Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
debate is
'
not as vivid now
'
as attention has been refocused to the economic crisis
and the Arab Spring.
Policy-makers ritually acknowledge the lack of institutional momentum. EAS
sta
lamented that the 2012 Rio Summit did not attempt to address climate
security and that nobody in the EU machinery pushed for it to do so. Privately,
insiders lament that the experience of the 2009 Copenhagen summit
at which
the EU appeared to be excluded from key deal-making involving the US and
rising powers
-
was to make the EU more cautious in future COP meetings and to
make it more focused on simply
-
rather than pushing the
debate into considering more comprehensive political linkages. When the EAS
launched a new energy and foreign policy paper in August 2012,
'
being in the photograph
'
it contained
nothing on climate security.
EU diplomats lament that while CSDP personnel have been
'
sensitised
'
to the
issue, there is still no high-level
'
champion
'
to link the EU
'
s security arm to climate
security. No equivalent of the UK
s climate security envoy has been appointed at
the EU level. High representative Catherine Ashton has not given a single speech
dedicated speci
'
cally to the issue. One EAS diplomat acknowledged that as of
2013 the EU was still failing to move beyond the traditional CFSP agenda fully to
deal with new challenges such as climate security. Notwithstanding the signi
cance
of the June 2013 council conclusions and re
ection paper, these talk primarily
about using foreign policy to push other countries to raise their levels of
'
climate
ambition
'
for a post-2015 UN agreement on emissions. On the more strictly
de
ned security aspects of policy, the commitments in these documents are still
phrased mainly in terms of
'
developing a narrative
'
,
'
awareness-raising
'
and
'
enga-
ging
'
with business, civil society, other powers and international organisations
-
that is, they are largely about the EU
s own institutional preparedness and couched
less in terms of commitments to tangible policy output.
44
The EU has failed to streamline institutional structures. Overall capacity in cli-
mate issues decreased in the move from Relex to the EAS. Responsibilities for
foreign and security policy, energy security and climate change are split in confus-
ing fashion amongst a large number of institutional players. In Brussels, after many
years of internal debate, the precise division of competences between the External
Action Service, DG Energy and DG Climate Action remains imprecise. None of
these departments is tasked unequivocally with leading on the geopolitical impact
of climate change. A 2013 European Parliament report lamented that energy policy
was the area where coordination remained poorest between the External Action
Service and the Commission, and by extension between the foreign policy
dimension and more technical areas of external cooperation and funding.
45
Insti-
tutional links have remained especially weak between DG Environment and the
other departmental players
'
-
DG Energy, the External Action Service and DG
