Climate security in the European Union’s foreign policy: addressing the responsibility to prepare for conflict prevention

ABSTRACT

Climate change is increasingly acknowledged as a threat to international stability. The devastating impact of the changing climate is expected to grow over this century; nonetheless, the international community now has unprecedented predictive capacities at its disposal to prevent and mitigate this change. Drawing on scientific advances, numerous initiatives have emerged to strengthen international cooperation on climate-related security risks. Among these, the ‘Responsibility to Prepare’ framework, launched by the Center for Climate and Security in 2017, provides a strategic agenda on a set of principles and goals to ensure a global response to climate-related pressures. As a regional actor, the European Union (EU) has also increasingly recognised the security risks posed by climate change, developing new approaches and tools to address them more systematically. A number of recent developments in the Common Foreign and Security Policy are consistent with the Responsibility to Prepare framework. These steps appear to underscore the EU’s willingness to promote this global framework. Nonetheless, further efforts will still be needed in coming years if the EU is to integrate climate concerns into a broader, all-encompassing climate foreign policy and translate its vision into practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate security risks
• responsibility to prepare
• European Union
• conflict prevention
• resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.