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How do international organizations address the interlinkages of climate and security? - Alexander Carius

This also implies a certain politicization of the topic in order that foreign policy and international politics take up the issue.

The video was recorded during the Planetary Security Conference 2016, 5-6 December, The Hague.

"How do international organizations address the interlinkages of climate and security? There are two things that are important. First is, before the climate COP there was a very important crisis narrative of looking at the negative impacts of climate change and how that affects security and I guess we have to change that right now. We have to turn this into a positive narrative and the way to do that is basically to promote projects where we can make the case for investing into climate adaptation and into sustainable resource management and actually have an effect on building peace and stability and improving trans-border cooperation. The way to do that I think implies also to politicize that and really to make a political point where foreign policy, where international politics comes into the game.

The second thing is – where does that happen – and there were plenty of ideas brought forward here at this conference to basically put it onto the agenda of the Security Council. The non-permanent members did that in the past, 2007 the Brits, 2011 Germany, several other governments did that: Morocco and Senegal in the past in the Arria format or formal sessions but I think we need a regular process of reporting back to the Security Council from the Secretary General on what we have learned in each of these international crises and how we can take these messages forward. There is a very strong argument also by the African Union members to push for initiatives like this and I am pretty confident that both the Netherlands and also Sweden announced they are going to put climate and security issues or environmental peace building on the agenda of the Security Council."