This overview explains why climate change is a matter of concern for international peace and security and how the UN system should deal with climate-related security risks. It poses and answers seven questions.
Climate change is increasingly shaping international security. The session aims at making the COP community aware of the climate-security nexus and focus a debate on integrated risk analysis, mitigation and management. It will discuss potential pathways for action how to deal with climate-security risks in Latin America and beyond.
If the United Nations is to effectively deal with climate-related security risks, it needs expert support from every region. That’s where the Climate Security Expert Network comes in.
With the rapid rate of climate change and its likely implications for global security, the current world order will have to adapt – and adapt quickly. The difference between today and major global disruptions of the past is that though the risks are unprecedented, our foresight is unprecedented as well. This lays the foundation for a Responsibility to Prepare and Prevent (R2P2), a framework for managing the climate-security risks, which this report seeks to address.
More than 113 million people across 53 countries experienced acute hunger requiring urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) in 2018. This report illustrates in stark terms the hunger caused by conflict and insecurity, climate shocks and economic turbulence.
Nobody needs to be convinced that climate change affects our very existence and security. However, experts are interested to know how climate change affects security at a global level and what the EU can do in that regard. This was the main aim of the European Security and Defence College (ESDC) Climate Change and Security Course co-organised by the French Institute for Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN) and adelphi, as part of the Climate Diplomacy initiative supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, which took place in Brussels from 21 to 23 October 2019.
This is a joint event by the Centre for International Security at the Hertie School and the United Nations Association of Germany, focusing on the security implications of climate change and the role of the UN Security Council in this context.
International political boundaries are arbitrary creations. Today’s borders are better described as imaginary lines on maps, rather than hard barriers between states. Often using mountains, rivers, or other geographical landmarks, modern borders are entrenched in historic tradition rather than logic and fact. As a result, today’s international borders are poorly equipped to handle modern challenges, in particular climate change, which has already begun to threaten the most important state resource, fresh water.
Access to water can be a critical resource for cooperation, but also a source of tension. Identifying risks before their onset is crucial for the efficiency and economic feasibility of intervention strategies, but how can these risks be measured? To address this conundrum, adelphi together with several partners convened a side-event at World Water Week, which connected experts developing analytical tools to policy makers in the water sector.
“It is time to do more than just talk about sustainability. It is time to act sustainably,” said Heiko Maas during his speech at the General Debate of the 74th United Nations General Assembly. Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs highlighted the need for multilateral cooperation to achieve worldwide sustainability, as well as Germany's focus on climate-security, women, and disarmament and arms control as part of its agenda in the UN Security Council.
Policymakers and emergency managers tend to build a conceptual wall between natural hazards and terrorism. The causes of—and remedies for—these two kinds of disasters are seen as separate and distinct. But, in the era of climate change, the wall between the two is crumbling. As climate and weather patterns shift, the resulting environmental crisis is being leveraged as a tool for terror and political violence.
As the links between the climate crisis and risks to global peace and prosperity become ever more evident, foreign policy actors are increasingly under pressure to step up their efforts to address climate-related risks. To increase the momentum for addressing climate-related drivers of conflict, the German Federal Foreign Office in partnership with adelphi and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) hosted the Berlin Climate and Security Conference (BCSC) at the German Federal Foreign Office on 4 June 2019.