Climate change does not cause wars. It changes what it takes to prevent them.

01 · Keynote

For defence ministries, security conferences, re-insurers and institutional investors.

We are building a fortress on quicksand

The threats Europe is rearming against are real, and NATO allies have committed to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on core defence by 2035, plus up to 1.5 per cent on infrastructure, preparedness and resilience. But that money is being planned against a physical baseline that no longer holds, and I would argue that we are building a fortress on quicksand. Thawing permafrost is moving the foundations of radar stations and runways in the High North, and changing thermal layers in the ocean scramble the sonar that submarine warfare depends on. That is an environmental issue, but it is also a loss of defence capability, which is why climate has to be the baseline assumption of every planning decision and not a point in chapter six. Yet the larger gap sits outside the defence budget, because climate is in every ministry’s mandate and in nobody’s budget.

Read: Europe’s defence build-up is a climate gamble, World Economic Forum, July 2025, and The changing physics of the Arctic are the real defence threat, Financial Times, February 2026.

02 · Keynote

For business federations, industry associations, political foundations, parliaments and total-defence audiences across Europe.

Why the transition breaks politics first

The danger is not the shock as such, but the gap between what the transition costs and what the state will absorb. Where the state fails to absorb it, something else moves in and collects the legitimacy. Steelworkers in 1980s Duisburg felt sacrificed on the altar of global free trade; today, vulnerable households feel sacrificed on the altar of net zero. It does not matter whether you transition because you like trees and bees or because diesel costs five euros a litre, and that is why I think the transition is above party politics: it is a security question.

03 · Keynote or lecture

For public lectures, festivals and universities, and for UN, development and diplomatic audiences.

Echoes in the current: what actually prevents wars over water

I came to know the Soča river in Slovenia in my early twenties, working as a kayak teacher in Bovec, drawn in by the clarity of the water and the raw power of its rapids. Paddling along it, you notice the dark, hollow eyes of tunnels in the rock face and the cemeteries of the Isonzo front, where Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies fought for its valleys, peaks and river crossings. The war was going on, and the river was going on.

A century later, the struggle is no longer for valleys or peaks but for water itself, and a warming climate makes that water less reliable. Yet cooperation over shared water is far more common than conflict. What fails are the institutions meant to manage it, often because peacebuilders treat water as a technical problem, as at the Salma Dam in Herat or in the divided water systems of Mitrovica. In a society coming out of war, water is never just water; it is tied to identity, power and the legitimacy of the state. That is also where environmental peacebuilding begins, because, as Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms, the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

Read the essay: Echoes in the current: water, conflict, and the elusive hope for environmental peacebuilding in a warming world, Bled Strategic Times, 2025.

04 · Working session

For civil-society organisations, development agencies, foundations and their programme staff.

What it means to build peace in a changing climate

Climate change is changing the security landscape, and it is also changing what it means to build peace. Development and civil-society organisations already work where the two meet, in water user committees, in land and livelihood programmes and in the everyday relationship between communities and the state. Drawing on field evidence from Nepal, Kosovo, Somalia and Afghanistan, this session shows how environmental cooperation can build trust between groups, bring women and others who are usually left out into decisions over shared resources, and strengthen the legitimacy of local institutions. It also shows how well-meant projects that ignore local politics can do the opposite. The format is a 30 to 40-minute input followed by an open discussion with your team.

Read: Sustaining peace through better resource governance: three potential mechanisms for environmental peacebuilding, Krampe, Hegazi and VanDeveer, World Development, 2021.