IISS Global Strategic Review
“Managing Global Security and Risk”
Geneva, Switzerland: September 7~9, 2007
2nd Plenary Session: Asia and Managing New Global Risks
The Risk of Global Calamities
Professor Alan Dupont
In assessing our capacity to manage global security and risk, it is important to understand how thinking about security has been transformed by the rise of a host of transnational dangers that pose novel challenges for defence and foreign policy. They include climate change, energy dilemmas and the spread of virulent, new diseases such as HIV/AIDs and avian influenza. Often linked, these new threats stem not from competition between states or shifts in the balance of power but from human-induced disturbances to the fragile balance of nature, the consequences of which may be just as injurious to the integrity and functioning of the state as those resulting from military conflict. They may also be more difficult to reverse or repair, as global warming and the degradation of our planet’s resource base attest.
Seen in this light, climate is a critical part of the Earth’s natural support system which sustains all life. Protecting and stabilising our climate is, therefore, a legitimate long-term objective of security policy since human survival is dependent on the health of the biosphere and the coupled ocean-atmosphere. Nowhere is this more evident than our society’s current dependence on fossil fuels, which are largely responsible for the global warming that is exacerbating fears about future energy security and raises serious questions about our ability to transition to a new era of clean energy without conflict. Some infectious diseases have moved onto the international security agenda because of their capacity to cause mega death and major political and economic instability. Controlling and ameliorating the strategic consequences of ‘pandemic diseases’ and climate change requires new thinking and a more holistic approach to security.
In this paper I will elaborate on the connections between climate change, energy scarcity and disease, evaluate their likely strategic impact and draw out some of the implications for global security and risk management with particular reference to Asia.
Climate change and security
There is now sufficient scientific data to conclude, with a high degree of certainty, that the speed and magnitude of climate change in the 21st century will be unprecedented in human experience posing daunting challenges of adaptation and mitigation for all life forms on the planet. Climate scientists overwhelmingly accept that the world’s glaciers and northern ice cap are melting at accelerating rates and that sea-level rise will threaten many coastal and low lying areas. And they regard as virtually certain that there will be a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations over pre-industrial levels this century regardless of what we do to contain or reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. As a result, the Earth’s surface will almost certainly warm by more than 2.0oC, which is widely accepted as the threshold above which managing the risks becomes progressively more difficult and the consequences more dangerous. Moreover, sea-levels are expected to rise by between 0.19 and 0.58 metres, and by as much as 6 metres should the Greenland ice cap melt.[1]
The central problem is the rate at which temperatures are increasing rather than the absolute size of differential warming. Spread over several centuries, or a millennium, temperature rises of several degrees could probably be managed without political instability or major threats to commerce, agriculture and infrastructure. Compressed within the space of a single century, global warming will present far more daunting challenges of human and biological adaptation especially for natural ecosystems which typically evolve over hundreds of thousands and millions of years.
In a world already populated by 6.5 billion people and destined to reach 9 billion by 2050, sudden deviations from global or regional weather norms, particularly if they occur within the span of a single human generation, could have profound consequences for international security if, as seems likely, food production is disrupted, fresh water becomes scarce, diseases spread and natural disasters increase.[2] Climate shifts, manifested in rising sea-levels and more intense droughts and storms could stimulate large scale movements of people within, and across, international borders. Individually or collectively, such developments could destabilise nations internally, aggravate tensions between states and endanger human security. We could also be affected because of the often subtle and poorly understood dependence of natural ecosystems on the weather and climate.
Home to over half the world’s population, Asia will be particularly affected by weather extremes and fluctuations in rainfall and temperatures which have the capacity to refashion the region’s productive landscape and accentuate food, water and resource scarcity in a relatively short time-span. If repetitive floods, or prolonged droughts, were to create even short-term food and water shortages during times of rising social and political tensions, regional governments might find themselves hard pressed to deal with these exigencies. Sea-level rise is of particular concern because of the density of coastal populations and the potential for large-scale displacements of people.
