The short- and long-term challenges of climate change and security

Abstract

It is often said that the ‘urgent drives out the important’. Weakened by the financial crisis, and threatened by Russian adventurism to its east and by waves of migration to its south, the EU will be required to respond creatively to both the short- and long-term challenges of climate change. These challenges come at a moment when confidence in the European idea is low, populists have become expert at playing the anti-establishment mood and countries such as the UK are once again allowing the future of Europe to become a football in domestic politics. Wilfried Martens, as always, understood that the best way to focus on the issue was to redefine the challenges of climate change as part of the world of security. The EPP, largely created by him, stands today as a bastion against extremism of all kinds. It is no longer enough for the EU to treat climate change as a purely civilian matter.

Introduction

The newly appointed EU high representative faces two major short-term challenges that can be summed up as Putin and Lampedusa. First, President Putin's adventurism in Ukraine is based on the belief that Europe is too dependent on Russian energy to seriously block his ambitions to subvert the government in Kiev. Second, the pressure from refugees trying to enter Europe across the Mediterranean has increased massively due to the Syrian disaster and the climate change-led pressures for migration now apparent in Africa north of the Equator. These areas are among the most vulnerable to climate change. Due to economic reliance on climate-sensitive activities like agriculture and fishing, Africa is experiencing a substantial decrease in food production. Many parts of the African continent now face a number of security challenges such as food and water insecurity, disease outbreaks, contests over state power, and conflict in some regions. These developments have led to a rising level of migration from Africa to the European continent. ¹ This migration pressure is being exploited by the populist and extremist parties now represented in larger numbers in both the European Parliament and national parliaments. Things are likely to get even worse in the long term, looking at the climate outlook to 2050. Combined with more frequent climate hazards, these natural developments could overwhelm governments’ capacity to meet the basic needs of their people and increase the level of migration tremendously.

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Assessment based on the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change pamphlet, due to be published 2015. Authors include Yacob Mulugetta, Ashley Moran and Clionadh Sussex.

Such challenges add to the complexity of getting elites (governmental, security and business) to recognise that the challenge of climate change and security is not something for the future. It is a reality that is with us now in the form of extreme weather events and difficult choices with regard to energy supply. Behind these short-term challenges lurk long-term threats which, if understood properly, should mobilise even the most short-term-fixated elites. NIMTO (Not In My Term Of Office) is a much greater threat to progress than NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). Indeed it is not an exaggeration to say that those who wish to see real progress in the immediate future must first win the argument of ideas in the long term.

Climate change, security and the EPP

Wilfried Martens stressed this challenge during a conference in the European Parliament in 2012 organised by the Institute for Environmental Security and the Centre for European Studies, which now bears his name:

As President of the Centre for European Studies, I am proud to say that our political family is in the lead both on climate change matters and on foreign policy and security issues. Our basic values are at the origins of this leadership: sustainability, which represents our ambition to leave a healthier and safer world for our children. And respect for each individual, which comprises a focus on protecting the integrity of our citizens and necessitates a focus on security matters. As a political family, we need to be ambitious in tackling climate change and solving security issues. We should be ambitious not only for the sake of preserving the planet but also in order to create incentives for the European industry and military to create the most modern, efficient and effective products and institutions in the world. As the Centre for European Studies, we have formulated proposals to increase the sustainability of our economic and financial system. We have the goal of continuing to gather concrete ideas on how to advance sustainable policies at a European level when it comes to the link between climate change and security (Martens 2012).

How the EU should act

The interaction between Council, Commission and Parliament will be crucial and should not be disturbed by considerations of inter-institutional power play. After the findings of the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014) no one can doubt that climate change is the predominant threat to the stability of the globe in the second half of the twenty-first century (King 2014). It will require intelligent responses on an all-government and all-nations basis if we are to minimise the damage that looms. We must confront the reality that while the EU may need to reduce its activities on legislating doctors’ hours, the bycatch in declining fisheries and excessive suntans, it cannot and must not be reformed in a way that continues to ignore the need for united policies on the security aspects of climate change.

