About EEARTH

Climate change's escalating threat to global peace and security demands swift intervention. Understanding, anticipating and addressing these risks is crucial to protect millions from climatic disasters and deadly violence.

The Challenge

In South Sudan, prolonged flooding that began in 2019 has displaced herders in northern regions, worsening violence between rival groups competing for pasture and water. Meanwhile in Somalia, during a two-and-a-half year drought crisis from 2020 to 2023, insurgents punished dissenting communities and seized control of water points.

These sorts of climate security risks often go undetected until disaster and conflict are inevitable. Vulnerable populations suffer most, but the effects ripple outward. Policymakers are caught off guard, aid workers face grave risks, and years of peacebuilding and development can be lost.

Early warning systems face two key challenges in integrating diverse expertise and data sources. The first is deciphering how environmental change interacts with socio-economic conditions and political dynamics. The second involves bridging the gap between local political insights and the technicalities of climate science and spatial analysis. Overcoming these challenges is critical for effective warning and response.

Anticipating Risk, Averting Deadly Violence

EEARTH, the Environmental Early Action and Risk Tracking Hub, addresses these challenges by seamlessly integrating climate analysis, field knowledge, and political insight.

How EEARTH works

Designed to inform decision-makers 

Climate security risks are complex, but navigating them shouldn't be. Crisis Group's EEARTH platform blends incisive written analysis with intuitive data visualizations, delivering robust insights in an accessible format. The system is designed to be scalable without sacrificing expert local insight. 

Ulrich Eberle, EEARTH Project Director

Stay informed with EEARTH’s key features 

• Monthly Risk Monitoring: Employing big-data techniques, we combine geospatial analysis and artificial intelligence, verified by expert analysts, to identify and rank affected regions. We present this information via an interactive dashboard, informing  risk assessments and mitigating operational risks for development and climate adaptation actors.
• Monthly Country Updates and Risk Outlook: We deliver climate security briefings and risk outlooks, distilling key subnational developments for on-ground practitioners and peacebuilders. Our pathways assessment approach traces links between climate factors and conflict risks in order to anticipate potential outcomes.
• Conflict in Focus and Alerts: We issue timely notifications when trouble looms.

Our Expertise

Our EEARTH team brings together leading experts in conflict analysis, early warning systems, and geospatial and social sciences. We have a track record of shaping policy through field-based research. We've contributed to pivotal discussions at global forums including the UN Security Council and annual climate change conferences (COP), informed debates within regional organisations such as the African Union, and provided critical insights for national security deliberations and diplomatic missions worldwide. Crisis Group’s global network ensures that our advice reaches key decision-makers at all levels of climate security response.

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Milestones and Next Steps

EEARTH will be soft launched in South Sudan and Somalia, before a Horn of Africa public rollout in summer 2025. Subscribe to stay tuned on the latest developments.

Learn more about how climate change fuels deadly conflict here.