Climate Risk, Governance Stress and Europe’s Emerging Security Edges

Climate variability is reshaping the strategic environment in ways that no longer fit within established divisions between development, security and governance. This episode of The International Risk Podcast offers a clear illustration of this shift through an in-depth conversation with Dr Florian Krampe, Director of Studies, Peace and Development at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and Acting Director of the SIPRI Climate Change and Risk Programme. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and empirical analysis, Dr Krampe outlines how climate impacts intensify fragility, compound governance pressures and reshape Europe’s risk exposure across increasingly interconnected geographic and political spaces.

Early in the discussion, host Dominic Bowen captures the stakes succinctly. Climate change, he stresses, is “no longer just a development issue, it’s a accelerant of international risk,” observing that “environmental degradation is undermining state legitimacy,” “fuelling extremist violence,” and “triggering mass displacement in countless locations.” These concerns mirror the findings of SIPRI’s ‘Climate, Peace and Security Research Paper: Insights on Climate, Peace and Security’ (2023), where Dr Krampe and colleagues demonstrate that climate impacts rarely generate conflict in a discrete or linear manner, but consistently alter the pathways through which insecurity evolve.

Climate Impacts as Structural Risk Multipliers

When discussing how climate pressure shapes conflict trajectories, Dr Krampe emphasises nuance rather than determinism. Climate change, he explains, is “not necessarily direct cause” but it “is increasing the risk of conflict of violence” by intensifying existing vulnerabilities and placing added pressure on governance systems that are already under strain. SIPRI’s framework captures this interaction through four pathways: deteriorating livelihoods, displacement and mobility shifts, changes in armed actor behaviour and political or economic exploitation.

1. Deteriorating Livelihoods

Dr Krampe stresses that livelihood dependency is central to understanding how climate impacts become security risks. He highlights that in fragile contexts, “sixty per cent of people in DRC are dependent on the agricultural sector,” “eighty per cent in Afghanistan,” and “seventy two per cent in Somalia.” Small environmental shocks therefore have outsized effects. When rainfall shifts or water becomes scarce, communities rapidly lose income, crops and livestock. SIPRI notes that this directly erodes coping capacity and destabilises households.

The consequences are not purely economic. As he puts it, “if you were a farmer, you lose your livelihood, you lose your farm, you are losing a part of your identity.” Loss of identity and belonging can make recruitment by armed groups more appealing. SIPRI’s analysis reflects this pattern across multiple contexts where livelihood collapse creates openings for non-state actors to position themselves as service providers, protectors or governance intermediaries.

2. Mobility and Displacement Dynamics

Mobility is the second pathway SIPRI identifies. Climate related displacement, Dr Krampe explains, is already reshaping population movement in regions where governance is fragile. He notes that “climate related extreme weather events are a significant driver of internal displacement,” and stresses that it is the internal and regional effects that matter most for security.

He highlights that these dynamics often unfold indirectly. Climate impacts “might actually be dynamics that have an impact in one region, but will play out in a different area or neighbouring region… not immediately, but a year or two years in the future.” This insight is foundational to SIPRI’s mapping of how shifts in pastoral movements, grazing patterns and displacement flows generate pressure in areas that may not themselves be highly climate exposed.

3. Armed Actor Behaviour and Opportunity Structures

The third pathway concerns how armed groups respond to climate stress. As Dr Krampe explains, livelihood loss creates “an ability or opportunity for armed actors to exploit economic hardships and grievances, and recruit for their cause.” However, he emphasises that it is not simply a matter of economics. Armed groups also fill social and psychological gaps: “armed groups are not just filling an economic void, but they are filling an identity void.”

SIPRI’s research shows that in contexts where state institutions are weak, armed actors often step into governance vacuums. They regulate access to water points, grazing areas or farmland and mediate disputes. Dr Krampe notes that these environments are “complicated already, without climate change adding another dimension to it,” which makes the governance function of armed actors more consequential.

4. Political, Economic and Governance Exploitation

The final pathway identified by SIPRI concerns political and economic exploitation. Climate impacts often intensify existing governance shortcomings. Dr Krampe explains that climate stress interacts with “mismanagement,” “resource capture of elite actors,” and displacement dynamics that push people off their land. In these contexts, elites may take advantage of weakened institutions or ambiguous land rights to capture resources that communities rely on. This fuels grievance and erodes trust in the state.