Most of Asia’s largest aggregations of people and productive lands are on, or near, the coast, including the cities of Shanghai, Tianjin, Guanzhou, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Mumbai and Dhaka. The areas under greatest threat are the Yellow and Yangtse River deltas in China, Manila Bay in the Philippines, the low lying coastal fringes of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Java in Indonesia, and the Mekong, Chao Phraya and Irrawaddy deltas in Vietnam, Thailand and Burma respectively. Many of these locations have not previously been susceptible to climate induced risks and their vulnerability has increased due to extensive urbanisation and human settlement in coastal and riverine environments, made worse by extensive land use clearance. Heightening the risk is the fact that several large Asian cities are susceptible to cyclones driven by warm expanses of water that form in the west equatorial Pacific Ocean during summer. These cyclones produce strong tidal surges, especially in La Niña years, which can greatly increase the severity of coastal flooding and the consequent threat to lives, infrastructure, agriculture and fresh water.[3]
There are also concerns that climate change might cause mass migrations of environmental refugees and displaced persons, with serious consequences for international security. In the future, environmental refugees could constitute the fastest growing proportion of refugees globally. By 2050, up to 150 million people are expected to be displaced globally because of climate change, dwarfing all other causes of refugees and unregulated population movements. Much of the anticipated impact will be in Asia which already hosts more refugees and internally displaced people than any other region of the world. But climate change could add many more. Some 26 million people in Bangladesh are at risk from sea-level rise, 73 million in China and 20 million in India.[4]
The economic costs of managing the effects of climate change are likely to be substantial; they will include reduced economic growth and depressed incomes, which will circumscribe the ability of developing states to meet the rising aspirations of their people.Anticipating and preparing for the consequences of climate change will compound the already formidable problems of governance. For the developing states of Asia, and the world more generally, global warming will prove an unwelcome additional challenge to security which will be difficult to combat without meaningful regional cooperation.
Energy and the Environment
Global warming is also contributing to concerns about future supplies of energy, although it should be noted that competition for raw materials, particularly energy, was an important element of interstate conflict well before the environment and climate change entered the lexicon of international security. Nations have fought for control of critical raw materials at least as far back as the Trojan War because they are finite, unevenly distributed, central to economic development and therefore have high pecuniary and strategic value. Today, however, coal, oil and gas extracted from the sediments of long-dead animals and plants are the lifeblood of modern society, accounting for three-quarters of all energy used. The problem is that fossil fuels may not be able to sustain economic growth in the second half of this century because of their adverse environmental consequences. Oil spills, acid rain, land degradation, water pollution and climate change will eventually compel governments to adopt a cleaner energy system long before fossil fuels near exhaustion. Unfortunately, the transition from a ‘carbon-based civilisation’ to renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and tidal power is unlikely to be smooth. It will in all probability be accompanied by significant political and strategic perturbations that will move to centre stage in the security concerns of all states.
Environmental considerations are complicating energy choices by adding to the costs of production and usage. Coal, for example, is relatively abundant but it is also highly polluting. Fossil fuels are responsible for nearly 80 percent of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases that are the major cause of planetary warming.[5] Even if emissions from fossil fuels are stabilised at 1990 levels, as required by the Kyoto Protocol, greenhouse gases will continue to rise for the rest of this century further heating up the planet. We know this because the increase in green house gases can be extrapolated from current fossil-fuel usage (and rates of deforestation). In 1990, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, totalled 5.8 billion tons of carbon equivalent which in a business as usual scenario will rise 34 percent to 7.8 billion tons by 2010. If every signatory to the Kyoto Protocol reaches its pledged target, an unlikely eventuality since only two countries are within their agreed targets (the UK and Sweden), the increase would still be the equivalent of 7.3 billion tons.[6] This small reduction would be more than offset by the rise in emissions from developing countries, notably China and India, which have been reluctant to sign Kyoto for fear that signing up to mandatory targets would set back their economic growth.
