Supporting Syria to rebuild: for food and peace

Syria’s food system has been hollowed out by more than a decade of violent conflict, displacement, infrastructural destruction, climate stress, and market collapse. 13 million people have been displaced from their homes, and physical reconstruction costs are estimated at around USD 216 billion. Since 2016, the Syrian Arab Republic has consistently ranked among the ten countries with the highest numbers of people facing acute food insecurity globally. Even with reported improvements in nutritional outcomes following the political transition of 2024-2025, around 7.2 million Syrians still face moderate to severe food insecurity as of 2026 (2026 Global Report on Food Crises).

These figures point to a recovery challenge far beyond rebuilding infrastructure. Syria needs to rebuild the foundations of its food system: productive land, functioning seed systems, restored soils, rehabilitated irrigation, reliable markets, local processing capacity and stable rural livelihoods. Food systems recovery is therefore not only an agricultural priority. It is a peace and social cohesion priority.Restoring food and land systems in a peace-responsive manner can help address root causes of conflict, such as unequal resource access, political exclusion, and economic inequality, whilst also establishing the conditions associated with peaceful and inclusive societies through building responsive institutions, community resilience, and social capital.

The climate crisis is exacerbating an already complex set of risks. Climate variability, environmental degradation, water stress and market volatility compound the root causes of fragility and displacement, while food systems and other essential systems remain deeply disrupted. And when food systems are disrupted, risks of instability increases. As research developed by the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT’s Climate Security team demonstrates, (child) nutritional indicators act as key mediators within such risk transmission pathways, with temperature anomalies being linked to increased violent conflict through factors such as child wasting.

What are the opportunities?

There is a real risk within Syria of climate variability compounding pre-existing socio-economic, infrastructural, and security vulnerabilities to potentially engender the emergence of such a vicious cycle – and a return to widespread instability. Syria’s food systems, whilst admirably resilient, have been strained through years of conflict and are currently ill-equipped to manage and prepare for cascading and compounding climate-related disruptions at scale. Before the conflict, around 25% of rural households spent more than half of their income on food. By 2016, this had risen to 90% of households, indicating a dramatic collapse in purchasing power and the ability to invest in resilience measures.

Livestock holdings similarly declined by around half during this period, eroding the capacity of households to weather sudden shocks. And widespread damage to agricultural infrastructure, such as irrigation systems and water points, has rendered farmers more exposed to unreliable rainfall patterns. With sectoral reconstruction and recovery costs estimated at some USD 15 billion as of 2017, the agri-food sector has become more and more fragmented due to supply and value chain disruptions, the erosion of centralised input markets and seed multiplication systems, and the difficulty of supporting agricultural extension services in a conflict environment.

The 2024-2025 agricultural season is estimated to have produced only between 900,000 and 1.1 million tons of wheat, equivalent to roughly a third of average production rates during the conflict itself and roughly a quarter of pre-war production.

Recent research from Rural Damascus indicates these conditions are not only leading to widespread nutritional insecurity but crucially also that the crisis has begun to fray the social fabric of rural areas, with some 72% of surveyed households reporting tensions related to water access. The impacts of climate variability are evident in these dynamics. The Euphrates-Tigris basin has been experiencing extreme and exceptional drought conditions since 2020, undermining hydroelectric power generation capacities and access to safe drinking water but also critically impacting both rainfed and irrigated agricultural production systems. As of 2025, deviations in vegetation coverage and health due to irregular and insufficient precipitation have been observed in areas such as Al-Hassakeh, Ar-Raqqa, and Deir-ez Zor, which – combined with conflict-related damage to agricultural infrastructure and the contamination of agricultural lands with unexploded ordnance (UXO) – has resulted in widespread crop failures.

