Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
reallocating water allowances (although there were attempts at restarting dialogue
at the end of 2013). As one security o
cial acknowledges: this is the kind of
con
agration-in-waiting that the EU needs to help avert, but whose delicate
political context renders any outside security engagement extremely delicate. The
EU has upgraded its relations and cooperation with Egypt in the wake of Hosni
Mubarak
s ousting; but one searches in vain for any engagement on this festering
security risk. Years of controversial cooperation with the Egyptian military appears
to have given European governments little leverage on these kinds of climate
security challenges. The EU continues to contribute to security in this region by
deploying ships o
'
the shore of Somalia to deal with small groups of pirates; an
important challenge but marginal to the game-changing resource stresses soon to
be felt. The most common view expressed in private by EU security o
cials is that
a crisis-enfeebled Europe cannot realistically hope to engage with notable in
uence
in the large number of serious cross-border climate hotspots. The most that
EU defence capability can aspire to, many of them insist, is a more systematically
climate-sensitive contingency planning.
The Arctic is one arena where alliances have shifted and the EU has tried to
respond. Prior to the 2012 strategy document, detailed in chapter four, Catherine
Ashton travelled to the Arctic, eager for the Union to receive permanent observer
status on the Arctic Council,
'
because some of our member states are so connected
to it, [and]
…
because all of the European Union has something to o
er, when
you think about some of the environmental
. The European Parliament
passed a resolution on Arctic governance in 2008, pushing the EU to take the lead
in drawing up a multilateral treaty to govern the Arctic; this su
issues
'
ered a hostile
response from the Arctic powers that pointed to existing arrangements working
well and not needing to
s ambitions have been lowered
to providing small parcels of technical cooperation and ensuring that the EU at
least has a seat at the table.
While it is true that the Arctic states have all begun to recon
'
import
'
EU rules. The EU
'
gure their mili-
taries to safeguard their interests in the region, so far they are cooperating in a
relatively positive fashion and the Arctic Council is working. The EU has been
trying to stake a role in mapping the incipient Arctic disputes, but so far the par-
ticipating states insist that their own mapping is proceeding smoothly. It may be
that the most notable development is not so much geopolitical tension in the
Arctic but rather the Arctic Council taking on the role as an increasingly powerful
club; Scandinavian states may begin to feel much more epistemic identity here than
with southern EU states.
Danish diplomats insist that the country maintains a policy based on positive-
sum cooperation rather than military defensiveness, to avoid low-level di
erences
becoming a major security problem. The Arctic Council has awoken after years of
