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New French Climate & Defense Strategy Foreshadows a Wave of Climate Security Plans in Europe
By Elsa Barron
This April, the French Ministry for the Armed Forces released its Climate & Defence Strategy. The strategy closely followed the release of the EU’s Strategic Compass in March which set a demand to EU’s member states to elaborate national climate and defense strategies prior to 2024. France’s Climate & Defence strategy is thus the first of many European climate and defense strategies to follow. The document recommends four main areas of action for the Ministry of the Armed Forces: developing knowledge and foresight, engaging in adaptation, pursuing mitigation, and increasing cooperation. IMCCS spoke with Dr. Nicolas Regaud, Senior Advisor for Climate to the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, who guided the task force in developing this strategy.
(more…)Within the Health, Climate, and Security Nexus, Prevention is Better than a Cure
During the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, healthcare workers were contracting Ebola at an alarming rate. The World Health Organization (WHO) found that those fighting Ebola at the frontlines–in clinics and hospitals–were up to 32 times more likely to contract the disease than the rest of the population. Among the principal reasons why was the lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services in healthcare facilities, which rendered healthcare workers unable to wash their hands and disinfect surfaces. At the time, UNICEF reported that the demand for running water in Sierra Leonean healthcare facilities outstripped supply, as safely treating patients with Ebola requires 140 liters per day per patient. The most recent data from 2021 show that a staggering 80% of healthcare facilities in the West African country are without basic water services and less than 1% of its population has piped water at home. Globally, a quarter of all healthcare facilities are without basic water services and in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), which includes Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo–the latest country to fight an Ebola outbreak–this number grows to half of all healthcare facilities. Without access to WASH services in healthcare settings and in communities at-large, global health security cannot be achieved.
(more…)Event Summary | U.S. Climate Security Investments: Changing Plans Into Action
“We have got to get busy deploying dollars and energy and ingenuity to tackle the problem,” said Gillian Caldwell, Chief Climate Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) at a recent Center for Climate and Security (CCS) event: “U.S. Climate Security Investments: Changing Plans into Actions” (watch the whole event below)
BRIEFER: Climate Security: An Agenda for Future Research
By Dr. Duncan Depledge, Matt Ince, Olivia Lazard, and Erin Sikorsky
Climate change is altering the physical and strategic context in which national and international security is pursued. But it is not just increased climate variability and its socio-economic consequences that could compound instability and violent conflict in the future. The scale of transformation required to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, as well as the speed and orderliness with which any such transition must occur, carries additional risk and demands more attention from scholars and policymakers. That was the
conclusion of a virtual roundtable organized by the UK Ministry of Defence’s Climate Change & Sustainability Directorate and Loughborough University in May 2022, led by the authors of this briefer. The following draws from the roundtable conversations.
Read the full briefer here.