01/08/2019

A Brief Introduction To Climate Change And National Security

Yale Climate Connections

Extreme weather, rising seas, and a melting Arctic could worsen global tensions.


A series of punishing droughts set the stage for the Syrian civil war in 2011. A drying East Africa fuels ongoing conflicts over natural resources in Somalia and Kenya. Rising seas threaten future refugee crises in Southeast Asia. Melting sea ice in the Arctic is opening new shipping lanes, creating new potential for tensions among competing powers at the top of the world.
These are among the many worries – some already realized and some forecast in the near future – that concern experts studying the convergence of climate change and national security.
The idea that a warming planet threatens stability around the globe is not a new one. The U.S. Naval War College began studying the topic as early as the late 1980s, and over the past three decades a steady stream of analyses from the U.S. Defense Department, private think tanks, and other organizations have pointed to threats that climate change poses to peace and stability. Climate change is rarely viewed as a direct cause of instability and conflict, but experts generally regard it as a “threat multiplier” – a phenomenon that can worsen or exacerbate other sources of instability and conflict, such as competition for natural resources and ethnic tensions.
Discussions generally fall into two areas: the impacts of warming on conflicts between nations and among ethnic groups within nations, and the impacts of warming on U.S. military infrastructure and operations.

Threats to global security
The Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, an annual report on security threats to U.S. interests, concludes that “global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.”
“Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea-level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security,” the authors of the January 2019 report wrote.
Extreme weather events, worsened by accelerated sea-level rise, will hit some areas particularly hard – including South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. Water and food insecurity made worse by heat waves, droughts, and floods are already increasing the risk of conflict in Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Jordan, according to the report.
The Worldwide Threat Assessment also highlighted the risk of tensions between Russia and China as sea routes open up in the Arctic and the rush for natural resources at the top of the world increases.

Threats to military infrastructure & operations
Responding to a Congressional order in late 2017, the Defense Department issued a report in January of 2019 that outlined impacts of climate change on Defense Department missions, operational plans, and installations. It offers an authoritative overview of past, present, and future concerns.
Among them: In the United States Africa Command, rainy season flooding and drought and desertification can complicate the execution of missions. At Naval Base Guam, flooding driven by sea-level rise can negatively affect submarine squadron operations, telecommunications, and other support activities for naval operations.
Meanwhile, a warming climate is significantly impeding military testing and training, with an increased number of suspended, delayed, or canceled outdoor events – particularly at installations in the United States’ Southeast and Southwest.
Increased maintenance and repair of installations has been required: The report cites wildfires in the Western U.S. impacting Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Point Mugu Sea Range, hurricanes causing damage and delays at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, permafrost thawing impacting operations at Fort Greely in Alaska, and rising seas contaminating freshwater supplies at atoll installations in the Pacific.
While these two key government reports summarize some of the latest thinking on climate change and national security, they are backed up by a deep well of information on the topic. Climate scientist and author Peter Gleick has compiled a list of important assessments (updated regularly) at his blog.

Links
Coverage of the 2019 release of the Worldwide Threat Assessment: Coverage of the 2019 release of the Defense Department report on climate change and military operations: Other key reports: Yale Climate Connections news stories, podcasts, and videos: Additional News stories: Select sites and journal articles:

No comments :

Post a Comment

Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative