From Recognition to Alignment: The Next Challenge for European Climate, Peace and Security Policy

This brief examines the gap between the European Union’s growing recognition of the links between climate change, peace and security and its ability to translate that understanding into coherent action.

It highlights that EU initiatives on climate resilience, humanitarian assistance, development cooperation, peacebuilding and security increasingly address the same interconnected risks, but continue to operate through separate institutions, funding mechanisms and planning processes. This fragmentation limits the EU’s ability to prevent climate-related crises, strengthen resilience in partner countries and use its diplomatic and financial instruments strategically.

Key recommendations include integrating climate, governance and conflict analysis across EU institutions and implementing partners; designing and sequencing climate, development and peacebuilding programmes around shared objectives at the country level; and strengthening regional and subregional cooperation to manage cross-border challenges such as migration, water scarcity and resource competition. The article argues that the EU does not necessarily need new institutions or strategies, but greater alignment between existing policies, investments and actors to ensure that they reinforce one another in practice.