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OVERVIEW- The Current Climate Change Situation in Africa

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Climate Change in Africa Will Hit the Poor the Hardest

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Climate Change in Africa Will Hit the Poor the Hardest

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Climate Change in Africa Will Hit the Poor the Hardest

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Ethiopia drought 2016: how climate change affects children

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Ethiopia drought 2016: how climate change affects children

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Ethiopia drought 2016: how climate change affects children

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Donate to the emergency: https://secure.unicef.ca/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1672&ea.campaign.id=46768 El Niño has had a devastating impact on some of the world's most vulnerable people in Africa, Asia, Pacific Islands, Latin America and the Caribbean. It will take a long time for children to recover from the devastation.

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Climate change and its potential effects in Africa

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Climate change and its potential effects in Africa

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World Health Organization African Region

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Climate change and its potential effects in Africa

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Climate Change and the Migrant Crisis | Years of Living DangerouslyNational Geographic 

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Climate Change and the Migrant Crisis | Years of Living DangerouslyNational Geographic 

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Climate Change and the Migrant Crisis | Years of Living Dangerously

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Continental Divide: Why Africa’s Climate Change Burden Is Greater

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Continental Divide: Why Africa’s Climate Change Burden Is Greater

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Africa can easily be said to contribute the least of any continent to global warming. Each year Africa produces an average of just over 1 metric ton of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide per person, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's International Energy Annual 2002. The most industrialized African countries, such as South Africa, generate 8.44 metric tons per person, and the least developed countries, such as Mali, generate less than a tenth of a metric ton per person. By comparison, each American generates almost 16 metric tons per year. That adds up to the United States alone generating 5.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year (about 23% of the world total, making it the leading producer), while Africa as a whole contributes only 918.49 million metric tons (less than 4%). It is a cruel irony that, in many experts' opinion, the people living on the continent that has contributed the least to global warming are in line to be the hardest hit by the resulting climate changes.

"The critical challenge in terms of climate change in Africa is the way that multiple stressors-such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, the effects of economic globalization, the privatization of resources, and conflict-converge with climate change," says Siri Eriksen, a senior research fellow in sociology and human geography at the University of Oslo. "It is where several stressors reinforce each other that societies become vulnerable, and impacts of climate change can be particularly severe." She cites the example of the 2002 drought-triggered famine in southern Africa, which affected millions due partly to populations' coping capacity being weakened by HIV/AIDS.

"Climate change could undo even the little progress most African countries have achieved so far in terms of development," says Anthony Nyong, a professor of environmental science at the University of Jos in Nigeria. With climate change has come an increase in health problems such as malaria, meningitis, and dengue fever, he says. This means that the few resources these poor countries have that would have been channeled into essential projects to further economic development must instead be put toward health crisis after health crisis, providing emergency care for the people.

Models of Change

Africa may already be feeling the effects of global warming, says Isaac Held, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and more marked effects are likely to come, according to models developed by climate scientists around the world. Projected effects of global warming on precipitation throughout the world can be summarized in a single sentence, according to Held: areas that already get a lot of rainfall-such as the equatorial and subpolar rain belts-will get more, and areas that get little-such as the subtropical dry zones-will get less.

Climate models suggest that subtropical Africa south of the equator will follow this trend, and a plausible case can be made that global warming has already reduced rainfall in that region. In a paper published in the September 2004 issue of the International Journal of Climatology, NOAA scientist Pingping Xie and colleagues wrote, "Large decreasing rainfall trends were widespread in the Sahel from the late 1950s to the late 1980s; thereafter, Sahel rainfall has recovered somewhat through 2003, even though the drought conditions have not ended in the region." The study also found that major multiyear oscillations have appeared to occur more frequently and to be more extreme since the late 1980s.

About 300,000 people died in a prolonged drought in the Sahel during the 1970s. Until recently the scientific community attributed that drought to the severe loss of vegetation accompanying such factors as overgrazing and overpopulation; according to this model, the reduction in vegetation meant greater reflectivity of the Earth's surface and less moisture being returned to the atmosphere, with a net drying effect. But now, Held says, "we think of that drought as having been driven by changes in the ocean temperatures."

New climate models posit that precipitation changes are occurring because of alterations in the temperature gradient between the Southern and Northern hemispheres. "When the [ocean] waters are warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, rains are attracted farther north, and when they are warmer in the Southern Hemisphere, it doesn't get as far north," Held explains.

But it is a subject of debate, he says, whether the changes in temperature gradient that caused the Sahel drought were due to natural variability of the oceans or were partly the result of man-made changes in the composition of the atmosphere. There is as yet no consensus among climate modelers on the most likely future trend of Sahel rainfall, he emphasizes.

Still, climatologists agree that warming is happening. In Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II reported, "The historical climate record for Africa shows warming of approximately 0.7°C [1.3°F] over most of the continent during the twentieth century; a decrease in rainfall over large portions of the Sahel . . . and an increase in rainfall in east central Africa."

Accompanying the Sahel droughts has been an increase in dust storms, although whether these storms are a result of the droughts or a cause has been a subject of controversy. Research published in the 22 May 2001 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example, presents an analysis that demonstrated that the particles in Sahel dust storms weren't able to absorb much water. As a result, they did not form cloud condensation nuclei, as is usually expected in such dust particles, and so they suppressed rainfall and exacerbated the droughts. In addition to effects on weather, dust motes averaging less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter are in the range of particles that research shows may have serious health consequences. Such dust can carry with it a variety of hitchhikers including bacteria, fungi, and chemical pollutants, all of which may adversely affect health.

Food Stock Failure

On any continent crop failure means trouble, but in Africa it's a catastrophe. About 40% of the gross national product of African countries flows from agriculture, and about 70% of African workers are employed in agriculture, most of them on small plots of land. "Africa is full of poor people who are very highly dependent on climate-related issues for their livelihoods," says Bob Scholes, an ecologist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, South Africa. "They are subsistence farmers in often very marginal environments." African governments are frequently chaotic, ineffective, unstable, and corrupt, adding to the people's precarious existence.

Land ownership changes, less restrictive trade policies, commercialization of the agricultural sector, and increasing impoverishment, along with population growth, have pushed people into farming in dry areas, such as savanna, that not long ago were open to cattle and wildlife grazing, says Jennifer Olson, regional coordinator for land use with the LUCID (Land Use, Change, Impacts, and Dynamics) project at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya and a geography professor at Michigan State University. Faced with shrinking open grasslands, once solely pastoral people are settling down and planting crops of their own to supplement their livestock. New farmers tend to be poor, Olson says, and their farms, set in these dry areas, are usually small and thus especially vulnerable to droughts, floods, and other weather hazards associated with climate change.

"Rainfall is the biggest variable for crop and animal production here," Olson says. "Everything goes up and down depending on how the rainy seasons are going, so climate change is going to have a huge impact with the expansion of the number of people doing cropping in the more marginal areas. These tend to be the people on the edge of doing well anyway because there's not enough rainfall for them to be productive."

According to Robert Mendelsohn, a professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, small farmers in Africa are especially vulnerable to changes in precipitation. Only a small number use irrigation or fertilizer of any kind. Larger growers, such as the commercial farms of parts of East Africa, are better able to cope with weather extremes, but they are in the minority.

People who depend on livestock will be just as hard-hit as pastures go brown, Mendelsohn says. But in this case smaller spreads fare better than large ones. Big operations are usually committed to herds of cattle, which demand plentiful water and easy-to-reach areas in which to graze. When water is scarce, large pastoralists are forced to move their herds southward to relatively wetter areas that are usually occupied by sedentary farmers, thus precipitating intergroup conflicts. However, people who have just a few animals can switch to goats and sheep, animals that tend to be more inventive when it comes to finding food and water.

Ecosystem Changes

With changes in land use and climate, some areas in East Africa have become drier, Olson says, and water sources are becoming intermittent or disappearing. Streams that used to run year-round are now seasonal. The expansion of agriculture into savannas also blocks migration routes for large animals such as zebras, wildebeest, and elephants, she says.

As a result of climate-related ecosystem changes, some wild sources of food are also becoming harder to find, says Catherine O'Reilly, an assistant professor of environmental science at Vassar College. The fish stock in the deep Rift Valley lakes of East Africa, for example, are decreasing as average air temperatures rise. These lakes-a chain of fresh and brackish bodies including lakes Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria-contain greater biodiversity than any other of the world's freshwater systems, she says. That diversity depends on algae that are supplied when surface waters mix with nutrient-rich deep waters.

