Understanding climate risks is crucial to ensuring effective and sustainable conflict prevention. On 11 July, Sweden will hold the first meeting in the UN Security Council since 2011 on climate-related security risks, to better understand how climate change impacts security, and enhance UN responses across the conflict cycle.
The relevance of climate change for peace and security has been a topic at the highest level within the UN on numerous occasions. The UN Security Council first considered climate change in April 2007 at the request of the United Kingdom. Two years later, in June 2009, the UN General Assembly passed resolution A/RES/63/281, proposed by several small island states, which asked the UN Secretary-General to produce a comprehensive report on climate change and its possible security implications. Published in September 2009, the report (A/64/350) highlighted climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ with the potential to exacerbate existing threats to international peace and security.
In recognition of the growing security concerns posed by climate change, the German Presidency of the Security Council took the initiative to consolidate the topic within the United Nations framework by calling an Open Debate on the impact of climate change on the maintenance of international peace and security in July 2011.
During the last 18 months, the Council has also recognized the adverse effects of climate change and ecological changes on stability in several country-specific and regional contexts, such as the Lake Chad region (S/RES/2349), Somalia (S/RES/2408), and West Africa and the Sahel (S/PRST/2018/3).
Throughout these months, Sweden has been at the forefront of efforts to recognize that climate change and its negative impacts are no longer abstract but a present-day existential threat, with clear implications for peace and security. The meeting on 11 July will be chaired by Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms. Margot Wallström, with briefings from:
- The UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed;
- Minister of Water Resources of the Republic of Iraq, H.E. Hassan Janabi; and,
- Civil society representative Ms. Hindou Ibrahim, Coordinator of the Indigenous Women and Peoples’ Association of Chad.
The European Green Deal has made the environment and climate change the focus of EU action. Indeed, climate change impacts are already increasing the pressure on states and societies; however, it is not yet clear how the EU can engage on climate security and environmental peacemaking. In this light, and in the run-up to the German EU Council Presidency, adelphi and its partners are organising a roundtable series on “Climate, environment, peace: Priorities for EU external action in the decade ahead”.
In January 2020, the German Federal Foreign Office launched Green Central Asia, a regional initiative on climate and security in Central Asia and Afghanistan. The aim of the initiative is to support a dialogue in the region on climate change and associated risks in order to foster regional integration between the six countries involved.
Climate change will shift key coordinates of foreign policy in the coming years and decades. Even now, climate policy is more than just environment policy; it has long since arrived at the centre of foreign policy. The German Foreign Office recently released a report on climate diplomacy recognizing the biggest challenges to security posed by climate change and highlighting fields of action for strengthening international climate diplomacy.
A high-level ministerial conference in Berlin is looking at the impact of climate change on regional security in Central Asia. The aim is to foster stronger regional cooperation, improve the exchange of information and form connections with academia and civil society.