Climate Change = Security Risk: Connecting the Dots on the Growing Agenda

The Climate Change Narrative

Some Background

It’s been a while now since I posted this blog post back in 2011 on the security implications of climate change described in the US Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Report (QDR, pdf 2010). My main points back then were to: 1) highlight the discrepancy between the lack of doubt in how the US military portrays this risk compared to many US politicians (the latter swamped in the politics of climate change denial, which has pretty much framed the ongoing climate change debate narrative in the public sphere since then), and 2) note that the security implications of climate change was an important topic and potential public policy driver that wasn’t getting a lot of press at the time.

It looks like that lack of attention is about to change very, very soon.

The links between climate change and politics is a touchy enough subject, let alone the military linkages, so it’s a topic that I usually avoid commenting on. (Other writers, such as Paul Woodward have been covering security and climate change for a while now.) Nevertheless, I’ve been keeping a casual eye out on this topic since that last QDR, that came out on the heels of the 2009  failure of the last UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen. For those people who have been working towards trying to get meaningful action on climate change, it has often felt like it has been a losing battle, in spite of the scientific agreement, to sway politicians into action; this has led to feelings of depression and despair by many along the way. There was further disappointment at the recent Warsaw conference last December, and a recent opinion in the UK’s The Guardian that the deniers have won.

An Early Prediction on the Shift in the Narrative

In spite of the above, as the adage goes, it is usually darkest before the dawn, and from the looks of reports I’ve stumbled across in my research in the last few weeks, it looks like we are approaching a new day of renewed impetus for action, albeit a rather troubling one.

I would like to share the information on new developments below  that indicate that the topic of climate change and security risk is being elevated at some high levels. Based on the high ranking nature of the departments reporting on their growing priority to address the security risks of climate change, and the influence of their agendas, I’d also venture the following prediction:

The newly reported priority on climate change as an urgent security risk at high levels of government will emerge as a disruptive narrative in the public arena that will change how we will come to perceive the threat of climate change globally, and the need to act on it.

By the Paris talks in 2015, this narrative has the potential to turn the tide on action on climate change in North America, as a driver of public policy and legislation. It can do this through transitioning the emphasis in public discourse from the rhetoric of doubt and denial over to the new rhetoric—that there is a need to respond to climate change not only a real and significant risk, but as a clear and present danger. 

The thing is, there’s not just rhetoric around the narrative on climate change and security. The science (as will come out in the IPCC report on impacts tomorrow) shows that climate change does present real risks that people in the field have known has been there all along. (i.e. See this report on climate change and conflict in Africa from 2010, and this speech by Christiana Figueres in Spain in 2009 addressing a military intelligence audience on the importance of  addressing climate change.)

So, the knowledge on the security risk is nothing that new really. However, it appears that the priority of this factor is now being significantly escalated in the messaging from up top. Enough so that it looks like the security implications of climate change will begin to emerge as a primary driver on action not just at home, but around the world.

But don’t take my word for it.

The “Climate Change = Security Risk” Narrative

Growing Body of Evidence

Below I’ve outlined some lines of recent evidence for how climate change and security is starting to re-frame the messaging on climate change, primarily in the US. I’m pretty sure this list will be growing very soon.

1. US Department of Defense

• Then. 2010 – Quadrennial Defense Report: As mentioned above, I blogged about this report previously. There was not a lot of public follow up on the security risks of climate change back then. Instead, political will for climate climate change began to evaporate in the west as the climate change debate narrative took over. It’s my suspicion that the ‘climate change = security risk’ narrative didn’t stop at this point. It just quietly went undercover (see the note below about the early pilot program by HLS on Resilence Star for instance).

• Now. 2014 – Quadrennial Defense Report: The new report builds on the previous report taking the risk of climate change to security seriously, and going further to say that climate change “will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions – conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.”  See reviews of the report:
  • Climate Change and National Security in an Age of Austerity: The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review by the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat blog; and
  • Climate Change and National Security in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review by the Center for Climate and Security blog. (The panel of this org has quite the list of retired military personnel.)

