Contribution to the Berlin Climate Security Conference 2023

For the third time, ZIF hosted a breakout-session at the Berlin Climate Security Conference. This year, ZIF was co-host alongside the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) (Sweden) and the Crisis Management Centre (CMC) Finnland, both are close partners of ZIF. As all three organizations are seconding civilian experts to crisis management missions and peace operations, the panel discussed "Enlisting expertise - Exploring the climate security gap in peace operations".

Climate security expertise has become a crucial proficiency but the demand for expert staff is not being met by deploying organizations and calls for qualified applicants do not garner sufficient response. Climate experts and peace and security experts still tend to work in separate domains, with a bridging required to find and keep staff with the necessary capacities. The roundtable, moderated by Tobias Pietz, Deputy Head Team Analysis at ZIF, discussed this issue with two experts from the field: Caroline Gardestedt, the Environmental Advisor at the European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM Georgia), und Elizabeth Carabine, who is heading the new UN Climate, Peace and Security Hub for the Horn of Africa. They were joined by Johanna Lauritsen, the Environmental Coordinator at the EU’s Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC) ), and Emma Hakala from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) whose research is focusing on climate and environmental security.

The discussion focused on questions of the current state on the ground and kind of demands this results in as well as actual tasks of climate and environmental advisors and lessons learned in terms of beneficial guidance. Furthermore, the panelists gave an overview on current strategies to mainstream climate security and to find and deploy the right experts.

One of the key points to counter the gap between the demand for climate security expertise, and the lack of experts found and deployed to peace operations, might be to strengthen cooperation and exchange between the currently deployed experts from the United Nations (UN) and regional organizations. ZIF is leading this effort by preparing a workshop with UN partners as well as climate think-tank adelphi. The goal is to bring together the two groups of experts and set up a network for more targeted exchange and cooperation on climate security and peace operations in the field.