Almost all nations anticipate growth in energy usage in the coming decades. Globally, the International Energy Agency expects a 50 percent increase in fossil fuel usage over the next 15 years which will dramatically push up greenhouse gas emissions without mitigating measures.[7] Thus, at the very time when the world’s appetite for energy is growing exponentially, the environmental cost of using fossil fuels may be a greater, long-term constraint than their availability.
Climate change is also forcing a major reassessment of the utility of nuclear power, once seen as the energy choice of last resort because of its tarnished public image as a dangerous and dirty fuel. Since nuclear power only emits about 25 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour compared with around 450-1250 grams for fossil fuels, it is the only source of virtual carbon free energy that can make a substantial difference to energy supply in the short to medium term.[8] Critics maintain that switching to nuclear power in order to reduce green-house gas emissions is misguided and merely replaces one problem with an even more serious one – the proliferation of plutonium and enriched uranium which can be used for manufacturing nuclear weapons. They contend that safely storing and protecting this material from terrorists and criminal groups intent on acquiring weapons grade material for use or profit is problematic, and the political and security risks too high.
I would argue, however that the security consequences of unmitigated climate change outweigh the risk of terrorists or rogue states acquiring nuclear material from expanded global stockpiles. The reality is that the world is already awash in nuclear material much of it stored in unsafe temporary storage sites located near nuclear reactors. In Northeast Asia, for example, approximately 50,000 tonnes of spent fuel are likely to be generated between 1990 and 2020, containing 450 tonnes of plutonium.[9] Even if all the nuclear power plants in the world were to be shut down tomorrow and every nuclear weapon dismantled, the accumulated waste of half a century would still have to be isolated, safeguarded and eventually disposed of – either in an underground repository or, less desirably, by reprocessing. So arguing against nuclear power on the grounds of safety does little to address existing problems of waste disposal or proliferation, and even less the issue of climate change.
One aspect of the interrelationship between climate change and energy security that has received scant attention is the impact the submergence of small atolls, rocks and low lying islands due to sea level rise could have on the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of maritime states and disputed sea bed resources, including oil and gas. This is a critically important issue since small rocks and islets are commonly used to delineate maritime boundaries and to claim vast tracts of ocean which would otherwise fall outside the EEZs of contiguous states or be designated high seas, opening them up to exploration and exploitation by other nations. International law currently provides no answer to the question of what would happen to sovereignty and EEZ claims should an island, or even country, be submerged. In the event of significant sea-level rise, the low water marks from which EEZs are measured would shift, raising the real possibility of serious, new maritime disputes as states argued about the criteria for resetting base lines and redesignating EEZs as high seas.
In Asia, for example, rising oceans could complicate the resolution of disputed sovereignty claims in the Spratly Islands, a group of low lying atolls in the South China Sea which sit astride potentially rich deposits of oil and have already been the scene of military tensions between China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Some of these islands are already partially submerged and the highest (Southwest Cay) is only 4 metres above sea-level.[10] Beijing has challenged the island status of Okinotorishima, a small offshore islet claimed by Japan at the southernmost part of the archipelago that is uninhabited and slowly sinking, and is the basis for Japan’s claim to an extended EEZ. Under Article 121 of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, islands classified as ‘rocks’ are not entitled to a 200-nautical mile EEZ, unless they are capable of sustaining human habitation and economic life. Japan is attempting to increase the size and height of Okinotorishima by planting coral around the islet while some of the claimants to the Spratlys have built large concrete structures grafted onto submerged, naturally occurring coral, which house small military garrisons.[11]
Warming seas, as a consequence of climate change, are also making it possible to exploit previously inaccessible energy resources under the polar ice-caps, threatening what has been characterised as a new ‘gold rush’, with claimant states jostling for the rights to exploit potentially rich deposits of oil, gas and minerals on the sea-bed. The potential for conflict was dramatically brought home by Russia’s successful and highly publicised planting of the national flag on the Arctic sea bed on 2 August by two small submersibles, an act that was lauded as ‘heroic’ by Moscow but condemned by other claimants, notably Canada, which compared the Russian action to a 15th Century land grab.[12] Many climate scientists believe that the Arctic ice cap will disappear entirely by 2060 which would make the exploitation of Arctic resources technically feasible and therefore more likely, unless the five claimant states – Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway – can reach an accommodation.
