By Paul Dibb
Climate change doesn't pose an immediate threat to our national security, insists Paul Dibb
THE harbingers of doom are at it again. This time, some Europeans are claiming that climate change is an existential security threat whose effects will be catastrophic, like global nuclear war.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has described climate change as “the security issue of the 21st century'', one that could “pose national security issues like we've never seen before''. Then we had Lord May, a former chief scientific adviser to the British government, warning Australians of the threat of climate change causing armed conflicts as the world's population fought over limited water supplies and other resources.
Now we have Alan Dupont, professor of international security studies at the University of Sydney, calling for a fundamental reassessment of our national security because he believes climate change “has emerged rapidly to become one of the most serious potential security challenges''.
Rather than spend money on new defence equipment, Dupont says “more consideration needs to be given to funding ways to meet non-traditional security threats''.
National security is a greatly abused concept. The definition of serious threats should be restricted to events that could undermine our sovereignty, democratic freedoms and rule of law, and economic prosperity.
Australia's security interests are few in number and should be expressed in order of priority. This will be a challenging task for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's new national security adviser.
When it comes to climate change, it will not be good enough to evoke generalised threats that could simply inconvenience us. Any security challenges arising from climate change will take time, unlike, for example, a global nuclear war. Increases in temperature or water levels will not occur overnight.
Of course, Rudd is right to focus on climate change as a key challenge for Australia's prosperity. But it is far too early to say that a clear set of priorities has emerged for the national security agenda.
Populations weakened by famine and water shortages are hardly likely to travel across vast distances in their millions to get to Australia.
And there are a very limited number of situations in which any country today will wage war in order to increase its water supply.
Climate change could, however, undermine the security of some countries in Australia's neighbourhood and produce failed states that will certainly require our assistance, but the prospect of climate change leading to interstate war is unlikely.
We need to be more careful about identifying parts of the world that will be most seriously affected by climate change in a security sense. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, different regions will be affected in different ways but the overall impact is likely to increase the vulnerability of areas that are already prone to conflict, poverty and disease.
According to the IISS, there will be moderate but below-average declines in rice yields in South and Southeast Asia over the next few decades, with large but average declines by the last quarter of the century. The monsoon is likely to become, on average, warmer and wetter.
In East Asia, rice, the dominant regional food crop, will experience small and below-average declines in yield in the next 20 to 30 years, with moderate but nonetheless below-average declines later in the century. There will be a small increase in available water resources in the next few decades and moderate increases later in the century.
The population at risk of coastal flooding is expected to increase significantly, particularly in China, but this is mostly because of population growth rather than the effects of climate change.
Australia is expected to experience below-average declines in wheat yields, and water resources are expected to increase marginally overall, though southern areas will be hardest hit where drought does occur. The IISS observes, however, that Australia is especially vulnerable to rainfall variation and there is therefore scope for extreme variations from the norm.
As a result of increases in the sea level, the island nations of the South Pacific are particularly at risk from flooding, but the threat of submergence, with its profound human and political consequences, “will be marginal unless warming significantly exceeds the mean projection''.
The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that some parts of the world, such as Africa, South America and the Middle East, are more likely to be seriously affected by climate change in a security sense than Australia.
There is, however, a significant degree of uncertainty in the science surrounding these predictions. Regional climate change models are not well developed.
Of course, it would be a different matter if it could be demonstrated that climate change will fundamentally undermine Australia's economic strength and, therefore, our strategic position. According to the latest Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics assessment, Australia is projected to be one of the most adversely affected regions from future changes in climate in terms of reductions in agricultural production and exports.
This brings me to the suggestion that we should cut the defence budget going to hi-tech equipment in favour of funding measures against non-traditional security threats, such as climate change. But the proponents of this idea fail to make clear how they are going to combat the security threats of climate change: is it with a bigger army, a larger federal police force, or some sort of peace corps?
We need to be clear, however, that they risk undermining Australia's military power in a part of the world where the geopolitical balance is changing rapidly, and not necessarily in our favour. Successive Australian governments have given priority to our defence force maintaining a clear regional technological advantage. I expect the Rudd Government to do the same.
Paul Dibb is emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.
