Russia is “playing politics with energy supplies,” said U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a major policy speech at the Wilson Center in November. In Europe, the debate is raging over how best to achieve energy security in the face of the twin challenges of Russian dominance and the need to decarbonize the economy. The ongoing securitization of Russian natural gas could not only complicate the road to a low carbon future in Europe, it could also undermine a European integration project that has mostly been a success.

This year’s Planetary Security Conference set a concrete agenda for action on climate and security with the launch of The Hague Declaration. The six-point plan, which has been signed by almost 80 high profile experts in the field, from ministers to ambassadors, mayors, generals and academics, seeks to move the agenda from knowledge to action.

The UN Security Council is hosting an Arria meeting on ‘Preparing for the security implications of rising temperatures’ on 15 December at the UN headquarters in New York. As climate-induced security threats have become more pressing, the highest body of global governance is slowly taking up the issue again.

While COP-23 took many steps in the right direction, there are a plethora of issues at stake for developing countries that need to be ironed out, such as transparency, pre-2020 climate action, and loss and damage, before the post-2020 international climate policy is rolled out. Dhanasree Jayaram argues that the developing bloc needs to unite for a better and equitable world.