Security changes with global warming
Security changes with global warming encompass a wide range of challenges that nations face as climate change impacts resources and destabilizes societal structures. As climate change depletes vital resources like food, water, and land fertility, the resulting scarcity can lead to increased civil unrest, political instability, and competition over resources. Vulnerable populations are particularly at risk, with projections suggesting that climate change could push millions into poverty, exacerbating existing tensions and conflicts, such as those seen in regions like Darfur and the Palestinian territories.
Additionally, mass displacement is a significant concern, with estimates indicating that up to 216 million people may be forced to migrate due to rising sea levels and decreased agricultural productivity by 2050. Such migrations, if not managed effectively, could further strain the social and economic stability of host nations. The military-industrial complex also plays a role, as traditional defense activities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, complicating efforts to achieve climate security.
Overall, the interplay between climate change and national security emphasizes the need for collaborative approaches among governments to address these emerging threats and protect against the potential for violence and unrest stemming from resource competition. As climate-related challenges become more pronounced, proactive engagement and sustainable practices are crucial for maintaining stability and security worldwide.
Security changes with global warming
Definition
Security refers to the general stability of a nation; it includes military defense against other nations and threats, as well as defenses against lower-level threats to stability, including civil unrest, political instability, disruptions of resources, and terrorism. Climate change has the potential to affect many of the resources that industrialized nations take for granted. Those resources are necessary to protect the land, air, and sea, as well as nations’ military capabilities. Provisions for food, shelter, health, longevity, space, and transportation may suffer, as may the general level of emotional security that helps maintain civil order in any nation where the populace vastly outnumbers the military and civil peacekeepers.
Governments must adapt to altering climates to maintain their security, so they must search for preventive and collaborative ways to pursue both military and health security that respond both to actual threats and to potential future threats. All societies need to conserve vital resources, while maintaining the ability to protect themselves. Even within the realm of military defense alone, competing interests must be taken into account. For example, testing nuclear weapons may make nuclear powers better able to defend themselves from other nuclear powers, but it could just as easily prove significantly counterproductive by destabilizing the relations among such powers. On a broader level, the military-industrial complex of the United States and other developed nations accounts for extremely high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as it is an manufacturing sector. Thus, traditional military security activities may contribute significantly to the decrease in national and international climate security.
Significance for Climate Change
Food availability is just one immediate example of a security concern raised by climate change. Such change can affect land fertility, and traditional methods of increasing fertility depend heavily on and GHG emissions, which may increase global warming and exacerbate the problem. Global warming may also lead to an increase in the number and spread of infectious diseases: Malnutrition and other disruptions in food quality can contribute to disease, as can changes in temperature and humidity that increase such disease vectors as mosquitoes and water contamination.
As food quality suffers, this in turn can lead to a decline in labor productivity, both for those who own and run farms and for those who cannot obtain the necessary nutrition to function effectively at work. The decline in productivity could specifically hinder military workers. New diseases can also weaken military capabilities, making nations more vulnerable and placing them at higher risk of security threats. Microbial changes in the environment can affect the very young and the very old, potentially increasing mortality rates. In nature, bees and other pollinators could become extinct, further endangering food supplies.
The most vulnerable nations, like the most vulnerable individuals, are those with the least power and resources. Estimates in the early 2020s stated that by 2030, climate change could push up to 130 million more people into poverty. Thus, climate change is widely expected to have the greatest immediate security impacts on the nations that are already the least secure. In Darfur, for example, a scarcity of natural resources has led to conflict among the local populations. There has been competition for water between groups that, in the past, were able to coexist. In the Palestinian territories, Israeli settlers receive more water per capita than do Palestinians, greatly exacerbating political and social tensions between the two groups. These conflicts may serve as canaries in the coal mine, revealing to more stable nations the dangers of severe climate change. However, they are also of immediate concern, because the world’s major economic powers depend upon the availability of the world’s markets, so any significant global instability, even in the developing world, represents a threat to the industrialized nations’ economic security.
Mass displacement is another concern of many world governments. Some estimates show that by 2050, global climate change could force up to 216 million people in six world regions to move their homes. These changes will likely be driven by rising sea levels, water scarcity, and low crop productivity. Sudden mass migrations, if not handled properly by world governments, have the potential to destabilize entire regions.
Global transportation could be significantly affected by the need to reduce GHG emissions, as it is a major source of such emissions. Business travel in particular could be significantly curtailed, as telecommuting and teleconferencing technologies replace in-person meetings. At the same time, the potential collapse of some national resource chains and infrastructure increases the likelihood of significant international migration, as climate refugees seek new homes in which to support themselves. Such large potential influxes of immigrants threaten the social and economic stability of their new homes, especially if resources in those new homes are already under pressure from climate change.
At the extreme end of climate-related security concerns lies the threat of significant and sustained violence in the service of resource competition, both within and among nations. Such violence could escalate to warfare. This danger makes it all the more necessary for nations to collaborate and succeed at finding a solution to projected climate changes. In order for national governments and their people to be protected from the risk of political unrest and terrorism, this goal is key.
Bibliography
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"What Is Climate Security and Why Is It Important?" UNDP, 1 Sept. 2023, climatepromise.undp.org/news-and-stories/what-climate-security-and-why-it-important. Accessed 21 Dec. 2024.