Climate as a trigger for conflict

Climate change has long been seen as a threat to infrastructure, food security, and health. Recently, though, experts and politicians have identified yet another affected area: national security.
In July, Senator John Kerry directed the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to discuss the potential effects of climate change on national defense. He urged the panel to connect the dots between a “ravaged environment and a much more dangerous world”—two intimately related realities, he says. Citing the findings published by the Center for Naval Analyses in the report “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” Senator Kerry concluded that acknowledging the consequences of climate change is not only about saving polar bears. The risk of conflict, forced migration, and failed states is more than a national concern—it relates to global well-being.

Domestically, America has the wherewithal to adapt to changing environmental stress. That said, many consider the primary challenges that the country faces to be indirect effects from abroad: the climate-driven exacerbation of pre-existing issues in developing states. Projected climate changes will impact food security and the incidence of vector-borne diseases. Coastal and deltaic regions are particularly at risk to sea level rise—especially in countries with weak adaptive capabilities. The confluence of these stressors—when combined with already weak central governments—can lead to de-stabilization and political turmoil.

The CNA identifies climate change as a “threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile and troubled regions in the world.” The de-stabilization of fragile countries opens the door to radical ideologies and extremism—environments potentially conducive to terrorism. Retired Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, one of the eleven flag officers on the CNA’s military advisory panel, goes so far as to state that the conditions produced by climate change will prolong the war on terror. Insurgent and extremist groups can gain political footholds by capitalizing on a weak government’s inability to provide basic services.

Research conducted by the Earth Institute’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network, the United Nations Institute for Environment and Human Security, and CARE International presented the link between climate change and human migration. Resource scarcity (by 2025, 40 percent of the world’s population will experience water shortages) and environmental degradation may force migrations of workers, asylum seekers, and refugees seeking more promising conditions.

Senator Kerry refers to these anticipated migrants as EDPs—environmentally displaced people. The CNA warns that EDPs can add to a nation’s internal unrest when groups move from rural to urban centers, often over-stressing resources at the new location. In less-developed countries environmental degradation can fuel migration to neighboring nations, producing dangerous economic and political climates. The massive loss of arable land over the last 50 years in Bangladesh has contributed to an exodus to India, often resulting in tense relations between natives and migrants.

So what’s to be done? The CNA urges the United States to assume a stronger international role in promoting climate change mitigation with the goal of stabilizing the climate before it reaches dangerously unmanageable levels. However, the international peace-building organization International Alert asserts that it is not mitigation so much as adaptation that we should be concerned with.

Authors Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda state in their report “A Climate of Conflict” that climate change is already upon us, and that even with massive international cooperation and immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the initial effects—drought, sea level rise, natural disasters—will continue to unfold over the upcoming decades. Adaptation is crucial at the international and regional scale and particularly at the local community level. Policies must be designed with the goal of securing action from the local leaders and authorities—where most climate-driven changes will occur.

Community-based climate adaptation can take many forms. The non-profit group ActionAid has been working with a local women’s rights organization in Malawi, the Salima Women’s Network on Gender, to promote coordination and cooperation among regional farmers. By pooling tools and information, the farmers have been able to remain secure despite worsening crop conditions.

Although the effects of climate change have been discussed for decades, the national security consequences have only recently been examined. It’s true—the relationship between climate change and national security is not yet fully understood. As of now, science cannot predict impacts with absolute certainty. However, the possibilities cannot be ignored. In order to effectively manage risk and foster a culture of mitigation, we must raise awareness of this important issue—starting in the classroom.

As General Gordon Sullivan puts it in the CNA report, “We never have 100 percent certainty. We never have it. If you wait for 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen.”

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in mathematics. She is the director of the Energy and Environment Center in the Roosevelt Institution on campus and currently an intern at the Earth Institute’s Climate Center.