World in Transition: Climate Change as a Security Risk - WBGU

ened, with the aim of achieving fuller recognition of
their human rights and ensuring that the financial
costs involved are shared.
10.3.3.4
Initiative 9: Expanding global information and
early warning systems
Both the gradual changes caused by climate change
and the natural disasters which are expected to occur
with increasing frequency and intensity could destabilize
the affected regions and, in extreme cases, constitute
a major risk factor for national and international
security. Well-functioning global information
and early warning systems can therefore do much to
mitigate these adverse effects and make a major contribution
to conflict and crisis prevention.
These systems should provide timely information
and warning in advance of extreme events and crises.
The United Nations recognised the importance
of early warning systems long ago, as is apparent,
for example, from its designation of the 1990s as the
International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction
(IDNDR, 1990–1999), its adoption of the ensuing
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
(ISDR), its staging of a series of UN conferences
on early warning systems, and the launch of the new
International Early Warning Programme. In WBGU’s
view, the recommendations made in the UN’s Global
Survey of Early Warning Systems (UN, 2006a) point in
the right direction. The German government, which
has been active in this area for many years, should
continue to participate in the development of a global
early warning system. The aim should be to establish
a system which is not confined to individual risks
but addresses threats to human security on a comprehensive
basis. First and foremost, it should draw
on existing early warning capacities and pool current
knowledge in order to make it accessible as easy-tounderstand
situation reports and forecasts for users.
The early warning system should provide information
about all types of natural hazard, epidemics and
technological risks, and also take account of ongoing
environmental problems. Finally, WBGU recommends
the establishment of early warning capacities
for political crises and regional conflicts so that
any escalation of violence can be avoided or conflicts
contained.
The system must also provide processed data on
expected regional climate impacts, especially for
developing countries which lack adequate capacities
of their own to model and evaluate these data. But in
industrialized countries too, the systematic provision
of information on regional climate impacts is still in
its infancy and is in some cases obstructed by dis-
The window of opportunity for climate security: 2007–2020 10.3
putes over competencies or limited data access rights.
Decision-makers in developing countries and development
agencies alike need to integrate adaptation
to climate change into their work as a cross-cutting
theme and are therefore reliant on the provision of
such data. The aim should be establish a database
which would collate regional forecasts with all their
uncertainties – ideally gleaned from ensemble modelling
or from the evaluation of a variety of models –
and make them accessible in an easy-to-understand
format for users and affected communities. Support
must also be provided for the development of partnerships
for the analysis and interpretation of data in
order to identify requisite actions and devise adaptation
strategies. The five-year programme of work
on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate
change, adopted by the 12th Conference of the Parties
(COP 12) to the UNFCCC, offers a good starting
point for this process.
In order to establish this type of global information
and early warning system, the activities of existing
UN institutions and conventions (e.g. WMO, FAO,
UNDP, UNEP, UNFCCC) and other forums such as
ISDR or IPCC must be properly coordinated. This
broad-based early warning system should contribute
to the development, in all regions of the world,
of a comprehensive knowledge base on anticipated
climate impacts and present and future threats and
risks, and would be a valuable resource for the various
national organizations as they develop adaptation
and mitigation measures.
In the further development of early warning and
information systems on natural disasters and crises at
national and local level, a key task is to ensure that
the information is passed promptly to potentially
affected communities and to national and international
emergency response agencies. It is also important
to establish and trial information and decisionmaking
structures within the relevant administrations.
There are numerous examples which show that
the conversion of early warning information into
generally accessible and culturally adapted guidance
on how to respond in the event of a disaster is often a
weak point in early warning. The timely involvement
of potentially affected communities is also often
neglected, and long-term education and training programmes
are required in at-risk areas. Finally, people
and organizations in the affected areas should also
be given information on who is responsible for carrying
out specific measures in the event of a disaster
warning, and how affected individuals and communities
should respond.
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