Anthropolitics - Olivia Lazard

Europa2057 Lecture Climate change is not merely intensifying disasters and resource scarcity. It is fundamentally reorganizing the ecological foundations of geopolitical power: water, fertile soils, agricultural productivity, habitable territories and strategic resources. As climate niches shift, so too does the geography of economic opportunity, political leverage and strategic advantage. This lecture introduces climate-niche geopolitics to examine how planetary transformations are reshaping the European security landscape and the balance of power between Europe and Russia. Drawing on agro-climatic projections, biogeographical modelling and Russian strategic doctrine, it explores a consequential asymmetry: Europe's ecological foundations are weakening, while Russia anticipates converting its changing ecological endowment into geopolitical lever-age. These developments threaten to redistribute productive capacity within Europe, deepen strategic dependencies, undermine political cohesion and transform the territorial logic of security and competition.