Berlin
Peace Dialogue
2022

Recognising crises at an early stage to identify and to provide precise precautionary measures in conjunction with adequate prevention measures and crisis management become more and more important. Despite improvements of the related awareness architecture, again and again we seem to be caught by surprise. Therefore, during this workshop, the current national and institutional structures, formats, mechanisms and instruments of early warning shall be scrutinized. Some of the crucial questions are: What was the added value of previous, rather quantitative methods of early crisis detection? Are Instruments, mechanisms, formats and structures to handle these problems sufficient? Do the current structures, mechanisms and formats allow the timely information exchange to the leadership on the strategic level? How do we process and transport Information in such a way that knowledge reaches the political level? What are possible links between early warning and early action?

Panelists:
– Colonel Ralf Feldotto, Head of Division SE I 3 Early Crisis Detection, Federal Ministry of Defence
– Hans-Christian Mangelsdorf, Chief Data Scientist, Federal Foreign Office
– Dr Florence Gaub, Foresight Advisor, Council of the European Union

Rapporteur:
– Philipp Rotmann, Director, Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi)

Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has put existing practices of German and European civilian crisis prevention and peacebuilding to test. What does the failure of diplomacy, dialogue, and cooperation offers teach us for other conflict constellations? Which instruments have, despite the Russian role in the region, nonetheless proven useful and under which scope conditions? What are the limitations of civilian crisis prevention and peacebuilding and to what extent do their instruments need to be coordinated with military preparedness and measures in the future?

Panelists:
– Dr Sebastian Relitz, Founder & Director, Corridors – Dialogue through Cooperation
– Dr Kristi Raik, Director, Estonian Foreign Policy Institute
– Stefan Melle, Executive Director, DRA

Reflections:
– Matthias Lüttenberg, Director for Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Federal Foreign Office
– Henning Plate, Head of the Division for Crisis management, transitional development assistance, reconstruction, infrastructure in crisis situations, German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Facing the inadequacy of multilateral rules-based order and multilateral frameworks and recognizing the need for universal regulation of global challenges, we need to ask ourselves: which institutional structures, agreements, or approaches are fit to strengthen European and global peace and security order for the future? How would a new peace and security architecture look like? In order for international institutions, instruments and structures to be effective, what are the relationships we need to seed credibility and pave the way toward conflict transformation? How can we make the existing systems (UN, OSCE) work better? Where have current instruments of conflict transformation, including mediation, dialogue and negotiation deem helpful and what improvement and revisions do we need to seek to gain resilience for a peace and justice discourse? How to strengthen mutual understanding and complementarity between “hard” and “soft” approaches?

Panelists:
– Tuula Yrjölä, Director, OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre
– Andrew Gilmour, Executive Director, Berghof Foundation

Commentators:
– Jonathan Cohen, Director, Conciliation Resources
– Professor Dr Lars Kirchhoff, Institute for Conflict Management at European University Viadrina & mediation hub in a joint project with the Federal Foreign Office

Rapporteur:
– Rachel Gasser, Senior Project Manager, Berghof

The Russian war of aggression has given new impetus to the international debate on energy security, climate protection and renewable energies. While a year ago the connection between climate protection and energy security played a subordinate role in public perception, it now occupies a central position in political and social debates. At the same time, we are witnessing more and more consequences of the climate crisis: forest fires are igniting, biodiversity is being destroyed, and famines are becoming more frequent. The transition to renewable energies seems inevitable. At the same time, the share of coal-fired power generation in the Federal Republic is growing, and the promise to abolish fossil fuel subsidies has been eroded within the framework of the G7. The technical and social design of the European Green Deal is gaining geopolitical relevance in view of its effects on non-European countries and is setting the course for the European Union’s foreign energy policy in the midst of multiple crises. After all, are dependencies – also in terms of resources and supply chains – really being reduced or are they merely shifting to other regions and countries? These and other questions will be discussed in the workshop “Energy Security and Climate Crisis in the Context of Russia’s War of Aggression”.

Panelists:
– Professor Dr Franziska Holz, Deputy Head of the Energy, Transportation, Environment Department, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)
– Christoph Podewils, Director of Communications, Global Solutions Initiative
– Holger Lösch, Deputy Director General, BDI e. V.
– Heike Thiele, Director for Crisis Prevention and Stabilisation, Federal Foreign Office