Key Message

No longer is climate change just an environmental problem or an energy challenge. In recent years, it has been recognized as a core development challenge that carries potentially serious implications for international peace and security.

Climate Change and Security

What's New in Conservation and Conflict?

  • Arctic Sovereignty and Security in a Climate-changing World (PDF - 642 kb)
    Arctic sovereignty is a complicated business. Promises of vast resources and fabled shipping lanes set free by a melting ice pack have triggered a competition for land and influence across the region. Climate change has made it clear that the Arctic environmental transformation poses some very real security concerns for Canada. There is a danger, however, that these perceived security threats, the shared expectations of what lies beneath the Arctic ice and the race to define our northern sovereignty could overshadow some of the current and expected environmental challenges to be faced by the Arctic ecosystem and the communities that depend upon it. This short report focuses on the important northern issues that Canada should be focusing on beyond those currently grabbing the headlines.

There is an increasing realization within the international community that climate change is an issue with implications across the full sweep of government policy. No longer is climate change seen as merely an environmental problem or an energy challenge. In recent years, it has become viewed as a core development challenge that carries potentially serious implications for international peace and security.

Climate change will redraw our coastlines, alter where we can grow food, change where we can find water, expose us to fiercer storms or more severe droughts and likely force large numbers of people to move from their homelands. Climate change will undermine the economic and agricultural base of many countries, particularly the most vulnerable developing countries.

Meanwhile, warming temperatures are changing the strategic balance in the Arctic by opening up new shipping routes and uncovering the oil and gas supplies previously under the ice. Globally, climate change will stress existing mechanisms for sharing resources like transboundary rivers and migratory fish stocks. It is clear that climate change holds the potential to exacerbate existing tensions and even trigger new ones.

IISD's work tries to understand how climate change could affect political and economic stability and to develop effective ways to address those problems. It attempts to cut through the rhetoric with clear analysis of where the areas of concern lie, and hopes to add nuance, texture and detail to the debate on the security implications of climate change.

Research