E3G

Energy, Climate, Conflict: the dynamics of global cooperation

By Nick Mabey

On the 26th April, E3G Chief Executive Nick Mabey participated in the conference Energy and Conflict: Current Controversies.

The event was organised by the Madariaga Foundation in partnership with the East West Institute, and was hosted by the French Institute of Petroleum in Paris.

The aim of the conference was “to identify ways of handling current controversies in international energy relations”.

Nick gave a presentation entitled Building a New International Energy Regime: Understanding the Dynamics of Cooperation, which is attached in pdf format for download.

The following summary provides an overview of Nick’s presentation.

Building a New International Energy Regime: Understanding the Dynamics of Cooperation

Energy security analysts make their living identifying future political – and even military – conflict over energy resources, and for good reason.

Competitive great power politics over oil and gas are rearing their head in the Middle East, Central Asia, East and West Africa. Indeed, Javier Solana has noted that energy politics are at the heart of all the foreign policy issues the EU deals with; from Sudan to Iran to North Korea.

Many consider competition over energy and mineral resources will become the defining axis of geopolitics over the coming decades.

However, this preoccupation with state-to-state competition is obscuring deeper levels of common interest between energy consuming nations.

In an increasingly interdependent world, ensuring energy security in our major trading partners is a matter of self-interest. China’s thirst for energy and materials is driven primarily by the need to fuel manufacturing for export, not domestic consumption. If China’s economy stutters and fails because of energy shortages, then US and European companies and consumers will pay a high economic price.

In what way does Europe compete with China for Russian Gas or Middle Eastern oil, when this energy contributes to European prosperity and security?

Major consuming nations also have critical interests in preventing geo-political competition fuelling instability and civil war in supply countries. As China is fast finding out, there is no doctrine of non-interference in African countries; supporting the government makes you an enemy of competing elites.

Despite these strong commonalities, there have not been large enough incentives to cooperate to overcome traditional nationalistic approaches to energy security.

Climate change fundamentally alters this balance of interests.

Climate change poses a vital security threat to all countries, with China and India being particularly vulnerable to economic, social and security impacts of changing climate in the next 20 years. Discussions on climate change at the UN Security Council in April 2007 showed that a large number of countries are already experiencing the destabilising impacts of climate change.

There is no hard security response to climate change. Countries must cooperate to reduce energy use and switch to low carbon energy sources. This transformation will also increase energy security and reduce pressure on global resources.

We will not solve climate change without developing a strong global culture of cooperation over energy investment and technology development. This cannot happen if major consumers continue to compete politically – rather than economically - for energy resources.

Climate change therefore provides the missing ingredient for shifting us towards a global culture of cooperation on energy security.