Climate security

 ( Climate Change ) 

Climate security is a political and policy framework that looks at the impacts of climate on security. Climate security often refers to the national and international security risks induced, directly or indirectly, by Climate change. It is a concept that summons the idea that climate-related change amplifies existing risks in society that endangers the security of humans, ecosystems, economy, infrastructure and societies. Climate-related security risks have far-reaching implications for the way the world manages peace and security. Climate actions to adapt and mitigate impacts can also have a negative effect on human security if mishandled.

The term climate security was initially promoted by national security analysts in the US and later Europe, but has since been adopted by a wide variety of actors including the United Nations, low and middle income states, civil society organizations and academia. The term is used in fields such as politics, diplomacy, environment and security with increasing frequency.

There are also critics of the term who argue that the term encourages a militarized response to the climate crisis, and ignores issues of maldistribution and inequity that underpin both the climate crisis and vulnerability to its impacts.

Those who look at the national and international security risks argue that climate change has the potential to exacerbate existing tensions or create new ones – serving as a threat multiplier. For example, climate change is seen as a threat to military operations and national security, as the rise in sea level can affect military bases or extreme heat events can undermine the operability of armies. Climate change is also seen as a catalyst for violent conflict and a threat to international security, although the causality of climate and conflict is also debated. Due to the growing importance of climate security on the agendas of many governments, international organizations, and other bodies some now run programs which are designed to mitigate the effects of climate change on conflict. These practices are known as climate security practices. These practices stem from a variety of actors with different motivations in the sphere of development, diplomacy and defense; both NATO and the UN Security Council are involved in these practices.

The term is used in fields such as politics, diplomacy, environment and security with increasing frequency.
     

To map the different ways in which climate change is conceptualized, scholar Matt McDonald identifies four discourses of climate security advanced by policymakers, lobbyists, environmental advocates, civil society groups and academic analysts. He divides them into national, human, international and ecological types of security which respectively concern nation-states, 'people', the international community, and the 'ecosystem'.  National climate security is the most dominant of the four discourses as it focuses on the threat climate change poses to nation-states and the maintenance of its sovereignty and 'territorial integrity' from an external threat. This discourse is advanced by national security institutions where the Nation state is viewed as the most capable provider of security through the military apparatus. This discourse has also been advanced by policy think tanks embracing the concept of 'threat multiplier'.

The international security discourse focuses on internationalism and global cooperation where international organizations are viewed as providers of security. Mitigation and adaptation strategies are central to this discourse, such as the transition to low carbon economies and the transfer of technology, sources, and expertise to developing countries. International organizations such as the UN Environment Program are involved in these processes and the more recent Sustainable Development Goals are an embodiment of such discourse. However, the UN Security Council plays a central role as the securitizing agent, which has been often criticized by developing countries, such as Group 77 and the non-Aligned Movement, as they are concerned climate change will be used to justify military intervention and increased military budgets by powerful countries. The human security discourse emerged as a counteracting alternative to national security, and was embraced first by the United Nations Development Program in 1994. It seeks to center the wellbeing of people rather than states. For the UN agencies, mitigation strategies and the redistribution of resources are seen as central to providing security to populations. The ecological security discourse is seldom included in dominant policy or academic debates.

While many International Relations (IR) scholars link climate change with security and conflict through a traditional military approach, there is an ongoing debate on whether climate change and environmental issues should be securitized and who and what is really protected. The scholars who theorized the concept of securitization allowed to deepen and broaden concepts of security beyond traditional military security through discourse methodology and 'speech acts.' For example, Copenhagen School scholars, such as Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, argue that security justifies urgency and exceptionalism, focusing on defense, the military and the state and that climate change should instead be placed into 'normal politics' and removed from the security agenda. Furthermore, some scholars note how securitization theory, stemming as a response to traditional realism theory in the post-Cold War era, is mostly a Eurocentrism field and does not include the legacies of colonialism and inform global politics and governance.

