The Burning Question: Climate and Conflict

Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue, it is driving conflict, displacement, and deepening global insecurity. What would it take to address climate justice and political conflict together, rather than in isolation?

In this timely conversation, Andrew Gilmour joins broadcaster Paddy O’Connell to explore the intersection of climate, sustainability, peace, and migration, asking how solutions to the climate crisis can also lay the groundwork for more just and lasting peace.

Andrew Gilmour is the former Executive Director of the Berghof Foundation. He stepped down in January 2025. Before joining the Berghof Foundation in May 2020, Andrew served 30 years at the United Nations, most recently as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights from 2016 to 2019 and as Political Director in the Office of the Secretary-General in New York from 2012 to 2016. He previously held senior UN positions in numerous conflict zones including Iraq, South Sudan, the Middle East, the Balkans, Afghanistan and West Africa.

With masters degrees from Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Andrew was later an Adjunct Fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. In 2019 Andrew was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College Oxford to research links between climate change, human rights and conflict. In 2020 he became a Senior Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Paddy O’Connell presents BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. He was a local radio reporter in Devon, Essex and Cleveland and worked on the launch of Five Live. He was a reporter for The World, a US-based daily programme and later a host on LBC. As BBC Wall Street Correspondent, he lived and worked in the USA for eight years, and reported from New York during the attacks of 9/11. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

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