"With climate change," O'Reilly explains, "there is less of this mixing, because the [temperature-mediated] density difference between the surface waters and the deep waters has gotten greater, and so it takes more energy to mix deep water up to the surface." Less algae means less food for the entire food web, and the result, she says, is big decreases in fish catches in all of these lakes.

O'Reilly and colleagues reported in the 14 August 2003 issue of Nature that climate change had contributed to a 30% decline in Lake Tanganyika fish stocks over the past 80 years. Such declines can be disastrous for the villages in the region, where the average income is less than US$250 per year, and where the people depend on the fish from these lakes for all of their protein.

When this important food source fades, every aspect of the regional environment is affected. As fish yields go down, increased demands are put upon the land as some fishermen switch to arable farming, O'Reilly says. This in turn leads to more intensified farming, and thus more deforestation, increased erosion, and degradation of the shoreline. Degradation of the shoreline destroys in-shore habitat and spawning grounds for many fish species, further impacting the fish population. "You get a positive feedback loop started," she says, "whereby a small decrease in productivity in the lakes can cycle through all these factors and impact [yet] another aspect of the fish life-history cycle."

When food sources dry up, Africans also turn to wild game. This can put pressure on already endangered species and potentially expose diners to the diseases these exotic animals carry. A report published in the 12 November 2004 issue of Science showed that declining fish stocks in Ghana-down by at least 50% since 1970-corresponded with a demand for "bushmeat" that led to a 76% decline in the numbers of 41 species of mammals, including buffalo, antelope, jackals, monkeys, and elephants.

Insects-and with them the diseases they harbor-have also been affected by new climatic conditions, says Jonathan Patz, a physician and associate professor of environmental studies and population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As Africa has warmed, he says, vectorborne diseases-those in which a pathogen is carried from one host to another by pests such as mosquitoes-have increased their range. Malaria, for example, has moved into higher African latitudes as highlands have warmed enough for mosquitoes to breed. (However, other experts, such as Marlies Craig, a malaria researcher at the South African Medical Research Council in Durban, believe that factors besides increasing temperatures, such as increased resistance to drugs, are the cause of this vector spread.) Further, as malaria makes its way into higher latitudes, it reaches people who didn't develop malaria immunity as children. The result is an increase in adult mortality.

Although some areas may become more suitable for some diseases, others may become less so, Patz adds-disease vectors don't universally seek warmer temperatures. Rather, each has optimum conditions in which it thrives. In North America, for example, Patz says the warmer, wetter temperatures that foster some mosquito growth tend to worsen conditions for the tick that carries Lyme disease. Similarly, research by a team from the Institut Français de Recherche Scientifique pour le Développement en Coopération in Senegal, published in the March 1996 issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, indicated that tickborne borreliosis extended its range out of the Sahel and into West Africa most likely because of the Sahel drought of the 1970s.

Wages of War

When the apocalyptic horsemen of famine and pestilence appear, war can't be far behind. Decreasing pastoral lands, decreasing available tillable land, decreasing wild game, and decreasing available water all add up to more strife, Scholes says. "Subtropical dry, arid areas are going to be a huge source of conflict over the next half-century because we still have very, very high population growth rates in those areas, very low economic growth rates, and deteriorating environment," he says.

"Basically," he adds, "not only are the spillover effects environmental, in terms of dust storms and soil erosion and so forth, but there is also massive spillover of people moving out of [more stressed areas] into better resourced areas." In relatively developed countries such as Nigeria and South Africa, 30% or more of the population consists of illegal immigrants.

Farmers, pastoralists, and the new agropastoralists are already competing for water and suitable agricultural and grazing land, Olson says; regional warming and drying can only be expected to worsen the situation. On occasion, she says, the conflicts that result from this competition can turn violent, although most are settled peacefully.

But according to Eriksen, extended periods of increased violent raiding in parts of East Africa have led to loss of livestock and land, and have driven people into a state of destitution that makes them extremely vulnerable to drought events. "Although many conflicts are politically instigated and driven by underlying economic inequities in resource access, rather than climate change as such, increasing drought stress can exacerbate conflict and violence," she says.

Strategies for Coping

As a reaction to so much bad news, in July 2005 the G8 countries-Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States-approved a pledge to forgive about US$40 billion of debt owed by 18 nations, including 14 African countries. These forgiven debts represent about one-sixth of the total owed by African nations to the G8 nations and international lenders. According to Nyong, relief from these debts will allow these African governments to spend more on local issues related to climate change. The G8 leaders also committed to double annual African aid from US$25 billion to US$50 billion.

But debt relief isn't an instant cure. "We really have to spend some time exploring the implications of [debt relief] for rural economies and urban economies," says David Campbell, a geography professor at Michigan State University who has studied East African communities for more than 25 years. It's also important, he says, to determine what investment should be made with financial aid to maintain the resilience of societies, both urban and rural, in the face of potential increased climatic variability.

Industrialized nations bear another responsibility, Nyong says: "Just as Africa is trying to adapt to these adverse impacts of climate change, the developed countries, particularly the G8 countries, should put in place a mechanism to which they are committed to substantially reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. [With Nigeria] having signed the Kyoto protocol, we want to see definite plans articulated to achieving the targets set by the protocol."

Mendelsohn lays out the bottom line: "As the net income of this land deteriorates, it's not going to be able to sustain the number of bodies that are on it anymore. So the question is, where will these bodies go?" One long-term answer is to try to increase industrialization in Africa to give people other alternatives, to move away from climate-sensitive livelihoods and industries toward those that are not climate-sensitive-ecotourism has been suggested as one possible replacement for farm income.

In the meantime, Campbell says, "It's important that the G8 outcome be committed over the long term to maintaining [financial aid] policies." This financial aid, he says, will be vital to the lives of Africa's poor, who represent an ever increasing segment of African society. And climate change is likely to accelerate such societal stratification, he says. People who have at least some wealth will be better able to switch to different crops, buy a different kind of livestock, or combine growing and herding. "Herders who had taken on farming appeared to be less vulnerable to drought than the people who had maintained themselves in terms of subsisting almost entirely on herding," Campbell says. "So that diversification showed itself to be successful in terms of allowing them to cope with prolonged drought." However, those Africans who don't have sufficient wealth to buffer the effects of increasing climatic variability will plunge deeper into poverty.

But as much as financial aid is needed, Nyong says, the reality is that no amount of money is going to stop climate change from affecting Africa in profound and unpredictable ways. Africa wasn't able to prevent the buildup of greenhouse gases, he says; "What we are left to do now is to adapt to the buildup."

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Continental Divide: Why Africa's Climate Change Burden Is Greater

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Africa can easily be said to contribute the least of any continent to global warming. Each year Africa produces an average of just over 1 metric ton of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide per person, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's International Energy Annual 2002.

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SIPRI Reflection: Climate change, peace and security

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The first film in SIPRI's Reflection series seeks to analyse why climate change matters for peace and security. The film begins by unpacking the connection between climate change and conflict, before demonstrating some of the difficulties in undertaking this research, explaining the main SIPRI working streams before concluding by considering the current picture of climate change, peace and security.

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Clean, fresh water is Africa's most important  natural resource. Therefore, we ought to be preparing to survive climate change by treating fresh water with the respect it deserves.

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Clean, fresh water is Africa's most important  natural resource. Therefore, we ought to be preparing to survive climate change by treating fresh water with the respect it deserves.

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Water Security and Climate Change in Africa

2012-06-14

Duke Kent-Brown, Project Leader: Peace and Security Council Report, ISS Addis Ababa

The problem of climate change is very real and will probably not go away during this century or this millennium. In approaching the problem of climate change the question to be asked is not what is causing climate change (human insouciance, solar activity or some other cause) but what should we be doing to mitigate its effects. How can we best survive its anticipated impact? Certainly, a worldwide reduction in CO2 emissions, particularly by the major industrial countries, including China, would help. Yet, even as we fight that battle, water resources, particularly those in Africa, will continue to diminish through evaporation, wastage, drought and pollution.

Although the UN announced in March 2012 that an important objective of the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals had been achieved, of halving the number of people on the planet without access to safe drinking water, it was also made clear that much remained to be accomplished. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, 70 percent of Africans do not even have access to toilets. In addition, some 738 million people on the planet do not have clean drinking water and 2.5 billion people lack basic sanitation. Both are contributing causes of diarrhea, which is believed to kill up to 2000 African children per day. Unfortunately, the UN announcement served as a reminder that water needs, as articulated by the MDGs, were classified by the UN as being subordinate to the goal of ensuring environmental sustainability, with the main focus on clean drinking water and sanitation. What ought to have been an obvious goal in its own right, of ensuring fresh water access and sustainability, was apparently not considered.

