Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
climate-related indicators, nourished by cross-departmental stabilisation and con
ict
assessments. A £20 million Early Action Facility would fund more pre-emptive
capacity-building. In addition, a Defence Engagement Strategy would bring the
Ministry of Defence (MoD) to work more on upstream prevention activities. And
'
would be developed on all these issues with rising powers.
This strategy document insisted that resources were already being spent in a way
that re
prevention partnerships
'
ict dynamics in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and
West Africa. Climate triggers were listed as one of the factors prompting the e
ected climate-linked con
ort
to upgrade and
orts.
10
The Danish government has created a new Peace and Stabilisation Fund which
will make new funds available for climate security projects. Denmark has a long-
standing approach based on increasing trust between involved parties and addresses
problems related to the management of natural resources. The German MFA has
explored the notion of track II initiatives to re
ne-tune con
ict prevention e
ect on the interests of the groups
most a
ected by climate change; the aim has been to build capacities to spend
climate funds coherently and transparently with a special view to the governance
challenges of fragile countries and regions, and a particular link to human secur-
ity.
12
Germany now explicitly advocates
,in
particular linking track I and II approaches and using climate funds for governance
challenges in fragile regions.
13
There is a widespread consensus among policy-makers that the changes
'
con
ict-sensitive adaptation practices
'
owing
from such formal initiatives are no more than embryonic. A 2012 independent
assessment of the UK
ict pool concluded that the basic policy had not
changed; that nearly all funds were still spent on reacting to short-term crises; and
that the MoD, Department for International Development (DfID) and FCO divi-
ded funds out for their traditional types of projects rather than working together on
new joint approaches to underlying causes of instability. Moreover, by 2011 the
DfID share of the pool was down to 5 per cent and the FCO share up to 60 per
cent.
14
A similar stasis is evident elsewhere too. While Spanish ministers have made
increasingly bold statements acknowledging the climate
'
s con
ict link,
15
the link
between the defence minister and the secretary of state for climate change is rela-
tively weak. Insiders acknowledge that this means that the UME
-
con
'
s inception has
not led to any change in the broader gamut of Spanish con
ict prevention policies.
One team of experts has criticised European governments for not realising how
far Middle Eastern democratisation will be hindered by climate-compounded
resource constraints. A serious weakness of the EU
'
s response to the Arab Spring
is the absence of any e
orttoworkwithgovernmentsintheregiontodevelop
climate adaptability plans or to redirect meaningful amounts of aid towards
addressing such priorities. Indeed, the risk has been that middle-income Middle
Eastern states have fallen outside the rubric of large-scale climate
nance, which
