Climate, Conflict and COVID-19: How Does the Pandemic Affect EU Policies on Climate-Fragility?
Publisher: Cascades
Author(s): Susanne Wolfmaier, Adrian Foong, and Christian König
Date: 2021
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Cooperation, Programming, Public Health
This paper will explore the implications of COVID-19 on relevant EU policies and strategies that address the climate security nexus, focusing on three regions: the Sahel, North Africa, and Western Balkans. These regions were chosen for geographical representativeness (i.e., being the EU’s southern and eastern neighbouring regions), as well as being priority regions for EU external action, and, in the case of the Western Balkans, for EU accession.1
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 outlines, in general terms, the impacts of the pandemic on the political priorities and ability of the EU to address climate-fragility risks. Section 3 explores, for each focus region, how the pandemic affects key objectives of EU policies aiming at reducing climate-fragility risks in that region. Section 4 provides several recommendations on how the EU can better address the interlinking risks associated with climate-fragility and COVID-19.