Therefore, we need to engage in even more serious long-term planning, because our survival requires an understanding of how climate change may threaten individual and collective human existence. This is true particularly in the developing world, including Africa. We should begin by treating fresh water with the respect it deserves.

The most important natural resource on the planet, and certainly in Africa, is fresh water; and water is the perceived most vulnerable casualty of the impact of climate change. The oil rich countries of the Gulf are the latest examples of economic growth in the face of a shortage of natural water resources. Therefore, in order to survive they have relied on expensive technologies to convert sea water into the desalinated water they need for human, agricultural and industrial growth to take place. There are few rivers in that region, and most available natural water sources lie underground. In Africa too, countries such as Libya and Algeria respectively, are 95% and 60% reliant on subterranean water sources.

In 2007, some scientists forecast that by the end of this century, Southern Africa would experience a 3.4⁰c increase in annual temperature, a 23% decrease in annual winter rainfall and a 13% decrease in annual summer rainfall. A year later, in Sirte, Libya, the African Union (AU) conference on water use for agriculture came up with more dramatic rainfall statistics for the region and relatively less worrying temperature fluctuations. Nonetheless, the many problems confronting Africa were made very clear, particularly in terms of food and energy production, as well as the increased threat of disease and pestilence, as a result of global warming and anticipated water shortages. The AU conference report also noted that Africa had 10% of the world's fresh water and some 12% of the planet's population.

Consequently, a practical plan of action that aims to avoid the negative consequences of climate change and human carelessness, with resultant pressures on human security, needs to focus specifically on the preservation and protection of valuable water resources. A continent-wide campaign throughout all the countries of Africa, emphasising the value and precious nature of water, rewarding water preservation and water wastage, would be a good start. Everybody from a king to a beggar or a doctor to a shopkeeper, is surely capable of appreciating the value and indispensable nature of water? To save and preserve water now is also to save and preserve Africa and its people in the years ahead.

Unlike the countries of the Gulf and some other desert states, many of Africa's countries have access to rivers and lakes. There is no immediate need to introduce expensive desalination plants to convert sea water into fresh water. It would be a much cheaper alternative to focus on preserving and conserving Africa's existing water resources so that less wastage takes place and maximum use is made of what we already have. If necessary, sea water desalination would be the next step. In the longer term, other solutions to water shortage could be considered. For example, water tankers might well become more numerous than oil tankers as they traverse the southern oceans carrying water from Antarctica, natural reservoir of 70% of the world's fresh water, to arid destinations in the north.

By making it Africa's primary resources goal to provide potentially more than two billion Africans thirty years from now with fresh, usable water, the threat of depleted fresh water resources would become a manageable phenomenon. Africa's future sustainable development needs would be assured and human security problems would be reduced to manageable proportions. It could be as simple as that.

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Water Security and Climate Change in Africa - ISS Africa

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Another Casualty of Climate Change: Peace

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Another Casualty of Climate Change: Peace

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commentary

(Project Syndicate)

by Gulrez Shah Azhar

For months, farmers in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu have been protesting, sometimes naked, sometimes carrying skulls, sometimes lighting candles in remembrance of six protesting farmers killed earlier by police-to gain the attention of authorities to their plight. Among the farmers' demands are forgiveness of loans they cannot repay as the worst drought in 140 years cripples their harvests. In one part of the state, a million coconut trees have died, driving the migration of many farmers to cities where they hope to work as day laborers. Elsewhere, under cover of night, farmers pump water from below the ground of a depleted reservoir. Meanwhile, the lakes that once supplied the 8 million inhabitants of the city of Chennai have gone dry, and the city's water supply has dropped by half.

Drought, temperature and tensions rise in tandem, with the implicit threat of violent conflict not far behind.

Drought, temperature and tensions rise in tandem, with the implicit threat of violent conflict not far behind. In East Africa, 26.5 million people are in need of food assistance as the result of recurrent droughts and failed harvests, conflict and growing insecurity.

Now a new report by the Center for Climate and Security calls on countries to prepare for global crisis sparked by climate change. It identifies 12 "epicenters" where climate change could ignite conflict that could engulf large populations and often cross national boundaries.

This connection between human conflict and climate change is no mere coincidence. In fact, researchers have quantified a precise relationship between rising temperatures and conflict around the world. As the report found, with each significant deviation upward in a country's normal temperature or rainfall, the frequency of interpersonal violence rises by 4 percent and intergroup conflict increases 14 percent. Rising rates of human conflict appear to be another alarming impact of climate change.

On an intuitive level, it seems to make sense-hasn't most everyone felt irritable when forced to be out in the heat? Psychological studies have shown that people subjected to uncomfortably hot temperatures in laboratory settings have increased levels of aggression. New research is finding that what is true for the individual also holds true for populations.

Conflicts have been a part of humankind's story since ancient times, and the connection between climate change and conflict needs to be understood in its complexity. There are immediate causes of conflicts-political, social and otherwise-but climate change can act as an enzyme, accelerating and exacerbating it. Or as the Pentagon might say, climate change can be a "threat multiplier."

Data from sub-Saharan Africa show that temperature increases over the past 30 years match up with outbreaks of civil war. The UC Berkeley study reports that "civil wars were much more likely to happen in warmer-than-average years, with one degree Celsius warmer temperatures in a given year associated with a 50 percent higher likelihood of conflict in that year." The authors predict that by 2030 the expected one degree Centigrade increase in global temperature would translate to a 55 percent increase in civil war in some African countries, and to about 390,000 additional battle deaths. Similar conflicts have been predicted elsewhere, including in the South China Sea, the Arctic and Central America.

Of course, no one wants this to happen. Avoiding such an outcome will likely take enormous commitment from the global community; strong support for the Paris Convention on Climate Change (weakened by the United States' withdrawal); and urgent action by countries, cities and industry to help populations adapt to a changing climate. The underlying pathways that connect climate change and conflict also need to be understood.

Several scientific studies indicate that three underlying pathways connect climate change and conflict: resource shortages, disasters and human migration.

Resource shortages: Rainfall variation affects agricultural production, and increases in global temperatures are expected to lower crop yields, leading to increased hunger and declines in rural incomes. In the absence of other economic opportunities, conflicts are expected to intensify. For example, when global food prices increased dramatically in 2008 it led to political and economic instability (PDF) and social unrest in dozens of countries.

Three underlying pathways connect climate change and conflict: resource shortages, disasters and human migration.

In largely agricultural societies like those in India and many African countries, farm productivity affects those individuals dependent upon agriculture for their livelihood-and consequently the entire economy. Indeed, India has a history of famine, starvation deaths still occur and thousands of farmers commit suicide each year. Agricultural distress is already an issue, and as in Tamil Nadu, could well take more heated forms.

Disasters: With increasing temperatures, heat waves are likely to increase in frequency, intensity, duration and cause more deaths. The climate impact of other natural disasters also has been modeled and observed, and ranges from flooding to super-typhoons. These impact human health, livelihoods, and stability as well as the broader economy and society. In the absence of effective risk-reduction and response strategies, these disasters would affect poor and vulnerable communities the hardest and could lead to cycles of poverty and violence.

Human migration: In 2015, there were 244 million international migrants. Taken together, they would make up the fifth-most populous country in the world. As living conditions become intolerable or economic options dry up, people move in search of opportunity. Climate change is already causing mass human migration. The International Organization for Migration fears that the scale of such movement will rise, with "unprecedented" impact on lives and livelihoods[ 1]. Parts of western Asia, for example, are likely to become inhospitable for humans from heat by the end of this century, with temperatures projected to exceed the human adaptability threshold. Temperatures exceeding 45 degrees Celsius will become the norm in most low-lying cities and could go as high as 60 C in Kuwait City, Al Ain and Doha during late summer months. Heavily populated cities like New Delhi could have up to 200 days a year of temperatures greater than 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 C).

These alarming findings show the need for immediate action to stop temperature increases by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and for governments to urgently adopt policies that will help populations adapt to climate change, ranging from improved management of soil resources from small farms to vast rangelands, and advance planning to maintain and conserve water resources. And while some may feel that the Paris accord could be a hindrance to economic growth, proponents assert that its push to mitigate greenhouse emissions makes it a critical component to addressing climate change and would have economic co-benefits. For example, in Chennai, experts point out that the regular de-silting of lakes and reservoirs, and efforts to capture excess water during periods of heavy rain and ensure recharging of groundwater have been lacking.

