Necessary complexity in the Anthropocene: new approaches in socio-ecological systems thinking, Do No Harm, and fragility integration

ABSTRACT The links between climate change, fragility, and conflict have received growing attention over the past decade. Yet, the theory and analysis underlying conflict-sensitive practice has not figured significantly in these developments, thus limiting effective action and policy. While there is pressing need for climate adaptation efforts, climate change-related disaster response, and low-carbon development to leverage local capacities for peace and avoid exacerbating conflict dynamics, existing conflict sensitivity frameworks (a) lack sufficient emphasis on action and (b) struggle to incorporate the complex, systemic interactions among ecologies, societal conflict, and aid, or other efforts to address fragility. This paper draws on complexity-informed approaches that more directly and practically integrate socio-ecological systems thinking into urgently needed conflict-informed action. Specifically, the paper establishes the basis for integrating CDA Collaborative Learning Projects’ systems-based Reflecting on Peace Practice (RPP) approach and Do No Harm (DNH) framework for accountable analysis and action amidst conflict, and reframing the key analytical categories of Connectors and Dividers to Resilience and Vulnerabilities.

could push an additional 132 million people into poverty within the coming eight years (Jafino 2020) and result in the displacement of between 143 million (Rigaud et al. 2018) and 1.2 billion people (Institute of Economics & Peace 2020, 8) by 2050.
Fragility limits adaptive capacities, and the ability of communities to prepare for and cope with disasters; weak adaptive capacities can heighten fragility in turn (Peters et al. 2020). Therefore, the impacts of climate-related disasters in FCAS come at a greater environmental and human cost and exacerbate existing inequalities, such as those due to disability status or gender norms. Women who face discrimination in resource access and control and are particularly vulnerable in conflict are predicted to be further marginalised as climate impacts exacerbate resource competition (Smith, Olosky, and Grossman Fernandes 2021). As a corollary to these negative dynamics, there is also increasing evidence that climate action and climate change-related disaster-risk reduction (DRR) demonstrates the potential to promote social cohesion and offer an opportunity to build more inclusive societies for women, as well as youth, Indigenous groups, ethnic minorities, rural populations, and others often on the margins of policy change (UN Women 2020).
Simultaneously, there is growing evidence that climate mitigation and low-carbon development, more broadly, are stirring conflict in many global regions (Myers et al. 2021). There have long been calls for conflict integration and the tools for analysis and action in climate mitigation and low-carbon development (Tänzler, Carius, and Maas 2013). Yet, the urgency of calls from the community-level is now being matched by researchers, governments, and global institutions (Sawas, Workman, and Mirumachi 2018). Conflict-sensitive climate adaptation and DRR initiatives also have the potential to advance development indicators and improve ecosystem protection, while addressing climate-related grievances (Matthew 2014).
Finally, the integration of systems thinking with conflict sensitivity generally, and DNH specifically, could support the development of the environmental peacebuilding field. As Tobias Ide has noted, environmental peacebuilding can have a "Dark Side", in that it risks to: "depoliticize, displace, discriminate, delegitimize the state, degrade the environment and deteriorate conflict" (Ide et al. 2021). Peacebuilding does not protect against negative consequences, and environmental peacebuilding is no exception. The DNH Framework's concepts of "Implicit Ethical Messages" and "Resource Transfers" are well suited to examine consequences, identify ways to mitigate harm, and leverage local capacities for environmental peacebuilding. Additionally, conflict sensitivity can support the localisation of environmental peacebuilding efforts by centring the local context as its primary reference point and communities' senses of peace and securityhuman, cultural, ecological, and spiritualthat are grounded in epistemologies and relational ontologies, often place-based.
Efforts to integrate DNH, conflict sensitivity, and complex systems-based approaches into environmental peacebuilding, offer a set of tools to mitigate any negative impacts of environmental peacebuilding action, and monitor and maximise its positive potential.
The imperative of systems thinking: integrating Do No Harm with reflecting on peace practice Intellectual traditions, especially Western traditions, often imprecisely separate society and ecology. However, understanding the relationship between environmental change and conflict is an investigation into one integrated, complex-adaptive system. Collapsing the Cartesian distinction between society and the environment, conflict today requires practitioners to understand socio-ecological systems, the systemic vulnerabilities of societies and ecosystems, and how communities can be more resilient to social and environmental shocks. Integrating CDA's systemsbased RPP approach is a first step in adapting conflict-informed action for this anthropocentric reality.