Infectious Diseases
Once considered primarily public health or microbial problems several particularly virulent, pandemic diseases have also emerged as a transnational risk to global security. The reason for their new found prominence is that the most deadly can kill extraordinary numbers of people. For all our medical and public health advances it is often forgotten that infectious diseases remain the number one killer of humans worldwide. They are also global in their reach, difficult to stop, create disproportionate panic and may result in massive economic losses which have the potential to destabilise weak states and undermine regional and global order.[13] Unfortunately, infectious diseases are on the rise globally. There has been an unusually high spike in the number of previously unknown infectious agents since the 1980s. Roughly 30 have been identified, including HIV/AIDS, rotavirus, Ebola, SARS and the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. But this is not the whole story. Some old scourges, thought to have been defeated, have spread or re-emerged sometimes in more virulent form such as the plague, cholera, diphtheria, yellow fever, dengue fever and tuberculosis. 80 percent are zoonotic pathogens that originate in birds and animals and are then transmitted to humans.
Why is the incidence and seriousness of disease epidemics rising? A key triggering mechanism is usually some element of human behaviour that changes or disrupts the natural balance between animal and human populations. Human induced modifications to the biophysical environmental (loss of forests, desertification, urbanisation, land clearing, global warming) have been a significant catalyst in the emergence of new strains of infectious disease and the re-emergence of old ones. Other factors have been natural microbial adaptation and human complacency – the mistaken belief that the threat from infectious diseases had been contained by medical advances in vaccines and anti-viral drugs. Air travel has facilitated the spread of new diseases.
AIDS, or the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is perhaps the best known of this new class of highly infectious diseases that will rival war as a major cause of death and impoverishment in the twenty-first century. AIDS is one of the few diseases to justify the term ‘pandemic’ because it is killing more people than any other infectious disease.[14] 25 million people have already died from AIDS and some 40 million are currently infected. Since it was first isolated in 1983, the proliferation of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which causes AIDS has been sudden, traumatic and devastating in its consequences, especially for the developing world. AIDS epitomises the transnational challenge to international security. It is a global, non-military phenomenon that strikes indiscriminately at its human victims, weakening the socio-economic foundations of states in transition and corroding government institutions.
In the first post-Cold War decade, AIDS rated only a passing mention in the taxonomy of threats to international security despite abundant evidence that the disease was set to devastate sub-Saharan Africa and was spreading rapidly across the globe. The slowness to recognise the threat from AIDS can be attributed to a complex mix of genuine ignorance, denial, social taboos and a widespread conviction in the West that AIDS was largely under control in the developed world and would therefore have only a marginal effect on Western security interests.[15] However, as the immensity of the disease’s impact has become more apparent, intelligence agencies and national security communities around the world have begun to sit up and take notice. An attitudinal turning point was Washington’s decision to declare AIDS a threat to US national security, citing the disease’s capacity to destroy governments and foment ethnic conflict. This followed an assessment by the National Intelligence Council that the infiltration of AIDS and other infectious diseases into the ruling elites of developing states could intensify internal power struggles over scarce resources as well as having a severe social and economic impact in developing countries.[16]
What makes HIV such an insidious and dangerous virus is that its long incubation period allows it to spread much more effectively than other life-threatening viruses. Ebola, for example, is a haemorraghic fever which kills its victims brutally but quickly, so that there is less opportunity for it to become an epidemic. To use Chris Beyrer’s military analogy, Ebola and other comparable diseases go off like cluster bombs, whereas HIV is more like a landmine, lying undetected for long periods before being triggered and exploding.[17] Of course, there have been epidemics and pandemics throughout history. Some, such as the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the fourteenth century and the influenza epidemic that swept the globe at the end of the First World War, were more lethal than AIDS in the sense that they killed a higher percentage of the world’s population in a shorter space of time. The Black Death of 1347–50, a virulent composite of three diseases – bubonic plague, septicaemic plague and pneumonic or pulmonary plague – is estimated to have reduced Europe’s population by as much as a third, or 30 million people. The influenza epidemic of 1918–19 probably killed about 40 million people worldwide.[18]
However, the number of deaths globally from AIDS will soon surpass the number of people killed by the 1918–19 influenza pandemic and the Black Death. This grim statistic aside, the HIV virus has a number of unique characteristics that makes it difficult to combat and magnifies its social impact. “It has a long incubation period; is predominantly sexually transmitted; its symptoms are diverse; it is fatal; and it hits two specific groups – the young sexually active population and infants infected before or during birth”.[19] AIDS infects and debilitates the body politic as well as the bodies of its victims, destabilising states in the developing world and reversing their hard-won economic gains.
