Seite - 17 - in Friedensgutachten 2020 - Im Schatten der Pandemie: letzte Chance für Europa

These topics should not be neglected: taking further measures to protect the climate, pro- tecting civilians in armed conflicts, appropriate responses to mass protest movements, a cybersecurity strategy that focuses on resilience, tempering great power rivalries by means of multilateral cooperation, and combating online cultures of hatred. For these areas of peace policy, the coronavirus may be a crisis, but it can also be an opportunity. How the pendulum will ultimately swing could not be determined with any reliability by the editorial deadline (30 April 2020). ↘ KEEP CLIMATE ACTION A PRIORITY AND USE IT TO PROMOTE PEACE Climate change remains a major challenge for peace. It undermines the ability of people in many regions to make a living, increasing the risk of conflict and hampering the search for long-term peacebuilding. Yet the demonstrable effects of climate change on violent con- flicts so far are limited. Simplified assumptions that climate change inevitably leads to more violence and war are unsustainable. What is not disputed is that climate change is a stress factor and risk multiplier in existing conflict situations, and that this increases with the level of global warming. This is particu- larly the case in regions where life is already hard and institutions fragile. The risks to peace of climate change are thus distributed very unequally among the world’s regions. Preventive measures that seek to promote peace in the face of climate risks therefore need to distin- guish between those who cause climate change and those who suffer as a result of it. Traditional security policy instruments – things like arms and the military – are no use in combating the climate emergency. They are themselves harmful to the environment, and they stand in the way of peaceful conflict resolution. There is a need for policies and instruments that can help to generate a cooperative approach to the climate problem while maintaining a durable peace. We need, above all, to agree on measures that draw together climate and development policy and the pursuit of peace. Efforts in early warning, crisis prevention and analysis of the effects of climate change on peace should be strengthened. Civilian climate policy, consisting of emissions reduction and mitigation efforts, needs to be conflict sensitive in order to avoid unintentional negative consequences. The coronavirus pandemic is a major challenge for global efforts to protect the climate. While current measures to restrict the spread of the virus have had the side-effect of ben- efiting the climate in small ways, they are not sustainable. The already perceptible decline in focus on global climate policy and the change of political priorities in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic might even endanger the goals of the Paris Agreement. It is therefore all the more necessary to maintain measures under the current conditions that ameliorate the already foreseeable negative consequences of climate change for peace. Furthermore, alongside social measures, climate change also needs to be an integral part of programs for the rebuilding of affected economies. Climate change as a stress factor in conflict situations Climate policy needs to be conflict sensitive 17 peace report / 2020