Systems thinking emphasises the interconnectedness and relationships among seemingly disparate elements in a particular bounded system. When utilised in peace and conflict studies, systems thinking helps us understand conflict as complex-adaptive systems (De Coning 2019;MacGinty and Richmond 2013). Systems approaches to peacebuilding acknowledge complexity, emergent properties, non-linearity, higher levels of uncertainty, and the self-organising behaviour of conflict systems (De Coning 2019). Systems thinking is often linked to adaptive peacebuilding specifically (De Coning 2018), iterative cycles of analyses-learning-implementation that emphasises local ownership and resilience thinking. As such, systems thinking is an essential feature for effective peacebuilding in the Anthropocene.
Both the research by Mary B. Anderson (1999) and colleagues and the design of the DNH Framework were pioneering for how they looked at aid and power as part of the wider system of conflict contexts. By considering programming and local action of all types, the framework had wide applicability in humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding arenas. In the early 2000s, RPP research refocused specifically on the systems dynamics of peacebuilding actions. The resulting RPP Matrix is a tool for systemic and holistic conflict analysis to support programming options in response to the analysis conducted. The two approaches share underlying principles of iterative design, contextual knowledge, participation, and inclusiveness, and both derived from the same stakeholder-informed collaborative learning methodology. 4 Several key features of both DNH and RPP are relevant to effective analysis embracing the complexity of socio-ecological factors.
To start, there are important process features. The DNH approach is characterised by a process of context analysis, program and/or project analysis, and impact analysis. Context analysis includes actor mapping to identify forces, systems, institutions, and individuals acting for peace and for conflict, plus an analysis of Dividersfactors that create division among groupsand Connectorsfactors that pull people or groups togetherin a particular context. The RPP Matrix identifies drivers of peace and conflict, then importantly prioritises the selection of Key Driving Factors (KDFs), those dynamics or elements without which the conflict would not exist or would be completely different (CDA 2021; Figure 2). It then uses systems mapping to visualise and examine the relationships among KDFs and other factors, identifying leverage points for weakening or strengthening specific relationships among factors. RPP is also an innovation on DNH related to option generation. Whereas the DNH framework relies on relatively unstructured brainstorming to generate options for aid actions to build on Connectors and mitigate Dividers, the RPP Matrix adds the lens of personal to societal-level change to help establish or interrogate a projects' theory(s) of change. This lens is important to socio-ecological analysis and project design.
Additionally, the level and boundaries of analysis are key features differing between DNH and RPP. DNH focuses on a single geographical scale, helpful to assess practical options for a particular aid action. RPP allows for relationships among local, national, and regional conflict actors, and factors can be presented in a single systems map, facilitating analysis of multi-scalar dynamics, which are particularly pertinent in the Anthropocene.
Finally, purpose is a key feature of both DNH and RPP. DNH is inherently about power relations and making more explicit how aid actions impact these relations by benefiting some and disadvantaging others, with the goal of more accountable project design choices. RPP is focused on effectiveness, leveraging systems understanding to guide impactful actions and decisions by practitioners. An important area of innovation has been systemic approaches to understanding power dynamics in conflict contexts, such as gendered power analysis frameworks. International peacebuilding organisations Conciliation Resources and Saferworld are both, for example, conducting intersectional 5 analysis of gendered power relations and drawing systemic conflict maps that include gender-sensitive driving factors of peace and conflict. 6 Capacities for vulnerability and resilience, like drivers for peace and conflict, are all shaped by gendered power dynamics and are thus critical to making sense of socio-ecological conflict systems.
For the global network of practitioners familiar with both DNH and RPP as heuristic approaches, such integration is familiar and effective. CDA has tacitly integrated systems thinking in its applied conflict sensitivity guides on land governance, noted above, and public health emergencies (CDA 2021; Figure 3 as illustrative). As such, there is experience on which to adapt DNH as an RPP  systems-informed approach for (a) analysing the interrelations among aid, power, societal conflict, and environmental impacts and (b) generating options for context-specific action that minimises harm to both conflict and ecological systems and builds on capacities for peace and resilience.

