Fire and (no) Ice: Climate Security Landscapes in Fall 2020
We are entering the last days of the BCSC 2020, with insightful discussions on a number of climate security challenges still to come, as well as the launch of our “21st Century Diplomacy: Foreign Policy Is Climate Policy” essay series. Building on the high-level political Part I of BCSC 2020 back in July, this second part aims to bring together the field’s various actors in the realm of climate, development and security policy in one digital space to meet the strategic goals of sharing good practice on what works on the ground and help inform policy processes.
Two current catastrophes with a strong climate change impact are illustrating a different kind of climate security landscape. They should be seen as a wakeup call that alerts us of the urgency of finding sustainable solutions. The devastating forest fires in the Western United States, especially California, have already destroyed more than 4000 buildings and forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes. The area affected, more than 12 million acres, is nearly as large as that of the island of Vanuatu. Moving further north, the sea ice in the Arctic reached its annual minimum extent by mid-September, just 3.74 million square kilometres. In four decades of satellite recording, this is the second-lowest level on record.
Both catastrophes are worrisome signals of long-term downward trends. Given the current atmosphere of climate denial in significant parts of the United States, the elections in early November are taking on more and more the character of a final exam – one that will determine whether the United States returns to the table to ensure global risk management, or stays at the margin to play with fire – and no ice.
As India grapples with the worsening impacts of climate change, the need to strengthen its adaptation efforts has become more significant than ever. Climate diplomacy and mainstreaming climate adaptation into the most vulnerable sectors could provide some solutions to overcoming barriers, such as the lack of sustainable funding.
“Climate Security risks will materialise in very different ways and forms, whether we talk about Lake Chad or about the Arctic, Bangladesh and the Small Island Developing States,” said the EU’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, Joao Vale de Almeida, in his opening remarks. “But for the EU, there is no doubt, as underlined in 2016 in our Global Strategy, and reaffirmed by the 28 Ministers of Foreign Affairs, that climate change is a major threat to the security of the EU and to global peace and security more generally,” he said.
The challenges facing the international community are growing while the willingness to cooperate seems to be waning. Foreign policy must help bridge this gap. One way to accomplish this is by pushing forward a major achievement of multilateralism: the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. At a side event during the 2019 High-Level Political Forum, diplomats and policy experts discussed the role of foreign policy in the global sustainability architecture.
Global progress towards achieving the SDGs is slow, and for many targets, off track. While SDG implementation is primarily a national task and responsibility, it also requires concerted international cooperation. This article presents two arguments why foreign policy could play an important role in their achievement.