The new global pact to fight climate change has the potential to be a global solidarity contract for the 21st century. This will occur if the demands to promote decarbonisation and strengthening of resilience are pursued equally, immediately and systematically during implementation.
The most important and anticipated climate change conference in years is finally underway. In some ways, as Bill McKibben and Andrew Revkin have pointed out, its success is relatively assured thanks to the number of major commitments countries have already made. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to see here.
Climate foreign policy needs to shift its focus towards catalyzing the climate economy, key to raising ambitions beyond Paris. Here is how and why.
Paris 2015: as climate advocate, this meant and means for me the upcoming World Climate Conference in December. And this hasn’t changed, even as a result of the horrific terror attacks last Friday in Paris. On the contrary, the outcomes of the approaching conference can make a major contribution to stomping out the breeding grounds for these kinds of attacks.
Acknowledging that climate change is a global threat to security in the 21st century, the Dutch government has convened an international conference on Planetary Security on 2-3 November 2015 in the Hague. The aim of the conference was to facilitate strategic exchange on existing foreign policy and security architecture.
In a commanding speech at Old Dominion University this week, Secretary Kerry announced a dramatic step toward integrating climate and security into U.S. foreign policy.
How do you avoid that the urgent always takes priority over the important? In the coming decades, we may see climate change destabilizing conflict regions, fueling new conflicts, and undermining progress on development. Climate change is thus increasingly a global threat to security. The Foreign Ministers of France and Germany co-hosted a high-level discussion on September 30 during the United Nations General Assembly on how foreign policy can address these risks.
The updated version of the Climate Diplomacy booklet is now available online, published by adelphi. It highlights the approach and efforts of the German Federal Foreign Office in the field of climate policy.