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- Permanent Link:
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Notes
- Summary:
- The costs and consequences of climate change on our world will define the 21st
century. Even if nations across our planet were to take immediate steps to rein
in carbon emissions—an unlikely prospect—a warmer climate is inevitable. As
the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, noted in 2007,
human-created “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident
from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread
melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”1
As these ill effects progress they will have serious implications for U.S. national
security interests as well as global stability—extending from the sustainability of
coastal military installations to the stability of nations that lack the resources, good
governance, and resiliency needed to respond to the many adverse consequences
of climate change. And as these effects accelerate, the stress will impact human
migration and conflict around the world.
It is difficult to fully understand the detailed causes of migration and economic
and political instability, but the growing evidence of links between climate change,
migration, and conflict raise plenty of reasons for concern. This is why it’s time to
start thinking about new and comprehensive answers to multifaceted crisis scenarios
brought on or worsened by global climate change. As Achim Steiner, executive
director of the U.N. Environment Program, argues, “The question we must
continuously ask ourselves in the face of scientific complexity and uncertainty,
but also growing evidence of climate change, is at what point precaution, common
sense or prudent risk management demands action.”2
In the coming decades climate change will increasingly threaten humanity’s shared
interests and collective security in many parts of the world, disproportionately
affecting the globe’s least developed countries. Climate change will pose challenging
social, political, and strategic questions for the many different multinational,
regional, national, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to improving the human
2 Center for American Progress | Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict
condition worldwide. Organizations as different as Amnesty International, the
U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the International
Rescue Committee, and the World Health Organization will all have to tackle
directly the myriad effects of climate change.
Climate change also poses distinct challenges to U.S. national security. Recent
intelligence reports and war games, including some conducted by the U.S.
Department of Defense, conclude that over the next two or three decades,
vulnerable regions (particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South and
Southeast Asia) will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises, and catastrophic
flooding driven by climate change. These developments could demand
U.S., European, and international humanitarian relief or military responses, often
the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations.
This report provides the foundation and overview for a series of papers focusing
on the particular challenges posed by the cumulative effects of climate change,
migration, and conflict in some of our world’s most complex environments. In the
papers following this report, we plan to outline the effects of this nexus in northwest
Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in the Andean region of South America, and
in China. In this paper we detail that nexus across our planet and offer wideranging
recommendations about how the United States, its allies in the global
community, and the community at large can deal with the coming climate-driven
crises with comprehensive sustainable security solutions encompassing national
security, diplomacy, and economic, social, and environmental development. ( English )
Record Information
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- Florida International University
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