Climate Policy & Environment
Climate Action for Global Stability
The Working Group Climate Policy & Environment explores the intersection of climate change and global security, analyzing its impact on migration, resource scarcity, and geopolitical tensions. It assesses international climate agreements, renewable energy policies, and conservation efforts. Monthly briefings feature research on integrating sustainability into foreign policy and fostering international cooperation to mitigate climate-related security risks.
Pastures Under Pressure
Drawing on Ostrom’s theory, this paper argues that participatory, commons-based governance in Kyrgyzstan enables pastoral communities to manage shared pastures sustainably, driving climate adaptation and preventing climate-induced conflict.
Smart grids, same dumb trust?
The strategic importance of energy is clear – power is required for critical sectors such as transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and healthcare. Even a temporary failure in the energy system can have devastating outcomes. Take the Texas power crisis as an example: infrastructure lacked wi…
Resilient Roots: EU Tech Grants for Farmers
How can the EU accelerate climate tool adoption for smallholders in Africa and SE Asia without increasing financial risk? Loan-based models create debt burdens during crop failures; thus, a grant-based instrument within the NDICI-Global Europe framework is essential to fund both technology and lo…
Western Balkans
Thematic Working Group Briefs – 2026 Western Balkans: EU, Environment & Accession The Western Balkan EU accession candidates (Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) together with Kosovo, as a potential candidate, face significant challenges in meeting the EU’s envir…
Hydro-Hegemony: Türkiye’s Leverage over Syria Iraq
How does Türkiye’s Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) transform upstream water control into geoeconomic leverage over Syria and Iraq? This article argues that expanded hydropower and irrigation infrastructure convert hydrological dominance into domestic economic gains, producing asymmetric inter…
DRC: Rich land, hungry people.
Food insecurity in Eastern DRC is structurally driven by conflict, displacement, and livelihood collapse, not scarce land. Climate change, hazardous pesticides, gender barriers, and neglected crop species compound the crisis. Humanitarian aid often reinforces dependency rather than building resil…
European Integration and EU External Action
Main question: How does legal fragmentation across EU external action frameworks—security, human rights, economic policy, and digital governance—affect its capacity to act as a unified global actor? Argument: Structural fragmentation and intergovernmental dominance create legal uncertainty, weake…
Fuel Crisis: Car dependence & Environmental Impact
Argument: How Australia’s car-dependent urban policy model and heavy reliance on imports for fuel expose Australian cities and the national economy to significant risks from global disruptions. This dependence is highlighted by the supply shocks in the Strait of Hormuz, significantly disrupting g…
Accountability Gaps in Indonesia’s Palm Oil
How do governance failures and land conflicts in Indonesia’s palm oil sector contribute to broader climate security risks? Weak legal frameworks and export-driven growth enable corporate control and elite rent-seeking. As a result, land conflicts, labour exploitation, and environmental degradatio…
Justice Beyond the Courtroom in Africa
In what ways does transnational litigation function as both a challenge to and a reproduction of corporate impunity in the strategies of environmental justice movements in Africa? African movements use courts to hold transnational corporations accountable, but legal action can both contest and re…
Critical political ecology (CPE)
– The concept of critical political ecology highlights the link between the moral and practical concerns of the environmental movement and contemporary theories about the state, democracy, and justice. – Liberal democratic states are constrained in their ability to implement their green transitio…
Policy Incompatibility in the European Union
Do the monetary costs expected to be saved by businesses through simplification initiatives outweigh the possibly detrimental costs for environmental regulation? The shifting of the Commission’s priorities is reflected in the policy overlap of the omnibus package on sustainability and the compreh…
Bolivia’s Environmental Policy Since Evo Morales
Is it possible for Bolivia to promote an environmental-forward political agenda while reproducing the structures of a neoliberal-capitalisit world system? Bolivia’s reliance on neo-extractivism to fund social programs reproduced dependency, highlighting contradictions between indigenous worldview…
Hurricane Melissa and Climate Disaster Governance
How do military post-disaster operations illustrate the role and consequences of militaries as actors in climate governance? The intensity of Hurricane Melissa led to the involvement of foreign militaries in disaster relief. Disaster relief operations provide an entry point for militaries as acto…
Water as an Instrument of War
Should the environment be used as an instrument of war ?
The Green Transition in the Western Balkans
The 2026 CBAM implementation confronts the Western Balkans with a fundamental paradox: coal-dependent economies face €1.2bn in annual costs yet lack carbon pricing systems. Can regulatory constraint catalyse modernisation? Three pathways emerge: national carbon pricing (€2.8bn revenue 2026-30), E…
COP30: Europe Under Pressure Without the US
MQ: How has Europe navigated COP30’s climate negotiations and energy transition amid the US absence? MA: With the US absent, Europe took center stage, balancing climate ambition with strategic, geopolitical, and energy constraints; youth engagement added perspective but could not replace careful …
Power Struggles in the Energy Transition
How does China’s dominance in critical minerals and clean-tech manufacturing reshape global power in the energy transition? This brief argues that China’s control across the entire mineral-to-technology supply chain creates asymmetric dependencies that influence national climate strategies and cr…
Climate Linked Instability in the Sahel and Horn
How does climate stress reshape patterns of authority and instability in high-risk African states? Using Burkina Faso and Somalia, the brief shows that climate shocks amplify existing governance weaknesses, alter mobility, and expand the space for non-state armed actors. Climate change is a mul…
The Pacific’s Climate Financing Dilemma
How do Pacific Small Island Developing States assess the COP29 Triple Finance Framework ahead of COP30? Climate finance supports PSIDS in reducing their vulnerability to climate impacts; however, more ambitious actions by other countries remain essential for their survival. At COP30, PSIDS plan o…
