The Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Bert Koenders, emphasizes that climate change threatens international peace and security and speaks about his personal experience in Northern Mali, where he worked during his term as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Head of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA).
This interview was conducted at the Planetary Security Conference in The Hague, 5-6 December 2016.
"In 2015 and 2016 two things came together: One is that almost everybody in Paris agreed on the enormous consequences of climate change. Secondly, we see at the same time, an urgency of the international security situations - in different countries but also geo-strategically. And we see more and more, even if it is not digital, that there is a relationship between climate change and security. I have seen it myself when I worked in Northern Mali. You see the desertification as a result of climate change, resulting in scarcity, therefore conflicts of different groups of people that live there in very difficult circumstances. That often leads to the importation of terrorism of extremist groups who take advantage of this. It is an example of the relationship between security and climate change. Therefore, those who think still – there are only a few – that they can deny the climate problem and even if they are not interested in it they might be interested in the security and migration part.
We have to fix these issues together, and therefore it is important to get different disciplines, different politicians and different countries together to move in very practical and operational terms on this different nexus between climate change and security."
A new publication on SDGs and foreign policy, prepared by researchers at the German think tank adelphi, highlights a phenomenon I call this the ‘Great Splintering’ – the fracturing of political will for collective action on the global stage. This article outlines five steps we could take to revive multilateralism.
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At a meeting of the Arctic Council, secretary of state Mike Pompeo refused to identify global warming as a threat, instead hailing an oil rush as sea ice melts. The US refused to join other Arctic countries in describing climate change as a key threat to the region, as a two-day meeting of foreign ministers drew to a close on Tuesday in Ravaniemi, Finland.
Around 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihood, and about 2.6 billion people rely directly on agriculture. Deforestation, land degradation, and unsustainable management of ecosystems threaten those livelihoods and may contribute to resource-related conflicts and social unrest.