Our world faces a convergence of crises: accelerating climate change, escalating conflicts, and rapid urbanization with extensive housing and basic service inadequacy. 2024 was the hottest year on record, conflict events have nearly doubled in five years, and 123 million people were forcibly displaced by the end of 2024. These global shocks and stresses intersect in cities, where over half of humanity lives – a share projected to rise to 68 per cent by 2050. Urban areas are increasingly vulnerable as climate impacts and armed violence deepen inequalities, devastate infrastructure and strain housing.
Despite their centrality, cities remain overlooked in research and action on the climate-conflict nexus. This publication aims to help close that gap. Chapter 2 explores the complex interlinkages between climate change and urban conflict, including their increasing overlap, two-way causal links, and the factor of climate change- and conflict-related displacement. Concepts traditionally associated with states, such as fragility and complex emergencies, are found to be increasingly applicable to cities. At the same time, key urban characteristics –from concentrated inequality and informality to complex local governance and extreme heat exposure – emerge as critical considerations for tailored solutions design.
Chapter 3 turns to such tailored solutions, recommending five areas of research and action to tackle the identified interlinkages: addressing shared vulnerability factors; taking climate action in fragile and conflict-affected cities; readying cities for climate change and conflict-related displacement; implementing localized assessment and action on climate change-related urban conflict; and building green and resilient cities through conflict recovery. Finally, Chapter 4 showcases UN-Habitat-led projects in Guinea-Bissau, Jordan, Lebanon, Mozambique, Philippines, Syria, and Yemen as models of integrated approaches.
The message is clear: in a world of rising temperatures and rising tensions, cities are not only frontline victims – they are indispensable to solutions and must be placed at the heart of global strategies for resilience and peace.
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