Climate variation fuelling developing nation security risks

In a range of security and humanitarian contexts, changes to local conditions are multiplying risks and producing contagion effects

The absence of a globally coordinated response at the outset of the coronavirus outbreak represented an essential failure of international cooperation, according to UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in September 2020. Indeed, regional coordination was largely eschewed in favour of national or even local action. Understandably, respondents to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Perception Survey (GPRS) 2021, published in February, assessed “multilateralism collapse” as a critical long-term threat to stability. Over a near-term horizon, respondents emphasised their concern regarding “interstate relations fracture”, “interstate conflict” and “resource geo-politicisation”. They felt thes