Chad Briggs, Strategy Director of Global Interconnections and lecturer at the American University in Kosovo, spoke with adelphi about the role of diplomacy as well as that of the intelligence and military communities in reducing disaster risk and vulnerability.

adelphi: How can we obtain an accurate assessment of environmental risks?

The landmark decision on a new climate agreement in Paris in December 2015 is a major step in preventing dangerous climate change. How dangerous climate change could be is indicated by the Global Report on Internal Displacement 2016, just published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

On June 3rd 2016, the European Union joined six of its Member States and 14 other countries – including China and the United States – and became the 21st member of Mission Innovation, an initiative of governments committing to double their clean energy research budgets over the next five years. This, we argue, is a vitally important first step of taking Europe’s energy innovation imperative more seriously.

The ongoing drought conditions in India have affected 256 districts in 10 different states and more than 300 million people. Another figure quoted by the Minister of Rural Development and Minister of Drinking Water and Sanitation stands at 313 districts in 13 states. In many parts of the country, acute water scarcity and water stress have created severe economic and social distress, including the loss of crops, farmer suicides and rural-to-urban migration. Indeed, the situation is so precarious that the Supreme Court (the apex court in India) has stepped in to direct the central government to declare the drought a humanitarian disaster and to establish a consolidated fund and national response force to deal with the drought conditions.

The Spanish version of the Exhibition Environment, Conflict and Cooperation (ECC) that includes a specific module on South America is currently shown in Chile in cooperation with the NGO Fundación Terram. During 9-20 May, the Exhibition was hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Chile. The launch event on 10 May was attended by over a hundred participants: foreign policy, defence and environmental decision makers from Chile, representatives of several Latin American countries, Germany and USA, as well as members of Chilean and international civil society.

26 May 2016 – At a meeting today in the United Nations Security Council on the situation in the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa, senior UN officials stressed that climate change plays a direct role in the region’s security, development and stability by increasing drought and fuelling conflict.