Comment archive

Thursday, 24 Apr 2025
The Hype, Delusions and Risks of the Arctic Geopolitics

The surge of political attention to the Arctic may appear counter-intuitive to the experts overtaxed with assessing the consequences of the global trade war, perplexed by the deadlock of the Ukraine War, and frustrated by the deepening indifference to the Gaza war. No notable power shifts are indeed registered in ...

Thursday, 7 Dec 2023
Russian Energy Industry Faces Looming Investment Crisis

The 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), currently taking place in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, is missing contributions from one major energy power — namely, Russia. Many countries are guilty of pledging to curtail emissions then departing from their plans and falling short of the United Nations’ ...

Thursday, 10 Nov 2022
Armed Conflict and Climate Change: How These Two Threats Play Out in Africa

The world is falling miserably short of reducing Climate carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, a 2015 treaty to keep global warming well below 2℃. The results of this failure are a greater increase in the prevalence and severity of extreme weather events, more rapid sea-level rises and an ...

Wednesday, 5 Jan 2022
Can we predict climate change impacts on future peace and security?

In the same manner as societies are developing policies to strike the optimal balance between public safety and social and economic cost of COVID-19, the international community is negotiating strategies to address climate change. However, unlike lockdowns, vaccination, and other responses to the ongoing pandemic, risk-reducing effects of alternative climate ...

Monday, 13 Sep 2021
Book club review: Savage Ecology - War and Geopolitics at the End of the World

Screenshot from book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFP2m8O2Ex8 Pardon me, I was dreaming; I forgot you are herewaiting for me to accept you again, tell you that you’re not dangerous.Alice Notley, Above the Leaders With the global security system implicated in just about every scenario of civilisational and species collapse, should it be ...

Tuesday, 15 Jun 2021
Climate and Security: What will Norway do during its term as an elected member of the Council?

Today, no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis. While climate change is rarely, if ever, the root cause of conflict, its cascading effects make it a systemic security risk. The UN Security Council will increasingly be forced to respond to the security impacts of climate change. ...

Friday, 5 Mar 2021
Climate-conflict research: A decade of scientific progress

The last decade was the warmest on record, with 2020 tied with 2016 for the all-time high average annual global temperature. This 10-year period also saw armed conflicts at severity levels not seen since the Cold War era. Could there be a causal link between these trends? To the frustration ...

Monday, 22 Feb 2021
Climate, Crop, and Conflict: a matter of space?

Anthropogenic climate change poses unprecedented threats to socio-ecological systems, affecting the lives of millions of people around the world. Among others, global warming has resulted in an increased frequency, intensity and duration of extremes, such as heatwaves, droughts and heavy precipitations. Climate-related impacts include alteration of ecosystems, disruption of food production and water ...

Tuesday, 3 Mar 2020
Development aid increases local resilience to drought

The recently concluded UN Millennium Development Goals framework documented significant progress (although not complete success) in halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015, compared to 1990. However, in the most recent years, the global rate of undernourishment has again been on the rise. According to the UN ...

Friday, 18 Oct 2019
How conflict leads to biased development aid

With two special reports (here and here) released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just after the summer, the awareness of the consequences of climate change and the measures needed to limit these impacts is higher than ever before. Regrettably, there is not a one-to-one relationship between responsibility ...

Tuesday, 9 Jul 2019
Heating up: mediation and climate change

Mediation – the process of helping groups in, or at risk of, armed conflict settle their differences peacefully – rarely gets the attention it deserves given how much bloodshed it has averted. In the twenty years following 1988, most of the world’s major armed conflicts were resolved by agreement, leading ...

Tuesday, 12 Feb 2019
Climate Change and Conflict Generates Clicks, but What about Scientific Claims?

Does global warming really increase armed conflict? Recently, a new study joined a wave of research (e.g., here and here) that seeks to illustrate the effects of climate change on political violence. The most recent study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change and conducted by Guy J. Abel and ...

Sunday, 10 Dec 2017
Making the Invisible Visible – Satellites, Visual Technologies and Environmental Security

By Delf Rothe How can satellites promise to predict future environmental risks and threats? Global warming and resulting environmental changes are unfolding at an ever-faster pace. Natural disasters threaten the well-being of communities across the globe and debates around whether environmental change can (or should) be considered security risks are ...

Monday, 4 Dec 2017
"Dimming the Sun" and the Implications of a ‘Plan B’ to Prevent Global Warming

By Olaf Corry What security problems are likely to be involved in developing and using technology to deliberately modify the global climate ? Some argue that effective global action to prevent global warming is too difficult politically, and that ‘dimming the sun’ should be explored. The idea is that a ...

Wednesday, 1 Nov 2017
What to Expect from India at COP23?

Climate change is not a one-way street of cause and effect. International negotiations on climate change and the reduction of emissions are equally complex. A consistent Indian demand has been  green technology transfer from “high-emitting” developed countries. An equally longstanding principle is that of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities, ...