Chapter Five: Climate Change and Security

Abstract

Climate change has been a key factor in the rise and fall of societies and states from prehistory to the recent fighting in the Sudanese state of Darfur. It drives instability, conflict and collapse, but also expansion and reorganisation. The ways in which cultures have met the climate challenge provide object lessons for how the modern world can handle the new security threats posed by unprecedented global warming.

Combining historical precedents with current thinking on state stability, internal conflict and state failure suggests that overcoming cultural, social, political and economic barriers to successful adaptation to a changing climate is the most important factor in avoiding instability in a warming world. The countries which will face increased risk are not necessarily the most fragile, nor those which will suffer the greatest physical effects of climate change.

The global security threat posed by fragile and failing states is well known. It is in the interest of the world's more affluent countries to take measures both to reduce the degree of global warming and climate change and to cushion the impact in those parts of the world where climate change will increase that threat. Neither course of action will be cheap, but inaction will be costlier. Providing the right kind of assistance to the people and places it is most needed is one way of reducing the cost, and understanding how and why different societies respond to climate change is one way of making that possible.

Notes

UNFCCC, Article 2, http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf.

TAR, p. 71.

Richardson et al., Synthesis Report, p. 12.

Ibid., p. 16; Joel B. Smith et al., ‘Assessing Dangerous Climate Change through an Update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “Reasons for Concern”‘, Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, online Early Edition, 26 February 2009, http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/25/0812355106.full.pdf.

4AR WG1, p. 13 (SPM), adjusted to take into account pre-twenty-first century warming.

See Dupont, ‘The Strategic Implications of Climate Change’; ‘Climate Change: Security Implications and Regional Impacts’, Strategic Survey 2007; James Lee, Climate Change and Armed Conflict: Hot and Cold Wars (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009); Cleo Paskal, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2008); Richardson et al., Synthesis Report, pp. 12–17.

See, for example, Mazo, ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’, Survival, vol. 50, no. 3, June–July 2008, pp. 249–56; Jim Hansen, ‘The Threat to the Planet’, New York Review of Books, 13 July 2006, pp. 12–16; Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (London: Fourth Estate, 2007).

Richardson et al., Synthesis Report, p. 18.

‘Copenhagen Accord Faces First Test’, IISS Strategic Comments, vol. 16, comment 1, January 2010.

John M. Broder, ‘Countries Submit Emission Goals’, New York Times, 2 February 2010.

4AR WG2, p. 364.

Ibid., p. 407. For Colombia's per capita GDP see Military Balance 2010 (Abingdon, Routledge for the IISS, 2010), 94; other estimates put the figure just below $6,000.

See Adger et al., ‘Successful Adaptation to Climate Change Across Scales’.

Lobell et al., ‘Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030’.

Dell et al., ‘Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century’.

Christa Marshall, ‘“Coal Country” Poses the Biggest Obstacle in Senate Climate Debate’, Climatewire, 2 November 2009, http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/print/2009/11/02/1.

For nuanced discussions of the problem of uncertainty for planners see Michael Fitzsimmons, ‘The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning’, Survival, vol. 48, no. 4, Winter 2006–07, pp. 131–46; Colin Gray, ‘Coping with Uncertainty: Dilemmas of Defense Planning’, Comparative Strategy, vol. 27, no. 4, July 2008, pp. 324–31.

4AR WG1, pp. 854–7.

The Military Balance 2010, pp. 378, 380.

Ibid., p. 380.

Evelyn Leopold, ‘UK Puts Climate Change in U.N. Council’, Reuters, 17 April 2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1736824820070418.

‘National Security Implications of Global Climate Change’, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, August 2009; ‘“Bin Laden” Blames US for Global Warming’, BBC, 29 January 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8487030.stm.

Oli Brown, Climate Change and Forced Migration: Observations, Projections and Implications, Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper (Geneva: UNHDR, 2007), http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2007-2008/papers/brown_oli.pdf.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2008 Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons (Geneva: UNHCR, 2009), p. 2.

US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010, p. 84, available at http://www.defense.gov/QDR.

Balgis Osman-Elasha, ‘Building Resilence to Drought and Climate Change in Sudan’, in State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World (Washington DC: Worldwatch Institute, 2009), pp. 92–5.

For a discussion of the problems of and a framework for development in fragile states, see Zoellick, ‘Fragile States: Securing Development’. See also Manish Bapna et al., Enabling Adaptation: Priorities for Supporting the Rural Poor in a Changing Climate, WRI Issue Brief (Washington DC: World Resources Institute, May 2009).

Martin Parry et al., Assessing the Costs of Adaptation to Climate Change: A Review of the UNFCCC and Other Recent Estimates (London: International Institute for Environment and Development and Grantham Institute for Climate Change, 2009), pp. 9, 14. Parry et al. gave the figures as £4-37bn and £86-109bn.

Ibid., p. 8. The lower figure is from the Stern Report and the higher from the UN Development Programme.

Rob Young, ‘UN Kyoto Climate Change Fund Still to Help Poor Nations’, BBC News, 9 December 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/84033377.stm.

See http://climatefundsupdate.org.

See http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_15/application/pdf/cop15_cph_auv.pdf.

Nathanial Gronewold, ‘Red Tape, High Fees Hamstring Int'l Green Funds’, New York Times, 22 December 2009. For a detailed critique of the finance provisions of the Copenhagen Accord, see J. Timmons Roberts et al., Copenhagen's Climate Finance Promise: Six Key Questions, IIED Briefing (London: International Institute for Economic Development, February 2010), http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/ 17071IIED.pdf.

Zoellick, ‘Fragile States: Securing Development’, p. 82. 35 Rice and Patrick, Index of State Weakness in the Developing World.