ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explains the test of the commitments of one such set of actors, the European Union (EU) and its member states. It proposes a set of operational guidelines for assessing EU climate security policy. The book's rationale has been to move debate beyond broad-brush predictions of how climate change will affect security towards an assessment of how security policies have begun to respond in practice to these challenges. It outlines the processes and identities that have defined the EU's role in foreign and security policy and related these to a set of alternative policy outcomes. Very little climate security denial remains amongst European politicians and diplomats; the doubts over climate change's strategic impact that were outlined resonate little among policy-makers. The mix of 'rivalry' and 'cooperation' dynamics is integrally related to the EU's sui generis security identity mapped out in the book.