From connectors and dividers to resilience and vulnerabilities
Connectors and Dividers analysis helps DNH practitioners think through social cohesion and conflict in a simple dualistic manner. In the DNH approach, Connectors are those social and economic forces that bring people together, building trust and equality, strengthening intergroup relations and society. Dividers, by contrast, are social and economic forces that drive groups apart and increase conflict or capacities for war. Connectors and Dividers also often include environmental phenomena as they relate to intergroup dynamics, such as resource distribution, and geographical and ecological features. While DNH does not explicitly focus on socio-ecological relations, it does center people as its main point of reference. The environment is only a passive player in the human theatre of strife.
Participatory research, like that necessary for DNH analysis, has grappled with the inclusion of more-than-human actorsland, animals, water, trees (Bastian et al. 2017). While we lack guidance on how best to do this, incorporating local ways of knowing and Indigenous understandings of socio-ecological relations into analysis is a good starting point. Relational peacebuilding design that considers human relationships with the natural world can counter colonial modernist assumptions built on nature-culture dualities (Escobar-Tello et al. 2021). In practical terms, all aspects of the research process benefit from local communities and local ways of knowing.
The United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) climate mitigation strategy is a helpful example. The strategy focuses on the protection of forests and sustainable land managed to store carbon. Like many such initiatives, REDD + is most often implemented by NGOs or companies alongside landowners and forest-dwelling communities. While NGOs and companies might see the value of forests from a carbon-offset or conservationist perspective, they mean much more to forest-dwelling communities. For many communities, the land and forests have ontological value, and are considered to be kin or inseparable from the human community (Myers et al. 2021). Conflict-sensitive analysis must account for these worldviews, knowledge, and valuing systems in the Anthropocene. The inclusion of conservationists, ecologists, and other relevant disciplines in peace and conflict analysis may also bolster relational approaches. It is imperative for researchers and practitioners to think creatively and holistically about participatory design processes and include all socio-ecological contexts into the analysis.
Resilience and vulnerability are the two most common concepts through which socio-ecological relations in the Anthropocene are framed in the aid sector. They have long been seen to be fundamental to life in the context of climate change (Timmerman 1981).

Resilience
Resilience is a multi-faceted concept, rooted in disciplines from ecology, computer sciences, and psychology, to disaster studies. Resilience is understood at different scales by each discipline: individual, household, community, or nation. In socio-ecological systems thinking, resilience is understood to represent "the ability of people, communities, societies, or cultures to live and develop with change and ever-changing environments. It is about cultivating the capacity to continue to develop in the face of change, incremental and abrupt, expected and surprising" (Folke 2016, 47).
Resilience has come to feature prominently in peace and conflict studies and peacebuilding practice (De Coning 2016). Ana Juncos locates the growth of the resilience thinking in peacebuilding at the "local turn" (MacGinty and Richmond 2013), where "resilience thus operates a turn from the international to the local (governments, societies, organizations, and individuals), which is now [made] responsible for managing and engaging with systemic risks" (Juncos 2018, 562). When viewed through a resilience lens, peacebuilding must acknowledge and recognise the limitations and past failures of large-scale Western-led liberal peacebuilding aid actions (Joseph 2016). In the context of climate change, resilience is associated with a shift from peacebuilding to conflict prevention. In a world where risk is compounded and structured socio-ecological vulnerabilities embedded in more extensive social and ecological processes whose risk is hard to predict (Corry 2014). It is peacebuilding deeply rooted in localisation processes and shifts in power dynamics due to historical and ecological necessities (Ejdus and Juncos 2018). Resilience thinking is also accompanied by the rise in adaptive co-management strategies, in which human-controlled resource systems are assessed by resilience levels and locally managed. This encourages adaptive learning and community management, through which feedback loops can be created (Olsson and Folke 2003). Resilience thinking, like conflict sensitivity, therefore equips adaptive and iterative management practices crucial in dynamic contexts, such as amidst rapid environmental change.
The integration of resilience thinking into conflict sensitivity in the Anthropocene requires careful navigation of conceptual and operational sensitivities related to resilience in concept and practice. First and foremost, resilience thinking runs the risk of obscuring, normalising, and naturalising systemic precarity (Barrios 2016). Because it emphasises the individuals' or groups' ability to endure adversity, resilience may fall short in shining a light on historical injustices and root causes of social and natural threats. This trend can be countered by focusing on structural factors of oppression, often the KDFs in conflict systems, and balancing resilience thinking with vulnerability analyses, as described below.
