Spreading Disease, Spreading Conflict? COVID-19, Climate Change, and Security Risks
Publisher: Climate Diplomacy, adelphi, and German Federal Foreign Office
Author(s): Beatrice Mosello, Adrian Foong, Christian König, Susanne Wolfmaier, and Emily Wright
Date: 2020
Topics: Climate Change, Disasters, Governance, Livelihoods, Public Health, Renewable Resources
The COVID-19 pandemic has profound global impacts. While all countries have been affected, the pandemic is hitting those that were already struggling with poverty, conflict and the impacts of climate change especially hard. This report seeks to explore these dynamics.
The pandemic offers another opportunity to talk about how interconnected risks, including those created by climate change, can contribute to insecurity and conflict. Taking these risks and their interconnectedness into account is essential not just to build back, but to ‘build back better’.
This report therefore recommends a number of entry points that governments should take to respond to these evolving risks, and to ‘build back better’ both from the pandemic itself and the climate crisis.