Climate change is increasingly considered a security threat with potentially far-reaching implications for the geostrategic environment. Through large-scale migration, increased border tensions, and greater demands for rescue and evacuation efforts, climate change potentially impacts the individual security of people and the viability of vulnerable states to an extent that exceeds existing disaster-response capabilities. As a result, Germany has announced that one focus of its membership in the United Nations Security Council will be on climate related security risks.

Links to climate change have slowly started to enter UN resolutions in recent years, but there is still controversy about the extent to which climate related security risks can and should be addressed by the UN Security Council. How can the international community best address resource conflicts driven by climate change? What consideration needs to be given to climate change in conflict prevention? And what are the long-term consequences of including climate change in the agenda of the UN Security Council with regards to sanctions and peacekeeping?

A discussion on the security implications of climate change and the role of the UN Security Council in this context, with speakers Ottmar Georg Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Professor for the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University Berlin and founding director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), Nina von Uexkull, Assistant Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University and Associate Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, and Karl-Heinz Kamp, Special Envoy of the Political Director in the German Ministry of Defence. Welcome and introduction by Detlef Dzembritzki, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the United Nations Association of Germany, event chaired by Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Senior Professor for Security Policy and Diplomatic Practice at the Hertie School, Director of the school’s Centre for International Security and Chairman of the Munich Security Conference.