2. US Department of Homeland Security

• Then. 2011. DHS announces a Resilience STAR ‘pilot’, a “voluntary certification program that aims to make homes and buildings more secure and resilient to all hazards.” Note that this program had no mention of “climate” back in 2011, and has quietly been built on behind the scenes of the opposition to any kind of climate action under the guise of ‘weather’ disaster planning into the trademarked program in the next bullet (that also doesn’t mention climate). However, in the Senate testimonies linked further below, the actual ties of the Resilience Star initiative to climate change adaptation becomes apparent. This program has been build in collaboration with insurance companies, who are actuarial risk specialists, who are very aware of the difference between weather and climate. Note for instance how the graph by Munich Re from their report on weather risk below shows 30 years of data. 30 years is the time that is typically as the climatological normal, which makes this work on weather, pretty much about climate change adaptation.
• Now.  November 2013. DHS announces again that it is launching its new Resilience STAR™ Program to help home owners and businesses prepare for climate change in partnership with the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IIBH). The program is to be analogous to the EPA’s popular Energy Star program.
  • The Resilience Star program re-launched a second ‘pilot program’ that closed in January 2014
• Now. February 12, 2014:  The US Senate Hearing on Extreme Weather Events: The Costs of Not Being Prepared saw two officials from DHS testify along with other witnesses on the need to address risks and mounting costs of extreme weather events in the US. (A related report on Severe Weather in North America, by Munich Re states that, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of annual catastrophes more evident than in North America.” As shown in the figure below, copied from the Executive Summary, the number of weather catastrophes in North America has more than quadrupled over the last 30 years (the averaging time for climate change trends).)
  • The Honorable David F. Heyman, DHS Assistant Secretary for policy testified testified about the ongoing efforts of DHS and other departments since 2009 on building out resilience and security, including preparing “homes, communities and critical infrastructure” for future extreme weather events and disasters. He also commented on the mounting costs that extreme weather events, exacerbated by climate change in the US, noting that projected losses from the future impacts of climate change are estimated at USD $1.2 trillion by 2050.  Download Testimony (196.1 KB)
  • Caitlin A. Durkovich, Assisstant for Infrastructure Protection testified similarly about the work of about the ongoing efforts of DHS to build resilience and security.  (Note that the language on this resilience work has been historically framed around “weather” rather than “climate”, so it has largely gone along relatively quietly under the radar of the climate change debate the whole time, but now the language of climate change is also being used): Download Testimony (196.1 KB)

Trends in Weather-Related Loss Across Global Continents Over 30 Years. The top blue line shows the trend for North America which shows a rise higher than for any of the other continents. Source (Munich Re 2012)

3. US State Department

• Now. January 2014. The new draft of the Sixth US Climate Change Action Report notes security implications in the very first line of its Executive Summary, “Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges of our time, with profound and wide-ranging implications for development, economic growth,the environment,and international security.”
• Now. March 7, 2014. The US Department of State blog notes in their We Need to Elevate the Environment in Everything We Do post that Secretary of State, John Kerry issued “instructions to all diplomats around the world on combating climate change.” Kerry explicitly notes a priority of integrating the priority of climate change with the priority of “national security” in guidance point 7 (ha, I did just say priority three times there).