Climate change is a threat to civilization. With increasing temperatures, conflicts are likely to increase in the future. Earth has been here for 4.5 billion years, and humanity has inhabited it for just 0.005% of that time. The mighty dinosaurs once roamed the planet slow and unafraid, and all it took was one meteor to end their days. In their defense, they perhaps didn't see it coming.

But humans do.
Dr. Gulrez Shah Azhar is an Aspen New Voices fellow, an assistant policy researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a Ph.D. candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
A version of this commentary originally appeared on www.project-syndicate.org.

Authors

Assistant Policy Researcher; Ph.D. Candidate, Pardee RAND Graduate School

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environmental and natural resource management

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Another Casualty of Climate Change: Peace

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commentary (Project Syndicate) by Gulrez Shah Azhar For months, farmers in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu have been protesting, sometimes naked, sometimes carrying skulls, sometimes lighting candles in remembrance of six protesting farmers killed earlier by police-to gain the attention of authorities to their plight.

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How climate change contributed to the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa

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How climate change contributed to the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa

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Voices and Views: Middle East and North Africa

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The Climate Change conference in Paris only confirmed what we already knew-that increasingly, there's an overlap between conventional security threats of a military nature, which are focused on nations, and unconventional security threats of an environmental, social, and humanitarian nature, which are focused on societies and individuals. Thus, the phenomenon of climate change has brought about new security threats, such as internal conflict, terrorism, and instability.

The Middle East region's share of greenhouse gas emissions does not exceed that of more developed countries, but it is among the regions that have been most adversely affected by the consequences of climate change so far, with droughts and desertification already causing a decline in agricultural production, falling water levels in rivers, and the erosion of the agrarian revolution, stoking conflicts over resources.
Outbreak of civil conflicts
According to the 2013 study by John Waterbury, "The Political Economy of Climate Change in the Arab Region," droughts that occurred prior to 2011 led to the devastation of agricultural land on which at least 800,000 people depended in eastern Syria, and resulted in the death of at least 85% of their livestock. This, in turn, led to the displacement of the inhabitants of rural areas who went to seek employment in Syria's larger cities, where they formed disenfranchised belts of disparate communities surrounding Hamah, Homs, and Daraa. This contributed to the outbreak of conflict in Syria, following President Bashir al Assad use of his armed forces against them.

A similar situation occurred with respect to the conflict in Darfur, in western Sudan, where rainfall had declined by 30% and agricultural production had fallen by 70%, while the average annual temperature rose by 1.5 degrees, contributing to conflict between pastoral and agricultural tribes over the use of land for grazing livestock or growing crops.
Expansion of terrorist organizations
The importance resources hold for terrorist organizations is emphasized by the efforts of the so-called Islamic State, IS or ISIS, to capture the Mosul and Fallujah dams in Iraq, as well as the Iraqi regions of Zumar, Sinjar, and Rabiah, in order to gain control of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as well as water sources in Syria, and fertile regions suitable for agriculture in both countries.

A study by Aaron Sayne, published by the American Peace Institute in June 2011, states that the emergence of Boko Haram in Nigeria can be traced to environmental developments and climate change, linking the founding of Boko Haram by Mohammed Marwa in the 1980s to the proliferation of victims of environmental crises in Nigeria, who lacked food, shelter, and other basic necessities of life. Boko Haram's ranks then swelled after the migration of Chadian farmers as a result of droughts and desertification in Chad.
Escalation of environmental protests
Many studies have pointed to the link between climate change and the outbreak of the Arab revolutions. "The Arab Spring and Climate Change," published in 2013 by the Center for Climate and Security in Washington, says it was the failure of governments to meet their citizens' basic needs, address climatic issues like droughts, desertification, and power shortages that led many people to take part in the political protests of the Arab Spring.

Other environmental protests that took place were in the cities of Ouargala and Ain Saleh in Algeria in March 2015 against the extraction of shale gas. In Israel in 2013, protests in the Adulam region were led by several organizations, such as the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and the Green Zionist Alliance.

In 2011 and 2012, Egypt saw a wave of environmental protests, such as those against the MOPCO fertilizer plant in Damietta, and protests by the residents of the village of Fares near Aswan against gas drilling practices. In 2014, a campaign called "Egyptians against Coal" was launched in Alexandria to confront the pollution caused by the use of coal by the Lafarge Cement Company. In March 2015, a number of environmental groups threatened to hold a sit-in following the government's announcement that it would allow the use of coal in cement factories.
Deterioration of human security
In conclusion, climate change has increased threats to human security. Most environmental studies concur that is it likely climate change will lead to the numbers of displaced persons and refugees in the Middle East increasing. It is anticipated that the rise of sea levels, particularly in the Mediterranean, will displace 3.8 million residents of the Nile Delta and other coastal regions to internal areas, according to a report issued by the World Bank in November 2014. Coastal cities, such as Alexandria, Egypt; Benghazi, Libya; and Algiers, Algeria, may all be subjected to flooding if the Mediterranean rises.

The World Bank report, "Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal", states the Arab region is witnessing the evaporation of its scarce water resources, particularly in the Tigris, Euphrates, and Jordan rivers, and the Sea of Galilee, as well as a 30% decline in crop yields in Egypt, Jordan, and Libya. Likewise, a report by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development states that 12% of the arable land in Egypt is subject to multiple, climate-related risks.

Threats resulting from climate change extend beyond the domains of environmental, social, and human security, and overlap with conventional security and internal stability. These confirm the need to increase the pressure on industrial and other rapidly growing economies in countries that contribute the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions; to participate actively in countering its dangerous consequences; to change perceptions of the risks related to environmental security among the political and media elites; find alternative ways to address the crises of food and water shortages; and develop policies to deal with the waves of internally displaced persons that are anticipated.

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How climate change contributed to the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa

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The Climate Change conference in Paris only confirmed what we already knew-that increasingly, there's an overlap between conventional security threats of a military nature, which are focused on nations, and unconventional security threats of an environmental, social, and humanitarian nature, which are focused on societies and individuals.

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Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa

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Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa

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Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa

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In this audio slideshow, Dr. Joshua Busby from the University of Texas at Austin summarizes his original research on how climate change may intersect with demographic, social, and political influences in North Africa.

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CLIMATE CHANGE, VIOLENCE AND YOUNG PEOPLE

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CLIMATE CHANGE, VIOLENCE AND YOUNG PEOPLE

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Read the summary.

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This Unicef UK commissioned report, co-authored by the Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a world-leading authority on global security, and International Alert, one of the world's leading peacebuilding organisations, adds to a growing body of research which emphasises the role of climate change and environmental stress as a 'threat multiplier' in terms of stability and security.

The report finds that regions where large youth populations will be present in the coming decades currently have low resilience to the impacts of climate change and generally experience poor governance and social and political instability. The worsening effects of climate change, combined with growing social, economic and political pressures as a result of rapidly-expanding populations, will place additional strain on governments and social systems that are already over-burdened - potentially triggering, or exacerbating, social unrest, instability and even conflict.

Reacting to the report's findings, David Bull, Executive Director at Unicef UK said:

"We know that climate change compounds the daily struggle faced by millions of the poorest families in the world, but this report shows it could also increase the risk of worsening violence and conflict. This is just the latest in a huge body of evidence showing that securing an international agreement to limit global warming is essential to protect vulnerable children from danger."

Climate Change, Violence and Young People: Report for Unicef UK

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Climate change, violence and young people - Unicef UK

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This Unicef UK commissioned report, co-authored by the Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a world-leading authority on global security, and International Alert, one of the world's leading peacebuilding organisations, adds to a growing body of research which emphasises the role of climate change and environmental stress as a 'threat multiplier' in terms of stability and security.

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Climate Change Will Create More Violent Extremism, If We Let It

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Climate Change Will Create More Violent Extremism, If We Let It

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The protests and violent conflict in Syria that began in 2011 originally took U.S. security analysts by surprise. Early in the Arab Spring, the State Department had ranked Syria near the bottom of a list of Middle East and North African nations most likely to experience upheaval. Five years later, we have a hopelessly war-torn country, land occupied by ISIS, and the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

They shouldn't have been surprised. Three years earlier, a Syrian bureaucrat had issued a stark briefing to U.S. and U.N. officials warning of a "perfect storm" of conditions that could undermine his country's stability.

Syria's President Bashar Assad had stifled human rights, democracy, and economic opportunity for many years (with the complicit support western goverments)-but that's not what was worrisome. The truly destabilizing factor was drought. Beginning in 2006, northern Syria plunged into the worst drought in its modern history-its unusual length and severity likely caused by the planet's changing climate. Exacerbating the drought's effects, the government had for years grossly mismanaged the country's aquifer resources, encouraging water-hungry cash crops and allowing groundwater levels to deplete. Poor farmers were left with nothing after crops failed. Agriculture collapsed.

