Episode 291: Climate Insecurity, Conflict, and Europe's Expanding Risk Perimeter with Dr Florian Krampe

Today, Dominic Bowen hosts Dr Florian Krampe on The International Risk Podcast to examine how climate insecurity is reshaping conflict dynamics, governance pressures, and Europe’s expanding risk perimeter. They discuss how environmental stress interacts with fragility, why climate impacts compound existing vulnerabilities, and how these pressures influence patterns of violence, mobility, and institutional strain across regions from the Sahel and the Horn of Africa to South Asia and Europe. Together they explore how climate change acts as a risk multiplier, deepening livelihood insecurity, affecting the legitimacy of state institutions, and altering the operational landscape for policymakers and businesses.

Dr Krampe outlines the pathways through which climate variability translates into insecurity, explaining how deteriorating livelihoods, internal displacement, armed actor behaviour, and resource exploitation shape conflict environments. The conversation highlights the challenges facing regional and European institutions as they attempt to incorporate climate-security into policy and operational planning, including issues of institutional fragmentation, competing priorities, and the diversion of resources. Dr Krampe also discusses the implications for Europe’s strategic posture, supply chains, and the growing need to understand climate impacts not only as external pressures but as domestic security concerns.

Dr Florian Krampe is the Director of Studies, Peace and Development at the SIPRI and the Acting Director of SIPRI’s Climate Change and Risk Programme. His work examines the intersection of climate change, environmental stress, fragility, and security, providing analysis that informs international organisations, governments, and regional actors. His research focuses on how climate impacts interact with governance capacity, peacebuilding processes, and long-term resilience, and he has contributed to some of SIPRI’s leading frameworks for understanding climate-related security risks.

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker, or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe's business leaders. Dominic is the go-to business advisor for leaders navigating risk, crisis, and strategy; trusted for his clarity, calmness under pressure, and ability to turn volatility into competitive advantage. Dominic equips today’s business leaders with the insight and confidence to lead through disruption and deliver sustained strategic advantage.

The International Risk Podcast – Reducing risk by increasing knowledge.

Transcript

[00:00:01] Florian: It's a moment where in Europe, in my perspective, quite shortsighted that we try to reduce everything to singular threat.

[00:00:08] Florian: Ignoring that there are the other risks at the horizon. Not just on the horizon actually already affecting our security. We spoke mostly about how the climate change is impacting countries in the global south, but climate change is already impacting Europe.

[00:00:25]

[00:00:35] Dominic: Hi, I'm Dominic Bowen, host of the International Risk Podcast, and today we're joined by Dr. Florian. He's the Director of Climate Change and Risk Program at SIPRI, and he's here to discuss the expanding risk perimeter facing European leaders today from Mali to the DRC. Climate change is no longer just a development issue, it's a accelerant of international risk.

[00:00:56] Dominic: Environmental degradation is undermining state legitimacy. In many cases, it's fueling extremist violence in many countries, and it's triggering mass displacement in countless locations. As the European Union steps up its climate security agenda, there's fragmented responses and sometimes blind spots that risk making the situation worse.

[00:01:16] Dominic: And for business leaders, the message is really clear. Climate's not just an ESG issue, it's a core strategic risk that all business leaders need to be considering, and for policymakers, it's a question of credibility. How do you actually promote global resilience at the same time when data showing that we're still falling drastically short in our commitments?

[00:01:35] Dominic: Florian's work really has been fantastic and it's wide ranging and he's supported UN bodies, national governments. And the work he's doing really sits at the nexus of the questions which we've mentioned. And today I'm really keen to explore with Florian how climate insecurity is reshaping international risks.

[00:01:52] Dominic: And what are the political, commercial, institutional opportunities for different actors across Europe. Dr Florian, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.

[00:02:00] Florian: Thank you for having me. When we talk about climate change, it's often discussed as a development issue or an environmental one, but from the work of yours that I've seen, it seems to also be a core security challenge.

[00:02:14] Dominic: Between the year 2020–22, climate related disasters in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa caused over 11 billion dollars in losses and affected over 150 million people, and with just two degrees of global warming we expect the projected costs of climate change to cost at least 160 billion by the year 2050.

[00:02:35] Dominic: Can you walk us through how environmental fragility is influencing these conflict dynamics and why this should matter to European institutions?

