“Some of the security challenges we face today are, by their nature, short-term and acute. Others are longer term, but no less pressing. Over the years, the United Nations, Governments and the people of the world have come to recognize climate change as a deadly peril to our ecosystems and, by that, to our security and, indeed, our survival. We may in many cases in life have a Plan B – but we simply have no Planet B.”
Remarks by Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the Munich Security Conference dinner to present the 2016 Ewald-Von-Kleist Award to H.E. Laurent Fabius and Christiana Figueres (Munich, 13 February 2016)
Photo: From left to right - Jan Eliasson (Deputy Secretary General, United Nations), Laurent Fabius (former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, French Republic; President, COP21), Horst Seehofer (Minister-President, Free State of Bavaria), and Wolfgang Ischinger (Ambassador, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference). Credit: MSC / Kuhlmann.
Until recently, impressive economic growth, stable leadership and its attractiveness as a foreign investment hub put Ethiopia in a positive spotlight. However, the country still ranks low in human development and is highly dependent on rainfed agriculture, making it particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. Combined with existing tensions and inequalities, climate vulnerability can exacerbate security risks. To mitigate these linkages, Ethiopia’s leadership should support implementation of conflict-sensitive climate change adaptation policies and include climate security in its conflict mitigation strategy.
On 19 November in Dhaka, adelphi partnered with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) to hold a roundtable and discussion on climate change and fragility risks in South Asia.
One of the world’s lowest-lying countries invited international experts to discuss the security challenges related to climate change.
Nepal and Afghanistan face a number of serious climate-fragility risks, so adelphi brought together regional government officials and NGO experts for a training in Kathmandu on 9 November 2019.