The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s was a time of immense upheaval that posed major challenges for Europe and raised numerous questions about the future shape of the European security architecture. It is a testament to Karl Kaiser’s foresight that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he was already concerned with the effects of global warming and thus thinking beyond the traditional bounds of security policy at that time.
He clearly characterized global warming as a challenge that endangers international stability worldwide, going so far as to call political action to contain it “a matter of long-term survival.” This makes his quote more relevant than ever. Many governments now recognize the security risks of climate change as a threat to stability and peace. They also see that these risks cannot be considered in isolation, a realization based not least on the geopolitical shifts of recent years. In 2023, for example, the German government used the term “integrated security” in its first National Security Strategy to create a framework that encompasses and links traditional and non-traditional security risks. It states: “Because the new threats are complex and affect all areas of state, society, and the economy, we are applying our policy of Integrated Security to all these spheres.” And further: “Our international and security environment is becoming more multipolar and less stable, and is increasingly defined by the existential threat posed by the climate crisis.”
Kaiser Recognized Climate Change as a Global Threat Early On
Kaiser’s quote preceding this article comes from Europa-Archiv, the predecessor of the journal Internationale Politik, in which he analyzed changes of the time and outlined possible future threats. At the time, few people in the security policy discourse considered the mitigation of harmful emissions as part of crisis prevention. Yet, it was precisely during these years that scientific evidence proving the negative consequences of human interference with the Earth system was growing. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first assessment report in 1990, laying the foundation for scientific consensus on the numerous global consequences of climate change. Just two years later, in 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted with the aim of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere in such a way as “to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” The convention was signed that same year by more than 150 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, better known as the Earth Summit or Rio Conference.
A few years after the end of the Cold War, the Rio Conference was a commitment by the international community to international cooperation; an effort to create new and just paths for sustainable development for the good of all humankind. One of the milestones in this process was the recognition by industrialized counties that they are more responsible than the developing countries for the deterioration of global environmental conditions and thus also have a greater obligation to address them. The principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” is also found in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, with the addition of “and respective capabilities.” To date, this principle is an important basis for negotiations at the annual UN Climate Change Conferences, a meeting of the signatory states of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. The first of these “Conference of the Parties” (COP) took place in Berlin in 1995 under the presidency of Angela Merkel who was then Germany’s environment minister.
These developments in the early 1990s show that the risks associated with our dependence on fossil fuels were already apparent 30 years ago. A “worldwide ecological deterioration,” according to Karl Kaiser, “reaching increasingly critical levels.” While the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was radically reduced in the 1990s through the resolute implementation of the Montreal Protocol, greenhouse gas emissions have increased massively and are only now approaching their peak. Meanwhile, climate change is no longer a future scenario. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense, destroying livelihoods. In September 2024, the EU climate service Copernicus reported the hottest summer on record. In addition, global warming for the first time exceeded 1.5 degrees on average for twelve consecutive months compared to pre-industrial times. Floods of historic proportions destroyed entire regions in Central and Eastern Europe, ruining many livelihoods. Climate impacts are no longer a “matter of long-term survival” for people in all parts of the world; they are already struggling to survive in the present. Due to insufficient prevention through greenhouse gas reductions, climate change has been increasingly shaping the global risk landscape.
This is particularly evident in one of the most controversially debated topics of our time: migration. The link between climate change and migration is complex and defies simple explanations. Migration is generally a multi-causal phenomenon, and the context of climate change is no exception. Many factors influence migration decisions, including social, political, economic, demographic, and environmental ones. Today, the impacts of climate change are intensifying these drivers in many regions. For example, small farmers, who often have little or no savings, quickly face threats to their economic survival when changing precipitation patterns lead to dwindling crop yields.
Extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change, can also force people to leave their homes. Last year alone, there were 20.3 million internal displacements worldwide due to weather-related disasters. For particularly vulnerable sections of the population, including women and children, older people, and people who require special protection (such as the chronically ill), migration and displacement are associated with significant risks and can have far-reaching consequences for their futures. For example, children may face poorer prospects if they have less access to education.
Climate as an Integral Part of Foreign and Security Policy
More than three decades after Karl Kaiser characterized global warming as a global challenge for international stability, climate impacts have become an integral part of the foreign and security policy discourse in Germany. In 2023, for instance, the German government announced a climate foreign policy strategy that calls “curbing the climate crisis and coping with its effects […] a key challenge facing humanity this century.”
Like other industrialized countries, Germany bears a special responsibility for tackling the consequences of climate change and for ensuring that particularly vulnerable states in the Global South have the chance to develop in a sustainable manner. Germany’s responsibility is all the greater given that global efforts to achieve more climate protection in the coming years will be severely hampered by the reelection of Donald Trump in the United States.
The importance that Karl Kaiser already attached to the special responsibility of industrialized countries at that time becomes evident in a 1990 study published by the Enquete Commission on “Preventative Measures to Protect the Earth’s Atmosphere,” which dealt with the proposal of a climate convention. Kaiser and his co-authors stated: “Fair and constructive cooperation between North and South to protect the Earth’s atmosphere assumes the ecological credibility of the industrialized countries, it requires the global economic framework to embrace ecological principles, and it necessitates the consideration of new incentives for ecological goals in development cooperation.” This quote, too, shows that Kaiser was ahead of his time.
Little Time Left to Prevent the Collapse of Civilization
The international credibility of Germany’s climate foreign policy is closely linked to its domestic climate policy. In view of budgetary constraints, funds for the country’s urgently needed green transformation are often lacking. This is a poor prerequisite for making recommendations to others. Kaiser’s analyses painfully demonstrate the missed opportunities of the past decades in terms of climate protection and partnerships with emerging and developing countries: Our Earth could have been in a very different state. But even if losses are already immense, the collapse of our civilization can still be prevented. There are still a few years in which we can keep the promises of the ecological pioneers of the 1990s – but those years have already begun.
This text is a chapter from the book “Paths to the Future: Perspectives on Foreign Policy: On the 90th Birthday of Karl Kaiser” and contains no footnotes. You can access the full version including footnotes in the PDF above or via the e-book.