The virus’s long gestation period and the lingering death that those afflicted generally suffer also makes AIDS a high-cost disease in terms of its demands on public health systems and the depletion of an infected country’s human capital. Asia has already overtaken Africa as the global epicentre of the disease and as many as 20 million Asians may be infected by 2010. China’s National Centre for AIDS Prevention and Control has forecast that HIV/AIDS infection in China could reach 10 million by 2010. If this forecast proves accurate, AIDS-related deaths in China would equal all the fatalities from armed conflict in East Asia in the second half of the 20th century.[20]
Notwithstanding the enormous impact of AIDS, the H5N1 strain of avian influenza is now considered to be the greatest potential health security threat to Asia because of the potentially devastating strategic and economic implications of a full blown avian influenza pandemic. While the likelihood of H5N1 developing into a human pandemic in the next thirty years is still assessed as low by most health experts - around ten percent – it is sufficiently high that governments and business ought to take the issue very seriously. Indeed, in any meaningful risk assessment of the principal security challenges confronting the region, avian influenza has strong claims to rate among the top half a dozen along with international terrorism, major war, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, HIV/AIDS and climate change.
Avian influenza is an ancient virus that has lived in the gastrointestinal tracts of some wild aquatic bird species for centuries, spreading around the world as they migrate back and forth. These waterfowl have innate immunities which allow them to host the virus unharmed and do not encourage genetic mutations for which the virus has a natural propensity. But when, through commingling, wild waterfowl spread the virus to non-immune avian species, new variants can arise which may become highly pathogenic and extremely infectious, causing disease and death in large numbers.
Commercial poultry farming in East Asia – particularly China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia – has been seriously affected by recent outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which is the most genetically unstable of the different classes of influenza and the most likely to be pathogenic in new host species. In mid 2003, eight Southeast Asian countries experienced the largest and most severe outbreak of a deadly variant of avian influenza in poultry ever recorded which has since become endemic in these countries and has continued to spread across the globe, with outbreaks occurring in other parts of Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The World Health Organization has characterised this development as “the fastest and most extensive geographical spread of any highly pathogenic avian influenza virus recorded since the disease was first described in 1878.” [21]
The widespread nature of these outbreaks in both domesticated and wild bird populations has raised fears that conditions are now ripe for the H5N1 virus to jump the species barrier and become transmissible between humans.
Animal husbandry practices in parts of East Asia - where several species of animals, including humans, live in very close proximity to each other - provide ideal conditions for the influenza virus to infect humans. Most of the confirmed cases of human infection by the H5N1 virus have occurred in East Asia, and around half have resulted in death. To date several instances of limited human-to-human transmission of the virus have occurred but according to WHO, “in no case has the virus spread beyond a first generation of close contacts or caused illness in a general community.”[22] If it had, the world could already be suffering a major influenza pandemic. Fortunately, on present evidence, the species barrier is still a formidable obstacle for the virus to overcome as it does not easily cross from birds to humans, or from human to human.