Syria’s still fragile post-conflict status, and complex risk environment means that – for success- agrifood sector recovery and food security programming needs to be firmly embedded within an inclusive and peace-responsive climate resilience approach. Agrifood system restoration and sustaining peace are not activities that should be sequenced. Instead, the question is how these efforts can be done together so that they are mutually reinforcing. There are specific pathways that link different peace domains – namely, conflict prevention, basic safety, and security; social cohesion, cooperation, and trust-building; good governance and inclusive political processes; and sustainable economies and livelihoods – with the sustainable management and recovery of food, land, and water systems. Several of these pathways are relevant to Syria.

How can food and land systems become peace and stability infrastructure?

Negative peace

Conflict prevention, basic safety and security

Strengthened conflict management mechanisms

Strengthen Early Warning Systems (EWS)
Disaster risk reduction
Support displaced populations and migrants

Control drivers and reduce incentives for violence

Control conflict resources
Incentivise peace and stability
Safe livelihoods for women and girls
Remediate environmental damage

Positive peace

Social cohesion, cooperation and trust

Constructive engagement

Environmental cooperation
Community-based climate action

Improved relationships and joint problem-solving

Collaborative environmental governance
Bridging generational and gender divides

Good governance and inclusive political processes

Governance of land and natural resources

Public participation in decision-making
Institutional accountability
Environmental governance rebuilding
Transitional justice support

Equitable access to natural resources

Improved basic service delivery
Resource access and ownership reform
Customary governance systems

Sustainable economies and livelihoods

Increased agricultural productivity

Food security strengthening
Climate-resilient livelihoods

Viable livelihoods in conflict contexts

Economic diversification
Alternative livelihood support

The Theory of Change (ToC) diagram linking food and land systems recovery to peace outcomes.

Investing in climate-resilient livelihoods and promoting food security, restoring and diversifying (rural) economies, and supporting alternative ‘green’ livelihoods are, for instance, expected to increase agricultural productivity and improve the viability of resource-dependent livelihoods in fragile environments. Particularly in post-conflict environments where agricultural livelihoods remain a key source of income and employment, such efforts can in turn contribute to the recovery of sustainable economies and livelihoods, a key economic dimension of positive peace.

Similarly, increasing public representation and embedding customary and traditional legal frameworks into natural resource governance, enhancing basic service delivery and institutional accountability, and strengthening transitional justice processes through inclusive resource management can not only increase equitable access to environmental resources but also improve the sustainability of renewable natural resource stewardship.

In post-conflict settings characterised by low degrees of institutional trust, such interventions can contribute more broadly to the development of good governance and enable a greater degree of inclusivity in political processes. Lastly, enabling functional environmental cooperation around community-based resource and landscape management initiatives can help bridge generational, gender, and other social divides, thereby leading to improved relational dynamics, constructive engagement around shared environmental challenges and improved social cohesion.

Developing a climate resilient and sustainable agrifood sector is thereby not simply an investment in domestic food security, but also an investment in peace infrastructure. Ensuring agrifood systems are both insulated from external (environmental) shocks whilst also forming a space where equitable income generation opportunities, inclusive and accountable governance, and collective action capacities can be promoted positions such systems as critical buffers against cascading instability risks.

Rebuilding peace- and climate-responsive food systems

Such objectives – whilst attainable – are however also mired by potential trade-offs and risks associated with systemic lock ins across the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, particularly in a post-conflict environment characterised by competing short, medium, and long-term strategic priorities. The transitional government’s Statement of Recovery Priorities and Agricultural Strategy (2026-2030), for instance, both represent ambitious and comprehensive recovery agendas, yet also contain sectoral objectives that are potentially at odds with other strategic imperatives.

Efforts to revitalise domestic production capacity by restoring Syria’s irrigation systems to pre-war levels risk accelerating the collapse of already depleted aquifers with unsustainable recharge rates, thereby threatening the long-term viability of agricultural production and potentially reducing water allocations for other sectoral purposes, such as WASH or industry. Similarly, promoting the rapid modernisation of agricultural systems to increase yields in the short-term may also reduce the need for on-farm labour, thereby undermining labour market absorption in rural areas to which many displaced people are returning.

