Roundtable Workshop Environment and Security

Challenges for Change

IUCN World Conservation Congress
Barcelona
6 October 2008

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On 6 October 2008 over 50 representatives from the 'worlds' of conservation and security met at the Roundtable Workshop on Environment and Security at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona. At the workshop, organised by the Institute for Environmental Security and the IUCN CEC and CEESP Committees, participants discussed current and upcoming environmental security issues and explored common grounds for cooperation.

There was a consensus among the participants that cooperation on environment and security must go beyond reduction of the environmental impact of the military to include action on, for example, the management of environmental problems that may lead to, or aggravate, conflict. A number of promising opportunities for cooperation were identified, particularly with regard to sharing expertise and information. Environmental organisations could profit from the expertise that military organisations have in the field of scenario planning and modelling while military organisations could improve their understanding of (potential) conflicts with the help of detailed information on environmental conditions on the ground that could be provided by environmental organisations.

Military leaders from Ecuador, Mauritania, Nepal, and Thailand offered insights in the ways in which environmental issues affect the security situation of their countries. Contributions from these and other participants made clear that impact environmental issues on security is large and increasing, but that environmental issues do not yet receive the attention required as they typically compete for the attention of governments with a large number of other pressing challenges.

The urgent need for an effective global environmental agreement to tackle climate change in order to reduce the risk of climate change related environmental conflict has fostered the IES developing a Programme on "Climate Change and International Security" (CCIS) including a series of events to be organised before the Copenhagen UNFCCC COP 15 in December 2009. The next event, which will take place in Brussels on November 12, will pay special attention to this issue. The event, scheduled just one week after the November 4 U.S. presidential elections, will assess the prospects for EU-US cooperation on climate change and security for the coming years. Other follow-up events, that will focus on the joint interest of the environment and security 'worlds' in combating climate change will take place in Washington and Poznan in late 2008. Follow up events on other aspects of the cooperation between the environment and security worlds, such as the possibilities for sharing information and expertise, will take place in The Hague and Brussels in the first half of 2009.