At the time, Abdullah Bin Yehia, Syria's representative to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), begged for more aid to assist farmers in the northeast. In a classified cable on Wikileaks, a U.S. State Department official in Damascus wrote to the CIA and U.S. Defense Department: "If UNFAO efforts fail, Yehia predicts mass migration from the northeast, which could act as a multiplier on social and economic pressures already at play." Yehia predicted such "social destruction" would lead to political instability in Syria's major western cities, Damascus and Aleppo, the cable said.

Hindsight is 20/20, but Yehia was prescient. No, neither climate change nor drought caused Syria's war (or ISIS, as Senator Bernie Sanders tried to claim, saying, "climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism")-corruption, human rights abuses, and poverty did that. But the drought in Syria took tensions that had been simmering for decades and ramped them up very quickly.

The coincidental timing of the recent Paris terrorist attacks and the international climate treaty negotiations there have placed a sharp focus on the link between climate change and extremist violence. At the Paris climate talks, President Obama said both problems-climate change and terrorism-require a similar, long-term response: "What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it?"

That's lovely rhetoric. But climate and security experts, including the U.S. military, have long held that climate change and violence are much more than metaphorically entangled. Environmental disasters present clear escalating opportunities for conflict, violence, and instability. The Defense Department calls climate change a "threat multiplier."

Syria is now Exhibit A for this concept. Whatever insufficient aid did come to Syrian farmers came too late. The 1.5 million displaced people who flooded into Syria's cities became one contributing factor to the unrest that exploded in 2011 and devolved into bitter war.

"Syria was a wakeup call," says Francesco Femia, director of the Center for Climate and Security in Washington, D.C. "Governments needed to ask themselves why exactly Syria was unstable as it was and what they missed-the missing issue was water and food security."

Water is currently a concern and potential source of instability throughout the region. Jordan was already water-stressed, largely due to inefficient management and infrastructure, and now it is absorbing millions refugees from Syria. In the Sahel region of Northern Africa, drought and conflict have displaced millions of farmers and herders over the last few years. Yemen's capital city Sana'a may be the first city in the world to run out of water (and it might happen as soon as 2017), a situation that has played a part in its ongoing civil war and power of extremist groups there.

"Water is one of those things that gets swept under the carpet, and no one is talking about it because it's not a sectarian thing," says Middle East human rights researcher Mahmood Monshipouri, referring to Yemen. "There's no question: The lack of water in the Middle East has empowered extremists." This happens in several ways: When people are desperate to meet their basic needs, there is greater competition for scarce resources, which can exacerbate existing ethnic, tribal, or religious tensions between competing groups. People are also more vulnerable to those who offer easy answers to their problems. More directly, terrorist groups have made it a strategy to control water resources as a tactic to exert control over populations. ISIS, for example, has taken over dams and drained marshlands to control the flow.

Conflict related to water-stress is not new. But, says Femia, there's growing evidence that climate change will increase the likelihood of state failure and conflict, given other political and economic conditions.

One study projects that temperatures in the region could be physically too hot for human inhabitants by 2100, if climate change goes unchecked. In 1950, per capita renewable water resources were four times greater than today. By mid-century, according to the World Bank, they will drop even further-possibly to 11 times less than the global average. Out of 33 countries predicted to experience "extreme water stress" by 2040, 14 of them are in the Middle East.

"What we worry about is when climate change becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back and makes a problem so bad that violence occurs when it might not otherwise have occurred," says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute.

Counter-terrorism and global security are not reasons to solve climate change (and there are many other, better reasons to do that). But, on the flip side, in the long-term, terrorism and extremism will be harder to build defenses against if nothing is done to improve water and food security in the Middle East and North Africa region. Basic food and water resources-and a reliable economy for farmers-are crucial to building societies in which freedom and prosperity can flourish. But what can be done?

Some of the obvious solutions tend to be bureaucratic or technical-and require massive investments. In Jordan, water security could be hugely improved by investing to reduce water leakage and efficiency, setting more appropriate water pricing and consistent water policies for farmers, and by increasing the treatment and reuse of wastewater, according to Jordan University of Science and Technology engineer Samer Talozi. "The availability of water and energy at affordable prices are crucial for stability and economic development. This is becoming more of a challenge every day," he says. And in 2009, during the worst of the Syrian drought, the FAO appealed for emergency aid, but it also wanted to build long-term resilience measures in the country, such as a National Early Warning System for drought.

Israel, says Gleick, is one of the best examples of the effective use of technical know-how and policy. Its agriculture sector is structured to grow more food with less water, and the nation has centralized water planning, created pricing that gives the incentive to conserve, and begun reusing substantial amounts of wastewater. Its desalination plants-an expensive investment that works alongside all of Israel's other measures-help ensure supply. Israel can be a model (though it surely isn't one to Palestinians in the West Bank). Still, its example is harder to follow in poorer nations or under unstable or corrupt governments.

Other projects are less wonky and more creative. Over the last decade, the Great Green Wall Initiative in Northern Africa has gone from idea to reality. It started as a quite literal idea to plant trees across the continent. But since, funded by $1.1 billion contributed by African governments and the global development community, it has evolved to a practical slate of programs-from conservation agriculture to microcredit systems to solar energy-intended to improve the livelihood of poor, migratory herders and subsistence farmers (who are often divided across ethnic or tribal lines) across 12 countries spanning the Sahel and Sahara deserts.

Elvis Paul Tangem, the coordinator for the Great Green Wall at the African Union Commission, says the initiative is in place partly to enhance stability in a region vulnerable to conflict and combat the power of groups like Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group in northeastern Nigeria and nearby countries.

"If you look at most of the migrants who cross into Southern Europe today-the bulk of them come from... highly degraded lands. There's not much to do in the villages. If you want to make something useful with your life, you migrate. If you cannot go, you are vulnerable to illicit activities, drug trafficking, and terrorism. This is about providing alternatives."

One example of the program's early success is in the Louga region of Senegal. "Multipurpose gardening" was introduced to give pastoralists or their families the economic opportunity to stay in place during a dry season, rather than migrate hundreds of miles for fresh grass and water-a safety net, essentially. Now, women are employed and more children are going to school, and there are more stable communities with enterprises linked to less drought-vulnerable natural resources, such as products made from acacia trees. Tangem describes the Great Green Wall less as a planned project and more as a "brand" or "platform" for fighting land degradation.

Other solutions can be political. In the wake of the Arab Spring, Tunisia's new democratic government rewrote the constitution. It became only the third country in the world to include climate change in the constitution, as a legal responsibility of the government to address. And while water offers opportunities for conflict, it also offers opportunities for cooperation. Israel and Jordan have had close cooperation over water issues, working to implement projects to manage the Jordan River.

"They've worked hard to put in place some institutions across the border with Jordan that manage their water resources in a more transparent way-there's still some tension, but they've managed to prevent conflicts over water," says Gleick. Similarly, in India and Pakistan, there has been some cooperation on water issues-which can serve as the catalyst to greater political and economic cooperation

The connection between climate change, water and food security, and conflict and terrorism is circular. Political stability is needed to improve climate and water issues, but these issues can undermine stability and provoke violence. The future will require taking both seriously, equally.

Bernie Sanders tried to say climate change is a biggest national security threat facing the United States. That may be true: Climate change will breed more political instability, which will make it harder to respond to climate change; The dynamics are already nearly impossible to separate. Say Femia: "There are no bumper stickers about these connections. We have to embrace the complexity."

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Climate Change Will Create More Violent Extremism, If We Let It

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The protests and violent conflict in Syria that began in 2011 originally took U.S. security analysts by surprise. Early in the Arab Spring, the State Department had ranked Syria near the bottom of a list of Middle East and North African nations most likely to experience upheaval.

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Climate Change: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South

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Climate Change: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South

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Acknowledgements: This paper has been the result of a collaborative writing process. We would like to thank Marcela Donadio (RESDAL); Obayedul Hoque Patwary (Department of Peace and Conflict Studies of Dhaka University, Bangladesh), Razia Sultana (Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies); Shiloh Fetzek and Wong Dan Chi (Paia Consulting, Singapore) for their engagement in this process. Any errors or inadequacies are the authors' own.