The impacts of climate change, highlighted in 1990 by the First Assessment Report (FAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and in 1992 by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), highlighted the need for climate change to be viewed as a security threat and influenced international entities to do so. A report in 2003 by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall looked at potential implications from climate-related scenarios for the national security of the United States, and concluded, "We have created a climate change scenario that although not the most likely, is plausible, and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately."

In 2008, the EU published a report on climate change and international security, defining climate change as a 'threat multiplier' affecting EU own security and interests.

The climate security approach has also a significant impact on borders and migration, as its narrative emphasizes the 'threat' of climate-induced mass migration. Indeed, the border industrial complex is expected to grow globally by 7% annually. As the Transnational Institute report "Global Climate Wall" shows, the seven biggest GHG emitters the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia spent collectively at least twice on border and immigration control than on climate finance between 2013 and 2018. The EU's budget for Frontex has increased by 2763% since its establishment in 2016 through 2021.

Social movements and organizations, such as Climate Justice alliance, We are Dissenters, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network, call for a bigger emphasis on climate justice and environmental justice rather than climate security. Climate justice puts the emphasis on the root causes of climate change, like colonialism and neocolonialism, global inequality, globalization and exploitative economic systems such as the exploitation of natural resources. Many call this addressing the era of climate colonialism. Indeed, many proponents of climate justice call for bigger support for and other frontline communities that are fighting for climate change and also already protecting 80% of Earth's biodiversity.

Many civil society actors also call for climate reparations on top of more climate finance, and also the establishment of Loss and Damage Finance Facility (LDFF), which has been proposed by low-income countries, as well as Debt relief. This way, low-income countries could tackle the impacts of climate change for which they are bear the least responsibility.

From an academic standpoint, the concept of ecological security, allows for a more systemic approach to climate change that examines the structural roots of the climate crisis as the overlapping economic, political, and social issues of the global system.

Indeed, the richest 10% (circa 630 million people), of the world's population, mostly from EU and North America, are in fact responsible for 52% of carbon emissions, whereas the poorest 50% (circa 3.1 billion people) were responsible for only 7% of cumulative emissions. The Global North is responsible for 92 percent of GHG emissions and climate change is devastating the Global South. To account for this, the UNFCCC embodies the notion of "common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)" which addresses developed countries' responsibility to transfer aid and technology to developing countries.

A report by the Global Peace Index found that 971 million people lived in areas with either a high or very high climate change exposure and that 400 million of those people lived in countries with low levels of peacefulness. It warned that climate change can increase the likelihood of violent conflict by impacting upon resource availability, job security, and by causing forced migration. Predicting future risks of climate change and conflict remains difficult, despite the existence of several predictive models and tools. Future climate change is likely to be very different from what humanity has experienced previously and the ability of societies to adapt is unclear. A 2016 article suggested that conflict over climate-related water issues could lead to nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. However, other scholars believe that climate change are unlikely to have major impacts on the nature of interstate wars, but have expressed concerns about its impacts on civil wars and communal conflicts. Based on a meta-analysis of 60 studies, Solomon Hsiang, Burke and Miguel concluded in 2013 that warmer temperatures and more extreme rainfall could increase interpersonal violence by 4%, and intergroup conflict by 14% (median estimates). However, their results have been disputed by other researchers as being not sufficiently robust to alternative model specifications.

Recent studies by authors like Halvard Buhaug, Detges, Ide and von Uexkull have been more careful. They agree that climate-related disasters (including heatwaves, droughts, storms and floods) modestly increase armed conflict risks, but only in the presence of contextual factors like agricultural dependence, insufficient infrastructure, the political exclusion of ethnic groups, insufficient conflict management, and high disaster vulnerability. Climate change is therefore rather a "risk multiplier" that amplifies existing risks of conflict. In line with this and other reviews of the topic, an expert assessment published 2019 in Nature concludes that between 3% and 20% of intrastate, armed conflict risks in the previous century were affected by climate-related factors, but that other drivers of conflict are far more important. The expert assessment itself notes that major knowledge gaps and uncertainties continue to exist in the research field, especially regarding the pathways connecting climate change to conflict risk.

