Discussion with 

• Dr Holger Klitzing, Head of Division, Climate and Security, German Federal Foreign Office 

• Tefta Kelmendi, Deputy Director, Wider Europe, European Council on Foreign Relations 

• Julia Hammelehle, Senior Policy Advisor, Munich Security Conference 

Some of the common denominators linking climate and security are droughts, floods or water scarcity leading to armed conflicts and displacement. However, there is also another side of the coin: the transition to climate neutrality increases security, resilience and sovereignty. Some of the key synergies between climate and security involve rapid reduction of Europe’s dependency on fossil fuels sourced from unreliable partners. So how can climate and security policy be aligned to achieve mutual benefits? 

Dr Holger Klitzing sees the climate-security nexus becoming more important on the political agenda, as Europe is experiencing geopolitically challenging times. “China’s economic policy threatens our economic model, while climate change threatens our prosperity and clearly has security effects. We do our best to keep pace, but we know how far we are behind,” he said.  

For Tefta Kelmendi, the greatest opportunities to address these challenges will arise if climate issues are increasingly integrated into Europe’s competitiveness and security policies, which are currently the top priorities on the European agenda. She is concerned that while climate features prominently in programmes such as REPowerEU, it is considered to a far lesser extent in relation to security and competitiveness. “We have to ensure that Europe stays cohesive,” she said. 

Julia Hammelehle voiced concern about the U.S. administration’s rollback of climate action, funding gaps and a shift in European governments’ priorities, with climate change losing ground and even being perceived as opposing other political priorities.  

Tefta Kelmendi reported that the climate community is worried about these developments and the implied cuts in funding and loss of attention to climate issues. “Member states are divided over how best to deal with China,” she said. She also expressed her concerns about the outlook for multilateralism.   

Dr Holger Klitzing emphasised that dependencies on China and other partners for critical raw materials and fossil fuels must be reduced, which will be neither easy nor cost-free. However, for an open economy such as the EU, autarky cannot be the objective. “We have to diversify our partnerships and supply chains,” he said, and pointed to the fact that not only critical raw materials but also processing capacities are part of the equation. He stressed that Europe has a lot to offer to partner countries in developing their economies, primarily technologies and reliability as a basis for creating mutually beneficial partnerships. 

According to Julia Hammelehle, partners from the Global South still criticise that there are still no real partnerships in place, and the mere extraction of raw materials still predominates. She called upon Europe and its member states to show more political commitment and boost funding for the development of genuine partnerships, and underlined that in Africa, the EU has the potential to assert itself against China’s dominance with its reliability and robust regulations, which ultimately benefit the people. In the competition with China, Europe should focus more on critical supply chains.  

Tefta Kelmendi warned that Europe is moving very slowly and that reaching the goals set in the EU Critical Raw Materials Act is unrealistic. Europe should also not aim to fully decouple from China. The question, rather, is: “What do we do here and what in China?” One option is for Europe to leave the production of solar panels to China but draw a red line on Chinese investments in European energy grids.  

Finally, the discussion focused on not forgetting recycling as a way to reduce primary sourcing of raw materials and the fact that mining always harms the environment but is needed for clean technologies. It should be designed as sustainably as possible so that local sourcing communities benefit as well. The audience was reminded that security solutions can also be nature-based, as the restoration of wetlands in Poland and Finland to secure their borders against Russia shows.