3. Other

• Then. 2012. The American Security Project (ASP) published, American Security: The Impact of Climate Change. This report outlines implications for homeland security and global security relating to climate change.
• Now. The Climate, Energy and Security home page of the ASP currently states: “Climate change is a scientific fact; it is real and poses a clear and present danger not only to the United States but to the entire world.”
• Now. The Center for Climate Change and Security (CCCS, whose review of the 2014 QDR report I linked to previously in this post) has been following the climate change security agenda for some time now. Some of their recent publications are below:
  • January 22, 2014. Briefer, Message to Davos: Climate Change Risk Assessments Need to Go Big which outlines how the World Economic Forum in Davos has climate change as one of its top five priorities, but also how climate change is also linked to three of the other top ten priorities (food, water and extreme weather events). The report emphasized under, “It’s the People, Stupid”, how climate change has been typically lumped under and ‘environmental’ box only; however, it is also fundamentally a social, geopolitical and economic risk.
  • February 26, 2014 Briefer, Climate and Security 101: Why the U.S. National Security Establishment Takes Climate Change Seriously discusses several aspects of climate change and security, including the statement that, Four-star Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, head of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), identified climate change as the biggest security threat facing the Asia-Pacific region. In the Asia-Pacific, U.S. Pacific Command is working with China and India to align military capabilities for “when the effects of climate change start to impact these massive populations.”…
  • Update! (3/31/3014) The CCCS has informed me that I missed that they also keep a record of US Government Intelligence Statements. Their recent one by the Director of National Intelligence, titled “Statement for the Record, Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,” (January 29, 2014) makes two explicit references to climate. The first is regarding risks to freshwater supplies, particularly in key countries such as North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, but also in several developing nations. The report discusses some of the potential scenarios of what these shortages could lead to. The second reference is with regards to extreme weather events, that the report notes empiracle evidence along (without the help of climate models) suggests that the warming trend is affecting weather leading to more frequent or intense floods, droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, cyclones, coastal high water and heat waves. The outcome of this trend will likely place stress on first responders, NGOs, and militaries called on to provide humanitarian assistance.

• Now. March 20, 2014. In the United Kingdom, Responding to Climate Change (RTCC), the UNFCCC official observer published an interview with a US Army expert who said of the climate change risk that, “This is like getting embroiled in a war that lasts 100 years. That’s the scariest thing for us. There is no exit strategy that is available for many of the problems.”
• Now. March 27, 2014. In the United Kingdom, the non-profit Environmental Justice Foundation published The Gathering Storm: Climate Change, Security and Conflict. This 44 p. report “calls for climate change to be recognized as a human rights issue as well as an environmental issue and highlights the need for urgent international action to respond the human and national security challenges that climate change presents.” The report frames the climate change security risk as a human rights issue as well: “The potent significance of the fact that the world’s major military powers and security institutions consistently and increasingly voice their concerns regarding the impacts of climate change jars with the simple fact that there has been a failure to act on the issue. EJF interprets this collective failure as the gravest threat to human and national security: the insecurity wrought by climate change is the defining global human rights issue of the 21st Century.”

This EJF image connected to their new report, Gathering Storm, is starting to make appearances on Twitter under #gatheringstorm

 

Connecting the Dots on the New Climate Change Narrative

Connecting the dots on the above evidence outlines a new emphasis on the impacts of climate change to national and global security. This climate change = security risk narrative has emerged in priority agendas of the UN,  and for major US government departments. There are references in the above reports on the emphasis of this agenda in other countries as well. So, it looks like the emerging climate change as security risk platform may have its roots in quieter work that has been ongoing for many years now and is finally ready to emerge as a policy pillar.

Where is this all headed? The climate change security agenda may not unfold as rapidly as my above prediction to be influential on securing a deal at the Paris 2015 talks, as well as in influencing stalling nations to roll out climate change mitigation and adaptatoin action where they have been lagging up to now. What is certain though, is that there is strong talk in high places backing this agenda. And, given that the effects of climate change are predicted to grow in time, the climate change = security risk agenda is one that will not be going away any time soon, and will certainly be one to watch closely over the upcoming year.

Defense and Climate Change – Little Room for Doubt

“Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.” – United States Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review 2010

I’ve been sitting on the above quote for a while now. The thing that really stirkes me about it—aside from the surety (notice the two “will”s which do not leave a lot of doubt in the matter)—is that this quote is not from the EPA. It’s not from the UN. It’s not from some scientific panel or from some university somewhere… It’s from an official document of the US Department of Defense. No matter what one’s political views, no matter where one lives, when one reads something put out by US “intelligence”, especially when inside an official military document, one sits up a bit straighter and pays a little more attention.  After all, many of the last century’s scientific advances had their start in the military (or were taken up by the military). When a Department of Defense talks science, they don’t mess around.