SIPRI documents how such governance failures transform climate shocks into triggers for social tension. Dr Krampe stresses that these interactions require responses that move beyond narrow, single-issue thinking. Europe, he warns, is at risk of adopting “a very narrow” view of security that “makes us immediately feel more secure, but does not make us actually safer.”

Interconnected Risks for European Security

A central theme in the episode is how climate related risks spill across borders and shape Europe’s strategic exposure. Dr Krampe points out that climate impacts rarely remain confined to the places where they occur. Instead, pressures created by drought, displacement or resource scarcity frequently emerge in neighbouring regions or along linked economic and political systems. These delayed and geographically dispersed effects reflect SIPRI’s wider observation that mobility shifts, livelihood disruptions and resource pressures move through networks, not boundaries, and can generate security challenges far from their point of origin.

External evidence reinforces this point. ODI’s analysis of the climate, displacement and conflict nexus in East Africa documents how drought related mobility among pastoralist and agro pastoralist communities in Uganda and Kenya has heightened tensions with host communities and reshaped local settlement and movement patterns. These dynamics resemble the pathways described by SIPRI, where climate impacts on livelihoods and mobility in one area contribute to security pressures elsewhere.

Europe is already experiencing internal manifestations of climate stress. According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), weather and climate related events caused more than seven hundred and ninety billion euros in economic losses across 38 EEA member and cooperating countries between 1980 and 2023. The EEA also reports that extreme heat contributed to over sixty thousand deaths across Europe in 2022. These hazards, together with flooding, water scarcity and infrastructure strain, increasingly influence domestic policy and internal security planning.

Dr Krampe highlights that Europe’s current spending patterns do not reflect the scale of climate related security risks. He notes that “funding, finance to fragile and conflict affected states was minimal. This is decreasing further,” and stresses that Europe’s overall financial capacity is not the issue, explaining that “there is money. I think it is a matter of prioritising it.” His concerns align with the 2025 edition of I4CE’s ‘State of Europe’s Climate Investment‘, which reports that the EU invested approximately €498 billion in climate related measures in 2023, while meeting the EU’s 2030 climate objectives will require around €842 billion annually. This leaves a €344 billion investment gap. The report identifies significant shortfalls in sectors central to climate resilience, including buildings, transport and energy systems, underscoring the level of financing needed to reduce Europe’s structural vulnerability to accelerating climate impacts.

In his World Economic Forum opinion piece, Dr Krampe notes that climate related disasters are already increasing military deployments for disaster response across Europe, disrupting training cycles and placing strain on equipment and infrastructure. He argues that climate impacts are becoming a structural pressure on defence readiness, and that rising defence spending should be used to develop climate resilient, dual-use technologies that strengthen both military preparedness and civilian response capacity. This perspective aligns with recent analysis from Bruegel, which highlights the need for European defence planning to incorporate climate resilience, supply chain security and climate informed capability development. Dr Krampe also emphasises that European supply chains remain vulnerable to climate shocks in production regions abroad, making adaptation and resilience essential strategic priorities.

Institutional Gaps and Policy Fragmentation

Dr Krampe is clear that Europe’s institutional architecture is struggling to keep pace with climate related risks. He describes the structural constraint directly, noting that “the European Union is huge. It is a beast. It is very difficult to move things. It is not an agile organisation.” At the same time, he acknowledges that the EU “is actually doing quite a lot in the field,” even if this progress is uneven and slowed by internal coordination issues.

He also highlights the pressures created by competing priorities. There is, he explains, “a necessary re-arming going on, and there is necessary support to Ukraine,” but this shift “is taking resources away” from other strategic needs, including long-term climate risk management. Funding for fragile and conflict affected states, he adds, “was minimal” even before these pressures intensified, and it “is decreasing further.”