Resilience thinking also runs the risk of unfairly placing the burden of responding to and withstanding crises solely on internal systems, individuals, households or communities and contribute to isolationism. While resilience thinking and its related approaches focus on local action and solutions, it also requires international solidarities. The Anthropocene inherently connects geographical scales; from the molecular movements of carbon; to the visible world of plants, animals, and humans; to the households, and countries they inhabit; to, finally, the global scale of sea level and weather patterns. Cross-scalar analysis, action, and solidarity across scales, require complexity and systems thinking and will be essential to effective action in this epoch.
Rooting the concept in practice concerned with local capacities for peace and sustainable development might allow for concrete contextual examples as resilience is understood to mean many things. However, through research such as the Listening Project, CDA finds communities that have dealt with and survived great adversity are often highly aware and even proud of those forces that made them survive (Anderson, Brown, and Jean 2012). While celebrating with them, it is also important not to glorify indestructibility and take away from an analysis of not just what makes communities survive but thrive in the face of adversity. If we view resilience through the lens of DNH, resilience thinking could reveal what holds societies and socio-ecological relations together across scales. It can reveal socio-ecological cohesion, sustainable practices rooted in resource-sharing agreements, and the adaptive and collective management of these resources.

Vulnerability
Vulnerability as a peacebuilding concept focuses on susceptibility to harm. In the context of climate change, harm is understood as a socio-ecological concept, and vulnerability therefore "forges relations between humans and nonhumans at the same time that it calls into question the terms of human survival" (Vaughn 2016). There has been much debate on how to characterise vulnerability in the Anthropocene, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) driving much of the debate in the disaster risk literature. In this context, risk is measured as what socio-ecological systems are vulnerable to, what consequences can be expected from these vulnerabilities, and a prediction of when these impacts may occur (IPPC 2012). Political ecologists who are concerned with the relationship between environmental changes and power, have linked vulnerability to issues of injustice and inequality (Birkenholtz 2012). Understood in this way, vulnerability is a condition of socio-ecological systems that are shaped by unequal distributions of power and the inequitable burden of environmental threats and resource scarcity. Vulnerability is further compounded by historical patterns of inequality, such as colonisation, and socioeconomic and gender disparities.
The work of Blaikie et al. (1994) has been particularly influential in disaster studies to understand the intersection between historical injustice and vulnerability to environmental change, and their research, especially the Pressure and Release (PAR) model, can readily be applied to socio-ecological conflict. In this model, disasters are understood as the result of both socioeconomic pressures and physical exposure (environmental phenomena). "Pressure" is the process by which society generates vulnerabilities and the conditions, such as policies, that lead to physical exposure. Pressure can come from either side but must be reduced to decrease the vulnerabilities of socio-ecological systems. Vulnerability in PAR is three-pronged: root causes, dynamic pressure, and unsafe conditions. Root causes of vulnerability include power structures, political ideologies, economic systems, and resource distribution based on these. Dynamic pressures include weak local institutions, urbanisations, the availability of arms, and deforestation. Unsafe conditions include dangers inherent in a locality, livelihood conditions, and social relations (belonging to particularly vulnerable groups, for example). Disasters strike when hazards occur (floods, droughts, etc.) in vulnerable circumstances. The risk is then measured by multiplying hazards by vulnerability. This three-pronged analysis of vulnerability is useful in environmental peacebuilding as root causes often render communities vulnerable to both societal conflict and impacts of environmental change simultaneously. Furthermore, identifying dynamic pressures can offer entry points for environmental peacebuilding programming. While the PAR model has been successful at integrating historical oppression, injustices, and other root causes of vulnerability with disaster risk, it has also been criticised as too mechanistic (Cardona 2004). Coetzee et. al writes: "it is not enough to reduce a problem like societal vulnerability to only root causes, dynamic pressure and unsafe conditions, without taking into account the dynamic interaction between the various components, their environment (context), temporal dimensions and the information exchange that subsumes adaptation within a system" (2019). Put another way, mapping vulnerability to disaster requires systems thinking and analysis that focuses on non-linearity, emergent behaviour, and feedback loops amongst different components. From a DNH perspective, a focus on vulnerabilities could reveal weaknesses of socio-ecological systems and the heightened susceptibility to risk of some human and ecological communities over others. A DNH-informed analysis could also map the underlying causes and dynamic factors of this vulnerability and, if seen through a systems lens, how they are systematically related over time. A more traditional DNH analysis could explore resilience and vulnerability in a socio-ecological manner focusing attention through guiding questions on social, ecological resilience and vulnerability, and then map their interdependence. Bringing the approach closer to the RPP methods could proceed by mapping KDFs for peace and conflict and overlaying them with resilience and vulnerability factors.