[00:02:43] Florian: I think excellent numbers already that you put out there and very much indicating the business case for this. The key concern that we see in our research is that climate change is changing the security landscape. So it's not a development issue. It is also a development issue, but it is also a business issue, an economic issue, and it is a security issue increasingly. In various places in the Sahel, in the Horn of Africa, in the Middle East, South Asia. But we actually see that also within Europe.

[00:03:09] Florian: Some of the key dynamics that we see is that climate change is compounding the hardship of already highly vulnerable population. So it's not necessarily direct cause. It's always difficult to attribute one cause especially to conflicts. The way we talk about this is more in the way that climate change is increasing the risk of conflict, of violence. But how this is playing out is very different in different locations, in different settings. It might actually be dynamics that have an impact in one region, but will play out in a different area or neighbouring region. And it might play out not immediately, but it might play out a year or two years in the future.

[00:03:49] Dominic: If we're talking about risks that are not today, they might be a year, they might be in two years, and it's difficult to ascribe cause and it might not be happening in central or Western Europe. How do we encourage European business leaders, the communities, political advisors and politicians to recalibrate what is potentially right now seen as an external risk or a risk that's in the future?

[00:04:10] Florian: The key is increasing the knowledge and understanding of how these dynamics play out and finding the language and framing that resonates with policymakers or with business leaders. Sometimes they speak very different languages and I think our work is tailored in, okay, so how do we take the complexity of climate change impacting security in Mali or in Somalia, and how do we translate that into something that a policymaker can work with?

[00:04:40] Dominic: You mentioned Mali and Somalia. So whether you're a politician or a business leader, we all understand conflict. We all understand that both Mali and Somalia have had devastating conflicts for a very, very long time, multi decades, and many of the armed groups operating across Somalia and Somalia, but many other climate stressed areas also suffer from weak governance. How do you see the direct pressure of climate change fuelling the capacity, fuelling the legitimacy of these actors? And what does this mean for the security calculus for European Union institutions?

[00:05:13] Florian: I think to start off there is how do we understand how is climate change impacting those populations in Mali or in Somalia? The way we try to explain it and make it accessible is by using a pathway model. So we're not talking about causal mechanisms, but we're talking about pathways and those relate very closely to governance challenges.

[00:05:34] Florian: All of those, I mean, I'll come to that in a moment, maybe in terms of the response, but just maybe to go through how climate change is impacting the security dynamics. We have four pathways. One is deteriorating livelihood conditions. And here the fundamental point is to identify the different vulnerabilities. That's why the impacts are also different from Europe. Europe has a coping capacity on the governance side with these shocks, but also European societies are much less dependent on critical employment sectors that are dependent on climate or on weather.

[00:06:00] Florian: In that case, but if you take the case of DRC, 60% of people in DRC are dependent on the agricultural sector. 80% in Afghanistan, 72% in Somalia. So if you have climate related impacts that directly impact the agricultural sector, you are deteriorating livelihoods and that is a tremendous economic challenges for people.

[00:06:13] Florian: The second pathway that we are talking about is migration and mobility. And we see that climate related extreme weather events are a significant driver of internal displacement specifically, but also into neighbouring region. It's less a problem that climate change is causing migration to Europe. But the challenges that internal displacement because of climate related events is causing in cases like the DRC with 6.4 million internally displaced people is of course tremendous. They are flooding or getting into different regions. And we are starting to see more frictions and resource depletion in those cases just through the mere influx of a large number of displaced people.

[00:07:08] Florian: Important here is that both climate change and conflict are displacing people. And so we have these compounding factors and we need to take both into account. Just to briefly add then the two other pathways, and then we can jump to the governance and maybe the response question.

[00:07:24] Florian: The third pathway here is how it's impacting military and armed actors. And that goes back to your question also. We see an opportunity if livelihoods are affected, you lose your job, you lose your land, you don't have economic opportunities. There is an ability or opportunity for armed actors to exploit economic hardships and grievances and recruit for their cause.

[00:07:47] Florian: But it's not that simple. We have the economic hardship and the economic argument, but there is an additional factor that if you were a farmer, you lose your livelihood, you lose your farm, you're losing a part of your identity. So what we see actually in the research in various cases is also an indication that armed groups are not just filling an economic void, but they're filling an identity void.

