The Decisive Link Between Sustainability and Security: Mandate, Scope and Purpose

The interpretation of “security” has evolved and has enclosed the necessity for nations to take action against emerging new threats, such as climate change. Although there are scientific uncertainties about the potential capacity of environmental stress to become a cause of conflict, there is a broad consensus among institutions and literature that climate change is a “risk multiplier”, since it can increase resource demands and environmental degradation and exacerbate existing fragility, challenging the stability of States and societies. Yet safeguarding States from the consequences of climate change or preventing these outcomes has not been explicitly included in the mandate of UN or EU missions. The UN has a broad mandate to maintain international peace and security and climate-related security risks could fall within this conflict prevention competence. Likewise, on the European front, the establishment of Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) missions specifically aimed at countering climate change’s negative consequences seems necessary. In principle, the broad mandate on CSDP missions to prevent conflicts and strengthen international security could also include lato sensu climate-related security risks. The EU has a wide range of instruments to counter the negative effects of climate change: besides initiatives to reduce carbon footprint, it could invest in the creation of new missions in areas most at risk of conflict due to climatic conditions, with the specific aim of preventing conflicts from arising, expanding CSDP missions’ mandate or, alternatively, and develop ad-hoc capabilities through the establishment of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) projects, which enjoy greater flexibility in the approval process.