Video: The CGIAR Initiative on Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

The CGIAR Initiative on Fragility, Conflict, and Migration (FCM) addresses challenges to livelihood, food, and climate security faced by some of the most vulnerable populations worldwide. The Initiative focuses on building climate resilience, promoting gender equity, and fostering social inclusion.

In this video, Katrina Kosec, Initiative Lead and Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), discusses the importance of FCM in the CGIAR portfolio and provides an overview of how FCM addresses the challenges of fragile and conflict-affected settings. Peter Laderach, Initiative Co-Lead and Principal Climate Scientist, Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, explains how FCM strengthens evidence and partnership around migration through the CGIAR Climate Security Observatory and the Climate, Peace, and Migration Partnership. And finally, Sandra Ruckstuhl, Initiative Co-Lead and Special Advisor to the Director General and Senior Researcher, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), delves into how the Initiative and CGIAR researchers are supporting partners to strengthen the design and implementation of programs to promote innovation and inclusive, science-based decision making in uncertain and dynamic situations.

Katrina Kosec, Initiative Lead and Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute:

The CGIAR research initiative on Fragility, Conflict, and Migration is an exciting addition to the CGIAR initiative portfolio. It is motivated by a broad recognition that we live in an increasingly fragile world. Fragile and conflict-affected settings house 1.5 billion people globally and are a location of severe hunger and malnutrition. These challenges are compounded by climate change, unsustainable resource consumption, poor governance, and weak social cohesion. Women and youth are often disproportionately negatively affected by shocks and crises and have less access to the power and resources required to overcome them.
Governments and development organizations require evidence to address these compounding challenges, and CGIAR is uniquely positioned to provide it.
One exciting way that FCM is addressing these challenges is through rigorous causal impact evaluations to inform the design of livelihoods and food security programming. With partners such as the World Food Program, World Vision, ActionAid, and Harvest Plus, for example, we are evaluating the impacts of:

• A program in Ethiopia providing cash transfers and mental health services to individuals suffering from compound crises;
• An intervention in Nigeria providing vouchers for bio-fortified seed bundles to internally-displaced persons – aiming to integrate them into new communities;
• A poverty graduation program in Somalia for internally-displaced persons that includes cash support, asset transfers, training, and engagement with savings groups;
• And a program in Nigeria training women and their husbands to increase women’s voice and agency in community decision-making in the face of disruptive farmer-herder conflicts.

Our results will inform partners’ programming and permit scale up of successful work.

Peter Laderach, Initiative Co-Lead and Principal Climate Scientist, Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT:

Two ways the Fragility, Conflict, and Migration initiative is strengthening the evidence and partnership around migration in the climate security nexus are through the CGIAR Climate Security Observatory and the Climate, Peace and Migration Partnership.

The Climate Security Observatory or (CSO) provides answers to four guiding questions:

• How does climate exacerbate root causes of conflict?
• Where are the most vulnerable areas to climate-related insecurities and risks?
• Who are the groups vulnerable to climate and security risks that should be targeted?
• And, what needs to be done to break the vicious cycle between climate and conflict?

The CSO is developed in partnership with the CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience and was launched in May 2023 in Geneva.

The Climate, Peace and Migration Partnership is an FCM innovation that structures and guides our partnerships and impact pathways and complements the data and analysis of the CSO. It consists of three pillars:

Pillar 1: SECOND 

We second CGIAR staff to humanitarian, peacebuilding and development partners, providing expertise and technical support to humanitarian operations, planning and policy at the triple nexus.

Pillar 2: CONNECT  

We are connecting researchers and practitioner and supporting global and regional networks of scientists and universities to promote quality research and analysis on the impacts of climate change on human mobility, peace and security, and on integrated solutions to climate risks.

Pillar 3: LOCALIZE  

We provide and catalyze direct support to local researchers and science institutions to strengthen research capacity and accelerate peer-reviewed publications and use of science in and from the Global South.

Sandra Ruckstuhl, Initiative Co-Lead and Special Advisor to the Director General and Senior Researcher, International Water Management Institute:

Partnerships are the foundation of success for the Fragility, Conflict and Migration Initiative.  Humanitarian and development partners, national governments, and local organizations are requesting support from CGIAR researchers to strengthen the design and implementation of programs and investments in these dynamic, unpredictable and insecure FCM settings.   

For example: 

We are working with the World Food Programme and UNHCR to understand the water needs of internally displaced people and refugee host communities in the Somali region of Ethiopia, and the analysis will be used to support the integration of water-related risks into local anticipatory action initiatives, inclusive of humanitarian and development strategies. 

In Pakistan we are working with national and local disaster authorities to promote preparedness and livelihood resilience in the face of multiple, often compound shocks that vulnerable communities in Punjab province are exposed to – including flood, drought, dust and heat. 

And in seven countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East we are working with local entrepreneurs to accelerate innovative solutions that promote food, land and water resilience in fragile contexts. 

Working together we are able to merge practical, operational and context-specific expertise with food, land, water and climate science – to effectively inform intervention in FCM situations. 

These partnerships promote innovation and inclusive, science-based decision making in uncertain and dynamic situations.  These operationally-focused collaborations underpin the CGIAR mandate as a global research partnership for a food-secure future dedicated to transforming food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.  And so, these partnerships are integral to all efforts to promote resilience and sustainability, to achieve impacts through improved policy and investment, and to promote the principles of an integrated humanitarian-development-peace nexus approach.

To learn more about the Fragility, Conflict, and Migration initiative, visit our site, read the FCM brochure,  or get in touch with one of the Initiative Co-Leads. Please also sign up for our newsletter!

Video production: Chris Daileader, Evgeniya Anisimova, Gillian Hollerich (IFPRI)

Top image: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid