025
Greenland Is Not for Sale

President Donald Trump has provoked strong reactions with his proposition to buy Greenland, not the least because the right to self-determination is a fundamental principle in international law, allowing peoples to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. Home Rule Greenland has a long ...

Thursday, 7 Dec 2023
Russian Energy Industry Faces Looming Investment Crisis

The 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), currently taking place in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, is missing contributions from one major energy power — namely, Russia. Many countries are guilty of pledging to curtail emissions then departing from their plans and falling short of the United Nations’ ...

Wednesday, 6 Dec 2023
The Geopolitics of Deep-Sea Mining

Deep-sea mining carries substantial environmental risks and its immediate profitability remains questionable due to several technical difficulties. Yet, amid regulatory pitfalls, a handful of states are rushing to extract raw resources from the seabed. China seems set to dominate deep-sea mining. Minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese are ...

Tuesday, 16 May 2023
What’s Next in Climate Security Studies? Exploiting Synergies between Practice and Research

The increase in global temperatures by over 1 degree Celsius since pre-industrial times is already having broad and significant impacts. An ongoing multi-year drought in Eastern Africa, for instance, has been attributed to global warming. Hunger crises, displacement, and exacerbated conflict between pastoralist groups are some of the reported dire consequences. This blog post reports on ...

Wednesday, 1 Mar 2023
Renewable Energy, Renewable Conflicts? How a Lithium Rush in Zimbabwe Is Raising Tensions

In October 2022, lithium prices reached an all-time high. Lithium is an essential component for electric vehicle batteries, and with the current high ambitions in electrification of transport, demand for the mineral has been rapidly increasing, hitting a record price of $74,475 per tonne in October 2022. In Zimbabwe, where ...

Thursday, 19 Jan 2023
Land and Mining in the Green Energy Transition

Global mining uses more than 57.000 km2 of land. This area is likely to expand in the coming years due to a rising mineral demand for low-carbon technologies. The more strategic minerals become, the more critical the land becomes below which they are found. This poses a number of challenges. ...

Tuesday, 20 Dec 2022
50 Years Hence: Can the Apollo Missions Inspire Us Today?

Last week, 50 years ago, Apollo 17’s lunar module left the moon. Since then, no one has set foot there. Let us pause for a moment to think about the signficance of that rather unique adventure called Apollo. The Apollo program defies belief. At a time when much of modern ...

Thursday, 10 Nov 2022
Armed Conflict and Climate Change: How These Two Threats Play Out in Africa

The world is falling miserably short of reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, a 2015 treaty to keep global warming well below 2℃. The results of this failure are a greater increase in the prevalence and severity of extreme weather events, more rapid sea-level rises and an elevated ...

Wednesday, 23 Mar 2022
Climate Policy Must Be Inclusive to Be Successful

Climate justice is essential if we are to succeed in preventing global warming of 1.5 to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. This is a point that receives far greater attention in the new Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report than in previous reports. The Intergovernmental Panel ...

Friday, 26 Nov 2021
Good Reads: Resource Sovereignty

Green Curses research project member Dr. John Andrew McNeish, Professor at the Faculty of Landscape and Society at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, has just published two books on contestations over natural resources. The first book, a monograph authored by McNeish and entitled Sovereign Forces: Everyday Challenges to Environmental ...

Monday, 22 Nov 2021
Climate Resilience and Conflict: Multi-stakeholder Partnerships As A Way Forward?

As world leaders convened in Glasgow for the 26th annual Conference of Parties (COP 26) in hopes of accelerating action on the Paris Agreement and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the correlation between climate change and conflict is receiving more attention. In recent years, there has been ...

Thursday, 29 Jul 2021
Obscuring the True Causes of Conflicts

Is Norway’s mission on the Security Council to reinforce the myth that climate change is a root cause of violent conflicts? This will make finding lasting solutions more difficult. As a new member of the UN Security Council, Norway has identified climate security as one of four key thematic priorities ...

Tuesday, 4 May 2021
Green Energy Development and Transition: Have we seen this film before?

“I have seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending”. Surely these words have nothing to do with government commitments to the adoption of bright green technologies and the sustainable development goals made in the run up to COP 26. Surely green energy development is all new and ...

Wednesday, 16 Dec 2020
A Dam Dispute

This hydropower project could trigger regional conflict in Africa. Conflict related to renewable energy received considerable international attention in 2020 with the launch of the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD). Ethiopia began constructing what is now Africa’s largest dam back in 2011 in order to increase its low levels of ...

Wednesday, 6 May 2020
In memoriam: Arthur H. Westing (1928–2020)

Arthur Westing joined PRIO in January 1988. Sverre Lodgaard, who had worked at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) for the past six years, returned to Oslo to take over the position as Director of PRIO. As a bonus, he was able to bring Arthur to Oslo at the ...

Wednesday, 1 Nov 2017
What to Expect from India at COP23?

Climate change is not a one-way street of cause and effect. International negotiations on climate change and the reduction of emissions are equally complex. A consistent Indian demand has been  green technology transfer from “high-emitting” developed countries. An equally longstanding principle is that of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities, ...

Thursday, 1 Oct 2015
Pakistan’s Crippling Energy Crisis and Increasing Remittances

Deadly heat exposes Pakistan’s power problems. This summer CNBC run a report titled Deadly heat exposes Pakistan’s power problems after more than a thousand people died during heatwaves during the first days of Ramadan. Insufficient preparedness for the heatwave is largely seen as the cause of deaths, yet the context ...

Thursday, 7 May 2015
A Climate of Conflicts?

Political violence correlates strongly with climate: Civil conflict risk is seven to ten times higher in dry and tropical climates than in continental climate zones. Yet, there is little evidence that climatic variability and change are important in understanding this pattern. The prospect of climate change causing forced migration and ...

Tuesday, 10 Mar 2015
Reflections on Climate-Conflict Research: More Confusion than Knowledge

Does climate change constitute a threat to peace and security? Many agree that it does. The US administration’s new National Security Strategy, launched last month, portrays climate change as ‘an urgent and growing threat.’ And this week, a new study appears to add scientific credibility to this concern, suggesting human-caused ...

Thursday, 17 Apr 2014
Climate Change and War

The day after the publication of the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the effects of climate change, Norwegian daily newspaper Dagsavisen was able to report that Norway’s Minister for Climate and Environment now envisaged a future world with more conflicts. This is in ...

Tuesday, 1 Apr 2014
Female Empowerment in DR Congo

In January 2014 PRIO researchers Gudrun Østby and Ragnhild Nordås went on a two-week fieldtrip to Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, DRC. The main purpose of the visit was to launch the new collaborative project, “Female Empowerment in Eastern DRC”, funded by the Research Council of Norway. This project ...

Monday, 22 Nov 2004
Roots of conflict : Don't blame environmental decay for the next war

When Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan known for her work in human rights and environmental conservation, including efforts to fight deforestation, won the Nobel Peace Prize last month, many took note that the Nobel Committee had evidently expanded its notion of “peace.” “Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure ...