ABSTRACT
Climate change has been described as an emerging threat to national security, human security and ecological security. In areas with pre-existing socioeconomic and environmental tensions it can put development gains at risk, and it can help fuel instability, migration and conflict. Unabated climate change can also affect military infrastructures and operations. Europe and neighbouring countries may be severely affected by the impacts of climate change if globally concerted climate action fails to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Questions remain, however, regarding the precise nature, timing and severity of climate impacts, whose security is at stake and how to address climate change. Despite the need to achieve conceptual clarity regarding the climate-security nexus, policy makers in the EU (and elsewhere) have begun to integrate climate change in their security strategies, although further definition of targets, timetables and benchmarks would help ground climate action in the implementation of the European Union Global Strategy. The present chapter explores the climate-security binomial from a European foreign policy and security perspective.