Public analysis reflects these challenges. The EEA notes that, although national adaptation strategies exist across Europe, implementation often lags behind the pace of growing climate risks. The EEA highlights persistent barriers including unclear institutional responsibilities, limited local capacity and gaps in funding and monitoring. These findings reinforce the core issue raised by Dr Krampe: European institutions recognise the risks, but fragmented responsibilities, budget pressures and slow operational processes continue to constrain the depth and speed of climate security implementation.

Private Sector Exposure

Private sector exposure is another central thread in the episode. Dr Krampe emphasises that European companies are directly linked to climate sensitive regions through their production networks and supply chains. Using H&M as an example, he explains that “a lot of the production is happening in Bangladesh” and notes that increasing climate impacts there create a significant “risk factor for the supply chains.” He stresses that these disruptions are not abstract, pointing out that severe flooding or other climate related shocks can close factories, disrupt exports and reduce a country’s ability to absorb and respond to extreme weather events.

He also highlights that climate shocks do not affect markets uniformly. In South Asia, he explains, climate related stress tends to manifest through “mass protests and riots,” while in contexts like Somalia or Mali it often appears through “community violent level violence.” This divergence matters for European firms because it shapes the type of instability that can interrupt production, transport routes and labour availability across different regions where companies operate.

Dr Krampe further notes that, in fragile settings, climate pressures add another layer of volatility for businesses already operating in complex markets. He describes how climate related economic stress can influence grievances, mobility and local stability, all of which affect commercial environments. These dynamics underscore his broader point that climate change is “increasing the risk of conflict of violence,” which in turn affects the resilience and predictability of business operations in climate exposed regions.

SIPRI’s 2025 ‘Climate-resilient Investment in Fragile and Conflict-affected Situations: Opportunities for Business?’ research policy paper, co-authored by Dr Krampe, illustrates this empirically. The report shows how climate extremes can shutter factories, damage infrastructure and undermine local market stability, creating operational and financial risks for companies. It also identifies opportunities for resilience-building investment in renewable energy, early warning systems and water infrastructure, including examples from eastern DRC and south-central Somalia where such projects improved energy access and reduced resource tensions.

Taken together, the episode and SIPRI’s analysis point toward a consistent message: climate risk is not peripheral to corporate strategy. It affects supply chains, production hubs and market stability, making climate adaptation and resilience an essential component of long-term business planning.

Conclusion

Climate pressure is reshaping European and global security in ways that demand integrated, long-term approaches. Dr Krampe demonstrated how climate impacts amplify fragility, drive livelihood collapse and heighten cross-border tensions.

EU-supported evidence reinforces that Europe’s climate security exposure is not only imported from climate sensitive regions but also shaped by its internal vulnerabilities. It shows that climate and environmental stressors become security risks when they intersect with domestic conditions such as uneven governance, ageing or inadequate infrastructure, social fragmentation and limited coping capacities. These structural factors determine whether societies can absorb or mitigate shocks. At the same time, Europe is directly affected by climate impacts and political instability beyond its borders through pathways such as food price volatility, disrupted supply chains, displacement and conflict in fragile states. Regions such as the Sahel, North Africa and parts of the Middle East and Asia play a significant role in shaping Europe’s external risk environment. Europe’s overall climate security profile therefore reflects a dual structure: internal vulnerabilities that heighten the impact of domestic hazards, and external pressures that cascade back into the EU through economic, political and security channels.

Dr Krampe stresses that Europe’s ability to manage climate related security risks hinges on how effectively it navigates competing demands. He points out that governments face “a limited pool of cash” and must make difficult choices about where resources are directed. While recognising the need to address immediate security concerns, he warns that such reallocations are “taking resources away” from addressing climate driven vulnerabilities.

Climate impacts are already visible across Europe, and he cautions that treating security through a narrow lens fails to account for risks that are “already affecting our security” through severe weather events, resource pressures and new demands on institutions.

Dr Krampe argues that European leaders will need “a broad, comprehensive and integrated response,” one that recognises how climate pressures interact with economic systems, political decisions and cross-border dynamics. Narrow approaches may offer short-term reassurance, but as he puts it, they “do not make us actually safer.”

In his view, genuine security in a climate-stressed era will require long-term thinking, sustained investment and a willingness to treat climate risk as a central strategic concern rather than a peripheral one.