One of the first tests of Europe's ability to meet this challenge will come during the detailed votes in the European Parliament, when populists may combine their votes with industrial lobbies seeking to defend the current privileges of the fossil fuel industry. This will be the moment when we must look to the experience of Jean-Claude Junker to encourage the institutions to support each other for the collective good.

Short-term challenges for the EU

The five-year term of office of the new European Commission (January 2015-November 2020) neatly spans the next two steps in the long and complicated dance of international climate negotiations. After the relative success of the UN Secretary General's Climate Summit in New York in September 2014 and the potential for success at the twentieth Conference of the Parties (COP) in Lima, Peru in December 2014, the real test will come in the months that lead up to COP 21 in Paris. This period will be marked not only by a series of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change events, but by an important series of business and security conferences as the global political elite comes to terms with the reality of extreme weather patterns as the advance guard of a changing climate.

The EU faces a triple challenge. It must find a new consensus under Polish and Italian leadership that recognises the intensely political nature and the importance of the security aspects of climate change. At the same time, it will need to do everything it can to integrate the somewhat unpredictable relationship between the US and China on climate change matters into a multinational pattern that can be carried forward before and after COP 21 in Paris. Third, it must win the argument with business and security elites about the centrality of the issue at a time when businesses are concerned about recovery from the recession and the military is concerned with the double complexity of the challenge to Europe's eastern borders and the need to eradicate Islamic State.

Long-term challenges for humanity

There are also long-term challenges for humanity as a whole that are beginning to emerge from the mist of the future. Jason Blackstock (2012) of University College London asks perhaps the most fundamental questions: ‘Have we passed the point where we can credibly claim to be defending the remnants of the natural environment from pre-industrial days? Or are we effectively reduced to choosing between sustainable, if artificial, environments for the future?’ Similarly, the pressures on geoengineering to result in the militarisation of the weather will increase as the crisis darkens in the second half of this century. For instance, the ability to deny rain to the territory of an opponent or to subtly change wind direction could be devastating. While it is true that there is no security solution to climate change, we may have to choose between different levels of military involvement. The pressure to engage in ad hoc geoengineering may become difficult to resist and opens up ethical dilemmas for business, government and the military alike. We should strive to keep all such developments open and transparent. There needs to be a legal framework originating from the UN to control the testing of climate-altering mechanisms. There will be a continuing temptation for the military to develop such weapons in black budgets, arguing that the ‘other side’ is doing the same. Furthermore we can already detect the outline of an argument from the fossil fuel industry that seeks to persuade politicians that ‘a little geoengineering would be a small price to pay for keeping the lights on’.

As of today governments are not prepared to put sufficient money into climate change avoidance. Would they do so if they genuinely thought that the capitalist system could be endangered by a failure to deal with climate change? I wrote the European Parliament report on the CO₂ Energy Tax in the early 1990s. Since then I have been privileged to watch, both as the founder of the European Centre for Public Affairs and subsequently as Visiting Professor of Public Affairs at Brunel University, a sophisticated and well-financed campaign by the fossil fuel industry. It has focused on persuading politicians that the crisis is not severe enough to warrant painful public policies now. The prime targets for this campaign in the last five years have been centre-right parliamentarians in the European Parliament and in national parliaments.

While we live in a world of multiple capitalisms, most of the actions based on corporate social responsibility are to be found in the Atlantic area. What signs are there that Asian capitalists will evolve their own models for pushing governments into action on climate change?

Conclusion

The crucial moment for the new Commission will come after the Paris COP, from 2016 onwards. Such is the nature of international climate cooperation today that the Commission can no longer expect to be faced with a neat series of proposals for treaties and timetables. The degree of progress post-COP 21 will involve a great degree of agility and self-confidence if anything is to be achieved. One aspect where the skills of the European Commission can play a role will be in the continued need to articulate a broad coalition of interest amongst 20 or so key nations. It would be all too easy for these countries to become obsessed by their differences over the detail of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations or by their historically different approaches to the challenge of climate change. Europe, if it has learned the lessons of its Copenhagen arrogance, is still well placed to play a global role. In the process it may achieve a degree of internal unity appropriately strong for the challenge which it faces.