Climate change and its implications to national security

Risk Hazards Crisis in Public Policy, 2010

Security studies in the 21st century have broadened to encompass a variety of transnational phenomena newly defined as threats. Climate change is one of these phenomena. In theoretical terms, climate change is being securitized. Climate change, in which man-made global warming is a major factor, is an internationally recognized phenomenon that is projected to produce dramatic, accelerating, and long-lasting human, economic, and political consequences with profound security implications. These will be most pronounced in places where the effects of climate change are greatest, particularly affecting weak states already especially vulnerable to environmental destabilization. National security establishments in the United States and elsewhere are hurriedly attempting to come to grips with climate change and how to respond to its strategic challenges. This paper, in the context of securitization theory, human security, and sustainable security, discusses the phenomena of global warming and climate change, examines the destabilizing effects of climate change, describes how such effects are being perceived as transnational threats to security, and argues that securitization of climate change is necessary, timely, and irreversible.

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2021): J. Peace Dipl. , 2021

The security paradigm of the world is constantly shifting, and compared to the military and traditional issues, non-military problems are now given significantly greater emphasis. Threats to a person's life and wellness that fall beyond the usual definition of security include climate change. Climate Change has taken a central position on the international forum. The purpose of this study is to analyze climate-driven environmental changes that are anticipated to influence some of the factors that threaten security; undermine livelihoods, increase migration, create political instability or other forms of insecurity, and weaken the capabilities of states to respond to challenges appropriately. Some major international issues such as population growth, pollution, melting of ice glaciers, floods, and droughts are interlinked with the above-said problems and are also becoming the core issues within states and borders. Climate Change may result eventually in a plethora of security risks and threats that can also exacerbate conflicts. The purpose of the study is to examine either climate change is a critical issue or whether the states just politicize it. This study aims to investigate how climate change affects security and public perception to recommend policy solutions to these ever-evolving problems. Security is a multidimensional approach that focuses on an individual's welfare and well-being. Improvement of policymaking in handling the issue of climate change is also a very important factor for peace and human security at the international level.

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, 2023

The melting of glaciers and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, droughts, and flooding are powerful reminders of climate change and signals that we have entered the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002) -a new geological epoch in which the future of the planet depends on human actions, and which has 'no analogy' in the Earth's history (Dalby 2009, p. 11). Human action has become so powerful and pervasive that it is comparable to a geological force that transforms the planet in unprecedented ways. Nature, the environment and climate are no longer stable backgrounds against which human history and actions unfold. This requires humans to embrace the challenges of this new condition, its complexity and uncertainty. Climate change is emblematic of this shift, as it anticipates many challenges of the Anthropocene. New potentially catastrophic threats -the possibilities of abrupt climate change or the massive extinctions of species -emerge, while concerns about access to water, food and energy remain relevant and are aggravated by climate change. Conflict and social instability may follow or be exacerbated. Not surprisingly, some of these challenges have been addressed as security issues, both because of the concerns that these problems raise for states and peoples, and the power of evoking security to mobilize and legitimize action . Attempts to link climate change and security date back to the 1970s, when apprehensions about anthropogenic changes in weather patterns started to develop. Since then, climate change has been included in national security strategies and has been brought to the discussion of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on more than one occasion (Scott 2015 and Chapter 13 in this volume). There is extensive academic and political debate on the subject. 1 Yet, the term 'climate security', which is used in the literature, remains ambiguous and contested, as does the very consideration of climate change as a security issue. Establishing a link between climate change and security is not a straightforward process. Far from being self-evident, it implies a set of political choices on the kinds of threats that need to be considered, whose security is at stake, and the means to be employed. Once questioned, these choices reveal deeply seated assumptions on what counts as security and the ways of providing it and prompt reflection. For many, security is still associated with the survival of the state, its core values and the legitimation of exceptional measures. The link also requires conceptual and theoretical reworking of the way security is understood and provided, as many of the threats posed by climate change do not fit the traditional security agenda and logic. They question, for instance, the protection of a territory against external threats, using defensive, reactive measures and, that, in turn, challenges many of the political categories on which we moderns operate and think through. This Handbook explores the emergence of climate change as an international security issue, the threats it poses, and the political and academic debates it has prompted. It provides an overview of the different ways the link between climate change and security has been established

