Thematic Areas
We suggest five thematic areas that cover the broad range of possible impact points towards climate foreign policy. These areas are governance and leadership, biodiversity and energy, economy and finance, cooperation and development, as well as security and defense.
Governance and Leadership
Responsible governance and leadership builds the cornerstone for a successful and effective climate foreign policy.
Biodiversity and Energy
Biodiversity and green energy are essential for the recovery of our planetary ecosystem on the long term.
Economy and Finance
Sustainable economy and finance providethe guilding structure accelerating solutions and innovations globally.
Cooperation and Development
Human-driven cooperation and development targeting towards climate goals aligns with local needs on the long term.
Security and Defense
Climate-aligned security and defense minimizes power imbalances and combat environmental sources of conflicts.
Governance and Leadership
In a time of doubts, international institutions should be strengthened and aligned to the challenges of climate change and societal transformation. In this regards, governance and leadership builds the keystone for a successful and effective climate foreign policy, both at European and global level. While governance might be improved in terms of horizontal coordination, climate leadership is a matter of envisioned personality, societal empowerment, and networked communication.
Economy and Finance
Our economic systems are nowadays increasingly connected. Overlooking the direct and profound effects of climate change generates a risk for worldwide well-being and development. It is therefore necessary to include coherent climate foreign policy as a guiding structure into the global economy and finance system.
Biodiversity and Energy
Awareness of our embeddeness within a planetary framework and livable operating system is essential to preserve, mitigate, and prevent the steady loss of biodiversity an natural resources we need for oureveryday life. A sole focus on the long term; thus we need to consider all interdependencies binding sustainable energy, biological diversity, agriculture, and the health of other beings.
Cooperation and Development
A credible, coherent, and self-critical development policy is an integral part and strategically important action field of climate foreign policy. Against this backdrop, the guiding idea of climate mainstreaming is to improve interconnectedness and to harmonise sustainable development cooperation with climate foreign policy goals across all policy fields.
Security and Defense
The ECCFP pushes for a clear drive towards coherence between security and defence policies, including e.g., diplomatic and military cooperation and external climate policies.Soft factors of political integrity and coherence are key for achieving a world-wide shared understanding by societies and states to achieve the goal of global net zero emissions. However, power imbalances and conflicts can play a large role. The risk of conflicts over resources might increases as our environment is increasingly fragilized. Thus, climate foreign policy must embrace long-visioning secrity and defense as a way preserving global peace.