The issue of global climate change has become prominent over recent decades, now seen by many in the environmental movement as a problem of potentially apocalyptic proportions. Whilst the issue was first articulated by 'green' campaigners, gradually the socioeconomic, as well as ecological, implications of global warming are coming to the fore and being picked up by other interest groups. Over the last five years or so, the security policy community have come to regard climate change as part of their brief, as have civil society groups that work on defence, conflict analysis and peacebuilding.

While this paper is offered in the hope that the Western defence community may engage with some perspectives from the Global South, it is also to be hoped that as these actors become increasingly involved in issues related to environmental limitations, this knowledge leads them to act as advocates for climate change mitigation - as well as adaptation.

The 'securitisation' of climate change - treating the issue as a matter of local, national or global security - need not mean an automatic 'militarisation' of the issue - the adoption of military responses based on the threat or use of force to a changing climate. Such an overly pessimistic view ignores the potential we still have for preventing the most dramatic effects of climate change, and may decrease the chances of us embracing a more preventative approach, promoting a low-carbon transition.

Climate change is a complex phenomenon, which will have multiple and non-linear effects on human security. It will have both direct and indirect impacts on the stability and security of states and communities, and these will vary enormously across the globe. However, it is the states and people of the Global South that are the most vulnerable to the security implications of a warmer world that are described in this report.

With the number of people affected by climate change set to significantly increase in the next twenty years, potentially making it the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, the issue is fast becoming an important security challenge. When the increased instability of this humanitarian challenge (such as food insecurity) is combined with persistent socio-economic divisions, the potential for social unrest and political instability is considerable. As well as generating new conflicts, climate change acts as a threat multiplier - exacerbating existing tensions and divisions - especially in already fragile situations.

A militarised response that relies on the control paradigm - attempting to 'keep the lid' on threats through military force and political containment, without addressing the root causes - will not only be ineffective, is likely to exacerbate conflicts and insecurity. What is needed instead is a shift in the security community towards strongly advocating for a rapid shift to a low-carbon society, as a precaution against future conflicts. Such voices can highlight that 'securitising' a concept (making it the object of security analysis) does not necessarily mean 'militarising' the response.

Mitigating conflicts around climate change can be achieved mainly through mitigating the effects of climate change itself. Whilst there must be conflict-sensitive adaptation and diplomatic preparations for the impacts of climate change that we already know are likely to occur (such as migration and competition over natural resources), the most significant response to the security impacts of this issue should be action to reduce green house gas emissions and protect existing 'carbon sinks' (such as rainforests); these steps will prevent the more catastrophic expected elements of climate change, and thus prevent the most dangerous conflicts.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South

The current security paradigm adopted by most governments and their defence forces is based on the premise that insecurity can be controlled through military force or containment, thus maintaining the status quo. This has been termed the 'control paradigm', and, while being a potentially attractive short-term strategy, it is ultimately 'self-defeating in the long-term' (Abbott et al, 2006). Oxford Research Group argues that a new way of approaching security is needed, one that addresses the drivers of conflict: 'curing the disease' rather than 'fighting the symptoms'.

One alternative is the concept of 'sustainable security'. The approach is inherently preventive (where the 'control paradigm' is fundamentally reactive), in that it addresses the likely causes of conflict and instability well before their effects are felt.

Oxford Research Group aims to encourage in-depth, original thinking amongst decision-makers and civil society around sustainable responses to long-term trends in global security that are likely to cause unprecedented international tension and loss of life in the coming decades. Perhaps the four most important of these underlying drivers of insecurity are:

Climate change

Increasing competition over resources

Global militarisation

Marginalisation across much of the 'majority world'[1]

The sustainable security framework also aims to highlight the interconnected nature of these triggers of insecurity.

This is the third in a series of four papers[2] (see respective links at the bottom of this publication), each of which examines one of these four issues, and the ways in which each trend (in this case, climate change) may engender local and international discord.

Each paper is the result of long-term collaboration between ORG and partners across the 'Global South'.[3] This collaborative network - made up of activists, analysts and academics from a range of think tanks, civil society organisation and research institutes - have recommended background reading, provided expert review and written illuminating case studies commissioned for this paper, focusing particularly on Bangladesh.

The Importance of North-South Engagement

These likely future drivers of insecurity do not respect national boundaries, and will not be sustainably addressed by unilateral approaches. For example, as competition over energy resources increases with depleting supplies of fossil fuels, it will become more vital that positive collaboration between consumer nations in the West and resource-rich nations in the South occurs.[4]

In a globalised world in which no nation's security is independent of their region or of the wider international community, the opinions of the majority world can no longer be neglected by the major powers who seek to direct global security priorities.

The sustainable security approach posits global justice and equity as key requirements of any effective response to global insecurity. Voices from the Global South remain on the periphery of discussions around global political and security issues, and particularly at the negotiating tables of international institutions.[5] This must be addressed.

Western organisations can contribute to the building of an egalitarian approach to international relations by adopting a close and meaningful engagement with majority world thinking. Security analysts and policymakers must also continue to engage and collaborate with counterparts in the Global South, ensuring that the sustainable security project puts into practice the idea of a truly inclusive global politics.

Many future security problems, and also the solutions, will be found in the Global South (given their intimate and intuitive understanding of those problem and solutions), within the very populations whose marginalisation has resulted in much contemporary insecurity. Whilst climate change, for example, will hit the poorest communities hardest[6], it is with emerging economies like China, India and Brazil that the West must engage if mitigating climate chaos is to have any success at all. Non-Western perspectives must be recognised and addressed in concrete policies in the powerful countries of the Global North. Such policies should be focused on transforming tensions at their root rather than solely attempting to control violent conflicts.

Our hope is that this series of research papers will contribute towards 'North-South' communication, giving Western decision-makers greater reasons and resources with which to engage with their colleagues in the majority world to build a genuinely sustainable global system.

The Pressing Threats to Global Security in the Twenty First Century: A Changing Climate

The issue of global climate change has become prominent over recent decades, growing to be seen by many in the environmental movement as a problem of apocalyptic proportions (Lean, 2005). Whilst the issue was first articulated by 'green' campaigners, gradually the socioeconomic, as well as ecological, implications of global warming are coming to the fore and being picked up by other interest groups. Many development analysts are convinced of the potentially catastrophic effects on those already living with restricted resources (as Bangladeshi activist Nazmul Chowdhury put it, 'forget making poverty history, climate change will make poverty permanent' [Clifford, 2007]). Human rights and refugee specialists are increasingly occupied with the task of mitigating the human welfare problems around likely climate change induced displacement. Private sector and industry groups are now accepting the need to 'mainstream' climate change - and perhaps regard it both as a threat, and an opportunity for development.

Furthermore, over the last five years or so[7], the security policy community have come to regard climate change as part of their brief, as have civil society groups that work on defence, conflict analysis and peace-building. Whilst this paper is offered in the hope that the Western defence community may engage with some perspectives from the Global South, it is also to be hoped that as these actors become increasingly involved in issues related to environmental limitations, this knowledge leads them to act as advocates for climate change mitigation - as well as adaptation.

The "securitisation" of climate change - treating the issue as a matter of local, national or global security - need not mean an automatic "militarisation" of the issue - the adoption of military responses based on the threat or use of force to a changing climate. Such an overly pessimistic view ignores the potential we still have for preventing the most dramatic effects of climate change, and may decrease the chances of us embracing a more preventative approach, promoting a low-carbon transition (Rogers, 2010).

Climate change is a complex phenomenon, which will have multiple and non-linear effects on human security. It will have both direct and indirect impacts on the stability and security of states and communities, and these will vary enormously across the globe. However, it is the states and people of the Global South that are the most vulnerable to the security implications of a warmer world that are described below. The following case study, focusing on Bangladesh, is an example of this.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South

Climate Change and Conflict: The Case of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a 'frontline state' of climate change, predicted to be one of the first and the hardest hit countries to face the adverse impacts of warmer global temperatures. This is particularly due to its unique geographic location, dominance of floodplains, low elevation from the sea, high population density, high levels of poverty, and overwhelming dependence on nature, its resources and services. The country has a history of extreme climatic events claiming millions of lives and destroying past development gains. The impacts of the changing climate are eroding the assets, investments and futures of families, communities and the state at large. As a result, the number of internally displaced people is increasing alarming, which jeopardises social and political stability. For this reason, though Bangladesh is not directly facing any conflict resulting from climate change now, there is a general consensus that the impact of climate change has significant potential to lead to political instability and violent conflict at various levels of the society and state.

The country inherits a poor and institutionally weak regime and is therefore unlikely to respond to such crisis in a manner that is satisfying to all. Social effects related to the consequences of climate change, scarcity of resources and natural disasters could play an important role in giving rise to various conflicts. Social tensions, including those emerging from climate-related degradation, are likely to manifest themselves through anti-government movements.

