(AU SMH) Climate Change A Security Threat In Australia, Says Intelligence Expert

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Australia should address climate change as a national security threat at the Earth Day climate summit hosted by US President Joe Biden, according to a former director of the Australian Department of Defence.

Cheryl Durrant, a specialist in intelligence analysis and scenario planning during her military career who is now an academic and councillor with the Climate Council, said Mr Biden had raised the significance of climate change as a security threat in his invitation to world leaders.

A man tries to access his house in a flooded neighbourhood of Jakarta in January, when 17 people were killed. Credit: Getty

She said Australia was falling behind other nations in integrating climate policy with national security. The two major security threats facing the world at present were global war and climate change, said Professor Durrant.

“The unfortunate double-whammy with climate change is that it makes global war more likely, so it is a bit of a no-brainer that it is the most pressing problem to tackle,” the former director of preparedness and mobilisation at the Defence Department said.

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Professor Durrant said climate change presented difficulties to defence planners because it was unlike other threats they have prepared for.

“The whole defence apparatus is set up around bad guys and good guys, it really hasn’t advanced much beyond who has the bigger club … and that kind of thinking does not solve a problem like climate change,” she said.

“You can’t bomb climate change, you can’t fight it. If you were to declare war on the worst per capita emitter you would be declaring war on Australia. If you were to declare war on the biggest historical emitter you would be fighting America. If you’re fighting the biggest current emitter you’d be declaring war on China.”

She said many of Australia’s allies were now considering climate change from a policy perspective that integrated defence and security, as well as agriculture.

A spokesman for Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said achieving Paris goals would require co-ordinated global action, “including from the top three largest emitters: China, the US and the European Union, which collectively account for more than half of global emissions”.

In his executive order announcing the April 22-23 summit, Mr Biden instructed his administration to produce integrated reports on climate impacts in foreign policy, national security, economics and defence, Professor Durrant noted.

He also announced the creation of a climate taskforce to include 13 cabinet members and a range of department heads.

By contrast, last year’s Australian Defence strategic update was developed in isolation from other agencies and mentioned climate change once.

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The potential security threats presented by climate change in Australia’s region were particularly significant, Professor Durrant said.

Recent reports have highlighted the prospect of mass migration due to sea level rise and intense heat, as well as water and food insecurity.

She said Australia had to have an “honest conversation” about whether it wanted to make a big investment in new defence technologies – such as missiles – in a destabilised region, or a big investment in renewable energy technologies that could help stabilise the region.

The concerns echo those raised in a new report by Dr Robert Glasser, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Climate and Security Policy Centre.

According to that report, sea level rise in this region is happening four times faster than the global average, and it has the largest coastal population in the world affected by it.

In Indonesia alone, 60 per cent of the population lives in coastal areas.

Dr Glasser said as the report was published that the risk of multiple climate-driven crises happening simultaneously in the region was growing and suggested we were “on the cusp of an overlooked, unprecedented and rapidly advancing regional crisis”.

Links

• (AU) Climate Change Is A Security Threat The Government Keeps Ignoring. We’ll Show Up Empty Handed To Yet Another Global Summit
• (USA) Intelligence Forecast Sees A Post-Coronavirus World Upended By Climate Change And Splintering Societies
• (AU) Climate Change ‘A National Security Threat’: Report
• (USA) ‘Mutual Suicide’: US Issues Stark Warning On Climate Change
• Climate Change 'The Biggest Security Threat Ever Faced By Modern Humans', David Attenborough Warns
• Sea-Level Rise From Climate Change Could Exceed The High-End Projections, Scientists Warn
• Preparing For When Climate Change Drives People From Their Homes
• A signal of hope as US and China find common ground in climate crisis
• What keeps climate scientists like me awake at night - and why the next 10 years are so critical
• Facing the climate ‘endgame’ in a world bound for 1.5 degrees warming