humanity.

It is a key element in peace building

Ecological and conflict resolution.

Diplomacy Ecological Diplomacy understands that

ecological integrity and ecological health is the
foundation for human security as well as
EU Approach to Security and Peace international security.
in a Climate Disrupted World
The EU has a role to play in Ecological
Climate Transition in the Light of Diplomacy which is to salvage peace
Geopolitical Change particularly on the African Continent, the Latin-
American region, and in the Indo-Pacific.

The Climate Security Agenda has been

brought up at the UN Security Council for the
Ecological diplomacy is an emerging topic
first time in 2007.
since climate change is affecting geopolitics as
well.

Keynote Speakers:
How does climate change aggravate or create
1. Olivia Lazard from the Carnegie Europe. Her
new conflict?
research focuses on the geopolitics of
climate change. She has a long background
In 2007, climate disruptions were not so severe
on environmental peacemaking. A mediation
as they are today having a geographical
practitioner for over 12 years. So, she has
aspect.
hands-on experience in addition academic
experience.
Cause of Climate
2. Anne Tarvainen from the World Wide Fund,
Finland. She has been working at the Finnish Change
Ministry for Foreign Affairs, UNDP, and various
NGOs as well as the Finnish Environmental Climate change results from the release of
Institute. excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
coming from industrialized nations whose
energy systems which are fossil-intensive.
What is Ecological
Diplomacy Conflict/ Violence
Contributors to Climate
It is important for the European Union and its Destabilization and Environmental
member states to adopt ecological Plundering
diplomacy at the heart of its foreign policy.
In Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, parts of
It is an approach that reconciles climate Latin America, and Indo-Pacific, every time that
stabilization and ecological integrity with I talked to conflict practitioners about climate
human security and in geopolitical de- disruptions, they would tell me this is not
escalation. something that we can change anything to for
the reason that the drivers of climate change
The escalation of conflicts is not a fate to be are located in the Global North.
accepted. A strategy for de-escalation is to
understand the other by recognizing their This is untrue because if you look at this map,
you will see that the red and orange areas are
the global regeneration priority areas. From a geo-economic and geopolitical
perspective, the country that ends out with
Or where we urgently need to protect as well most of these natural resources, and that is the
as regenerate terrestrial and marine best at processing the critical materials that
ecosystems. everybody needs for their transition is China.
That means there is an essential role to play
for peacemaking, security, and development of The European Union is over 90% dependent
communities. Not as marginal actors in the on the Chinese imports and processing of
fight against climate change, but actually very critical materials. Solar panels as well as digital
much as front-liners. technologies are made of these critical
materials. Outside of China, the critical
This is achieved through Nature-Based materials are concentrated in conflict and
Solutions or Nature-Based Processes fragile zones.
wherein we partner with nature in order to
mitigate climate change. We're not just tackling a problem of excess
release of greenhouse gas emissions in the
There should be inclusiveness in the solution atmosphere or only of carbon dioxide. We're
to mitigate climate change like inclusive looking at carbon cycle, water cycle, the
governance and inclusion of women, youth, hydrological cycle, how water moves from
and indigenous populations because the liquid to gas and back to liquid, and how we
incoming climate disruptions will be on regional actually need to harness water vapor and water
levels. as a liquid to try to mitigate the effects of the
carbon cycle.
The UNDP is working on connecting big
climate financing with fragile countries for the
reinforcement of the inter-linkages between
Security Threats on Our
soils, water and biodiversity. These ecological Way
interdependencies benefit human populations
in their local environment. Climate disruptions will accelerate in the next
two decades. There will be incoming shocks to
We absolutely need to direct a lot of effort food systems and water availability that will
around the tropical belts of the world, trickle into human societies. The shocks will be
particularly the Congo basin, the Amazon economic, political and potentially
basin, and the wet forests of Asia. These geopolitical protraction.
ecosystems
play an important role in atmospheric rivers. We need to pre-empt and prevent them from
They do not just generate rain in their own going forward. We still have a window of
ecosystem. They are actually instrumental to opportunity. We should know exactly where we
watering the rest of the world. can mine for critical materials.
The Congo basin gives about 40% of rainfall We need to start talking about complex
patterns to the Ethiopian highlands but such regeneration. At the moment, everybody is
basin is currently threatened by armed conflict. talking about offsetting strategies and nature-
based solutions: how to aid forest, how to
The global plan for climate mitigation is the reforest certain parts of the world.
decarbonize of energy systems, which is the
next wave of an industrial revolution. We need Planting trees is all fine and good but we must
critical materials for decarbonization. These understand that trees are not the silver-bullet
include rare earths like lithium, cobalt, bauxite, solution that we all want them to be. What is
neodymium, promethium and other metallic important is to recreate an integrity from an
elements.
ecosystem perspective so that trees can partnership with in terms of critical materials
survive in water-challenged landscapes. and supply chains in July 2021.

