Climate security, a necessary debate ahead of the 29-N elections

On September 14th, I had the opportunity to appear, on behalf of GOB, before the committee of the Parliament of Catalonia in charge of processing the bill for urgent measures for climate security protection. Beyond the appearance, that experience reaffirmed my belief in an idea that today seems even more necessary to me. The Balearic Islands also need to open a deep debate on what climate security means and how this concept should guide public policies in the coming years.

The early call for general elections on November 29th offers a good opportunity to move this debate into electoral programs. In fact, the election campaign already seems to have begun. The latest general policy debate in the Parliament of the Balearic Islands had a marked electoral rally character, with a succession of announcements, promises, and investment figures. In contrast, the major environmental and social challenges have occupied a clearly secondary space. The election campaign will accelerate this dynamic even further. It will be very worrying if we once again witness a campaign full of proposals on economy, housing, tourism, energy, infrastructure, and mobility without addressing an issue that conditions them all: how will we guarantee climate, ecological, and social security in the coming decades.

Talking about climate security means going beyond traditional mitigation and adaptation policies. It means asking ourselves which ecological and social conditions we need to preserve so that our territories continue to be habitable in a changing climate. GOB believes that this requires incorporating two inseparable dimensions of climate security: ecological security and social and intergenerational justice. Protecting ourselves against climate change also means preserving functional ecosystems, ensuring the availability of essential resources like water, reducing social vulnerabilities, and avoiding decisions we make today compromising the well-being of future generations.

This way of understanding climate security inevitably leads us to the debate about the biophysical limits of the territory. For decades we have planned development by prioritizing economic, demographic, and infrastructure indicators. But a territory cannot be governed by ignoring the availability of water, the state of the aquifers, the functionality of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, the fertility of the soils, the conservation of biodiversity, and the capacity of the coastline to respond to the impacts of climate change. All these processes contribute to maintaining the conditions that make our quality of life possible and, ultimately, the habitability of the Islands, especially in a context of climate change.

These limits should not be reduced to a generic statement about the need to protect the environment and people. We need to identify the essential ecological processes that sustain the habitability of the territory and have indicators that allow us to know their state and evolution. Based on the available scientific knowledge, we can begin to establish reference values, thresholds, and safety margins that help us identify the points at which the pressures we exert on natural systems compromise their functionality.

In the Balearic Islands, this perspective is especially necessary. In an island territory subject to high tourist pressure, knowing these limits would allow for evaluating to what extent economic activity remains within the ecological and social capacity of the territory. It would also allow for anticipating how this capacity may be altered in various scenarios of climate change and tourist pressure, and for incorporating this information into planning and decision-making.

But facing these challenges does not mean starting from zero. The Balearic Islands have already taken important steps that we should preserve and develop. The Citizens' Assembly for Climate demonstrated that it is possible to build ambitious proposals based on social deliberation and scientific knowledge, many of which remain pending effective translation into public policies. And Law 10/2023, on well-being for present and future generations, promoted by the GOB, introduced a long-term perspective aimed at incorporating intergenerational justice into decision-making. Precisely for this reason, the GOB has conditioned its reincorporation into the Pact for Sustainability on the recovery of articles 7 and 8 of this law, repealed in 2024 with the support of the PP and Vox, which established mechanisms to evaluate the impact of budgets and public policies on the well-being of present and future generations. Talking about sustainability does not only imply promoting new measures within the framework of the Pact, but also not dismantling what we already have and preserving the instruments that allow principles to be converted into verifiable commitments.

In view of the November 29th elections, we ask all political forces to incorporate climate, ecological, and social security as a transversal principle of their programs and public policies. This implies assuming that the Islands have biophysical limits and that, in a situation of ecological and social oversaturation, it is not enough to talk about containment. If we have repeatedly demanded policies oriented towards reducing pressures on the territory and natural resources from Marga Prohens' Government, we must also demand that the future State government assumes its responsibilities. Decisions regarding strategic infrastructures such as airports and ports, regarding capacity, expansions, and the investments made there, cannot be taken regardless of the effects on highly touristified island territories. Incorporating biophysical limits into these decisions would be an essential step for state policies to be coherent with climate security objectives and the need to guarantee the habitability of the Islands.

In this context, access to housing is particularly relevant. Without decent and climatically adapted housing, it is difficult to build rooted and resilient communities capable of facing the challenges that lie ahead. A society in which an increasing part of the population has difficulty accessing decent housing is also a society more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. For this reason, a climate security policy cannot be limited to reducing environmental risks or adapting to them. It must also avoid new forms of exclusion and ensure that the costs and benefits of adaptation are distributed fairly. Social cohesion, access to housing, and intergenerational justice are also part of the necessary conditions to guarantee the habitability of the Islands.

The electoral campaign that is now beginning should not be limited to a competition of advertisements, promises, and investment figures. The 29th of November should also serve to debate what future we want for the Islands, aware that many of the decisions made during the coming legislature will have environmental, territorial, and social consequences that will go far beyond the next four years. Incorporating climate security, biophysical limits, and intergenerational justice into this debate means deciding which conditions we want to preserve so that Mallorca and the Islands as a whole continue to be habitable. This is, probably, one of the main commitments we have to present and future generations.