No country is immune to natural hazards, but for fragile states, the effects are even more severe. Mostly, conflict prevention and humanitarian aid are seen as more pressing priorities to protect livelihoods there. This pushes efforts of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction to the bottom of the priority list and results in compounded pressures.
San Francisco’s Global Climate Action Summit ended on 14 September with non-state actors sending a call to action to governments ahead of the crucial COP24 in December, while highlighting their pivotal role in reducing emissions and reaching climate targets.
The EU and its Member States have been practical pioneers of climate diplomacy for many years, but what has been learned up until now? Which initiatives and approaches are worth being replicated?
When it comes to accessing and making best use of climate finance, states in situations of fragility are faced with particular challenges that are largely disregarded in the current aid architecture. If we want to support the most vulnerable nations in building resilience to climate-fragility risks, we need to make sure our resources actually reach those most in need, effectively link climate, peacebuilding and development finance, and apply modalities that fit states with low capacities.
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.
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.
The G7 Foreign Ministers can take a leading role in avoiding the increased weakening and even total collapse of states and societies threatened by fragility challenges. Resilience - understood as the existential ability of a nation or society to cope with major crises - has to become the compass for foreign policy.
This is one of the key recommendations of the recent report commissioned by interested G7 Foreign Ministries and authored by an international research consortium from Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA, led by think tank adelphi. These recommendations also fed into the final communiqué of the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Lübeck on 14-15 April 2015.
As negotiators look to next year’s UN climate conference in Paris, there is increasing discussion of a new way forward that does not depend on sweeping international agreements.
It has become a trend of sorts to publish an assessment of the most recent scientific findings related to climate change in the run up to the next high level event of international climate negotiations. After Copenhagen 2009 the next such event is now scheduled for Paris at the end of 2015.
March 2015 summit in Japanese city of Sendai set to lay foundations for climate change treaty later that year.
he UN hopes to seal a global agreement on reducing the risks from extreme weather events, earthquakes and tsunamis at a 2015 summit in the Japanese city of Sendai.