That means that we first need to rebuild water It is no surprise that Russia is now starting to
retention landscapes. try and gain access to certain countries that are
very well-endowed in those critical materials to
That means that we need to harness the power become a broker in the race to critical materials
of community work that we need to support and in the race to transition modelling and geo-
community processes including conflict and economic re-engineering of international
fragile zones to work towards regeneration relations.
goals.
European resilience in climate-disrupted
With the help and the support of local futures depends on the resilience of societies
communities, this will benefit their water and regions in the rest of the world.
security, their food security and it will protect
them from the incoming extremes that they are It should protect societies from the incoming
going to face as a result of climate disruptions. wave of potential conflict related to the
scramble for resources, for critical materials in
All of this is really important. And I want to drive particular, but also for agricultural soils, for
this point forward extremely clearly: working at water resources, and for any type of resources
the local level with inclusive processes based that may enhance the resilience of countries in
on dialogue and on disaster relief. a climate-disrupted futures.

Also, we can reverse scarcity. We can work But from a more structural perspective, we also
with nature in order to reboot ecological need to understand that the European Union
services. needs to look at partnerships with Latin
American, African, Indo-Pacific partners for
The European Union has dealt with its own their climate adaptation needs and climate
climate-related transition from a technical and mitigation as well as human security
a financial perspective over the last two stabilization.
decades by energy mixes, pledges,
incentivized pledges from other actors around On the longer term, investing into research on
the world. It has not, however, looked at the regenerative practices at home and how we
energy transition and at climate-related export them to the rest of the world.
transitions from a geostrategic, geo-economic,
and geopolitical perspective. Sustaining Human
The time to change that is now. Civilizations
The European Union is facing a Climate scientists who develop very localized
weaponization of energy. solutions in Europe to enhance the resilience of
their economies and invest in rebuilding
Actors are scrambling for resources around the bioregional economies on the basis of different
world targeting middle powers and fragile and soils, different water resources, and different
conflict-affected countries for the benefit of types of biodiversities.
their transition model at the expense of peace
and human security, and at the expense of Since we all need to decarbonize and digitize,
European security, for that matter. there is competition over critical materials,
there is a need for legal frameworks,
Ukraine, for example, is one of the countries regulation, treaties and agreements that will
that the European Union had struck a regulate the scramble for resources and
ensure that energy mixes needs can be
achieved not at the expense of the countries of Finnish food consumption are outside of the
well-endowed in those resources. Finnish borders.