Strategic Studies Institute Carlisle Papers, 2009

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Journal of Strategic Security, 2020

Policy makers, scholars, strategic military thinkers, and intelligence analysts increasingly recognize climate change as a profound multi- dimensional global crisis. The dimensions of climate change have the potential to alter the way people live by presenting a range of environmental, social, economic, political, and social challenges. These include the potential for extreme weather events (hurricanes, storms, floods, heat waves) triggering mass migration, refugees, and depopulation of entire regions as they become uninhabitable due to extreme heat or sea level rise, droughts, degraded water supplies, famine and food insecurity, and health and biosecurity threats trigger humanitarian emergencies.

Environment Systems and Decisions, 2014

The science is clear that climate change is one of the most important issues facing humanity. The changing climate is already affecting humanity and our economies in many ways. These effects will increase as the climate continues to change, and the effects are expected to increase dramatically over the coming decades. Climaterelated hazards exacerbate other stressors, often with negative outcomes for livelihoods, especially for people living in poverty. Climate change can amplify existing stresses and vulnerabilities among populations and existing threats to security and can indirectly increase risks of violence and violent conflict. This paper is aimed at examining the changes occurring to the Earth's climate, what additional changes in climate are likely to occur over the coming decades, and how climate change could affect global security.

Vermont journal of environmental law, 2014

Journal for the nation's top-ranked environmental law school, has the unique opportunity to host experts from across the nation, and the world, to debate and discuss influential and significant environmental issues. Without exception, the Journal's 2013 Symposium sought to reinvigorate the nation's climate change discourse through a robust look at the growing link between climate change and national security. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Defense has consistently identified climate change as one of the top threats to U.S. national security The Journal was not alone in its interest to draw attention to this significant issue. In the months leading up to the 2013 Symposium, President Obama gave a landmark climate change speech revealing that in the last fifteen years, the United States experienced the twelve warmest years on record; 1 U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, writing for Foreign Policy magazine, addressed the Navy's near "eco-arms race" to rapidly adapt to changes in energy costs and climate demands; 2 and a scientific paper published in Nature warned of rising greenhouse emissions †

2009

The international political environment will change substantially as the Earth enters a period of rapid bio-physical transition driven by climate change. While it is true that climate change will have considerable impact on the national security of states around the world, the link between climate change hazards and security threats is not direct. The academic literature has been haphazard in presenting a theoretically consistent paradigm for assessing the security implications of climate change. Because of the global scale of climate change and the regional variation of specific climate change hazards, the traditional, human and environmental security paradigms can and should be reconciled to ascertain how conflict develops from climate change hazards and predict the probability of conflict scenarios developing at a given location. This paper attempts to redress this through a four-step framework for mapping how climate change hazards can lead to human and traditional security problems at a specific location and in surrounding areas.

Advances in Politics and Economics

Traditional security premised on state and its military apparatus has got itself emasculated in the face of continuing emergence of new kind of threats from the non-traditional and nonstate centric sources. Climate change and deepening environmental crisis along with other crises like demographic change, incidence of poverty, and rise of fatal and dangerous diseases have already thrown down the gauntlet to the realist paradigm of security built on state. Out of all these what stands out as the greatest threat to entire humankind is the climate change with all its devastating consequences like global warming, sea level rise, floods, cyclones and storms not only killing and uprooting poor people from their homeland etc. but also dragging people into an unsafe, insecure and sepulchral uncertainty of life. The answer to the fundamental question of survival and security and of providing a dignified way of life to the individuals was tried to be found out in various world summits on clima...