Recently, researchers have paid increased attention to the impacts of climate change on low-intensity and even non-violent conflicts, such as riots or demonstrations. Even if people do not have the means or motivation to use violence, they can engage in such forms of conflict, for instance in the face of high food prices or water scarcity. Studies indeed show that in vulnerable societies, the anticipated consequences of climate change such as reduced food and water security increase the risk of protests. These conflicts often add to and trigger the escalation of deeper social and political struggles.

On a country by country basis, several case studies have linked climate change to increased violent conflicts between farmers and herders in Kenya and Sudan, but have found mixed results for Ghana, Mali War, Nigeria and Tanzania. Evidence is also ambiguous and highly contested for high-intensity conflicts such as civil wars. Some experts suggest a contribution of climate change to civil wars in Mali, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. Other studies suggest that there is very little evidence for these causal claims, including for the cases of Darfur, Egypt, and Lake Chad.

The most prominent example of these debates is the Syrian civil war. Several studies claim that a climate-induced drought between 2006 and 2009 led to mass migration into urban areas, contributing to grievances and unrest that erupted in the 2011 protests. The repression of the latter marked the start of the civil war. A team around Jan Selby argues that these claims are overstated and that political decisions and mismanagement, rather than climate change and migration, have caused the onset of the war. Several recent studies find that the debate is not yet settled because there is evidence for both positions, yet a lack of comprehensive empirical data.

There are a number of studies that criticize how climate-conflict research is based on a deterministic and conflict-oriented worldview, that findings of statistical studies on the topic are based on problematic models and datasets, and that constructivist approaches are largely ignored. Existing research also predominantly focuses on a few, well-known and already conflict-ridden regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. This raises questions about sampling biases as well as implications for less-considered regions like Latin America and the Oceania, with topics such as peaceful adaptation and environmental peacebuilding also understudied. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report concluded in 2022: "Climate hazards have affected armed conflict within countries (medium confidence), but the influence of climate is small compared to socio-economic, political, and cultural factors (high confidence). Climate increases conflict risk by undermining food and water security, income and livelihoods, in situations where there are large populations, weather-sensitive economic activities, weak institutions and high levels of poverty and inequality (high confidence)."

Many politicians, decision makers, and journalists have drawn a connection between climate change and conflict. Already in a 2007 study on the topic, the German Advisory Council on Global Change identified four pathways potentially connecting climate change to conflict: degradation of freshwater resources, food insecurity, an increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, and increasing or changing migration patterns. A more recent 2021 report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence predicts intensifying physical effects of climate change "will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions will face increasing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance." The United Nations Security Council has discussed the links between climate change and security various times, even though the position of its member states vary.

In some cases, climate change could also decrease conflict risks. This happens either if climate-related disasters impose financial and logistical constraints on conflict parties or if various social groups come together to cooperate about the shared challenge of climate change (environmental peacebuilding).

There have consequently been efforts to 'green' the military and prepare it for a climate changed world, through the installation of solar panels at military bases, alternative fuels in shipping and renewable energy equipment.

There are also concerns about the reliance on fossil fuels, which can pose vulnerabilities for armed forces. The Pentagon alone is the world's largest consumer of fossil fuel. For example, during the US invasion of Iraq, one in nearly 40 fuel convoys in Iraq in 2007 resulted in a death or serious injury. At least since 2010, the U.S. military begun to push to develop, evaluate and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels. The NATO's 2021 Climate Change and Security Action Plan proposes strategies to protect its assets along with a promise of GHG emissions reduction by 2050.

However, because military emissions reporting is only voluntary, there is a lack of transparent data on militaries' GHG emissions.  A 2019 study by Brown University estimated 1.2 billion metric tons of GHG have been consumed by the U.S. military alone since the beginning of the war on terror in 2001. Additionally, Scientists for Global Responsibility have calculated UK military emissions to be 11 million tonnes, and EU emissions to be 24.8 million tonnes with France contributing to a third of the total.

The military's sustainability plans have been criticized as 'greenwashing.' Additionally, militarism and war have caused devastating environmental damages. The chemical contamination left in Afghanistan and the nuclear contamination in the Marshalls Islands are some examples of and its environmental legacy.