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Climate Change and Security

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

• Battling the Elements: The security threat of climate change (PDF - 364 KB) »  Oli Brown, Alec Crawford, 2009 Addressing climate change is about more than arctic ice and biodiversity. It is becoming increasingly clear that action on our emissions now may shape our security in the future. But it is a shared challenge, beyond the capacity of any one country to tackle on its own. This commentary lays out the extent of the security challenge of climate change and argues that if we are aware of the potential threats, then we are in a better position to prevent them.

• Give Peace (and the climate) a Chance (PDF - 225 KB) »  Oli Brown, Alec Crawford, 2009 Jordan River basin countries are desperately short of water. Israel, Jordan and Palestine have less than a quarter as much water as the common definition of a water-scarce country. Regional climate models predict that unless drastic action is taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, rising temperatures will reduce agricultural productivity and make water even harder to come by in this already-dry region. At the same time, population growth is increasing demand for water, food and jobs at a tremendous rate. A decrease in the availability of water needed to feed the Middle East's growing population could raise the stakes for the return or the retention of occupied land. The threat to political stability in the Middle East underlines why the climate talks in Copenhagen in December must conclude with a deal on climate change.

• Climate Change and Conflict: Lessons from community conservancies in northern Kenya
  (PDF - 978 KB) »  Ivan Campbell, Sarah Dalrymple, Rob Craig, Alec Crawford, 2009 This report is based on the findings of research carried out in two community wildlife conservancies in northern Kenya earlier this year. It illustrates how climate change is affecting the distribution and prevalence of natural resources in Kenya, but makes it clear that this is not the only factor contributing to resource scarcity. It emphasizes that competition for natural resources is a key driver of conflict, but also that it interacts with a range of other factors and that violence is not inevitable. The research found that local governance mechanisms, especially natural resource management mechanisms, provided by community conservancies in the region, are crucial in determining whether competition over scarce resources will turn into violent conflict.

• A Recurring Anarchy? The emergence of climate change as a threat to international peace and security (PDF - 125 kb) »  Oli Brown, Robert McLeman - Routledge, October 2009 Robert Kaplan's 1994 article, "The Coming Anarchy" was a milestone in literature on the links between environmental change and security. The article predicted that disease, corruption, overpopulation, scarce resources and climate change would plunge West Africa into pervasive conflict. A decade and a half-and several civil wars-later, this article returns to West Africa to see to what extent Kaplan's predictions have come to pass.
  
  While West Africa may not have followed exactly the trajectory that Kaplan foresaw, he did correctly predict that climate change would be recognized as a threat to international security. This paper reviews, in greater detail, the development of conceptualizations of environment and security that influence current discussions about the potential impacts of climate change on security, paying particular attention to the ways in which West Africa is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

• Climate Change and Security in Africa»  Oli Brown, Alec Crawford English (PDF - 4 mb) - Français (PDF - 3.6 mb)
  Climate change–by redrawing global maps of water availability, food security, disease prevalence and coastal boundaries–could potentially increase forced migration, raise tensions and trigger new conflicts.
  
  Although Africa is the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, it is almost universally seen as the continent most at risk of climate-induced conflict due to its reliance on climate-dependent sectors (such as rain-fed agriculture) and its history of resource, ethnic and political conflicts. In this report, prepared for the Nordic-African Foreign Ministers Forum in Copenhagen in March, 2009, IISD examines the threats that climate change could pose to security for the continent, as well as strategies for peace and development in a changing climate.

• Arctic Sovereignty and Security in a Climate-changing World (PDF - 642 kb) »  Alec Crawford, Art Hanson, David Runnalls 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.

• Climate change: A new threat to stability in West Africa? Evidence from Ghana and Burkina Faso (PDF - 215 kb)»  Oli Brown, Alec Crawford, Institute for Security Studies, September 2008. The security implications of climate change have become the subject of unprecedented international attention. There have been some attempts to construct scenarios of the security implications of climate change at a global scale but the country-level security impacts of climate change have often been lost in the midst of the political rhetoric. In this article for the September 2008 edition of the African Security Review, published quarterly by the Institute for Security Studies, Africa's leading human security research institution, Oli Brown and Alec Crawford draw on their fieldwork in Ghana and Burkina Faso to see to what extent the links that have been hypothesized reflect a realistic future for two different countries in West Africa as the impacts of climate change gather pace.

• The Security Dimensions of Environmental Policy: Canadian defence policy changes along with climate in the suddenly accessible Far North (PDF - 116 kb) »  Alec Crawford, Toronto Star, July 2008 This Toronto Star op-ed discusses how Canada's Arctic sovereignty and security are increasingly being shaped by climate change and the resulting reduction of sea ice.

• Environmental Change and the New Security Agenda: Implications for Canada's security and environment (PDF - 688 kb) »  Oli Brown, Alec Crawford, Christine Campeau, IISD, June 2008. This paper investigates how environmental change and Canadian security are interlinked. First, it attempts to chart the ways in which global environmental change (such as climate change and environmental mismanagement) affect Canada's domestic security and the welfare of Canadian interests overseas. Second, the paper analyzes the links between environment and security from the opposite direction: we assess the environmental implications of what we call 'the new security agenda', Canada's current national security focus on the prevention of terrorism.

• Migration and Climate Change (PDF - 962 kb) »  Oli Brown, International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2008. This short book analyzes the prospect of large-scale forced migration as a result of climate change and attempts to estimate the developmental impact of potentially millions of people displaced by coastal flooding, extreme weather events and agricultural disruption. It was written for the International Organisation for Migration's Migration Research Series (no.31) and developed from a thematic paper originally written for the 2007/2008 Human Development Report of the UNDP, "Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World." A link to the IOM publications page can be found here.

• Assessing the security implications of climate change for West Africa: Country case studies of Ghana and Burkina Faso
  (PDF - 620 kb) »  Oli Brown, Alec Crawford, IISD, 2008. Our research in this area investigates the country-level impacts of climate change on security in West Africa. The final report sets out scenarios for the future security implications of climate change as well as identifying particular 'flash point' issues that domestic authorities and external actors should bear in mind when designing development programs.

• Weather of Mass Destruction? The rise of climate change as the "new" security issue. (PDF - 133 kb) »  Oli Brown Institute for Security Studies, 2008. This commentary assesses the risks and opportunities of a securitized debate on climate change.

• Climate change as the 'new' security threat: implications for Africa (PDF - 133 kb) »  Oli Brown, Anne Hammill, Robert Mcleman, IISD, 2007. Once an environmental issue, then an energy problem, climate change is now being recast as a security threat. Africa is particularly vulnerable—with its history of resource, ethnic and interstate conflict. This article for the journal International Affairs charts the dimensions of the climate security challenge in Africa and analyzes the role of adaptation policies in future conflict prevention.

• Climate Change and Foreign Policy: An exploration of options for greater integration (PDF - 655 kb) »  John Drexhage, Deborah Murphy, Oli Brown, Aaron Cosbey, Peter Dickey, Jo-Ellen Parry, John Van Ham, Richard Tarasofsky, Beverley Darkin, IISD, 2007. This study examines opportunities for a broader framing of the climate change issue in a number of foreign policy areas of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark: diplomacy and international relations; energy security; peace and security; trade and investment; and development cooperation.

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