Food security in a changing climate: an illustrative case of applying systems thinking, resilience, and vulnerability analysis to Do No Harm This section demonstrates the applicability of a systemic DNH analysis that includes resilience and vulnerabilities factors by exploring climate impacts on food security programs through this lens. While the way in which climate change affects peace and conflict is contingent on many factors and context-specific, we believe that this example will demonstrate the usefulness of a systemic DNH analysis in this Anthropocene. Food security programs are relevant because competition over natural resources (land, water, fisheries) is one of the primary pathways through which climate change is and will impact conflict and peace (Mobjörk, Krampe, and Tarif 2020). Despite agreement in the sector that there is a direct connection between impacts on livelihoods and climate change and conflict, this pathway is not linear or direct. Rather, it interacts with context-specific factors such as land tenure, gender relations, governance, migration, etc., in a complex system.
Both rapid-onset disasters (hurricanes, droughts, floods) and slow-onset disasters (rising sea levels, soil salinisation, thawing permafrost) can have detrimental effects on livelihoods, especially for populations that rely heavily on renewable resources as their primary means of livelihood generation. As renewable resources dwindle, food prices typically rise, which can lead to civil unrest under certain circumstances (UN Security Council 2018). Local access to resources, especially land, shape power relations, including political power, in many places around the world. As climate change and disasters impact local access to resources, power struggles amongst political elites and local or regional land conflicts may turn into national level conflicts, as is the case in Somalia (Elmi and Barise 2006). While the precise role of climate change in the Syrian uprising is still disputed, there is no doubt that rural-to-urban migration resulting from the six-year drought led to rapid growth of unregulated urban settlements and subsequent unrest over lack of democratic change, crony capitalism, and rampant unemployment (Gleick 2014).
These examples demonstrate how impacts on livelihoods can feed pre-existing grievances and vulnerabilities, such as unequal distribution of resources along class, ethnic and/or gender lines, and exacerbate conflict. In particular, worsening livelihood conditions brought on by climate change also tend to exacerbate gender inequality. The unequal distribution of resources means that women, especially marginalised women, lose out in resource competition, lowering their adaptive capacities vis-à-vis men (Neumayer and Plümper 2007). However, women are also uniquely positioned to contribute to and lead in climate resilience, peace, and security efforts . Any systems analysis must therefore proceed from an intersectional analysis of gendered power relations (Close, Groenewald, and Trimiño Mora 2020), that maps such particular vulnerabilities and capacities for peace and resilience specific to particular subsections of society, most importantly marginalised or excluded communities.
This system's map of a simple reinforcing conflict loop over the unequal distribution of resources demonstrates how worsening livelihood conditions brought on by climate change can feed into the unequal distribution of resources and thereby exacerbate water and land conflicts, as well as gender inequality. In this example, resource competition stirred by climate exposure leads to greater factionalism and potentially increased clientelism by those that control the dwindling resources. Fed by patriarchal land and water tenure, this conflict system also exacerbates gender inequality in the access and control over land and water. Inserting a food security program into these dynamics, as the map demonstrates, has the potential to exacerbate conflict dynamics and gender inequality alike. And while much food security programming today is gender, climate, and conflict sensitive, there is also evidence that food security assistance can have positive and negative effects on the intensity and duration of violent conflict (Mary and Mishra 2020). And it may not be gender transformative, engaging with underlying patriarchal structures or access and control over resources (Botreau and Cohen 2020).