[00:08:08] Florian: And that makes it much more complex because that means we cannot just ensure economically the response, but we have to consider that there's bigger identity dynamics at heart that we also need to take into account. Lastly, political and economic exploitation, mismanagement. It leads to driving people off their lands, taking over land when people are displaced, driving frictions between the population, resource capture of elite actors.

[00:08:34] Florian: So those are the four pathways we have seen now in multiple cases that are really increasing the security implications of climate change.

[00:08:42] Dominic: That's quite a lot. They are quite significant issues and I think all of them in themselves would make their own podcasts. I wonder, and we'll come back to some of them, if we look at Europe's response to that in 2023

[00:08:53] Dominic: The European Union had the joint communication on climate security nexus, and this was about integrating environmental peace building into foreign policy of nation states and across the European Union. I think a lot of people are very concerned about how slow the European members of NATO have been and how slow the Europe has been largely in response to Russia's increased aggression, not just to Ukraine, but right across Europe.

[00:09:18] Dominic: And I think this is perhaps also mirrored that there has been implementation of this joint communication in relation to foreign policy. But from what I understand, implementation remains really patchy, especially across fragile states like Mali and Sudan, we haven't yet spoken about Sudan, widely credited as one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes around the world.

[00:09:37] Dominic: What are the barriers? Why haven't we achieved more? I mean, the European Union is a huge beast. It's extremely powerful, influential, financed quite well. Why haven't we seen more effective integration of climate security and what are the opportunities you see moving forward to address some of the risks that you just spoke about?

[00:09:56] Florian: I mean, all credit to the European Union. I think that communication is a really important step. It's a very comprehensive one that goes across different sectors within the European Commission, and it's really outlining a roadmap, address and deal with those issues. One is.

[00:10:13] Florian: Evidence-based analysis and foresight, absolutely important. And an actor like the European Union, of course, with its resources and the European Satellite Center can bring in these different dimensions, both from a natural science side to really study and the political social science side and get the right analysis.

[00:10:31] Florian: But then it's also, as you mentioned, the operationalising it in the field. Also here, I think all credit to the European Union of pushing this agenda forward in multiple cases. Of course, it's the European Union is huge. It's a beast. It's very difficult to move things. It's not an agile organisation.

[00:10:49] Florian: It's actually doing quite a lot in the field. My concern at the moment is that A, we have to give credit at implementing peace building efforts and then on top recognising that we need to link those to climate change and climate security concerns is not easy. It's possible, but of course the context we are operating in and we are concerned with c are really.

[00:11:11] Florian: Complicated. They're complicated already. Without climate change adds another dimension to it. So we need to find ways of operating these complexities and identifying the synergies across different sectors and different silos within those organisations like say EU, but also with partner organisations.

[00:11:28] Florian: The second and third point are related to the point you made about Russian aggression against Ukraine, which is of course an incredibly important factor and it's an incredibly distracting factor. There is a necessary re-arming going on, and there's a necessary support to Ukraine within the European Union, but at the same time, it's taking resources away.

[00:11:51] Florian: And we see that already before funding, finance to fragile and conflict affected states was minimal. This is decreasing further. And at the same time we see that the European Union had all this excellent frameworks. But then if you look at some of the new documents that are coming out, the defence roadmaps, or white paper on defence, from a couple of months ago, climate change doesn't show up.

[00:12:14] Florian: And that is my worry at the moment that we are forgetting climate change in this equation because we recognised all these issues before we recognised climate change as an issue. The same with NATO. NATO recognised climate change as a fundamental security threat to the alliance. And within the last year specifically, I think it's becoming very silent. Both the EU, both NATO on those issues.

[00:12:37] Dominic: I think that's a really important point. What’s your opinion? And I know SIPRI produces a lot of fantastic research on the topics related to this, but how do and how should policymakers weigh, because of course we only have a limited amount of revenue that can be allocated to roads, hospitals, education, and of course we all want the money allocated to the areas that are most concerned to us.

[00:12:58] Dominic: That's what we do. We're humans, and that's fine. We all understand that. But how should politicians be looking at that when they've got a limited pool of cash and there is an illegal invasion of Ukraine going on? Europe is sorely under depleted when it comes to its military capabilities. But as you said, that is also recognised that a significant threat to European member states comes from climate change.

[00:13:17] Dominic: How should governments be prioritising the limited funds that they do have?

