Originally posted at tcktcktck.org
A disturbing new report released last week predicts that climate change will become a serious driver of conflict and an increasingly dangerous risk to national security.
Maplecroft, a global risk and consulting firm, assessed how well governments could respond to the threats posed by climate change—in particular climate change-related conflict and food insecurity—over the next three decades.
The report identified that serious risks to security, including epidemics and terrorist activity, will put pressure on the military and its resources as they struggle to deal with the mounting problems aggravated by climate change.
32 countries in particular are expected severely affected, among them some of the poorest and most conflict-ridden nations of the world. The top five countries most at risk were identified as Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Chad .
Other nations categorized as in “extreme risk” from climate change-related conflict included Haiti, Ethiopia, the Philippines, the Central African Republic, and Eritrea.
Many of these countries already suffer from high levels of inequality and have weak central governments. These conditions make it likely that terrorist groups will be able to take advantage of unstable socio-economic conditions—caused by powerless governments—in order to promote their own agendas.
Evidence of such activities can already be seen worldwide. In Nigeria, which was ranked third most vulnerable in the report, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram gained a foothold on power amid the chaos of widespread drought, food insecurity, and violent insurgency.
Oluwakemi Okenyodo, executive director of the not-for-profit CLEEN Foundation, said:
“When young people are pushed to the wall, there’s a greater chance that they will be sucked into the growing Boko Haram insurgency.”
While it is difficult to directly implicate human-caused climate change to the crisis of Nigeria, the links between climate change and political uprisings are expected to become more clear as rising temperatures and weather pattern further imperil access to food and water.
Climate change has also been linked to other conflicts. In Syria, conflict broke out following a prolonged and severe drought which displaced thousands of desperate people.
Violence and terrorism is often driven by complex circumstances that include population explosion, environmental degradation, and poverty. These hardships can be a boon to terrorist groups, who recruit new members who are dissatisfied by the status quo and see promise in extremism.
The Maplecroft report warns that increased international terrorist activity could fuel further conflicts, thus making large-scale humanitarian crises more likely.
The report, part of the findings of the seventh annual “Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas”, also warned that new enmities could be created globally.
As a result, vulnerable nations may call upon others to provide support in the form of aid and military resources. This will become increasingly difficult as military resources are stretched by increasing demands in the face of unpredictable conflicts and more-frequent extreme weather events.
Around the world, militaries are signally that they consider climate change to be their biggest security threat. Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III—whose job it is monitor hostile activity by North Korea—stunned observers when he recently asserted in an interview that climate change was the thing most likely to cripple the security environment.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry has referred likened climate change to a “weapon of mass destruction,” while the country’s Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, said last week that climate change is “critically important” to national security.
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