Significant difficulties arise in trying to quantify the economic effects of a pandemic, because of the large number of variables. But despite the difficulties in generating accurate numbers, modeling the economic effects of a pandemic is still important for planning policy responses and intervention strategies. The most authoritative modeling to date suggests that even a relatively mild avian influenza pandemic could cost the world 1.4 million lives and US$330 billion in lost production, or roughly 0.8 percent of GDP. However, a pandemic comparable to the 1918-19 Spanish flu would be devastating, causing up to 142 million deaths and losses of $US 4.4 trillion, equivalent to 12.6 percent of global GDP.[23]
Because of its speed of transmission and virulence, avian influenza could bring the global economy to a halt and devastate the developed as well as the developing world. The relatively modest SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis of 2003 provides an insight into what could happen if a strain of avian influenza develops into a genuine pandemic. SARS infected around 8,000 people, mainly in Asia, over a five month period. About 10 percent of those affected died - less than a thousand people in total. Yet it cost East Asian economies some US$40 billion and reduced air traffic in the region by 45 percent. And it spread with alarming speed. Emerging in rural China, the virus took only days to appear in five neighbouring countries and a few months to infect 30 countries on six continents. If an avian influenza pandemic eventuates then the number of deaths for Asia could be in the tens of millions, based on mortality rates from the flu pandemic of 1918-19.
During the SARS crisis, Hong Kong’s and Singapore’s economies shrank by 10 percent, despite the small number of confirmed cases.[24] An avian influenza pandemic would be far worse. Global financial markets would spiral downwards as investors reacted to the likely changes to consumer behaviour, leading to a rapid global sell off of bonds and equities and a flight into cash and gold. If the pandemic lasted beyond 6 months, many borrowers would have trouble servicing their loans which would flow through into bank profits and have a cascading effect on the global economy. Perhaps the greatest problem confronting governments would be controlling the panic and fear generated by the first signs of a flu pandemic. Writing about the Black Death which laid waste to Europe in the 14th century, the Sienese chronicler Agnolo di Tura, noted that fear of the contagion froze out every caring instinct. “Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another”, he wrote. “And no one could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship.” [25] It would be optimistic, in the extreme, to believe that the situation would be any different today without a major investment in public education and crisis management.
Conclusion
War has traditionally been considered the main threat to international security because of the large number of deaths it causes and the threat it poses to the functioning and survival of the state. If judged by these criteria, it is clear that the transnational threats explored in this paper are potentially as detrimental to human life and economic and political order as traditional military threats. The reality is that climate change of the magnitude and time frames predicted by climate scientists poses fundamental questions of human security, survival and the stability of nation states which necessitate judgements about political and strategic risk as well as economic cost.
Climate change is heightening anxieties about future supplies of energy, at a time when the security margin for fossil fuels, particularly oil, is disconcertingly thin. Climate change will complicate energy choices as the transition from highly polluting fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy gathers speed. In the short term this may exacerbate oil shortages resulting from sudden price rises, distribution problems or disruptions to supply, adding to strategic uncertainty. The melting of the polar ice caps and accompanying sea level rise will throw into question established maritime boundaries and EEZs, creating tensions at sea that could impact on energy supplies and fuel interstate conflict.
In assessing the risk to global and Asian security, the spread of pandemic diseases must now be considered a first order security issue since the security fall-out is commensurate with that of armed conflict and even major war. Moreover, these diseases are beyond the capacity of any one state to ameliorate or combat, and their economic impact on fragile and vulnerable states is often understated, as weak states generally lack the institutional strengths and expertise to mitigate the most deleterious effects. In the security domain, strategic doctrines and defence budgets are frequently justified on the basis of far less observable evidence than we have about infectious diseases and the climate future which awaits us. Prudence and sensible risk management suggest that policy makers need to take these issues far more seriously.
[1] M. Oppenheimer and R.B. Alley, Ice sheets, global warming and Article 2 of the UNFCC: an editorial essay. Climatic Change 68 (3) 2005.
[2] The current world population of 6.5 billion is expected to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050. See United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. World population to increase by 2.6 billion over next 45 years, with all growth occurring in less developed regions. (POP/918) United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs February 24 2005: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/pop918.doc.htm.