[00:13:21] Florian: I think we should keep perspective on the proportionality here. What are we talking when we talk about development assistance? That's like the aim is 0.7 percent and we just increased the NATO commitment from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP. So there's money. I think it's a matter of prioritising it, and it's a moment where in Europe, in my perspective, quite shortsighted that we try to reduce everything to singular threat.

[00:13:46] Florian: Ignoring that there are the other risks at the horizon. Not just on the horizon actually already affecting our security. We spoke mostly about how the climate change is impacting countries in the global south, but climate change is already impacting Europe. We are seeing severe weather events, floods, heat waves in Sweden.

[00:14:07] Florian: Now several communities. I mean, you wouldn't think of Sweden as a drought stricken country, but several communities have water shortages. Those are all factors that are already impacting us today. Now, on top of that, we are like, okay, this is wider societal issues. But no, actually some of those are actual security issues.

[00:14:24] Florian: We're deploying the military to respond to flooding in Spain, in Poland. Just last year we had the deployment and in other cases as well, so we are depleting. Or we're using the resources, we are interrupting training circles of the military, we're using equipment that is not necessarily intended for those cases.

[00:14:42] Florian: And putting strain on that. At the same time, if you look at the Arctic, you're seeing such a drastically changing environment where climate change and the melting of the permafrost is impacting radar stations. It's impacting runway stability. That is part of our security. That is part of the security that we are trying to build up framed in this singular threat as Russia, but we're missing the side that climate change is actually undermining that part of the security already.

[00:15:06] Dominic: Thanks for explaining that. And you mentioned before context like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Afghanistan where up to 80 percent of the population relies on weather sensitive livelihoods and agriculture, and these climate shocks are not only disrupting agriculture, but they're providing that fertile grounds where social contracts are collapsing and armed groups are able to help people re-identify instead of as a farmer, as a fighter and someone standing up for a certain cause and now they at least have some form of income.

[00:15:26] Dominic: I think we all understand the risk that that poses. So how should European policymakers and business leaders be rethinking their engagement in regions across Africa, across the Middle East, across west and South Asia? Not just as humanitarian lenses and donations, but also in terms of investments and stability and mobility, governments and market resilience.

[00:15:55] Florian: I think we need to identify, a, we need to recognise those risks and we need to.

[00:16:00] Florian: Recognise that we need a broad, comprehensive, and integrated response. Some of those dynamics seem very far away. Why do I care about DRC? Well, but DRC is of course a major source of critical minerals that we need in Europe, that we need for the green transition. It's a counterweight to the critical mineral extraction from China.

[00:16:20] Florian: So that matters. Let's take a major Swedish company like H and M. So without being an expert on H and M supply chain, but a lot of the production is happening in Bangladesh, so increasing climate impact in Bangladesh, that's maybe less a security issue per se, but it's a risk factor for the supply chains of a company like H and M.

[00:16:41] Florian: If you have severe flooding in Bangladesh, which is increasing because of climate change and the impacts, you have the risks of factories being closed, the risks of the inability of a country to deal with these extreme weather events is stirring grievances, and we see specifically in South Asia that some of these security dynamics are not playing out in the same way that they do in Somalia or Mali, where it's more on community violent level violence. In South Asia,

[00:17:00] Florian: It's more around mass protests and riots. And that has an implication for a company like H and M. So I think it's something we need to recognise that is obviously different from company to company. But there's a need on the business side to recognise how climate change is impacting our supply chains.

[00:17:26] Florian: Take Yemen again as an example here. Not that the conflict in Yemen is caused by climate change, but climate change is a factor in the conflict in Yemen. Then we have the implications of closed shipping routes from that conflict. I think that is where these risks need to be accounted for and need to be taken into account.

[00:17:44] Florian: But there's also the flip side, right? You can look at the opportunities.

[00:17:47] Dominic: Exactly. There's so many risks and opportunities when it comes to this, and I'd love to hear from you. Even though, as you said before, 6.4 million people displaced just in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and this has caused huge strains on communities, on resources. And this has fuelled recruitment by a variety of armed groups that are offering income, identity, and protection.

[00:18:07] Dominic: But as you said, many, many countries have got very significant interest in the Democratic Republic because of their natural resources. I'm wondering if you've seen any concrete policies or private sector interventions that have been really successful in breaking this loop between displacement, economic marginalisation and violence and, you know, what are the opportunities for Europe to be able to minimise this elite capture of profits and further deepening local grievances and instead, breaking that cycle. Have you seen any good examples of where corporate actors or governments have intervened?