The unabated impacts of climate change also have the potential to lead to economic instability in Bangladesh, which can also lead to violent conflict. Certain impacts of climate change e.g. food insecurity, freshwater crises and soil degradation are affecting the livelihood patterns of marginalised people directly. This results in deepening poverty at the individual as well as the national level. Moreover, the lack of economic growth reduces popular support for the government.

The political and economic instability resulting from the impacts of climate change can lead to destabilisation and conflict in Bangladesh in a number of ways. These include the breakdown of social harmony and cohesion, increasing competition over scarce resources, a collapse of traditional leadership structures and increasing stress on the political leadership structures of the state. In this way, climate change acts as a threat multiplier, causing widespread instability in socio-political settings that may deepen existing social and political tensions and at times leads to new ones. It also opens up the opportunity for non-state actors to intervene and exploit the situation, further undermining the security and stability of the state. Loss of livelihoods and the resultant deepening of poverty can also serve as a recruiting ground for extremist groups in Bangladesh, resulting in a higher conflict risk. The consequences of climate change are likely to generate large scale migration, which can potentially lead to various sorts of conflicts including group vs. group conflict (for example between Bengali and the tribal people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts), state vs. group conflict and state vs. state conflict (between India and Bangladesh). Impacts of global warming and climate change thus have the potential to challenge the development efforts, human security and the future of the country.
By Obayedul Hoque Patwary, Department of Peace and Conflict Studies of Dhaka University, Bangladesh

Direct Impacts

Areas Rendered Uninhabitable

Sea level rises and desertification are two processes for which climate change is a catalyst. Both are likely to affect regions that have not been heavy contributors to green house gas emission levels; both are processes that will make some hitherto inhabited areas unfit for human habitation.

The melting of glaciers is causing sea levels to rise (IPCC, 2007). In Africa, this process could threaten more than 25% of the continent's population, who live within 100 kilometres of the coast (Juma, 2010). Sea level rise will also have a dramatic affect on island states, nations with floodplains, and low-lying coastlines. Many Pacific islands may even disappear completely (Honig 2011).

In the Caribbean, sea level rise is a huge concern, endangering the future of small islands, and in the shorter term affecting their trade and tourism capabilities. The regional integration system (CARICOM - the 'Caribbean Community') has a task force dedicated to this issue (see Simpson et al, 2010).

Desertification is likely to affect the Arab world significantly (Shanin, 2009), along with southern Africa, southern Europe, central and east Asia (Rogers, 2009 and UNCCD, 2007). Desertification has also been a driving factor in the recent conflict in Darfur (Gambari, 2011), as desertification and drought result in increased water insecurity and arable land, there have been clashes between African farmers and Arab pastoralists, likely to spread as these nomadic herders are pushed into other territories by drought. Desertification will also affect the Latin American and Caribbean region where desertification, along with increasing incidences of natural disasters including hurricanes, is likely to reduce GDP in the coming decades by around 1% per year for the next ten years (ECLAC, 2009). Desertification will also occur in more developed nations, including the United States (Rogers, 2009).

These forces may force people to move, either temporarily or permanently. Migration both in and across countries is likely [see 'The movement of peoples' section, below].

CLIMATE CHANGE: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South

Bangladesh: Vulnerability, Gender and Migration

Environmental transformation has affected some countries in Asia and Africa in ways that have had disproportionately adverse impacts on women. Internal forced migration caused by climate change is a major concern in some disaster prone developing countries. Migration is not gender neutral - women are more likely to move from one place to another; and migrants are often treated harshly as they are exposed to violence according to their caste, creed or ethnicity.

The relationship between environmental crisis, migration and gender are not linear, but intertwined. Environmental crises induce forced migration both within and across countries which leads to human insecurities of displaced people through undermining livelihoods, increasing conflicts over resources (such as access to viable land, food, and potable water) and galvanizing other concomitant challenges. With widespread population movement, women suffer more than men as it is more difficult for the former to ensure access to credit and secure livelihoods during and after the disaster. Often, the influx of out-flow migration results in sexual violence and harassment against women in the transition and destination areas (Dalrymple et al, 2009).

To look at the linkages between climate change and human insecurity, in 2009 the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, in collaboration with Saferworld, conducted a study of the vulnerabilities of women in Khulna-Satkhira (states in the southern part of Bangladesh). The rationale of selecting Bangladesh as a case study was that the country has ranked one of the most vulnerable to floods, third most to tsunamis and sixth most to cyclones. In particular, the Khulna and Satkhira districts are the most flood and cyclone prone areas among the 64 districts.

The research found that the nexus between climate change and human insecurity is not direct, but dependent on a series of factors including gender. For instance, immediately after natural disasters (like cyclone Sidr), people struggled to access food, shelter, clean water as well as suffering from numerous diseases such as diarrhea, cholera and typhoid. Since women are more likely to be responsible for providing the family with water and food, they are both more affected by these problems, and more hard hit when disease strikes.

Moreover, a large number of women were involved in shrimp cultivation. When extensive river floods washed everything away, women lost their jobs, which increased livelihood insecurity.

The impact of natural disasters in Bangladesh has not only reduced the capacity of women to secure their jobs (as the degradation of the land reduces the work available in farming) but also increased the number of sexual assaults against women in some areas. It was revealed that male shrimp workers generally come from outside the local area, and are perceived as the main reason for the rise in sexual violence. Whether or not this is accurate, such suspicions lead to increased tensions between settled communities and the incoming workers.

Sexual assaults against women had far reaching impacts on individuals, families and local communities. Thus, the study found that climate change, and resulting migration, is a significant contributing factor to increase conflicts and violence in the society.
By Razia Sultana, Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies

Extreme Weather Events

Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and ferocity or extreme weather events - also known as 'climate shocks'. Whilst droughts and flooding are already regular patterns in many areas, and have been for many hundreds of years, climate change will mean these happen more often, and with greater intensity. For example in Pakistan, areas with a history of 'high frequency, low intensity flood events' are now experiencing 'high intensity, high frequency floods' such as those in 2010 and 2011, and humid regions have seen a rise in monsoon rainfall of between 18 and 32% (Jena, 2010). In northern Kenya, although droughts are nothing new, they are increasingly concentrated: for example in 2010, the River Bisanadi (a tributary of the major River Tana) had dried up, for the first time in living memory (Abdi, 2011).

This unpredictable climate has multiple affects: on food and water security, on transport, energy infrastructure, on the economy, education and health systems, on the ability of communities to adopt long-term adaptation techniques and ultimately on whether areas remain habitable.

Vulnerable communities face a more dangerous and insecure world. According to the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests, between 1991 and 2000, 93 major disasters were recorded in Bangladesh, resulting in nearly 200,000 deaths and causing US $5.9 billion in damages with high losses in agriculture and infrastructure (Patwary, 2011). In short, governments and communities are often still recovering from one natural disaster when another one occurs.

Competition Over Resources

In some areas, climate change will mean greater competition over natural resources; this competition has the potential to increase violent conflict.[8] Processes around the procurement of basic necessities - water, energy and food - are likely to become characterised by struggles for use and control of resources that are determined by existing power relations. Where households and communities are wealthy, access to basic provisions will be a manageable issue; for poorer and less powerful groups, this will not be the case. Marginalisation and poverty will play an even greater role in determining survival, with tension around natural resources grown/found in poorer areas, but bought/accessed only by those that can afford them.[9] This visible disparity may increase the risk of violent conflict between these groups.

Access to water, in particular, will be a major issue as climate change will result in there being less fresh water available in many areas. In countries such as Pakistan, where 'economy, social fabric and politics are directly linked with irrigated agriculture' and water resources are 'at the heart of most (...) conflicts' (Memon, 2009), river flows may be severely curbed, provoking conflicts both within Pakistan and with neighbouring India (Jena, 2010). India is likely to develop dams along the upper reaches of the Indus river in order to feed its reservoirs - raising questions in Pakistan over whether falling water availability is 'due to climate change or to India's reservoirs' (ibid.). Many of the rivers flowing through Pakistan (such as Chenab and Ravi rivers) have their springs and upper reaches in Indian-controlled territory, giving India greater control over shared river systems. As Pakistan is hampered by a lack of alternative water sources, competition for water access with India may prove destabilising to the brokered stability between these two Asian powers.

Supplies of fresh water will also be affected in some areas. As sea levels rise and impact on inland water supplies (e.g. rivers), the salinity levels of fresh water will be affected, possibly making it undrinkable, and also harder for fish to survive in. This may increase competition over food (Memon, 2008).

