The Changing Security Climate

Climate change poses direct security risks to our planet that need to be acknowledged and accepted so that they can be addressed

Cleo Paskal London

Climate change is now a security issue. Officially. There is a bill in the US Congress asking the security establishment to do a 'national intelligence estimate' on the impact of 'global warming' on international stability and, on April 17, 2007, climate change was addressed by the UN Security Council. This means, that for the first time, some of the most powerful countries in the world are saying loud and clear that this isn't just about drowning polar bears anymore.

The thing is, they know, there is a problem. They just aren't sure what it is. And the discussion has been confused by so many different topics that a lot of the suggested solutions won't solve the most imminent threats. By labelling the security issues as 'global warming' and 'climate change' alone, the Congress and the UN are inadvertently, severely limiting the range of possible responses and ignoring many critical and relatively easy to fix issues.

The confusion starts with the way the issue is framed. It is not enough to just look at 'global warming'. That is just one component of the larger problem of direct, man-made, environmental change.

As a species, we are constantly making direct and major changes to our environment, most recently through massive population increases. At the turn of the 20th century, there were 1.65 billion people on the planet. At the turn of the 21st, there were 6 billion. Meanwhile, they aren't making land anymore. So, more ground water is pumped up, more forests cut, more urban sprawl, more developments in flood-plains. And the environment is changed.

Which is not to say environmental change is always a bad thing. In fact, irrigation (which substantially changed regional environments) made early civilization possible. But now, as we place increasing demands on natural resources like fresh water and arable land, we have less room to manoeuvre. That makes us more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which is essentially a disruption of the status quo. This can worsen existing problems, but if there were no climate change, these problems would still exist.

For example, the social, economic and security crisis in the United States created by Katrina was caused to a large degree by the problems with the US Army Corps of Engineers, poor town planning, a failure of emergency services, and a breakdown in the chain of command.

This naturally dynamic coastal region was also going through a period of man-made environmental change, which incl-uded the draining of wetlands, the sinking of land caused by the extraction of grou-ndwater, and poorly conceived waterways.

Katrina showed how poor regulations, planning and emergency response can aggravate environmental disasters that will almost certainly increase because of climate change. But one can't say the tragedy in New Orleans was caused by climate change alone. Curbing climate change without addressing the way city planning and disaster management are done will not stop other 'Katrinas' (though it may keep the numbers down).

The same holds true for the devastating flood in Surat. Irregular rainfall, possibly caused by climate change, may have been a factor but, as reported in Hardnews, the bigger issue was the direct human impact of dam management.