14 Feb 2012 - On Friday 26 Jan 2012, adelphi’s exhibition on "Environment, Conflict and Cooperation" (ECC) has been launched at the World Social Forum with a focus on the civil societal preparation of the upcoming UN environmental conference “Rio+20”. The exhibition was jointly conceptualized by adelphi and the Brazilian environmental organization “Vitae Civilis”. It addresses the question, how climate change, environmental degradation and resource scarcity can be drivers of social and political conflict.
Over the past months, adelphi has developed a regional component for the exhibition together with the Brazilian environmental NGO “Vitae Civilis”. For the presentation in Brazil, the complete exhibition has also been translated into Portuguese. The regional component discusses the interlinkages between water scarcity, food and energy security. Moreover, it addresses the question how climate change could aggravate the existing problems or create new environmental challenges and what impact this will have on the living conditions of the Brazilian population.
The exhibition has been developed at the initiative of the German Federal Foreign Office and will be shown in other Brazilian cities in the course of this year. In parallel, similar exhibitions with regional components have been launched in China, South Africa and India.
For more information on the exhibition on "Environment, Conflict and Cooperation", please visit:
http://www.ecc-exhibition.org/en/project.htm
The European Green Deal has made the environment and climate change the focus of EU action. Indeed, climate change impacts are already increasing the pressure on states and societies; however, it is not yet clear how the EU can engage on climate security and environmental peacemaking. In this light, and in the run-up to the German EU Council Presidency, adelphi and its partners are organising a roundtable series on “Climate, environment, peace: Priorities for EU external action in the decade ahead”.
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.