The quotes from the Defense Review stand out in particular with all of the political ‘debate’ on climate change in the last couple of years (noting that the science IS clear on the key points of global warming and there is consensus on the call to action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and that it is basically politicians and certain lobby groups that are  finding ways to reword, delay, de-fund and ignore scientists).

In particular, many climate change deniers also fall into the camp that shows strong support for the military, so I found this report by the US military to offer, frankly, an interesting discrepancy. Enough of a discrepancy that it makes one wonder why there is any doubt on climate change left.

Any.

Here are some more quotes from the document (emphasis mine):

“Climate change will affect DoD in two broad ways. First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles, and missions that we undertake.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program, composed of 13 federal agencies, reported in 2009 that climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the oceans and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows…

While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world. In addition, extreme weather events may lead to increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response both within the United States and overseas. In some nations, the military is the only institution with the capacity to respond to a large-scale natural disaster. Proactive engagement with these countries can help build their capability to respond to such events. Working closely with relevant U.S. departments and agencies, DoD has undertaken environmental security cooperative initiatives with foreign militaries that represent a nonthreatening way of building trust, sharing best practices on installations management and operations, and developing response capacity…

Second, DoD will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on our facilities and military capabilities. The Department already provides environmental stewardship at hundreds of DoD installations throughout the United States and around the world, working diligently to meet resource efficiency and sustainability goals as set by relevant laws and executive orders. Although the United States has significant capacity to adapt to climate change, it will pose challenges for civil society and DoD alike, particularly in light of the nation’s extensive coastal infrastructure. In 2008, the National Intelligence Council judged that more than 30 U.S. military installations were already facing elevated levels of risk from rising sea levels. DoD’s operational readiness hinges on continued access to land, air, and sea training and test space. Consequently, the Department must complete a comprehensive assessment of all installations to assess the potential impacts of climate change on its missions and adapt as required.

In this regard, DoD will work to foster efforts to assess, adapt to, and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Domestically, the Department will leverage the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, a joint effort among DoD, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency, to develop climate change assessment tools. Abroad, the Department will increase its investment in the Defense Environmental International Cooperation Program not only to promote cooperation on environmental security issues, but also to augment international adaptation efforts. The Department will also speed innovative energy and conservation technologies from laboratories to military end users. The Environmental Security and Technology Certification Program uses military installations as a test bed to demonstrate and create a market for innovative energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies coming out of the private sector and DoD and Department of Energy laboratories. Finally, the Department is improving small-scale energy efficiency and renewable energy projects at military installations through our Energy Conservation Investment Program.

The effect of changing climate on the Department’s operating environment is evident in the maritime commons of the Arctic. The opening of the Arctic waters in the decades ahead which will permit seasonal commerce and transit presents a unique opportunity to work collaboratively in multilateral forums to promote a balanced approach to improving human and environmental security in the region. In that effort, DoD must work with the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security to address gaps in Arctic communications, domain awareness, search and rescue, and environmental observation and forecasting capabilities to support both current and future planning and operations. To support cooperative engagement in the Arctic, DoD strongly supports accession to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

As climate science advances, the Department will regularly reevaluate climate change risks and opportunities in order to develop policies and plans to manage its effects on the Department’s operating environment, missions, and facilities. Managing the national security effects of climate change will require DoD to work collaboratively, through a whole-of-government approach, with both traditional allies and new partners.”

And so there it is. It touches on climate change assessment, risk analysis, impacts, mitigation, adaptation, extreme weather, sea level rise, energy efficiency and renewable projects, and the opening of Arctic waters. It’s all there.

The only thing missing is mass recognition in North America that anthropogenic climate change is a fact. Enough of a fact that there is enough supporting measured and statistically significant data out there to make our own military intelligence design programs and strategies around it, and designate it as a significant security risk. So, if deniers don’t take science for fact, or at least a high risk factor, and if they wont take the advice of our own military intelligence as pursuasive, then perhaps they have argued themselves right off the table of logical debate.

So, perhaps it is time to put the unfounded politicized aspects of this debate to rest, and finally get on with taking some reasonable mitigation actions?