Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
adds a further level of internal policy competences to the various strands of foreign
and security policy deliberation.
Limitations are re
ected in the relative paucity of concrete follow-up on the
EU
s seminal 2008 paper and other formal climate-security commitments. Many
policy-makers acknowledge in private that core aspects of the debate have stag-
nated at the level of conjecture. Diplomats recognise this is a serious issue but
remain frozen in terms of knowing what to do within their security as opposed to
environmental policies. Nick Mabey summarises in sober fashion:
'
There is a mis-
match between analysis of the severity of climate security threats and the political,
diplomatic, policy and
'
38
Experts working closely with European government initiatives acknowledge that
'
'
nancial e
ort being expended to avoid these risks.
orts for policy learning to translate existing knowledge and legal
frameworks into decision-making is still in its infancy
transferring e
.
39
It is striking that after a period of intensive activity, few signi
'
cant policy com-
mitments were forthcoming at the EU level in 2011 or 2012, with the exception of
the paper on the Arctic region. As said, a number of new documents produced in
mid-2013 re-injected some degree of momentum; however, some diplomats still
lamented what they perceived as an overall diminution in the pace of policy initia-
tive compared with preceding years. Climate security was hidden away as an appar-
ently low-pro
le issue on the newly operational website of the External Action
Service. An extensive search of member states and EU sources reveals few policy
documents or initiatives directly related to climate security that were forthcoming in
2012 or 2013. The aforementioned 2012 American Security Project
s
Climate Security
Report
mostly repeated well-known challenges but also succeeded in galvanising
debate on a new
'
among the Washington secur-
ity establishment. Similar momentum was less evident in Brussels.
40
Strategists have begun to re
'
non-state centric
'
security
'
rethink
'
ect on the startling absence of a
'
European geo-
strategy
aimed at thinking through how the EU should be securing access to
global trade routes, to temper the dangers of strategic bottlenecks and deal with
climate-security linchpin states around the world.
41
Critics decry that none of the
profound changes that will occur to global political geography are anywhere near
being integrated into strategic planning.
42
One of the abiding weaknesses of CSDP
is that it functions in a
'
ict inter-
ventions with strategic interests emanating from patterns of oil and gas management
and climate change.
43
One leading European diplomat opines in private that the
geopolitics of climate change is the one area of
'
strategic void
'
, especially in failing to match con
'
new threats
'
where the EU has
failed
'
to move beyond the theory
'
. Experts and policy-makers alike admit that
while the UK was one of the
rst states to adopt the most holistic, forward-looking
discourse on merging climate and foreign policy in the mid-2000s, tangible change
in its security policies is hard to identify. A German diplomat laments that the
