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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI15061026/00001
Notes
- Summary:
- In 2013, the World Bank warned that 4°C of warming by the
end of the century is a real and urgent risk.1 According to
an influential study published the same year, such a rise in
global temperature could precipitate as much as a 56 per
cent increase in the frequency of intergroup conflicts across
the world.2 Once only considered as an ‘environmental issue’,
climate change is an emerging concern on international
security agendas. It is seen as a threat to both human and
national security. This reframing has seen climate change
discussed in two high-profile debates in the United Nations
Security Council and become the subject of United Nations
General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 63/281.
• This report finds that while climate change may not be
the sole cause of conflict in the future, it will increasingly
become one of the most important and decisive factors.
It will play a prominent role as a ‘threat multiplier’ –
in situations where multiple stressors already exist, climate
change may breach critical thresholds that lead to outbreaks
of conflict. This is particularly true in situations where
climate change impacts actual or perceived resource scarcity,
patterns of human migration or unfolds within contexts of
existing state fragility. In some cases, such as vulnerable
small island nations, climate change threatens the integrity
and sovereignty of the state itself.
• One of the most pronounced links between climate change
and conflict is access to natural resources. Many lessdeveloped
countries are acutely dependent on ecosystem
services and already experience tensions related to the
uneven distribution of resources and services both within and
across countries. Climate change may exacerbate resourcerelated
insecurities and generate conflict by increasing the
likelihood that actors resort to coercion or violence.
• Unequal access to resources fuels tensions within
societies, particularly where there is a history of specific
groups being marginalised. Climate change will likely
entrench or expand unequal systems of entitlement that
alienate vulnerable populations.
• Freshwater availability is a significant contributing factor
to stability. The relative scarcity of water between areas
is an existing fault line driving economic and political
tensions amongst some states. Failure to cooperate over
water resources which straddle international boundaries
is likely to exacerbate pre-existing pressures in geopolitical
hotspots, with repercussions for regional stability and
foreign policy objectives.
• Inadequate access to water also drives tensions. Obstructed
access to water has historically been used to undermine
particular regions or populations within countries. A waterscarce
future, driven by overexploitation and exacerbated
by rainfall variability, may witness the increasingly strategic
use of water as leverage – or even as a weapon –
in situations of conflict.
• In 2012, one person every second was displaced by a
climate- or weather-related natural disaster.3 This report
finds that, with millions of people displaced each year by
rapid-onset climate-related hazards and an unknown number
fleeing slow-onset environmental degradation, a changing
climate presents pressing operational and geopolitical
challenges to a number of states. Failure to adequately
respond to these challenges generates types of population
mobility which have severe implications for social wellbeing,
human rights and even state stability.
• This report demonstrates that fragile and post-conflict
states are particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate
change. Pre-existing constellations of vulnerability in these
contexts may lead to ‘tipping points’ where the influence of
climate change on other drivers of instability spills over into
crisis and conflict.
• The destabilising effect of climate change on fragile
states could also aggravate or generate instability on an
international scale by transmitting risk across borders.
US military experts, for instance, consistently raise concerns
that a failure to address the impacts of climate change in
some regions might generate ‘ungoverned spaces’ – where
the capacity of states to maintain security is fundamentally
compromised – and provide fertile breeding grounds for
armed non-state actors.4
• EJF acknowledges the commitments made by the global
community to mitigation and adaptation under the
Copenhagen Accord. Nevertheless, further and urgent action
is needed to ensure the prevention of conflicts related to
climate change. In particular, EJF urges governments to
deliver ‘linked-up’ policies on the environment, human
rights, development, migration and peacebuilding. EJF recalls
the findings of the Stern Review, which highlighted that
investment in climate mitigation equivalent to 2 per cent of
global GDP is preferable to the huge future costs to economic
productivity anticipated as a result of climate change.5/6
Similarly, EJF emphasises that investment in mitigation now
is also investment in a safer and more secure future for
vulnerable people across the world.
• The international community must recognise that climate
change is a human rights issue as much as an environmental
issue. The linkage between climate change and conflict is one
of the clearest examples of this fundamental interrelationship
between the environment and human rights. EJF urges
the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to take
positive action to safeguard rights under threat in the world’s
most vulnerable countries by instating a Special Rapporteur on
Human Rights and Climate Change.
Record Information
- Source Institution:
- Florida International University
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