Climate and Social Stress
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Material Information

Title:
Climate and Social Stress Implications for Security Analysis
Creator:
John D. Steinbruner ( Editor )
Paul C. Stern ( Editor )
Jo L. Husbands ( Editor )
Affiliation:
The National Academies -- Board on Environmental Change and Society -- Division on Behavorial and Social Sciences and Education
The National Academies -- Board on Environmental Change and Society -- Division on Behavorial and Social Sciences and Education
The National Academies -- Board on Environmental Change and Society -- Division on Behavorial and Social Sciences and Education
Place of Publication:
Washington, D.C.
Publisher:
National Academic Press
Publication Date:
Language:
English

Notes

Abstract:
The U.S. intelligence community is expected to provide indicators and warnings of a wide variety of security threats—not only risks of international wars that might threaten U.S. interests or require a U.S. military response, but also risks of violent subnational conflicts in countries of security concern, risks to the stability of states and regions, and risks of major humanitarian disasters in key regions of the world. This intelligence mission requires the consideration of activities and processes anywhere in the world that might lead, directly or indirectly, to significant risks to U.S. national security. In recent years, with the accumulation of scientific evidence indicating that the global climate is moving outside the bounds of past experience and can be expected to put new stresses on societies around the world, the U.S. intelligence and security communities have begun to examine a variety of plausible scenarios through which climate change might pose or alter security risks. In 2010, as part of its ongoing work with the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NRC) on issues related to climate and security, the U.S. intelligence community asked the NAS/NRC to organize the study whose results are described in this report. The central purpose of the study, as defined in its statement of task, was “to evaluate the evidence on possible connections between climate change and U.S. national security concerns and to identify ways to increase the ability of the intelligence community to take climate change into account in assessing political and social stresses with implications for U.S. national security.” The study committee was tasked to “focus on several broad questions, such as: What are the major social and political factors affecting the relationship between climate change and outcomes relevant to U.S. national security? What is the basis for this knowledge and how strong is it? What research and measurement strategies would strengthen the basis for this knowledge?” In response to this charge, this report presents a conceptual framework for addressing such issues, offers an evaluation of the available evidence, identifies key factors linking climate change phenomena to security concerns, and offers conclusions and recommendations related to: (a) improving understanding of climate–security linkages; (b) improving monitoring and analysis of the factors linking climate change to social and political stresses and to security risks; and (c) improving the ability to anticipate potential security risks arising from climate phenomena. As the study developed, and upon consultation with the study’s sponsors, we focused our efforts in three specific ways. First, we focused on social and political stresses outside the United States because such stresses are the main focus of the intelligence community. Second, we concentrated on security risks that might arise from situations in which climate events (e.g., droughts, heat waves, or storms) have consequences that exceed the capacity of affected countries or populations to cope and respond. This focus led us to exclude, for example, climate events that might directly affect the ability of the U.S. military to conduct its missions or that might contribute directly to international competition or conflict (e.g., over sea lanes or natural resources in the Arctic). We also excluded the security implications of policies that countries might Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis Prepublication copy, uncorrected proofs S - 2 undertake to protect themselves from perceived threats of climate change (e.g., geoengineering to reduce global warming or buying foreign agricultural land to ensure domestic food supplies). These kinds of climate–security connections could prove highly significant and deserve further study and analysis. They could also interact with the connections that are our main focus; for example, an action such as buying foreign agricultural land might go almost unnoticed at first, only creating a crisis when the country where the land is located experiences a crop failure it cannot manage with imports. Third, , we concentrated on the relatively near term by emphasizing climatedriven security risks that call for action by the intelligence community within the coming decade either to respond to security threats or to anticipate them. Although these choices of focus helped bound our study, they left it with some notable limitations. Climate change is a global and a long-term phenomenon. Events within the United States and those outside the country affect each other, indirect links between climate and conflict can be related to direct ones, and the effects of climate change will not stop beyond a 10-year horizon and, in fact, can be expected to increase at an increasing rate. Thus a complete security analysis should project the risks of climate change beyond the next decade in order to inform U.S. government security policy choices in the near term that will prepare the nation for events in later decades. Our study includes the full range of potentially disruptive events that are becoming more likely because of climate change, whether or not a particular event can be unequivocally attributed to human-caused climate change rather than to natural variation. We made this choice because any such climate events can become disruptive and create a need for U.S. government action regardless of whether they can at this time be uniquely attributed to anthropogenic climate change. ( English )

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Florida International University
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