Capacity Building
Climate Change
Early Warning & Risk Analysis
North America
Caitlin Werrell and Francesco Femia

The U.S. State Department has just released its “2014 U.S. Climate Action Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.” As announced on the official website:

"On January 1, 2014, the Department of State submitted the 2014 U.S. Climate Action Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This report, which includes the First U.S. Biennial Report and Sixth U.S. National Communication to the UNFCCC, details actions the United States is taking domestically and internationally to mitigate, adapt to, and assist others in addressing climate change. The 2014 U.S. Climate Action Report fulfills requirements under the UNFCCC for all Parties to report periodically on actions and progress in combating climate change. The last U.S. Climate Action Report submitted was in 2010. Over the course of 2014, UNFCCC Parties will provide their first biennial reports: developed countries are to provide theirs by January 1, 2014 and developing countries are to provide biennial update reports by the end of the year."

The report can be found here, 2014 U.S. Climate Action Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. For our readers, we have excerpted sections of the report below that explicitly highlight climate change as a national security concern. The concepts of “risk” and “preparedness,”  that are central to an understanding of the national security implications of a changing climate, are also embedded throughout the report (as are energy, food and water security), but for clarity, we are only including excerpts that explicitly mention climate change as a matter of “U.S. national security.” Mentions of U.S. national security appear most frequently in sections dedicated to vulnerability, adaptation and research, and systematic observations.

From the “First US Biennial Report” portion of the report:

For the complete article, please see The Center for Climate and Security.

Climate Change
Environment & Migration
Security
Europe
Global Issues
Stella Schaller and Lukas Rüttinger, adelphi

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”.

adelphi

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
Climate Diplomacy
Conflict Transformation
Environment & Migration
Security
Global Issues
German Federal Foreign Office

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.

German Federal Foreign Office

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.