[00:18:38] Florian: I think there are great opportunities in that space and we could look at a case like Somalia.

[00:18:44] Florian: Where we see that actors like IOM and the interventions that the International Organization for Migration is driving is directly getting at the heart of some of those livelihood challenges. There are opportunities to the development of solar, renewable energies, which take some of the resource tensions out of it. A lot of issues and environmental damage in Somalia is around charcoal trade. And if you can enter that through or taking some of those needs for charcoal and through supplying different fuels and different opportunities out of the equation, that is a great opportunity that we have to realise and take into account. So solar is a great example.

[00:19:23] Florian: There are great opportunities around regenerative agriculture in this case. And then we have the opportunity and we see that with some of the interventions that IOM is doing and that we're fortunate to accompany and study, that it is actually a positive impact that can be peace enhancing.

[00:19:41] Florian: So we see an interaction and a link here between peace building and climate action that is possible, for instance, through water infrastructure, through local solar hubs that reduce the need for firewood and charcoal, as I mentioned. And there are new business opportunities driving on that. So we need to get this two-way relationship between climate change and peace building or climate action and peace building going and really drive innovation.

[00:20:03] Florian: And I think that is a space also on the business side where European governments and the European institutions need to enable the transfer and encourage the development of innovative solutions. They need to support on the ground the governance structures that we are not ending because those are complicated spaces, right?

[00:20:23] Florian: And some are not open for investment because of the conflict. So that's where peace building is really important so that we resolve some of those conflicts and that we thereby create an opportunity to de-risk areas and open them up for investment and opportunities. And then companies from Europe have great opportunities to bring innovation into those regions, develop new markets, develop new business relationships.

[00:20:48] Florian: And I think that is a really underutilised opportunity and I think we don't have enough examples at this stage. Sometimes I'm also seeing in interactions with the business side that, well, Africa is more, it's a complex market and it's more difficult and it's not seen as an opportunity. And I think that is a lost opportunity actually.

[00:21:07] Florian: There is an opportunity there to develop.

[00:21:10] Dominic: If we go back to the numbers in 2024, there was 295 million people across over 50 countries affected by hunger. And of course, that's an increase on the 2023 numbers. And we saw 140 million people affected by conflict and 96 million people affected by climate related disasters.

[00:21:32] Dominic: I mean, these are huge numbers at CPR. Now, just for our listeners that don't know CPR, fantastic institution. Anyone that studied any international relations or geopolitics or international security will know CPR well. It's the International Peace Research Institute. It's not an environmental organisation, it's not a climate advocacy organisation.

[00:21:49] Dominic: It's a peace research institute, focusing on global arms transfers and military expenditure and nuclear weapons and non proliferation and post-conflict transitions. I mean, the work it does is really, really significant and really important and it's provided this lens to help us understand that, and I believe it's called the Pathways concept, to understand how climate stress actually interacts with peace and security.

[00:22:11] Dominic: And I think this is really interesting how you are really demonstrating that these threats are not single, they're interconnected, they're multifaceted. They feed off and they often compound each other. Can you tell us about the pathways concept and how it helps us understand how climate change and conflict are risk multipliers?

[00:22:28] Florian: Thank you for the kind words about CPR, and I think you put it very correctly. And just to add an element to that, why is an institution like CPR looking at climate change and climate related security risks?

[00:22:40] Florian: And it goes back to this point around a changing security landscape. The climate change and risk programme at CPR that I'm leading has been the last couple of years the biggest programme at CPR. I think that there's a reason for that. Not that the other issues aren't important, but we see increasingly that climate and environmental issues are a significant security concern.

[00:23:01] Florian: We work at the intersection of science and policy, and we do ground research, basic research to uncover new phenomena. But we are also translating. Our job and role is also to translating and making this information accessible to policymakers. And one of the ways to do that for us was this pathway model.

[00:23:23] Florian: Because it gives the structure. Thinking, I mean, as any critical listener will have identified, several of those pathways are interacting. There are dynamics that are moving from one to the other pathway. But it still gives us a structure to think without forcing us into inevitable conclusions, to be too deterministic that climate change will cause conflict.

