For the first Time, climate change and resulting global problems have been a topic in the main program of the Munich security conference. The collapse of the Ecosystem is already causing refugee movements.
Student protests against climate change in Berlin at the end of January
Like school children take to the streets to protest against the inaction of the government in the whole of Europe, and like scientists say extreme weather conditions and catastrophic food shortages around the world before the delegates to the Munich security conference, the climate change seems to be a very urgent Problem. The large conference room was Packed, as Angela Merkel made a plea for multilateralism and US Vice-President, Mike Pence, Donald Trump to the “fighters for freedom” declared. But it was half empty, as the representatives of Kenya, Norway and Bangladesh on the obvious links between climate change and global security issues discussed. The only great power in the round were the United States, represented by a Senator.
Climate change as a security problem
After all: It was the first Time, as the panel guests noted that climate change has managed to be included into the main program of the Munich security conference. At the same time, it was the security experts who identified climate change, first as a “threat multiplier”. In other words: The climate change increases the likelihood of mass migration, terrorism, rampant infectious diseases, and thus of global instability.
On climate change, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to discuss Norway’s foreign Minister, Ine Eriksen Soreide, your colleague, Monica Juma from Kenya, Sheldon Whitehouse U.S. Senate Committee for environment and infrastructure, and Bunny McDiarmid from Greenpeace (v. l. n. r.)
It is the former US Secretary of state John Kerry, pointed out in the audience revolt and the gravity of the situation. “We commit a mutual suicide on our planet,” Kerry said with an angry undertone. “We know how to do things, but we don’t do it! We are on the path to a temperature rise of four degrees in this century. We talk about it?”
“The fact is that we are talking for several years about climate change as a security issue,” said Kerry in the connection to the DW. “We had a Meeting with representatives of the military across the country and discussed the multiplier effect of the threat,” he explained. “High generals in our country have talked about climate change as a fundamental security problem, and we had closed an office in the Pentagon, which focused on dealing with climate change to Trump the office.”
Ex-US Secretary of state John Kerry signs in the climate discussion with DW-TV presenter Melinda Crane to word
On the Podium, the Kenyan said Secretary Monica Juma, such as ethnic land disputes flared up, as the lake Turkana dried up in the North of their country. Worse still, The drought in the Turkana basin, threatening the livelihood of a half a Million people. “So it’s no Surprise that more and more analyses show that one of the biggest conflicts that we are experiencing, will probably be the war of water,” says Juma.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose country has already been hit by catastrophic Floods, describes how her government was the lack of international support forced to take all alone measures. John Kerry described what happened with Bangladesh, as well as “immoral”.
The failure of capitalism
Sheldon Whithouse, sees the governments of the obligation to
The social impacts of climate change are already clearly noticeable. “We are just on the cusp of massive disruption to the natural systems of the earth,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, democratic U.S. Senator and a member of the Committee for environment and infrastructure, promotes a climate tax.
“This leads to displacement of the human species. The causes Suffering, and when people suffer, they want explanations, they want accountability and justice.” And the back would then be on the policy. “And when people look back on this time, they will say: capitalism and the freely elected democracies have failed as a community, harm to me and my family.”
Many people are employed already. A recent study by the Pew Research Center shows that the climate change in almost all of the 26 countries surveyed is the biggest fear of the people: in Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Argentina, South Korea, and most of the major countries of Europe.
From climate change to war
But the threat is generally perceived as an environmental problem – as something environmentalists should protest. Only a few people make the connection between climate change and war. An article in the “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” from the year 2016, argued that climate change could exacerbate the dispute over Kashmir, since Pakistan and India are at loggerheads over access to the glacier melt water from the Himalayan Region.
Anton Hofreiter, Chairman of the Green party, warns of the consequences of climate change
Even if these conflicts seem far removed from cities such as Munich, their effect on the wealthy parts of the world have already been noticeable. Some studies have even shown that droughts have contributed to North Africa to escape many people, which have arrived in 2015, in the capital of Bavaria and Germany.
“The climate crisis will be the dominant cause of migration movements”, – said the Chairman of the group of the Greens, Anton Hofreiter, in an interview with DW. “If weaker countries will experience more Droughts or Floods, this may not be the only cause for the collapse of a country. But these countries are more likely to be in civil war and Chaos.”
Panelists Bunny McDiarmid, Co-Executive Director of Greenpeace, reminded the audience about what spaces outside of the conference in the whole of Europe. “We don’t have school children marching on the street, because they believe that politicians act fast enough,” says McDiarmid. “They are the true adults.”