So, we have definitely outsourced our impact

SDGs on food consumption globally. We have to look
in the mirror and admit that the way we
The sustainable development goals are consume in Finland actually has a global
actually depending on the nature, biodiversity, impact.
oceans, all that you mentioned. They are the
bases of all the other sustainable development As emphasized, the resilience at home is
goals. reflected globally. We are depending on the
resilience of those countries to also be able to
And the recognition of that is crucial when we produce. They have to feed themselves but in
are trying to solve any kind of societal addition, they are feeding and providing
challenges. They are also impacting security services to us which we are using. This risk
issues globally. and dependency is recognized globally more
and more.
The CBD, the Convention of Biological
Diversity negotiations will start in Geneva. It World Economic Forum is annually publishing
has been postponed for several years because analyses of global risks.
of the pandemic, which is kind of interesting
because we could have connected the root Among the top 10 global risks, most of them
causes of the pandemic to the economic are connected to environmental risks such as
ecological items and how we have been extreme weather, human environmental
destroying the nature and then could have damage, and natural resources crisis that roll
connected it to the origin of communicable on the global economy.
diseases. And now, one of those diseases
have prevented us from making a global Climate change is influencing economy,
agreement on biodiversity conservation. security, and all the sectors. There is a
Nature-Security Nexus.
We have to start a very strong restoration
approach on those ecosystems which have Environmental degradation and biodiversity
been destroyed or affected. loss has a negative impact on natural
resources, livelihoods and human security.
The Finnish Environmental Institute SYKE &
SITRA published this map which is showing It also increases the potential of illegal
how Finland has actually outsourced some of exploitation of the natural resources like the
our environmental impacts. So, this map is illegal timber trade and illegal wildlife trade.
showing us how Finnish food consumption is
how much croplands we need to produce food And these are seen and connected many times
we consume in Finland. to organizations.

And the colors are indicating that kind of how The key message in the global biodiversity
strongly the consumption is influencing the framework is the Nature Positive. We have to
species extinction. put nature on a recovery mode. But we cannot
do it by only using conservation methods but
And then, the circles are indicating the demand by footprint.
for croplands in hectares.
I think that we have had this target of biological
One of the conclusions of this research was conservation for many decades, but they have
that more than 90% of the biodiversity impacts failed since it needs a whole-of-society
approach to be a success. It cannot be done retention landscapes. It's about re-attracting
by environmental NGOs alone. water, re-transforming water from gas into
liquid, stored liquid, into the ground. That
But we have a lot of Finnish expertise. We and requires enhancing the ability of soils to be
other environmental NGOs or entities can bring spongeous. And in order for this to happen,
our views together and provide our services for we need all the biodiversity we can get.
you. I have an example from Myanmar where
the Finnish Church Aid has been working That means re-shifting the way in which we do
now in a very fragile environment and providing territorial planning, energy planning, food
humanitarian aid. But they recognize that production planning. And we need to look at it
actually, when they provide humanitarian aid from an ecological perspective and an
in Myanmar, they would like to have a administrative perspective. So, to the question
climate and environmental aspects on that. of how we can expand on water diplomacy
today.
Today, every donor agency in the world wants
to work on climate mitigation or climate We're looking at watershed areas, how to
adaptation. regenerate them and expand from water sheds
to how we build regenerative economies that
are going to be truly regenerative, and
Water Diplomacy therefore truly sustainable. And I'll give the
example of Panama.
Water diplomacy is the starting point for
ecological diplomacy. Panama has had a really smart approach to
maintaining its geostrategic position in the
What is less said and less understood, is that economy of the world. It depends on the Canal,
by plundering ecosystems, we are releasing functioning as an economy. The Canal itself
and releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. depends on watersheds that are feeding into
the Canal.
Water vapor is a more transient greenhouse
gas. It doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long The Canal was having a lot of trouble with, you
as carbon dioxide. CO2 stays for three to four know, maintaining itself because of the
hundred years. Water vapor stays for a matter shipping industry, because of the exploitation
of a few days because it functions at an alongside the Canal. So, rather than just
accelerated pace between terrestrial and saying, "Well, we're going to use technological
marine ecosystems and within the atmosphere. solutions to fix the dampening of the canal
which threatens our global economy, societal
But the fact that we are releasing water vapor economy, we're going to regenerate the
in accelerated ways, that we are not keeping watersheds".
water in the ground where it should be, where it
needs to be made available for human And so, the watersheds actually help to
resilience, human survival, human stabilization, maintain the Canal and the shipping industry,
human civilizations. and therefore the economic stabilization of
Panama.
We are actually accelerating the effects of And it is now one of the global climate leaders
carbon dioxide. And when we start talking in in the fight against climate change. So, all of
our current day and age, most of the climate this is about adopting the systemic approach.
disruptions that we talk about are fires,
droughts, and inundations or flooding. It's whole-of-society, how you change the
sectors of the economy that deplete water
All three of them are water-related. It's either systems, and how you organize cooperation
too much water, or too little. We need to work between trans-boundary partners or societal
with regeneration so as to rebuild water partners on the basis of regenerative practices
rather than division of access to natural One of the reasons why European Union
resources. member states - can say that collectively they
only emit 7% of global greenhouse gas
emissions is because they outsourced
Footprint environmental destruction outside of their
borders.
Footprint comes from the products that we buy
from the global supply chains.
Agriculture
There is currently a danger inscribed in the
Paris agreement, article six, which is about Where is agriculture in our conversations?
offsetting strategies and, you know, carbon
credit. One of the key supply chains is agriculture. If
we look at the footprint, that raises the question
We are framing climate-related transitions as of how we actually transform food production.
net zero and not full zero. We are going to We must switch towards regenerative
see a lot of private actors trying to offset their agriculture. We build water tables to ensure
business as a usual model. Ex: Air companies bioregional food security systems.
or textile companies.
We have a role to play in leading that
In the case of Patagonia, we're looking at a homeward because our demand is disputing
textile company. So, we're looking at a deforestation and land conversion in the Global
company that relies on certain crops as well South.
such as cotton and others. How do you make
sure that your cotton is grown in places. We need to start questioning how agriculture
needs to be decoupled from globalized
It looks at its impact on footprint throughout the exchange. And how this profoundly contributes
supply chain in a way that helps to re-channel to climate action.
some of your profits into ecological
regeneration. We will benefit from globalized agricultural
exchange.

