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

provided in the Funds should be new and additional;
in other words, they should not be generated
through the redistribution of existing development
funds.
Strengthening microfinance: WBGU has on many
previous occasions advocated the expansion of
microfinancing institutions with resources from
international development cooperation, and reiterates
the importance of these institutions for the
developing countries, also in relation to environmentally
induced security risks (WBGU, 2005,
2006). Microfinancing instruments such as microcredits
or microinsurance have the potential to
make a major contribution to poverty reduction
and thus to decreasing the vulnerability of
populations in developing countries. Against the
background of growing environmental risks resulting
from climate change, microinsurance in particular
could play an increasingly important role. For
example, index-based microinsurance is promising
as an instrument to guard against weather-related
damage in agricultural production (CGAP, 2006;
UNEP, 2006; Churchill, 2006). However, despite
experts’ great hopes of microinsurance as a financing
instrument to guard against natural disasters,
it is important to emphasize that microinsurance
cannot replace – but at best can only supplement
– multilateral financial assistance.
Establishing a fund for environmentally
induced migration
Environmental migrants will become increasing relevant
in security policy terms, as discussed in Section
6.5. The management of environmentally induced
migration should therefore be a further funding priority
(Initiative 8). The International Dialogue on
Migration launched by the International Organization
for Migration (IOM) in 2001 offers an appropriate
platform for fair and efficient burden-sharing
between countries affected by environmentally
induced migration and those which are not (IOM,
2001). Burden-sharing should satisfy the ‘polluter
pays’ principle, described above, and the ‘ability-topay’
principle by linking contributions to the Fund
to the level of country-specific greenhouse gas emissions
and other indicators such as GDP per capita.
10.3.4.3
International conflict prevention
In Section 8.3.6, WBGU argues that climate-induced
social destabilization in various regions of the world
will be almost impossible to resolve through classic,
military-based security policy. Therefore as a supplement
to strategies which focus on climate change
The window of opportunity for climate security: 2007–2020 10.3
mitigation and adaptation to unavoidable climate
change, international conflict prevention strategies
should constitute a third funding priority (Initiatives 1
and 2). Initiative 7 focusses on the importance of prevention
strategies and the need to restructure, and if
necessary increase, existing military budgets to meet
new security policy challenges. Key areas of activity
in international conflict prevention include measures
aimed at averting violent conflicts, e.g. through civilian
crisis prevention, peacebuilding, security sector
reform or the stabilization of fragile states. International
humanitarian assistance, notably the provision
of essential goods to victims of violent conflicts and
natural disasters and protection from further persecution,
is also important (Reinhardt and Rolf, 2006).
There are overlaps between the strategies and
measures deployed in these two fields of action. In
both areas, civilian activities are to some extent reliant
on military backing and are funded from official
development assistance (ODA). Based on the findings
of the previous chapters, it is likely that both
fields of action will face increasing climate-induced
security risks in future. Alongside the key agencies
within the UN system, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, the donor community
includes individual states which carry out projects
within the framework of their bilateral development
cooperation (OECD, 2001; Raffinot and Rosellini,
2006). In the context of humanitarian assistance
in particular, civil society actors – such as the Red
Cross/Green Crescent or NGOs – also play a role as
donors (Development Initiatives, 2006).
As a prerequisite for the efficient financing of
conflict prevention, adequate resources must be provided
by the donor community. At the same time, it
is essential to avoid funding gaps in security-relevant
emergency action or in measures adopted in postconflict
processes, for example. Adequate funding
should also be provided for institutions which help
to ensure that the available financial resources are
deployed efficiently in relief and peacebuilding processes.
Adopting an integrated approach to the
financing of crisis prevention, development
cooperation and military spending
The funding that is required for civilian crisis prevention
and international humanitarian assistance is
almost impossible to quantify precisely. Due to the
clear substantive overlaps between civilian crisis prevention
and development cooperation, WBGU takes
the view that there is no need for an additional funding
target for crisis prevention. Instead, the political
focus should be geared entirely towards achieving
the 0.7 per cent ODA target. In moving towards this
target, however, it is important to ensure that inter-
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