[3] Kelly and Adger, 2000 cited in McCarthy, Canziani, Leary, Dokken and White, eds., Climate change 2001: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability – contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, section 11.2.4.5, at http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/445.htm.
[4] The risk is from starvation, disease, poverty and the effects of forced displacement. Norman Myers, Global Population Growth (paper presented at the Seminar on Global Security Beyond 2000, University of Pittsburgh, 2 November 1995), pp 17-18 and Norman Myers, Environmental refugees: a growing phenomenon of the 21st century. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 357 (1420) 2002.
[5] William Blyth and Nicolas Lefevre, Energy security and climate change policy interactions: an assessment framework. IEA Information Paper, International Energy Agency, December 2004, p 14.
[6] Alan Dupont and Graeme Pearman, ‘Heating up the Planet: Climate Change and Security’, Lowy Institute Paper 12, Lowy Institute for International Security, Sydney, 2006 http://www.lowyinstitute.org.au
[7] Energy Task Force, Securing Australia's energy future. Canberra, Australian Government: Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2006 http://www.dpmc.gov.au/publications/energy_future/
[8] Nuclear Energy Agency. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Nuclear power and climate change. Paris, OECD Publications, 1998.
[9] David Von Hippel and Peter Hayes, Two scenarios of nuclear power and nuclear waste production in northeast Asia. Pacific and Asian Journal of Energy 8 (1) 1998.
[10] Central Intelligence Agency. Spratly Islands. The World Factbook March 29 2006: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/pg.html. See also http://www.gesource.ac.uk/worldguide/html/1027_map.html
[11] Chris Hogg, ‘Japan uses coral to ‘grow’ islets’, 15 June, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6758271.stm
[12] C.J.Chivers, ‘Russia Plants Underwater Flag at North Pole’, New York Times, 2 August, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/world/europe/02cbd-arctic.html
[13] On this point see Miranda Darling, ‘The Pandemic Threat’, Quadrant; October 2005, p.8.
[14] An epidemic is defined as an outbreak of a disease that infects many individuals in a population, and can be difficult or impossible to contain. A pandemic is an epidemic that occurs in many regions of the world: ‘Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases’, UN Chronicle 1, 1999, p. 11.
[15] For a revealing insight into the reluctance of medical authorities and national security officials in the West to recognise the full import of AIDS, see Barton Gellman, ‘West Refused to Heed Early Warnings of Pandemic’, International Herald Tribune 6 July 2000, pp. 1–2.
[16] See Roxanne Bazergan, ‘HIV/AIDS and the military’, Conflict, Security & Development Group Bulletin 7, August–September 2000, p. 2.
[17] Chris Beyrer quoted in Bertil Lintner, ‘Condoms or Landmines’, Far Eastern Economic Review 9 April 1998, p. 50.
[18] Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1996), pp. 409–12, 777.
[19] Alan Whiteside and David FitzSimons, ‘The AIDS Epidemic: Economic, Political and Security Implications’, Conflict Studies 251, May 1992, p. 1.
[20] Alan Dupont, East Asia Imperilled: Transnational Challenges to Security (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2001), p.227.
[21] World Health Organization, ‘Strengthening pandemic-influenza preparedness and response, including application of the International Health Regulations’, Report to the Fifty Ninth World Health Assembly, A59/4, 24 April 2006, p.1.
[22] World Health Organization, ‘Strengthening pandemic-influenza preparedness and response, including application of the International Health Regulations’, Report to the Fifty Ninth World Health Assembly, A59/4, 24 April 2006, p.2.
[23] See the calculations by Warwick McKibbin and Alexandra Sidorenko, ‘Global Macroeconomic Consequences of Pandemic Influenza, Lowy Institute for International Policy, Analysis, February 2006, p.26.
[24] Matt Wade, ‘Economy at risk of melt down if killer flu strikes’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 October 2005, http://www.thesydneymorningherald.com.au
[25] Cited in Miriam Cosic, ‘Panic Attack’, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 10-11 May 2003, p.29.
