Main page content

Green Central Asia: Enhancing environment, climate and water resilience

28 January 2020
Berlin, Germany

Climate change poses a growing security risk in Central Asia and Afghanistan, where it has a particularly severe impact on glaciers and natural resources such as water, land and soil. As part of a preventive and stabilising foreign policy, the Federal Foreign Office launched Green Central Asia, a regional initiative on climate and security in the region on 28 January 2020.

The aim of the initiative is to support a dialogue in the region on climate change and the risks associated with it, thus fostering regional integration between the six countries involved. In particular, it aims to create better access to information and risk analyses to enable countries to assess the impact of climate change more accurately and to take preventive measures.

At the same time, dialogues and workshops will increase decision-makers’ abilities to address climate change-related security risks adequately at the national and regional levels. Scientific collaboration will support the expansion of national expertise, with the aim of identifying adequate solutions to the challenges posed by climate change. A high-level political dialogue on the nexus between climate change and security, as relevant to foreign policy, will actively support the implementation of Green Central Asia.

Green Central Asia will play a part in implementing the new EU strategy on Central Asia, which was adopted by the European Council on 17 June 2019. Among other things, this strategy focuses on strengthening countries’ resilience to internal and external risk factors such as climate and environmental factors.