Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Directive (RED).
27
The EU has linked its ETS with that of Australia, for example.
It is proposed that the multilateral Energy Charter Treaty apply its rules to low
carbon sources too. Some member states advocate extending the ECT
'
s aquis
comprehensively to cover renewable sources. Some o
cials see relevance for the
Middle East and North Africa in using the 20/20/20 targets as a form of experi-
mental governance to galvanise cooperation on climate change mitigation. Extra-
polating the same
, policy-makers envision extending this
proactive role into the sphere of climate security.
However, it cannot be said that the EU
'
externalisation logic
'
'
s commitment to mitigating climate
change is so strong that there is a signi
cant or natural spill-over of climate-related
considerations into security policies. The EU regularly claims that the example of
its own climate leadership serves as the foundation for an internationalisation of its
in
uence in this area of policy. But this domestic-to-external read-over is not
without blemish. The advance of EU environmental policies has certainly been
pervasive enough to ensure that areas of European external policies can no longer
remain completely immune from climate change considerations. But neither has
their progress been so exemplary so as to guarantee a natural externalisation of
climate primacy across a wide panoply of security issues. External Action Service
(EAS) diplomats admit that member states
'
growing caution of climate change in
general has infected the more speci
c climate security agenda.
In some senses, the expansion outwards of the EU
'
s highly regulatory approach
constrains
the geopolitical dimensions of climate security
policy. Security deliberation tends to get crowded out by a mindset of regulatory
export. Senior members of the EP
-
more than it empowers
-
'
sforeigna
airs committee have admonished the
Commission
focus on replicating internal market rules and consequent
blindness to the international geopolitical dimensions of climate and energy.
28
DG
Energy has assumed the most dynamic and proactive de facto role on the external
dimension of energy policies. This compounds the tendency for external policies to
be deliberated primarily as an extension of internal energy policy
'
s
'
introverted
'
as opposed to
common foreign and security policy (CFSP) leading with a priori foreign policy
considerations that then build energy and climate factors into such broader strategic
priorities. Indeed, states like Germany, France and the UK have pushed the climate
security agenda in part to wrest in
-
sbureaucratic-
regulatory mindset which they fear is inimical to nuanced geo-strategy.
The read-over between environmental and external policy is more contested
than it
uence away from the Commission
'
s Environmental Council is openly
reluctant to associate with security policy dynamics. Many Commission DGs meet
in coordination groups on environmental policy; similar coordination with the
EAS on climate security is conspicuously absent. One EAS o
is
seamlessly reinforcing. The EU
'
cial laments that the
transfer of personnel and competences to DG Climate has aggravated not improved