Blue Diplomacy and water cooperation – solutions to relieve the pressure of climate induced migration

Background

As the European Green Deal sheds light on the importance of environmental security as sine qua non for human development and prosperity in our century, water, the most valuable resource on our planet, deserves more attention. Many countries and regions are facing increasing challenges of social, economic, political and ecosystem risks related to water stress factors: in other words, there is too little, too much, and too polluted water. Water scarcity, water disasters and extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts, and failures of climate change mitigation and adaptation, continue to rank among the top global risks.

All over the world, there are multiple threats of water shortage and desertification and at the same time extreme events as floods and natural disasters. Meanwhile, water stress is causing extreme pressure in other regions, which face declining rainfall levels, raising major concerns about the resilience of European societies. Those extreme climate phenomena force millions of people, mainly depending on agriculture for the livelihoods to leave their home areas in search of water, food, and means to survive.

These challenges raise the importance of developing international governance structures promoting sustainable solutions regarding the management of flows of climate-induced migration, and especially hedging the risk of conflicts and humanitarian crisis by the means of pro-active foreign policy and diplomatic commitments.

The importance of tackling the above issues is further highlighted by the risk the initiatives undertaken on behalf of the EU so far to recede on the policy agenda hierarchy. Now more than ever, the gap between what the EU is doing versus what it should be doing to address climate change impacts on populations in its Southern Neighbourhood has become even clearer.

The opinion aims at showing that the EU must map out a proactive, multifaceted and comprehensive strategy that brings out the importance of the nexus between scientific evidence, decision making and policy implementation.