Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
9
CONCLUSIONS
This topic
s rationale has been to move debate beyond broad-brush predictions of
how climate change will a
'
ect security towards an assessment of how security
policies have begun to respond in practice to these challenges. Warnings that
climate change must be conceived as a security challenge have been forthcoming
for more than a decade. Over that decade, many governments and international
organisations have rhetorically assented with this prognosis and committed them-
selves to developing e
ective strategies of climate security. In this topic, I have
tested the commitments of one such set of actors, the EU and its member states.
The topic
s opening chapters proposed a set of operational guidelines for asses-
sing EU climate security policy. Two overarching questions were presented. First,
how much priority has been attached to climate security policies? Second, have
these policies tilted more towards cooperative
'
defensive notions
of security? Chapter two suggested that a comprehensive climate security strategy
would be expected to embrace a range of challenges: to prepare for climate-related
con
-
holistic or realist
-
ict resolution; to develop more structured diplomacy and incentives focused
on climate-related global dynamics; to adapt economic and development policies
speci
cally to temper climate-induced risks; to manage new patterns of interna-
tional alliances; to move away from purely state-centred approaches to security;
and to design more agile response mechanisms to deal with future uncertainty.
In line with these challenges, chapter three outlined the processes and identities
that have de
s role in foreign and security policy and related these to a
set of alternative policy outcomes. A realist or rivalry -oriented approach would be
manifest in additional investment in defensive military capability; increased tension
ned the EU
'
Search WWH ::




Custom Search