Speech by Foreign Minister Wadephul at the Berlin Climate and Security Conference 2026

Ladies and gentlemen, Colleagues, Guests, This is how we could sum up the reporting of recent weeks and months on “Super El Niño”. To my mind, crises do not need a special name to give us cause for concern.  Because even without superlatives, we can already see how increasingly extreme weather conditions are affecting and deepening many crises and conflicts worldwide. And we are seeing actors trying to turn this to their own advantage. In a perfidious manner, they are using the impacts of climate change as a weapon. In April, we met here in Berlin for the third Sudan Conference.  Together with the international community and civil society actors, we sought political solutions for a future Sudan and gathered humanitarian support for the Sudanese people. Today, we see that the lack of rainfall in Sudan is intensifying the drought in the fields.  The water levels along the Nile fell sharply this summer.  Many farmers do not know whether their seeds will grow, whether there will even be a harvest.  And all of this in a country where hunger and scarcity are deliberately being used by the parties to the conflict against the local population. Roughly 12,000 kil...