10 Insights into Climate Impacts and Peace
New report for policymakers provides an overview of the growing research on the links between climate change, security and peace. The synthesis identifies ten insights into climate-related security risks and lays the groundwork for the 'Global Climate Security Risk and Foresight Assessment', led by adelphi and PIK, that will be launched at the Berlin Climate and Security Conference.
Climate change is one of the most pressing political issues of our time. The unprecedented nature and scale of its impacts on people, economies and ecosystems worldwide are becoming clearer as science advances. One critical dimension of these impacts are their effect on international peace and security.
Yet to-date, the knowledge base on climate and security has remained dispersed and patchy, leaving policy makers unclear about how to grapple with this urgent issue. This new report synthesises and contextualises the existing scientific evidence to set out ten insights, which brief policymakers on the current knowledge of security risks related to climate change.
Access the Full Report here.
The ten insights, ranging from the peace and security implications of climate impacts on livelihoods and human mobility, to the unintended consequences of poorly designed climate and security policies themselves, lay the groundwork for the German Foreign Office-supported Global Climate Security Risk and Foresight Assessment that will be launched at the Berlin Climate and Security Conference.
The implication of these insights is that, if we do not act swiftly, climate change will mean more fragility, less peace and less security. The risks that climate change presents to international peace and security need to be addressed across the entire impact chain: by mitigating climate change, attenuating its consequences on ecosystems, adapting socio-economic systems, better managing the heightened resource competition climate change will bring about and by strengthening governance and conflict management institutions to cope with the changes in store without violence. The first step to all of this is a robust and authoritative risk assessment. The first outputs of the Global Climate Security Risk and Foresight Assessment will be published in 2021.
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In January 2020, the German Federal Foreign Office launched Green Central Asia, a regional initiative on climate and security in Central Asia and Afghanistan. The aim of the initiative is to support a dialogue in the region on climate change and associated risks in order to foster regional integration between the six countries involved.
Climate change will shift key coordinates of foreign policy in the coming years and decades. Even now, climate policy is more than just environment policy; it has long since arrived at the centre of foreign policy. The German Foreign Office recently released a report on climate diplomacy recognizing the biggest challenges to security posed by climate change and highlighting fields of action for strengthening international climate diplomacy.
A high-level ministerial conference in Berlin is looking at the impact of climate change on regional security in Central Asia. The aim is to foster stronger regional cooperation, improve the exchange of information and form connections with academia and civil society.
Time has come to build a ‘climate coalition of the willing’
As we step into 2020, time has come to implement the Paris Agreement and raise climate ambition, but the geopolitical tide seems to be against it. The best way forward at this crucial juncture might be to forge a ‘climate coalition of the willing’ – recognising and streamlining actions of all actors at all levels.