The UN Security Council has identified climate change as a driver of conflict across West Africa and the Sahel, in a statement published last Tuesday.
The destruction caused by Cyclone Ockhi in South Asia portends what a ‘climate-changed’ world has in store for humankind, especially taking into consideration the adverse human security implications of such disasters that have to be addressed urgently. Dhanasree Jayaram argues that planetary security in this context can be best ensured at the regional level.
In November 2017, the U.S. government released its first ever Global Water Strategy – to our knowledge also the first of its kind globally. The opening page cites President Trump claiming that ‘[w]ater may be the most important issue we face for the next generation’. This priority may surprise observers of the current U.S. administration.
The Lake Chad region experiences a multitude of crises: lack of employment and education opportunities, resource scarcity and violent conflict, all exacerbated by the effects of climate change, making the Lake Chad region Africa’s largest humanitarian emergency. At the margins of the Planetary Security Conference 2017, we spoke with the independent conflict adviser Chitra Nagarajan about the region’s future.
Last month, the UN Security Council hosted another meeting on climate change. Despite this positive step, in order to really tackle climate-related security risks, the Council needs to be reshaped into a more capable body, as a recent journal article by Conca et al. points out. In our review, we examine the authors’ attempt to steer the discussion away from the bipartisan impasse and towards the UN Security Council’s potential for becoming a key player on climate issues.
The UN Security Council is hosting an Arria meeting on ‘Preparing for the security implications of rising temperatures’ on 15 December at the UN headquarters in New York. As climate-induced security threats have become more pressing, the highest body of global governance is slowly taking up the issue again.
This year’s Planetary Security Conference set a concrete agenda for action on climate and security with the launch of The Hague Declaration. The six-point plan, which has been signed by almost 80 high profile experts in the field, from ministers to ambassadors, mayors, generals and academics, seeks to move the agenda from knowledge to action.
In December, the leading lights of the climate and security community launched an unprecedented declaration to catalyse action in the field in front of 350 participants at the Planetary Security Conference.
How can we move from analysis to action on climate-security risks? The third annual Planetary Security Conference 2017 will take place on December 12th and 13th 2017 in The Hague and aims at providing new answers to this question.
On November 17, adelphi hosted a high-level panel discussion on “How to prevent climate security risks?” at the German Pavilion at COP23. The panel discussion was an opportunity to take stock of what has been achieved and to deepen the discussion on how to prevent climate-related risks and incorporate them into policy planning.