Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has had immediate and ongoing effects for Arctic security and cooperative governance at both a regional and international level. The region is impacted by the increased sanctions, the withdrawal of Western companies from Russia, the Western disconnect from energy dependencies, and has also witnessed an increase in hybrid security incidents. In addition, climate change continues at to change the environment at a staggering pace in the north.
Afghanistan is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, with more frequent extreme weather events and temperatures that are increasing faster than the global average. These factors, coupled with the legacy of four decades of war, a complex humanitarian emergency and an economic crisis since the Taliban’s takeover of the government in August 2021, have heightened the vulnerability of the Afghan population.
On February 14, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) convened an open-debate to discuss the implications of sea-level rise for international peace and security.
The Council on Foreign Relations has recently released a podcast discussing the implications that climate change has for the Horn of Africa. James Lindsay and Michelle Gavin discuss the implications that climate change has in destabilising the region by exacerbating existing vulnerabilities such as food insecurity and civil unrest.
Scientific evidence is mounting that ‘human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe’. The 2022 floods in Pakistan and heatwaves in Southern Europe illustrate that climate change impacts human security and can have adverse social, economic and political effects in both developing and developed countries.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation may have begun on 24th February 2022, but it was preceded by the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the Russian Federation in February and March 2014 and more than eight years of de facto occupation by the Russian Federation of parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
This year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC) comes in the wake of a security revolution in Europe borne from the invasion of Ukraine, examples of this being the German “Zeitenwende”, the Danish “Nationalt kompromis” and the abandonment of
Notable institutions, such as the United Nations and the European Union, have declared that climate change endangers international security. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) shares these concerns and has expressed a desire to influence the global movement to meet this threat. However, the suitability and practicability of this objective have elicited conflicting opinions.
South Sudan’s future – and relief from its cycle of conflict – is linked to its reliance on fossil fuels, with limited but possible options for charting a new course. The world’s newest country gained independence in 2011 amid international fanfare, yet the celebrations were short-lived, with the outbreak of civil war in late 2013 bringing devastating consequences for the population.
