Global Affairs Canada (Fall 2024)

Project Background

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) is responsible for defining, shaping and advancing Canada’s interests and values in a complex global environment. GAC manages diplomatic relations, promotes international trade, provides consular assistance and leads international development, humanitarian and peace and security assistance efforts. It also contributes to national security and the development of international law.

The Strategic Coordination and Analysis unit, in the Transnational Threats and Conflicts Bureau, produces tailored analysis and advisory support to inform Canada’s peace and security programming in conflict settings. It also works alongside other parts of the department and diplomatic missions on responses to conflict and security threats and conducts analyses on emerging security challenges.

Definition of Opportunity

Since 2018, Coastal West Africa (CWA) has seen an increase of instability with a spike of violent extremist attacks and widespread intercommunal tensions and conflicts in northern regions along the borders with the Sahel. In order to address the window of opportunity to prevent more instability from emerging and spreading, GAC developed a Conflict Prevention Framework to guide its peace and security approach in southern regions of the Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger) and northern regions of CWA (Benin, Côte d’ivoire, Ghana and Togo). The framework is underpinned by an in-depth analysis of conflict drivers and regional trends, intended to inform Canada’s engagement in the region to prevent the spillover of conflict and instability in transborder regions. Of the various conflict drivers examined, the relationship between climate and security needs further research. GAC is interested in understanding how climate change impacts security dynamics in northern regions of CWA. For instance, how are strict conservation and environmentalist policies fuelling community grievances in northern Benin (W—Arly—Pendjari Parks)? How are violent extremist organizations (VEOs) capitalizing on these grievances to recruit disenchanted youth and marginalized communities? How are governments in Coastal West Africa responding to the rising security threats amid rising tensions over access to natural resources?

Definition of Success

We would be delighted to have short and insightful research that allows us to better understand the linkages between climate change and security in Coastal West Africa. Short analytical pieces and mappings will boost our knowledge about this thematic. We want to clearly identify how these thematic fuels conflict drivers and enable the spillover of violence and VEO activity in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo.

Meet the Team

Final Deliverable

U.S. Department of State (Spring 2025)

Project Background

The University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs is collaborating with the U.S. Department of State on an initiative focused on global conflict prevention research. As part of the Academic Centers of Conflict Anticipation and Prevention (ACCAP) partnership, the Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) is engaging universities to provide supplemental research, analysis, and data to enhance its ability to anticipate, prevent, and respond to global conflict. 

The CSO leads the formulation and implementation of conflict prevention and stabilization strategies, policies, and programs for the State Department. This partnership will provide undergraduate and graduate students at the Keough School with access to key State Department research tools, including its Instability Monitoring and Analysis Platform, which officials use to monitor conflict risks and implement evidence-based policies.

Definition of Opportunity

The student team will conduct research on illicit gold mining and its implications for violent extremism and broader instability dynamics in Coastal West Africa (CWA) focusing on Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo. The project will explore the relationships between illicit mining activities, financial flows, and governance challenges to inform future policy interventions. The student research will fill a critical knowledge gap for the Africa team within CSO, providing evidence-based analysis to support future Global Fragility Act (GFA) programming in the State Department. This project aligns with the broader mission of conflict prevention by identifying strategies to mitigate instability and strengthen governance structures.

Definition of Success

The team will explore the implications of illicit gold mining on violent extremism and broader instability dynamics in 1-2 countries in Coastal West African countries ((Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo). The final product should help address the following questions: What can legal mining operations do to promote formalization of these activities?  What local and national governments do to promote formal, legal employment and ensure gold mining revenues benefit citizens?

Meet the Team

Final Deliverables

Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (Spring 2020)

Project Background:

All over the world, people are experiencing the effects of climate change in a variety of ways. Droughts, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and wildfires are some of the most obvious effects. Climate change has been linked to increased famine, joblessness, conflict, and displacement. These effects are particularly apparent in poor, rural communities. These result in equally significant strains on the social bonds in these communities. Under these accelerating pressures, cultures and communities that have successfully overcome challenges for generations are suddenly in danger of breaking down. 

The Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities is an international collaboration across academia, practice, and policy that convenes people to discuss research and evidence about the role of religions in humanitarian and development work. The collaboration, founded in 2012, serves as an open access knowledge-sharing platform and research network for all sectors and organizations of all backgrounds. Their work is divided topically into the following hubs: Anti-Trafficing & Modern Slavery, Ending Violence against Children, Gender-Based Violence, and Refugees. They are exploring the opportunity of creating a new Learning Hub around climate change. There is extensive research documenting these significant negative impacts on communities worldwide. The Joint Learning Initiative (JLI) is trying to understand how to better support these communities and build the assets available to counter these impacts. This project will partner with the Episcopal Relief & Development (ERD), an international non-profit and member of JLI, that collaborates with church partners and local organizations on development programs and has been actively engaged in the climate discussions at JLI.

Definition of Opportunity:

JLI is interested in producing a study, using Ghana and Sri Lanka as comparative cases, to understand how stakeholders at multiple scales - from communities and organizations to individual leaders and community members - are coming together to adapt to these stressors. These adaptations may include migration in and out of rural communities, which may enhance resilience while at the same time creating new stresses. An understanding of how these adaptations operate within local perceptions, practices, history, norms, and beliefs will be essential to identifying responses that have the potential to be sustained. JLI has a particular interest in understanding the current and potential role of faith communities (conceptualized broadly to include faith-based NGOs, clergy, people of faith, etc) in protecting and strengthening the social bonds affected by climate change.

What does success look like? 

It would be useful to have a 10-15 page final briefing paper on the findings, with a one-page executive summary, that can be shared with the learning hub and provide the foundation for future work. We are also interested in making further connections with academics and faith-based organizations in the case study countries, which could be an outcome of the case study process.

Meet the Team:

Building a new curriculum on climate change working with Madras schools - BCAS, Bangladesh (Fall 2018)

Client Profile

Climate change is a global issue that does not recognize borders. There is perhaps no place where this is more apparent than Bangladesh, which is exposed to a myriad of hazards: flooding, cyclones, temperature and rainfall variations, drought, water logging, and salinity intrusion in water and soil. Bangladesh is often considered the country most vulnerable to climate change in the world.

Definition of Opportunity

The Keough School Integration Lab is partnering with the Bangladesh Centre of Advanced Studies (BCAS) to help advance its important policy work focused on climate-vulnerable populations. This i-Lab BCAS Project specifically assesses the climate vulnerability of different sub-populations, especially women and children, across the ecosystems of Bangladesh in order to evaluate current national policies and develop climate vulnerability maps that can further inform future policy making. Critically important is increasing public awareness about climate change, particularly among the poor and those who are most vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

Initial Ideas

Given the need for greater awareness and education, the team has begun to think about the possibility of developing a curriculum for climate change and disaster risk reduction, especially looking at the role that Madras schools, that provide education to the majority of the poor population,  might play.

Definition of Success

Working with BCAS, the development of a accessible and informative curriculum that could be used by Madras schools in Bangladesh that addresses issues of climate change and disaster risk reduction in operational ways.

Recommendations