Foreign Policy

While climate change had played a role in Germany’s foreign policy in the 1990s, this was mainly in an environmental context i.e. the Foreign Ministry contributed to shape Germany’s behaviour and climate policies concerning the UNFCCC negotiations but did not on a broader scale devote resources or adopt specific policies on the issue. This began to change in the early 2000s when the Foreign Ministry (Auswärtiges Amt, AA) took a stronger interest in questions of disaster prevention and early warning systems (Goldammer 2000: 12, 14, 16) and became part of the 2004 Action Plan on Civil Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding (Bundesregierung Deutschland 2004). Gradually, the focus on the various threats of climate change helped to establish the issue as part of Germany’s foreign policy. In its quest to act as a

‘good global citizen’ and civilian power Germany’s foreign policy had for a long time focused on facilitating a more just global order and on supporting disadvantaged populations around the world (Interview 2015b; Hellmann et al. 2006: 188, 192; Gareis 2005: 59). Moreover, the growing number of references to actual conflicts and threats to national and international security in climate debates as well caught the attention of foreign policy experts. In this context, climate change ceased to be exclusively or primarily handled by the BMUB and instead the AA progressively resumed more responsibility, particularly concerning the security aspects (Interview 2014y, 2015a).

Around the peak of the climate security debate in 2007 climate change was increasingly integrated into Germany’s foreign policy on a broader scale (Interview 2015b). Important triggers were the quickly accelerating global climate security debate, the appointment of the more climate friendly foreign minister Steinmeier (SPD) in 2005 (Interview 2014y) and

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especially the 2007 WBGU report on climate change and security. Thus, in 2007 at the 43^rd Munich Security Conference, Steinmeier called climate change a problem of national and international security (Steinmeier 2007a) and at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm emphasised the links between the security implications of climate change and energy security (Steinmeier 2007c). In the same year the AA organised a conference on climate change as security issue (Auswärtiges Amt 2007) where Steinmeier particularly mentioned the 2007 WBGU report. He stressed that ‘the foreign and security policy challenges’ of climate change ‘are enormous’ and necessitated new global mitigation alliances, diplomatic efforts and détente policies i.e.

‘preventive environmental diplomacy’ to avoid conflictual situations especially in developing countries (Steinmeier 2007b). He concluded that Germany would continue to consider climate change as a core aspect of its foreign policy and that it would soon be discussed by the European Council (Steinmeier 2007b). Subsequently, this led to the publication of the influential EU Commission report on climate change and security in 2008 under German EU presidency (Solana and EU Commission 2008).

The UNSC Debates

It was also in the peak year of 2007 that Germany vigorously stressed the security implications of climate change in the UNSC. In the first UNSC debate on climate change in 2007 Wieczorek-Zeul represented Germany, which exemplifies the close interconnections between foreign and development policy and the emphasis on supporting the world’s poor particularly in the context of the security implications of climate change. Wiecorik-Zeul mainly echoed the disciplinary and governmental discourse by emphasising the vulnerability of poor populations in developing countries (UNSC 2007b: 20). Consequently, she demanded that the ‘security implications of climate change should receive more attention’ (UNSC 2007b: 19) especially in the context of conflict prevention (UNSC 2007b: 19) and that the world needed a ‘global framework of risk management’ as well as ‘preventive diplomacy’ (UNSC 2007b: 20).

In 2011, Germany itself organised a second debate on climate change in the UNSC. In a letter addressed to the secretary general (UNSC 2011c), the Permanent Representative of Germany to the UN, Peter Wittig, primarily articulated the disciplinary and sovereign discourse.

He stressed that ‘the impacts of climate change on peace and security are already tangible’ and that climate change was a ‘risk multiplier’ concerning armed conflict especially in already fragile countries in the Global South (UNSC 2011c: 2). To tackle these problems he suggested an ‘integrated approach to conflict prevention’ that included all relevant UN organs from the

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UNDP, the UNEP to the UNSC (UNSC 2011c: 5). In the debate itself, he named climate change a ‘driver of conflict’ that could destabilise whole regions and once again highlighted the importance of crisis prevention policies (UNSC 2011a: 21).

Developing ‘Climate Diplomacy’ and ‘Climate Foreign Policy’

Especially from 2011 onwards, the AAs climate security initiatives were continuously expanded and became an important cornerstone of German foreign policy (Interview 2015b;

Auswärtiges Amt 2011). In close cooperation with Adelphi, which had been one of the most active non-governmental proponents of climate security, the AA developed the concept of

‘climate diplomacy’ (Pieper 2011; adelphi 2012, 2013; Adriázola et al. 2013)⁹, which also included an online knowledge base on ‘on environment, conflict, and cooperation’¹⁰. The aim of these initiatives was to increase the attention for the security risks of climate change and eventually to build support for a comprehensive climate agreement until 2015 that would be able to significantly reduce the security risks of climate change (adelphi 2012: 8).

Simultaneously, in cooperation with the KlimaCampus and the Research Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC) at the University of Hamburg, the AA established the global Climate Security Dialogues, which particular aimed at bridging the science-policy gap (adelphi 2012: 30). Moreover, again in cooperation with Adelphi, the AA organised policy briefings on climate diplomacy and the security implications of climate change for German embassy officials, officers from German implementing agencies, and representatives of German foundations around the world (adelphi 2012: 34; Adriázola et al. 2013: 13). Finally, in 2011 the AA established the Federal Foreign Office Climate Fund, which financed several projects around the world that aimed at raising awareness for the implications of climate change (adelphi 2012: 54).

In 2013 a BMZ report extended the concept of climate diplomacy to ‘climate foreign policy’ (BMZ 2013a: 20) and at the 50^th Munich Security Conference Steinmeier once again underlined that climate change was a ‘pillar of German foreign policy’ (Steinmeier 2014). In 2015 at the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Lübeck under the German Presidency the security implications of climate change were a central aspect in the final communiqué (G7 2015).

Mirroring the dominant discourses in Germany, the communiqué stressed that the world needed to ‘mitigate the risks of climate change’ and to ‘support preparedness and resilience to disasters’

9 The Climate Diplomacy Initiative also has a website: https://www.climate-diplomacy.org/

10 https://www.ecc-platform.org/

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(G7 2015). Moreover, it emphasised that we had to ‘better understand, identify, monitor and address the compound risks associated with climate change and fragility’ to prevent the further spread of instability and fragile states especially in the Global South (G7 2015). Besides establishing a working group supposed to ‘conduct integrated climate and fragility risk assessments’ (G7 2015), the G7 commissioned a report on ‘A New Climate for Peace: Taking Action on Climate and Fragility Risks’ carried out by Adelphi, International Alert, The Wilson Center and the Institute for Security Studies of the European Union (G7 et al. 2015). It called climate change ‘[…] a global threat to security in the 21st century’ and urged to ‘[…] act quickly to limit the future risks to the planet […]’ (G7 et al. 2015: vii). The report particularly engaged in the governmental discourse by highlighting that the aim was to reduce the overall risk of climate change to a controllable or tolerable level, without explicitly calling for massive mitigation. It hence recommended to ‘increase the resilience of states and societies’ (G7 et al.

2015: vii, xi), to ‘make climate-fragility risks a central foreign policy priority’, establish a

‘global resilience agenda’, carry out a ‘global risk assessments’ and develop disaster risk reduction programmes to eventually come to a ‘more peaceful and more resilient future’ (G7 et al. 2015: xv–xix).