Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 2, April–May 2009, pp. 137–148
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The conventional wisdom on climate change and security affairs features resource wars, weak states toppling, and trickles of immigrants turning into torrents. Over the medium term, however, climate change is not likely to involve simple causality and a stark, one-to-one correspondence. Climate impacts may be all but imperceptible for states already beset with acute ongoing problems, such as Afghanistan, North Korea and Zimbabwe. And they may be surprisingly tolerable for long-arid states, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose entire histories have involved adjusting to inhospitable climates.
For most states climate change tends to be under the radar, intersecting with and exacerbating existing difficulties such as economic weakness, infrastructural shortcomings, communal strife, weak governance and tenuous political legitimacy, often with spillover effects beyond borders. Climate impacts are manifold, diffuse and of systemic consequence in the aggregate. Well-governed states may be better positioned to adapt than states in the developing world, but even the most privileged nations will not get off scot-free.
There is increasing awareness and appreciation of direct climate changes in the form of mean surface temperature and patterns of precipitation as well as the secondary physical impacts on the earth’s natural systems. But the more intangible third-order socio-political and institutional effects have not been fully appreciated. It is only by adding in an accounting of these indirect effects, which bear on security, that a full evaluation of global climate change and appropriate responses can be made.
Physical changes, social responses
Rising temperatures and water anomalies, like droughts or floods, bear on the availability of natural resources such as pasture, agricultural produce and drinking water. Relative scarcity can lead to either cooperation or competition among affected groups, but it is competition that drives the social effects of most concern. This competition, disruptive enough, occurs between urbanites and displaced rural dwellers moving to cities, as has been seen in many parts of the world, such as South Asia. When cities do not have the resources to accommodate new arrivals, many will aim to move on to more prosperous countries. This can lead to human tragedy for migrants stuck outside various cordons and fences, recriminations on sending countries for not securing their borders, and ugly nativist backlashes in destination countries.
Another fault line for competition among domestic groups involves distinct regional entities, such as Saharan–Maghrebi divides within North African countries. And competition takes place between clans and ethnic groups as well. Already-weak central governments will be strained by the loss of revenues, new welfare demands, and the upsetting of traditional political balances. Official responses to hard-hit areas are likely to be perceived as inadequate, sometimes stoking pre-existing feelings of marginalisation and discrimination. Central incapacity and local grievance may prompt insurrection in the underserved hinterlands in areas such as parts of the Near East. Conversely, autonomy movements in wealthier portions of beleaguered countries could arise, as may already be happening in some Andean countries. Poorer states further weakened by climate-induced stress will fare poorly keeping some order.
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Paul F. Herman Jr is Program Director, Transnational Issues, National Intelligence Council Long-Range Analysis Unit. The views expressed herein are his and not necessarily those of the NIC or the US government. Gregory F. Treverton is Director of the RAND Corporation’s Center for Global Risk and Security. His most recent book is Intelligence for an Era of Terror (forthcoming).
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