What caught my eye - late May bank holiday edition
Britain likes it hot and dry, Arctic intrigue, an ECB report on how economies don't like droughts, a timely snapshot of what Indians think about climate change.
A certain team from South London just won its first ever major trophy and I’m glad all over. So I’ve been in a fantastic mood all week to give you a bumper crop of the latest interesting happenings in the climate security universe. Without further ado:
🇬🇱 Have ya heard enough about Greenland already? While the latest Trump-related intrigue is just a Google search away, what is interesting is that the Arctic Council - the main body for research and policy collaboration for Arctic nations - is back in the spotlight with a Greenlander heading up the council’s overall operations. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the body’s work largely stopped and has only slowly restarted, focusing on research projects that deliberately excluded politically sensitive topics like mining or telecommunications. The council historically has dealt with thorny issues like whaling but it would be hard to argue that it was ever a highly effective political body because of the presence of the US, Russia and now China with observer status. Will that change as competition over Greenland’s resources, undersea resources and new maritime and telecommunications routes intensifies? The council’s remit and work, as a result, presents a link between a resolution of the war in Ukraine and key Arctic countries’ interests in Greenland - critical minerals, uranium and potentially oil and gas. Watch this space too once real progress emerges on a political resolution in Ukraine. Sidenote: a fair chunk of Washington’s institutional knowledge and diplomatic experience on Arctic issues was at the US Institute for Peace, which has now been axed under Trump.
⛏️ Notably, Greenland recently gave a French-Danish mining group a 30-year license to mine anorthosite, a rock commonly used to replace kaolin in glass fibre manufacturing, and is touted to replace bauxite in the production of aluminium with reduced energy intensity requirements. Where are the American investors?
🔥 ⛲️ Wildfire warning signs have been installed in England’s Peak District and South Pennines for the first time - apparently the first of its kind in the UK. This reflects the assessment from authorities that wildfire risk is growing and sustained, attributed to climate change’s impacts on physical risks. reflecting the growing threat of wildfires due to climate change. This comes off of an exceptionally dry spring as it has been almost 70 years since England received this little rainfall between February to April. There are knock-on effects for soil moisture and agriculture, flora and fauna, and water-intensive activities like food manufacturing, pharma and data centres (if you’re a security or resilience manager for such a company, water should already be well up on your risk register and scenario planning). Reservoir and lake levels are low and there are once again concerns over hosepipe bans and even water rationing - almost unheard of on the island until several years ago. The noise around this has focused on the role of long-term underinvestment in water infrastructure, namely reservoirs and upgraded pipes etc. to reduce leakage.
🇪🇺 Staying on the drought theme, the European Central Bank recently highlighted that droughts could reduce the Eurozone’s economic output by nearly 15%, disproportionately damaging the productivity of sectors like agriculture and manufacturing. The report also highlights countries like Spain, Cyprus and Italy which have semiarid regions with the greatest exposure and risk. All three countries are Mediterranean nations, and have experienced significant political discord related to irregular migration, asylum seekers, and the burden - real and perceived - it presents on local economic activity and public resource availability. Water may not necessarily be a causal factor for significant discord, but can be a trigger for such in communities where significant underlying discontent and polarisation exists.
🇮🇳 🙋🏽♂️ Yale University’s Program on Climate Communication - an excellent resource on public sentiment towards climate change issues and messages - recently published the results of a major survey of how Indians experience and worry about climate change. India is one of the most climate-vulnerable nations and the survey results show that vulnerability surfaces in public worries. While a third of those surveyed had not heard of climate change, the personal impacts of its effects rang loud and clear: over the past year, 71% had experienced a severe heat waves, 60% experienced agricultural pestilence, and over half experienced water shortages and pollution, and power outages. These figures should be no surprise to those of you security industry readers who have operations in the country, with frequent monsoon flooding, water quality issues, and extreme heatwaves impacting productivity in both rural and urban areas. What also stood out is that solid majorities of the over 10,700 people surveyed expressed great or some worry over all climate-related physical risks polled, ranging from flooding and famine to extinction of flora and fauna. For me, what’s emerges from the survey is that in many developing countries / emerging markets, people already “get” climate change without needing to be explained or convinced of the idea in the same way as in Europe or the Anglo-speaking world. In fact, it may be counterproductive as the concept itself is politically tainted. Better yet to meet the people where they are: acknowledge their challenges, reframe the issue as one of protecting lives and livelihoods, and offer tangible, local-first solutions, and scale them where economically sensible.
London Climate Action Week in late June is just around the corner, and it’s great to see more events catering to resilience themes. The conversation still revolves a fair bit around engineering and insurance, but the greater number of events advertised and more diversity in topic and host is a step in the right direction. I think more people are coming out of the despair around breaching 1.5C and realise “welp, we gotta help ourselves live with it then.” Are you going to any interesting events?
And more to come in due course on a potential climate security soiree. Thanks to those who have reached out.
Until then, I’m off to enjoy the sun and maybe a parade on Monday. Until next time. COME ON YOU PALACE! See you in Europe.