Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a “U.S.-Canada Joint Statement on Climate, Energy, and Arctic Leadership”. The statement emphasizes the importance of addressing compound climate-fragility risks, and both leaders agree to continue addressing these challenges, in particular through the G7 working group on climate and fragility:
“Recognizing the particular impact of climate change on countries already dealing with conflict and fragility, the leaders commit to addressing the intersection of climate change and security as an issue for foreign, defense, and development policies. Through the G-7 working group on climate and security and elsewhere, both sides will work together to support sound analysis, practical recommendations, and meaningful cooperation to address climate-fragility risks.”
G7 Foreign Ministers set up the climate-fragility working group in April 2015 to evaluate the recommendations of the New Climate for Peace report by an international consortium led by adelphi.
The joint statement furthermore acknowledges the leadership role of both countries in promoting global climate change action and reiterates the commitment to continue cooperation in this field bilaterally as well as through multilateral fora like the G20.
At their June summit, G7 leaders pledged to develop long-term low-carbon strategies and phase out fossil fuels by the end of the century. They agreed on a global target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures to a maximum of 2 degrees over pre-industrial levels.
Between 2007 and 2014, social unrest erupted across the globe. In Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Greece, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, Thailand, Bosnia, Venezuela and Ukraine people took to the streets to protest against their governments. These protests had one factor in common: discontent with the government and underlying tensions were exacerbated by dramatic increases in food prices.
Syria is a warning sign of the crises to come. It gives us an important lesson on the links between livelihood insecurity, climate change and fragility. However, most of the reporting on the current crisis focuses on the violence and the extent of destruction. While this kind of reporting is important as it can keep the crisis on the political agenda and hopefully spur action to decrease human suffering and find solutions to the conflicts, it does not provide us with a deep understanding of how the crisis emerged in the first place and thus misses some key points which might help us prevent the next crisis from happening.
In 2011 Thailand was hit by unprecedented monsoon rains far above the average rainfall of the previous 30 years. Two million people across 26 provinces were affected. During the crisis, hundreds of civilians took it to the streets to protest discrimination by the Flood Response Operation Centre and the unfair distribution of water, electricity supply, shelter and food. Civilians were so angry that they broke a sandbag wall in Bangkok which was protecting a wealthy district from water surges. Public unrest and discontent with the government continued until a military coup in 2013.