And the transitional government’s intentions to shift from a state-controlled agricultural economy to a more liberalised market economy, whilst opening the door to private sector-led investment and growth, potentially also increases the risk of elite capture, thereby marginalising smallholder farmers and other stakeholders with limited capital resources.

These recovery dilemmas point to the need to move from crisis response to crisis management and ground decision-making within a risk-informed development (RID) framework. RID recognises that responding to interconnected risks not only requires developing effective risk management strategies, but that developmental and policy decisions themselves play a potential role in risk creation by generating unforeseen second and third order impacts on other sectors or geographies. To enable a risk-informed policy response, then, it is necessary for scientific research to make explicit the compound risk landscape within which decision-making is occurring; where and how sectoral, demographic, or spatial vulnerabilities might be interconnected; and the potential trade-offs and uncertainties embedded in various courses of action.

The Alliance’s contributions to Syria food systems reconstruction

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT is strongly positioned to contribute to the peace- and climate-responsive reconstruction of Syria’s agrifood system. A newly developed Syria offer identifies six priority recovery areas where Alliance science, partnerships and innovations can support recovery: wheat and cereal system rehabilitation; plural and resilient seed systems; soil, land and water restoration; dryland, orchard and rangeland recovery; nutrition-sensitive markets, cooperatives and agro-processing; and integrated support to return and reintegration areas.

This offer is strengthened by the Alliance’s Climate Security team, which brings dedicated expertise on climate, fragility, displacement and peace-responsive food systems. The team can support Syria’s recovery by identifying where climate risks, livelihood pressures, resource stress and social vulnerabilities intersect, and by translating this evidence into practical guidance for programming, investment and policy. Through tools such as the Climate Security Observatory, the Compound Risk Framework (CRF)¹, conflict-sensitive screening and participatory approaches, the team can help ensure that agrifood recovery investments do not only restore production, but also strengthen social cohesion, support return and reintegration, rebuild trust between communities and institutions, and create more stable livelihood pathways.

The Compound Risk Framework (CRF) makes use of Bayesian network modelling to provide a powerful measure of causal interactions and dependencies across multiple data layers – including conflict, biophysical, socio-economic, and institutional indicators – to identify sources of system fragility, map interconnectivity, and inform policy interventions to prevent cascading failures. Such approaches are critical enablers for risk-informed decision-making and effective resource allocation in complex post-conflict environments.

The Alliance has successfully implemented several peace-responsive programmatic modalities that explicitly embed conflict sensitivity and social inclusion components into climate-smart agricultural (CSA) strategies. Participatory approaches such as the Peace-responsive Climate Smart Village (CSV) and Community Seed Banks integrate CSA solutions through farmer-led innovation, knowledge exchange, and policy engagement to enhance resilience and food security, whilst also producing co-benefits for social cohesion by improving collective action capacities and promoting the inclusion of conventionally marginalised stakeholder groups. Other innovations, such as the Diversity for Restoration (D4R) tool and the Conflict-sensitive Nature-based Solutions approach, similarly offer opportunities to combine ecosystem restoration, socio-economic recovery, and environmental peacebuilding components to support coherent and conflict sensitive recovery efforts.

Food systems can either absorb pressure or amplify it. When livelihoods are fragile, resources are stressed, and communities face repeated shocks, the way food and land systems are governed, financed and supported matters enormously. If rebuilt in a resilient, inclusive and climate-responsive way, they can become instruments for peace by restoring livelihoods, strengthening cooperation over land and water, reconnecting communities to markets and generating shared economic opportunities. This requires decision-ready compound risk analysis to identify where climate, water, food security, displacement and social vulnerability intersect, and where investments can deliver the strongest recovery and stabilisation co-benefits. The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT is ready to bring this capacity to support Syria’s agrifood reconstruction.

For more information on the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT’s Syria strategy, please contact:

Grazia Pacillo – Climate Security team lead ([email protected])
Frans Schapendonk – Climate, peace, and security specialist ([email protected])