Climate Security – It’s Crunch Time
It’s crunch time for the global climate security discourse. While the COVID-19 crisis remains the key present challenge, it’s time to take stock of where the debate stands on the security implications of climate change in the run-up to another debate in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) scheduled for July 2020. The Berlin Climate Security Conference series initiated a year ago with a call for action complements the UNSC debate, with one conference taking place end of June and a follow-up conference in September 2020 to pave the way for more action. A “Global Climate Security Risk and Foresight Assessment,” intended to help identify concrete solutions, is part of implementing the call. It should enable the international community to design and implement early action to avoid an increase in fragility and decarbonisation on the basis of robust and interdisciplinary scientific findings.
This newsletter edition looks into some of the preliminary insights of the foresight assessment, and also aims at offering some insights into the perspective of non-permanent members – some of them heavily impacted by the consequences of climate change on their political, social and economic stability. Researchers from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy at the University of Erfurt analysed the potential expectations of the Dominican Republic, Viet Nam, and South Africa. The three states are UNSC members in 2020 and acknowledge the economic and health risks posed by climate change as key vulnerabilities that can create common ground in New York in a few weeks. For the next years, India will also be a driving force as incoming non-permanent member of the Security Council. India has shown that it can be quite effective in promoting dialogue with developing countries on their key concerns. In this context, India is well-known for stressing principles such as fairness, representation and transparency. Seen in this light, there are some prospects for broadening the debate on climate security in the UNSC and good reason to take a second look at the follow-up to the July debate in New York.
For the first time in the survey’s 10-year outlook, the top five global risks in terms of likelihood are all environmental. They are: extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, major natural disasters, major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and human-made environmental damage and disasters.
Climate change and conflict could fuel hunger in 2020
Millions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa could face grave hunger in the first half of 2020 because of armed conflict, political instability and climate change-linked disasters, a report says.
The report published by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) this month says that the countries affected will require life-saving food assistance and investment to prevent humanitarian catastrophes.
Australia’s bushfires and climate change: A media analysis
Australia is currently experiencing one of its worst bushfire seasons, with swathes of the southern and eastern coastal regions having been ablaze for weeks. As the fires have spread, there has been extensive media coverage both nationally and internationally documenting – and debating – their impacts. This Carbon Brief overview summarises how the fires – and the political response to them – have been covered by the media.
COP25 widens rift between ambitious and evasive states
The latest climate talks unravelled when parties failed to reach consensus on the global carbon market mandated by the Paris Agreement. The carbon market controversy emerged amidst new tensions between a growing grassroots climate movement and the climate sceptic agenda of populist leaders. The ball is now in the court of the climate laggards, but they can only halt global climate action for so long.