The Hague Declaration on Planetary Security

The European Union (EU) has recognized the high-probability, high impact threat climate change poses to international security, but is still formulating a response commensurate to the threat. This new report argues that the security threats of climate change should be more routinely integrated into EU institutions at a senior level and be elevated alongside other ‘traditional’ security issues like terrorism and nuclear threats.

A recent publication by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the future of migration patterns from and within Africa and to explore the main driving factors that impede or further migration flows. Building on those findings and data from the OECD, Gallup, the UN Population and the World Bank this paper use macro-econometric analyses to develop three forecast scenarios up to 2050.

For over a decade the EU has shown interest in mitigating climate-related security risks, but this has hardly translated into effective policies. The cases of Iraq and Mali illustrate how EU missions, policies and related financial instruments could be adjusted to take due account of the climate-security nexus.