Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
European militaries still tend to elide the
'
security implications of climate secur-
ity
rather than approaching the issue in a broader sense of power
balances needing to be reconsidered and reshaped. Militaries have not engaged
strongly with or pushed for mitigation, but have rather limited themselves to
re
'
with
'
threats
'
ecting on how to
'
pick up the pieces
'
when disasters and con
icts strike. They
admit to being at a relatively early stage in trying to de
ne what the security aims
actually are in this area, beyond e
ective responses to climate-induced disasters.
This reveals a key point: there has been a strong focus on the potential for
intra
-
state con
ict (as we will see in the following chapter), but very much less on pos-
sible
inter
-state tensions within a climate-stressed and
uid global order.
In general, European defence establishments insist strongly that they support
deeper multilateralism as a core organising principle for responses to the climate
security agenda. A constant theme that emerges in conversation with European
diplomats and military o
cials is the concern to downplay rivalry-based interna-
tional scenarios. All European documents and o
cials stress that climate change
shouldnotbepaintedasa
issue but a common global pro-
blem requiring multilateral partnerships. It is di
'
north versus south
'
cult to discern any signi
cant
impact on European defence preparedness of sceptical analysts
'
predictions of
climate-driven zero-sum con
ict between major powers. European militaries
themselves recognise the lack of progress on factoring into the geo-strategy cal-
culus incipient changes in the broader international dynamics of con
ict. It is
notable that military sta
within the EAS have not been prominent players in the
design of EU policy. Indeed, there has been negligible discussion between CSDP
units and other parts of the EAS about climate-related geo-strategy. Only in the
wake of the new 2011 climate diplomacy strategy did military sta
begintoshow
an interest in engaging with other parts of the EAS in this question. In 2013, this
has developed much further, with a major new programme involving defence
sta
in climate-related planning.
The UK government Foresight report of late 2011 registered this point
unequivocally: the long-term impact on UK interests will be most serious not at
the level of military intervention but the potential dysfunctionality of global insti-
tutions. If the kind of multilateral institutions that have served Western interests
well were to atrophy in the face of climate security challenges, the advent of a
more zero-sum security panorama could leave Western powers severely weakened.
While the UK government has begun to build climate risk factors into its scenario
building for humanitarian response planning, the broader implications for geopo-
litics are acknowledged to have fallen outside the purview of military and other
strategic planners.
42
British diplomats argue that too much has been expected of
the UNFCCC alone, and that the latter needs to be complemented by other, more
geopolitical fora.
