Public Event October, 21, 2010
Madrid, European Commission Representation in Spain
Climate change has become humanity’s next security challenge. Its risks are real and its effects are beginning to be felt in the whole globe. Competent scientists predict that the world average temperature will rise up by 2ºC. A new climate era is approaching. It will have an effect not only on human security (as a consequence of more natural disasters, land desertification and water shortages) but also on the way in which states relate to each other, becoming a potential source for conflict.
Climate change will redraw frontiers, increase migratory pressures to certain regions and spark off a dangerous race for the control of natural resources such as oil and gas. This race is already taking place in the Arctic land, where some states are already claiming for the sovereignty of certain parts, in the view that the land’s defrost will allow exploring and exploiting new gas and oil fields which are not accessible today.
Climate change will redraw frontiers, increase migratory pressures to certain regions and spark off a dangerous race for the control of natural resources.
As the High Representative and the European Commission noticed in March 2008 in their report “Climate Change and International Security”, climate change is best viewed as a threat multiplier which exacerbates existing trends, tensions and instability in overburden states and regions which are already fragile and conflict prone.
CITpax, an organisation that carries out its activity in one of the countries which will be most affected by climate change effects, organised an experts’ seminar to search for solutions to this important security challenge. The departure point is the 1992 Rio Declaration, which coined the principle of shared responsibility by the states in solving international problems.
This seminar was sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Defence. The collaboration of the Spanish Institute of Strategic Studies and the support European Commission Representation in Spain has been critical in this project.
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