Climate change is gravest threat to German and European security – government report
Clean Energy Wire
Climate change poses the greatest threat to German and European security because it destabilises states, undermines food security, increases conflicts over resources like water, according to Germany’s first National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment. “The climate crisis is the greatest security threat of our time,” said foreign minister Annalena Baerbock.
“Anyone thinking about security needs to think about climate as well. We are already living in the climate crisis,” the report said, which was jointly commissioned by the foreign and the defence ministries, and conducted by the University of the armed forces, think tank Adelphi, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), as well as Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Other than the U.S., no other country in the world has yet commissioned a comparable report, the foreign ministry said.
The report warns that climate change increases the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, as well as posing a risk to human health, infrastructure, and the economy. It also makes large-scale crop failures and resulting price shocks more likely, resulting indirectly in humanitarian crises, supply chain interruptions, and increasing migrations.
“New challenges are emerging for the entire range of military tasks. The destabilising effects of climate change are leading to an increase in conflicts in the international system,” the report states. It adds that the energy transition will shape geopolitics, as it undermines fossil fuel exporters and creates new trade patterns. “Germany is competing for market shares in clean energy technologies, in an international competition in which in particular China is partly using illegitimate means.”
A failure to mitigate climate change will undermine the rules-based international order that has been key in safeguarding peace and stability, the report found. Countries could also be tempted to unilaterally apply geoengineering, which holds “enormous potential for international conflicts and extreme risks to the climate system.”
The outgoing German government has put a focus on the nexus of climate and security policy, and its 2023 national security strategy said that exceeding the Paris Agreement's goal to limit global rise in average temperatures to 1.5°C would jeopardise the prospect of living in security and prosperity in Germany and globally in the medium and long term.
