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Climate change and security: managing the risk

Profile image of Graeme PearmanGraeme Pearman

2008

Abstract

Weather extremes and greater fluctuations in rainfall and temperatures have the capacity to refashion the Asia-Pacific's productive landscape and exacerbate food, water and energy scarcities in a relatively short time span. Climate change will contribute to destabilising, population movements in Asia and the Pacific. Most of these flows are likely to be internal, but the ripple effects will be felt beyond the borders of the states most affected, requiring cooperative regional solutions and Australian leadership. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, requiring a more rapid transition away from our dependence on fossil fuels, could place added pressure on an already tight energy market and heighten anxieties about energy security. More extreme weather patterns would result in greater death and destruction from natural disasters adding to the burden on poorer countries and stretching the resources and coping ability of even the most developed nations. Extreme weather events and climate-related disasters will trigger short-term disease spikes and also have more enduring consequences. The cumulative impact of rising temperatures, rising sea levels and more mega droughts on agriculture, fresh water and energy could threaten the security of Australia's neighbours by reducing their carrying capacity below a minimum threshold. While Australia may be better positioned to manage the consequences of climate change, we cannot be inoculated against its destabilising effects. Should climate change coincide with other transnational challenges to security, such as terrorism or pandemic diseases, or add to pre-existing ethnic and social tensions, the impact will be magnified. State collapse and destabilising internal conflicts are more likely outcomes than inter-state wars. Far from exaggerating the scale of climate change it is possible that scientists may have underestimated the threat. The most likely tipping point would be an accelerating reduction of land-based glaciers and the polar ice which could dramatically increase sea levels and reduce river flows. Prudence and sensible risk management suggest that Australia's strategic planners ought to include worse case climate change scenarios in their contingency planning as they do for terrorism, infectious diseases and conventional military challenges to national security.

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  64. Between 1999 and 2007, these extra-budget costs amounted to $4.3 billion, or $533 million per year. From data provided by Dr. Mark Thomson, Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
  65. Jared Diamond, Collapse: how societies choose to fail or survive. London, Allen Lane, 2005, p 13.
  66. Peter J. Mayhew, Gareth B. Jenkins, Timothy G. Benton. A long-term association between global temperature and biodiversity, origination and extinction in the fossil record. Proceedings of The Royal Society, 275 (1630) 2008. See also A. Hallam and P.B. Wignall, Mass extinctions and their aftermath, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, p 4.

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David J Spratt

2019

● Since the Paris climate conference in 2015, much time has been spent talking about and researching 1.5°C to 2°C of climate warming. But there has been relatively little focus on where the climate system is actually heading, given the lack of political commitment to climate action on a global scale: which is 3°C of warming, and possibly much more. ● In May 2019, Breakthrough published a policy paper Existential Climate-related Security Risk: A scenario approach , which included a brief 3°C scenario. Understanding scenarios is important because of the role they can play in “thinking the unthinkable”, sensitizing and broadening mindsets to critical global developments, especially the unexpected, and adjusting strategy accordingly. Scenario planning does not forecast, predict or express preferences for the future; rather it is story-telling, painting internally-consistent pictures of alternative worlds which might emerge, given certain assumptions that are credible in the light of both known and lesser known factors. ● This paper provides detailed supporting evidence for the brief 3 0 C scenario. Some contentious aspects are explored, including the possibility that perhaps a billion people could be displaced by 3°C or warming, that some regions may become too hot for human habitation for part of the year, and that critical thresholds, consistent with the “Hothouse Earth” scenario, may be passed. ● To complement this picture, a 3°C scenario developed in 2007 by US national security analysts is reproduced. Its conclusions do not mince words. This scenario has proven prescient in foreseeing some of the major socio-political events that have already emerged in the 12 years since its publication. Understanding what 3°C of warming really means should be a great motivator for climate emergency action.

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Chapter 25. Australasia. In: Climate Change 2014; Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Andrew Campbell
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Climate change impacts on Australia and the benefits of early action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions
Colin D Butler

2006

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DISASTER ALLEY: Climate change, conflict & risk
David J Spratt, Ian Dunlop

The first responsibility of a government is to safeguard the people and their future well-being. The ability to do this is threatened by climate change, whose accelerating impacts will also drive political instability and conflict, posing large negative consequences to human society which may never be undone. This report looks at climate change and conflict issues through the lens of sensible risk-management to draw new conclusions about the challenge we now face. From tropical coral reefs to the polar ice sheets, global warming is already dangerous. The world is perilously close to, or passed, tipping points which will create major changes in global climate systems. The world now faces existential climate-change risks which may result in “outright chaos” and an end to human civilisation as we know it. These risks are either not understood or wilfully ignored across the public and private sectors, with very few exceptions. Global warming will drive increasingly severe humanitarian crises, forced migration, political instability and conflict. The Asia–Pacific region, including Australia, is considered to be “Disaster Alley” where some of the worst impacts will be experienced. Australia’s political, bureaucratic and corporate leaders are abrogating their fiduciary responsibilities to safeguard the people and their future well-being. They are ill-prepared for the real risks of climate change at home and in the region. The Australian government must ensure Australian Defence Force and emergency services preparedness, mission and operational resilience, and capacity for humanitarian aid and disaster relief, across the full range of projected climate change scenarios. Building more resilient communities in the most vulnerable nations by high-level financial commitments and development assistance can help protect peoples in climate hotspots and zones of potential instability and conflict. It is essential to now strongly advocate a global climate emergency response, and to build a national leadership group outside conventional politics to design and implement emergency decarbonisation of the Australian economy. This would adopt all available safe solutions using sound, existential risk-management practices.

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Crunch Time: How climate action in the 2020s will define Australia
Simon Bradshaw

2021

Our future depends on urgent and decisive action to respond to the climate crisis in the 2020s, as scientific consensus makes clear our window to avoid catastrophe is closing. In November 2021, governments from around the world convened at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) to respond to the rapidly escalating climate challenge. The pledges made at Glasgow have profound implications for the next Australian Government, particularly the need to promptly strengthen its 2030 emissions reduction target (UNFCCC 2021). A significantly stronger 2030 target will restore Australia’s international standing, and unlock economic opportunities for Australians in clean industries and exports. Most importantly, it will better align with the global goal to limit warming to 1.5°C, which would help protect Australians, our Pacific neighbours and the global community from catastrophic climate change.

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  • Climate Change
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