Berlin launches climate and security initiative

Germany's foreign ministry today officially launched the "Climate, Environment, Peace and Security Declaration and Initiative", which aims to ramp up knowledge and action on the interlinkage between climate change and security risks.

The initiative draws on the declaration agreed by G7 foreign ministers in May this year under German presidency to recognise the impacts of the climate and biodiversity crises as a threat to international peace and stability, Germany's climate envoy Jennifer Morgan told delegates at this year's Berlin Climate and Security Conference (BCSC). The G7 declaration was to pave the way for enhanced multilateral action on climate security. "We need to move from study to action," Morgan said.

"Fighting climate change, in the end, is about peace," German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock told delegates. The initiative is to help better co-ordinate projects, share best practices and launch joint projects, Baerbock said.

While it is now common knowledge that there is a connection between climate change and peace, more data and more knowledge is needed on this interlinkage, Baerbock said. This can include information on new heat-resistant crops, educating peacekeepers on how climate change is affecting conflicts where they operate, or applying machine learning to collate data for risk analysis on how drought and heat are damaging agriculture and causing conflict between local communities.

Germany, for instance, is acting on the basis of such analysis as it plans to install solar panels in refugee camps in the Sahel, which are less polluting and less prone to failure than diesel generators in the event of a security incident, Baerbock said.

Since the Green Party's Baerbock took up her post in December last year climate policy has been a priority of Germany's foreign policy, the foreign ministry said, with a focus on the connection between climate, peace and security.

Germany's foreign ministry has repeatedly stressed the urgency to push the issues of climate finance and loss and damage at the UN Cop 27 climate conference in Egypt next month.

Egypt prepares climate, peace initiative

Egypt will present its own "Climate Responses for Sustaining Peace" (CRSP) initiative at Cop 27.

Ambassador Ahmed Abdel-Latif of the Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (CCCPA) told delegates at the BCSC that the CRSP initiative focuses on the African continent, being the most impacted by the consequences of climate change while contributing the least to this phenomenon. At the same time, Africa is the continent witnessing the greatest number of armed conflicts, and is the focus of most peace-building efforts.

The CRSP initiative aims at "moving to action" and addressing gaps such as the mismatch between climate action and peace policy. Under the initiative, a range of programmes and activities will address the link between climate adaptation and peace-building, between climate-resilient food systems and peace, look at scaling up climate finance, and finding durable solutions for displacement triggered by climate change.

The finance gap will be a "big priority" at Cop 27, Abdel-Latif said, pointing to the "unprecedented" strong focus on adaptation and vulnerability in the latest working group report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC report was one of the "frames of reference" for the CRSP initiative, Abdel-Latif said.

The CRSP initiative was first presented following joint technical discussions held last month between the CCCPA and the UN Development Programme.

German ambassador Hinrich Thoelken, permanent representative at the UN in Rome, said the two initiatives are "overdue", and that the time is ripe to move "beyond talks". The two initiatives can complement and strengthen each other, Thoelken said, adding that duplication can be avoided "by working together and being open and transparent".

By Chloe Jardine