[00:23:43] Florian: It's a risk factor. We need to acknowledge the risk and we can then identify opportunities for intervention. And the way the pathway model is laid out is that climate change is impacting people's vulnerability and people's vulnerability through these four pathways is impacting security. That gives us immediate entry points. That gives us, on the one hand, the security response in the peace building and the conflict resolution response.

[00:24:09] Florian: It gives us an entry point around people's vulnerability, which is climate adaptation and classical development aid and responses. But of course, there's climate change as a fundamental driver of this. So it also highlights the need and the necessary entry point around climate mitigation. And what we have seen, this resonates quite well.

[00:24:28] Florian: It helps policymakers identify some of those key risk factors in a specific country or region, and then informs their decision making processes.

[00:24:37] Dominic: It's really interesting. Florian, you talked about how the climate change and risk programme at CPR sits at the intersection of science and policy, and it made me think about how business leaders are often sitting at that intersection of risk and consequence or profitability and loss.

[00:24:50] Dominic: But companies are looking at building resilient supply chains. They're genuinely looking at ESG strategies and how to improve. They're forced in many cases to look at climate adaptation, to look at new supply chains, but often this is done without factoring in fragility. It's not considering all the conflict risks that, for example, your programme is looking at, it's often led by someone in an accounting team, for example, as opposed to a geopolitical scientist or a researcher.

[00:25:16] Dominic: What advice would you give to CEOs and executive teams and boards that want to move beyond just compliance? To actually align their operations and their business decisions with the geopolitical realities of a warming world.

[00:25:28] Florian: I think you framed that excellently. It is to recognise that this is not an ESG or compliance issue.

[00:25:35] Florian: It is also, and that is good and that is important, but most of the time that keeps it within, you know, my responsibility within the country I'm operating in, or the wider supply chain. But it is to recognise the risks and recognise the opportunities. I think both are there and I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done and a lot more interaction between policymakers, the research side and the business side.

[00:26:01] Florian: To bring this conversation together because they speak a different language, each of them, and it is to put the problem. The problem is the same for all of them, so let's put the problem in the middle. Let's sit around that table and find the common approaches and relevant dynamics. And I think that there are opportunities for that. A typical factor for a company not to invest in a fragile conflict affected state that is also impacted by climate change. It's like, it's complicated. I don't have a guarantee that this works. It's a high risk investment. A complex market is complex. It's difficult. And I think there is an opportunity and a role the public sector, the government sector needs to play.

[00:26:38] Florian: There are organisations like the African Development Banks that have insurance schemes that are able to mitigate some of those risks. And I think that is where we need to identify the space. What is the opportunities really here? How can we mitigate the risks that are real, but how can we also move beyond.

[00:26:56] Florian: Return on investment that is important. And without that, we're not having a business. But are there bigger societal impacts that are beneficial in the long run, that not immediately have a return, but will have a return in the long run? And position me better.

[00:27:10] Dominic: Thanks for explaining that, Florian. I'd love to hear from you.

[00:27:12] Dominic: When you look around the world, what are the international risks that concern you the most?

[00:27:18] Florian: I mentioned that earlier, obviously European Union. I think the risk at the moment that concerns me most is that we are 

[00:27:24] Florian: Moving from a more comprehensive, broad security conceptualisation back to a very narrow one. And that makes us maybe immediately feel more secure. But from anything I see and can see from the research side, it is not making us actually safer and that concerns me.

[00:27:41] Dominic: I think that's a really solid point. It was only just yesterday I was sitting down with an executive team of a large Swedish company and I had the same conversation with them about, you know, risks are not singular. There is no such thing as a singular risk. We compartmentalise them and we assess them on a singular basis, but the fact is they all influence each other.

[00:27:58] Dominic: So I think that's a very valid point, Florian. So thanks for mentioning that. And thank you very much for coming on the International Risk Podcast.

[00:28:00] Florian: Thanks for having me.

[00:28:12] Dominic: I found that really thought provoking conversation with Dr Florian. He's the Director of Climate Change and Risk Program at SIPRI. I really appreciated the clarity he brought on the international risks, and importantly how European policymakers and business leaders can pursue opportunities that are impacting millions of people now and undoubtedly are impacting Europe already, but will continue to even more in the future. If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the podcast wherever you listen and leave us a review, and you can also subscribe to our biweekly newsletter for more expert interviews and curated global risk analysis.

[00:28:38] Dominic: This episode was produced and coordinated by Katerina Mazzucchelli. I'm Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening.