Before the Storm: Why Preventive Diplomacy Must Be at the Heart of Climate Action
María Fernanda Espinosa, former President of the 73rd UN General Assembly and Ecuador's Minister of Foreign Affairs and National Defence, now leads GWL Voices as Executive Director. With over 30 years in academia and international diplomacy, Espinosa is a recognised authority on global governance.
As the climate crisis accelerates, so too does a quieter but equally alarming issue: the failure of global diplomacy to anticipate and prevent climate-induced instability. This is not only hampering our collective ability to respond to escalating shocks, but it also risks undermining the multilateral system itself.
The signs are impossible to ignore. Over the past year, nearly four billion people endured at least one extra month of extreme heat, according to Climate Central. In the past weeks, floods in Nigeria claimed over 100 lives, while a glacial landslide struck the centuries-old Swiss village of Blatten.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization reports record-breaking temperatures on land and sea, and the UN warns of rapid glacier loss and worsening water stress. These are not isolated events. They are part of a broader pattern of intensifying and recurring climate crises that almost always disproportionately affect the most vulnerable.
Despite decades of diplomatic engagement, including nearly thirty UN Conferences of the Parties (COPs), emissions continue to rise, climate shocks deepen, and displacement grows. Yet, our international response remains stuck in a reactive loop: climate crises trigger expressions of sympathy, emergency pledges, and temporary commitments, until the next disaster demands attention.
Too often, we respond too late and with tools that are no longer fit for purpose.
The current framework of climate diplomacy, including COPs, require a profound retooling. Decisions are made at the eleventh hour, when political tensions and national interests are most entrenched. Negotiations are becoming increasingly complex, difficult to navigate. Accountability and implementation mechanisms remain elusive. In such conditions, compromise narrows, urgency overrides foresight.
At the same time, the chronic underfunding of climate adaptation and humanitarian preparedness continues to leave frontline communities exposed. Between 2018 and 2022, annual climate finance more than doubled from $674 billion to $1.46 trillion, but that still falls far short of the trillions needed annually to stay within the 1.5°C target.
Yet prevention works. The UN has long held that every $1 invested in disaster risk reduction can save up to $15 in post-crisis recovery. From early warning systems and climate-resilient infrastructure to drought-resistant crops and flood defences, the tools for anticipatory action exist. The missing elements are political commitment to make these issues a priority and diplomatic structures to coordinate effective action.
This is where climate diplomacy must evolve from reactive response to preventive engagement. We need a new generation of diplomatic tools, centred on foresight and early action. That means embedding climate risk assessments in peacebuilding strategies, linking humanitarian response with long-term adaptation planning, and creating regional platforms for dialogue before tensions escalate into conflict.
Preventive diplomacy, the use of dialogue, mediation, and early action to reduce tensions before they become crises, is not a new concept. But its application to the climate crisis is long overdue. Climate-driven insecurity is no longer hypothetical; it is unfolding in real time. And yet, our diplomatic strategies remain one step behind.
This is not just a matter of environmental stewardship. It is a matter of peace and security. The impacts of a deepening climate crisis already exacerbate existing inequalities, resource competition, and displacement. Without preventive mechanisms, these stressors can accelerate instability, trigger violence, and undermine development gains.
London Climate Action Week offers a timely opportunity to bridge this gap. As the Bonn climate negotiations continue to lay essential groundwork, London Climate Action Week propels this momentum forward with solutions and partnerships that will prove vital on the road to COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
As a major forum that brings together a broad coalition of actors outside the formal constraints of UN negotiations, this platform is uniquely positioned to champion proactive and prevention-focused approaches.
This means dismantling the institutional barriers that segregate climate policy, humanitarian response, and peacebuilding into distinct policy areas. As integrated solutions are essential in a world of intersecting crises.
A key step forward would be the creation of regional dialogues or working groups dedicated to climate-conflict prevention. These mechanisms could enhance early warning systems, improve coordination across sectors, and foster trust-building before tensions reach a boiling point. They would bring climate foresight into the core of multilateral diplomacy, not as a side event, but as a central pillar of global stability.
Crucially, this is also a moment to reimagine how diplomacy itself functions. Traditional diplomatic processes tend to be slow, reactive, and state-centred. Yet, climate shocks demand agility, anticipatory thinking, and multistakeholder engagement. They require us to negotiate not just between governments, but across systems, linking science, finance, civil society, and local leadership.
This shift is far from easy. It will require reforms to multilateral institutions, new mandates and the political decision to sustainably work on the climate-security nexus, and far greater investment in preventative action. But the alternative, a continued cycle of disaster, displacement, and delayed response, is not sustainable.
Ultimately, the future of climate diplomacy will not be determined by how well countries and communities -especially the most vulnerable- recover from the next climate shock, but by whether we can prevent it in the first place. The choices we make now, to prevent greater climate catastrophes by reducing emissions drastically and swiftly , by cooperating more and better, and by ensuring that the resources, technologies and capacity reach everyone everywhere, will define our capacity to uphold peace, justice, and multilateral cooperation in a warming world.