While a traditional DNH analysis might have caught these interlinkages, especially the program's impact on the unequal distribution of resources, a focus on resilience reveals that customary resource-sharing and resource harvesting practices, if reinforced, would have the potential to counter both conflict dynamics and resource scarcity. A vulnerability focus reveals unequal access between different groups and especially unequal control of resources by women. Again, while a traditional gender-sensitive DNH analysis might have revealed that, the complex interrelations among climate change, livelihoods, conflict, and gender dynamics lend themselves to a systemic analysis through which feedback and balancing loops can be established. While customary resource-sharing practices are often highly patriarchal (Tantoh et al. 2021), if implemented in a gender transformative manner, they have the potential to transform both the conflict systems and gender dynamics alike. This is particularly true when coupled with a focus on customary rainwater harvesting practices (in many parts of the world associated with women). Such practices not only demonstrate environmental resilience, but also social resilience, indicating women's unique roles in sustainability and conflict management could be highlighted. Linking these two practices could make food security programming more sustainable and sensitive to conflict, climate, and gender dynamics. In this way, mapping exercises can produce inclusive, clear, and easy-to-use programming advice for conflict sensitivity and environmental peacebuilding by highlighting leverage points within these socio-ecological conflict systems.

Conclusion and areas of further consideration
Systems thinking, and especially attention to how socio-ecological systems are structured by power relations affected and precipitated by aid, offers a way to embrace complexity-based frameworks for conflict sensitivity in the Anthropocene. Adding resilience and vulnerability thinking to this approach offers well-established categories that are meaningful across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus to investigate and communicate these power relations and their implications for peace and conflict in a socio-ecological sense. Conflict sensitivity of any kind is impossible to achieve without seriously engaging with the operational contextideally, through prolonged and continuous analysis and engagement with those people most affected by both environmental change and conflict. Indigenous knowledge, and other forms of local customary knowledge, will be essential to understanding layered vulnerabilities and senses of peace and securityhuman, cultural, ecological, and spiritualthat are grounded in different epistemologies and relational ontologies. Customary practices emerging from these localities will be essential to building more resilient socio-natural relations.
But working on conflict and the environment is also by no means new. That is, although the term environmental peacebuilding and especially environmental peacebuilding practice has burgeoned over the past years, there is a lot to be learned from past and existing conflict management practices that incorporated environmental aspects, such as resource-sharing agreements of their communal management. In each context, all analysis needs to look at history and existing initiatives. For example, just like the original DNH approach derived through an abductive research project that collected approximately 45 case studies with affected communities, these new theoretical underpinnings need to be tested for their practical application. The theory-practice gap is still vast in the environmental peacebuilding field and the conflict-sensitive approaches in particular. There is little understanding of or research on how and why environment-related projects can contribute to peace legacies. The practical pathways by which this can occur can be challenging and complex for aid actors. The recent development of Conflict Sensitivity in Land Governance (CDA 2022) recognises the evolving understanding of the relationship among environment, land, and conflict in complex contexts, including the dynamic impact of climate change and diverse application for humanitarians, peacebuilders, and other sectoral actors planning for and implementing land-related efforts amidst fragility and conflict.
In summary, peacebuilding efforts as well as conflict-informed action in the Anthropocene need to be: (a) relational, looking at the interaction between human and non-human actors; (b) inclusive, incorporating the knowledge and solutions of the most affected communities, including genderspecific and Indigenous knowledge; (c) holistic, incorporating a variety of viewpoints on peace and security (human, ecological, cultural, ontological, even spiritual security); (d) multi-scale, linking for example individual, household, community, regional, national, and global scales in a cross scale-analysis. Integration of the DNH and RPP approaches are promising.
Timely areas for further focus include looking at how socio-ecological relations specifically bring together ecologists and conservationists, humanitarians and peacebuilders, as well as Indigenous groups and climate activists. These groups have yet to develop a common vocabulary and establish overlapping needs and responsibilities on shared systems challenges and policy opportunities. What peacebuilding means to conservationists, and what conservation means for peacebuilders, and or what both mean to humanitarian organisations remains unclear to most groups. As well, cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary research, programming collaborations, and dedicated conferences to encourage dialogue, establish priorities, and give clear direction for policy is of the utmost importance going forward. In a world of compounding fragility as well as opportunity, time is of the essence to think systemically and act with urgency.