ESG We also have to look at the consumption side

and think of sustainable diets. We also have
Environmental, Social, and Governance to globally shift diets towards increasing
vegetable and decreasing meat consumption
Investors are increasingly applying these non- because it's not a matter of how we produce,
financial factors as part of their analysis but what we produce so as not to exhaust soil
process to identify material risks and growth and water resources doing that. It doesn't
opportunities. mean that cattle is not allowed.

Equalize and transform the relationships

between the Global North and the Global Role of Individual EU
South. The mining companies are going to Member States to Promote
have an instrumental role to play in this. They
have a role in research on how to, over time, Ecological Diplomacy
switch from extraction from underground to
extraction from recycling, and thereby 1. Agree, adhere or understand the relevance
developing new business chains that are really of the analysis that we are offering. It is not a
important for the resilience of the EU and the new narrative, but it's a complemented
future of economies. narrative that tries to fit in all these different
elements together: security, ecological health,
biodiversity, water, soils, and climate health and human security and human rights,
stabilization or climate action. we need to have a geopolitical message. This
is what we need to embrace today.
2. Look at what each individual member state
commits in terms of resources at home in


terms of research, in terms of funding, in terms
of cooperation with, like, whole-of-society
actors.

3. Evaluate or assess the current levels of

investment with the objectives that we need to
set for ourselves.

The latest developments in the European

continent change everything. Adopting
ecological diplomacy as a European Union
proposition will encourage its member states
and partners across the world.
We can de-escalate geopolitical tensions and
we can work on planetary health. These are
the fundamental objectives that we need to
pursue.

If you look at the behavior of Russia and China

across the world, you will notice that the places
where they are present today are all the places
endowed in critical materials needed for the
transition, in the places that are well-endowed
in terms of soil productivity and in water
resources. So, what you see in Ukraine is
actually a case of what I am going to call
climate porting.

President Putin has mentioned that he wants

Russia to benefit from climate change, to
become an agricultural powerhouse. Acquiring
Ukraine within the Russian economy will go a
long way in that direction because Ukraine is
the European bread basket.

If the European Union fails to understand the

geopolitical and geostrategic outlook that
actors such as Russia and China have, the
European Union runs the risk of breaking within
the next 10-15 years.

In order to pre-empt that and to change this,

we need to understand the vital proposition of
what ecological diplomacy is saying: that
climate change and geopolitics are one and
the same today. And if we want to do climate
transitions in a way that safeguards planetary