Indirect Impacts

Agriculture, Land and Livelihoods

Farming will be severely disrupted by climate change in many areas, with land and soil quality affected by water insecurity (for example through drought, flash flooding and sea level rise) and by temperature change impacting crop selection. For example, a 1m sea level rise in Egypt would affect 6 million people, with 12 to 15% of agricultural land lost; if this change was not managed effectively, food security, as well as GDP, would be adversely affected (Medany, 2008).

A diversification in income may seem a sensible solution to those reliant on traditional and environmentally bound livelihoods, but some of these alternatives will foster greater insecurity. For example, in northern Kenya, where pastoralist livelihoods are threatened, young men can be drawn into armed cattle-rustling gangs. Moreover, where communities feel that external security provision is not in place, they may take up arms themselves, leading to a cycle of increasing militarisation and escalation of armed violence (Campbell, 2010).

Some alternative livelihoods may also be made less viable by climate change. Tourist industries will be hit in some areas, as the particular climate of tourist destinations change over time, some destinations even become submerged by sea level rise, or rendered more vulnerable to climate shocks. The needs of non-basic infrastructure, such as tourism, may also produce tension amongst communities. Tourism already diverts water from agriculture, which can deepen food insecurity, and, whilst it does provide employment for local people, it primarily serves the interests of powerful international companies and tour operators (Khattabi: 2009, 126).

In light of the difficulties in adapting to climate change, as the habitability of rural areas is affected, mass migration to urban areas may also be a common coping strategy [see 'The movement of peoples' below] (Tacoli, 2011).

High-carbon, industrialised agriculture contributes to climate change. For example, 18% of global greenhouse gas emission stem from livestock production (Pachauri, 2008). Agricultural initiatives that aim to mitigate climate change may also, if not managed sensitively, ironically increase environmental tensions. For example, in Paraguay, soy has become the biggest export - with much of this sold for biofuels (Vargas, 2007). There is evidence that local communities ( campesinos) in Paraguay have been driven from, or obliged to sell, their land in order for multi-national corporations to cultivate biofuels (ibid.).

In those communities, who have chosen to stay living close to the lands they vacated, negative health impacts (because the water supply is contaminated with pesticides, affecting both the people and their livestock) and economic disempowerment (as a result of the loss of their sustained income as small farmers), as well as loss of biodiversity (because of the new monoculture), have been reported (BBC, 2010).

The Guaraní people's land in Paraguay has been taken over by a Brazilian multinational. As one of their leaders put it, "this fight has been going on for three years, but the battle has been going on for a hundred and fifty. Indigenous people are always trying to recapture what they see as belonging to them (...) [the land is] now used to cultivate soya" (ibid.).

Thus, long-term tensions around sovereignty and indigenous rights are heightened, further entrenching the feeling of marginalisation in many communities. This experience of marginalisation can have disastrous personal impacts for individuals. In another Paraguayan community, two members of the agrarian reform land movement, who had campaigned against biofuels, were shot by the police in a struggle over land rights in 2008 (ibid.). Similar confrontations between police and local populations have also happened in other areas where occupying farmers were expelled by force (ibid.).[10]

There have also been occasions of violent reprisals from radical indigenous groups. In 2009, the Paraguayan People's Army, a radical socialist 'guerrilla' group, kidnapped a five-year old relative of one of the country's largest soy producers (Reuters 2009). The child is not the only victim of the group's attacks - they also claimed the murder of Cecilia Cuba, daughter of the former President - but the inclusion of a soy barons' family in their strategy may be a pointer to greater tension between multinationals and local populations in the future.

To avoid the spiralling violence that the combination of marginalisation and food insecurity can bring, it is vital that access to food remains central to debates around land use, particularly in terms of competition with 'cash crops', such as rape, sugar cane, etc. that are sold for biofuels.

The Movement of Peoples

As we have noted, many of the impacts that a changed climate will have on vulnerable regions will make some areas uninhabitable. Sea-level rise, desertification, water and soil salination[11], an increase in droughts, floods and unpredictable rainfall are just some of the processes that are likely to encourage either displacement as a result of an emergency, or migration as a result of longer term changes in the climate. In Africa for example, there is likely to be a ten-fold increase in the number of refugees and internally displaced peoples (IDPs), with the International Organization for Migration predicting that as many as 200 million people around the world will have to move by the middle of this century as climate change amplifies (Juma, 2010). Such displacement will by no means be exclusive to the Global South - some North American communities are already relocating.[12] Precise predictions of significant changes in migration patterns are contested, however, and arguably require deeper research (see Raleigh, et al, 2008).

Much expected climate change displacement will occur within countries, not between them (Warner, 2011). The distinctions between refugees and internally displaced peoples and economic migrants (IDPs) are pronounced in international law. Refugee law, which only deals with cross-border movement, is binding on parties that have ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, and is based around the principle of non-refoulement.[13] There is no binding international treaty on IDPs, however, the African Union launched a convention in 2009 - The Kampala Convention - which is the first legally binding regional instrument in the world to impose on states the obligation to protect and assist IDPs. The convention provides standards for before and during displacement (preventing displacement and assisting displaced peoples) and seeks durable solutions to bring displacement to an end (AU, 2009).

Discussions are currently being undertaken by stakeholders, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), regarding where climate change displacement sits within existing legal frameworks. Questions that need to be answered include: At what level of vulnerability does the migration of communities shift from a desire for livelihood improvement (pragmatic relocation) to environmental necessity (refugees)? How do the rights of climate change migrants relate to existing legal processes for forced migration e.g. those fleeing political persecution? How will host countries manage immigration? There is a clear need for a set of Guiding Principles that can be referred to in the management of such issues.

The Cancun Adaptation Agreement established at the COP 16 climate talks in Mexico in December 2010, provides guidelines for support for adaptation, and calls on countries to enhance understanding and cooperation on 'climate change-induced displacement, migration and planned relocation' (NEPAD, 2010). States have asked for support in undertaking thinking around preparedness (Warner, 2011); thus the time is ripe for those most likely to be displaced because of climate change to feed into international dialogue on frameworks for climate change migration, in order to ensure they are formulated with the complex needs of those most likely to be displaced fully in mind.

This is an issue first of inclusion and representation, as negotiations that exclude at-risk groups further embed the sense of marginalisation and inequality that have already surrounded environmental summits.[14] Secondly, it is an issue of building trust and security, as without the joint participation of all stakeholders, processes of migration, both within and between countries, could engender frustration, a lack of social cohesion, and civil unrest, as tensions between 'host' and 'migrant' groups erupt and governance mechanisms breakdown.

People move in order to improve the resilience of their households to deal with future climate shocks and stresses, and to move away from areas of intense climate stress. However, if migrants are then in competition for scarce resources in the areas they move to, and this results in conflict with the local population and lower incomes and reduced rights for themselves, then migration may be just the first in a series of adaptive strategies - including moving again (Kartiki, 2010). Conflict over resources in 'host' areas is not inevitable, however, as many migrants 'move locally and rely on social networks or are directed towards relief centres during a crisis' (Raleigh, et al, 2008:35). Equally, recent research has shown that environmental change can cause added problems associated with populations unable to move away from locations where they are vulnerable (Foresight 2011).

Finally, displacement that occurs as a result of climate change may drive militarisation along borders. For example, as the Australian government's policies towards asylum seekers becoming increasingly stringent generally (Ryan, 2010), they have begun using the Federal Police to intercept boats carrying asylum seekers (Maley and Maiden, 2010).

Marginalisation vs. Climate Justice?

The worst effects of climate change will fall first and foremost on the majority world (Adow, 2009) .[15]

With women being more likely to live in poverty than men, climate change is also not gender blind. Women represent 70% of those people living in poverty, and generally have less access to resources, technology and credit (Gandhi, 2011). In families living in poverty, adaptation to a changed climate will drain money away from other priorities, such as the education of children. As with these families, so in governments, where climate change adaptation measures may force funds to be reallocated from other departments, resulting in a neglect of other programming e.g. gender equality and development work.

Many across the Global South perceive climate change principally as an issue of justice. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has stated that "the countries most vulnerable (...) contribute least to the global emissions of greenhouse gases. Without action they will pay a high price for the actions of others" (quoted in Patwary, 2011). President Museveni of Uganda went as far as calling climate change 'an act of aggression by the rich against the poor' (Masood, 2007).

The perceived overall failure of the international negotiations, relative progress at the most recent talks in Durban in December 2011 notwithstanding, has contributed in some cases to North-South hostility - even a 'diplomatic freeze' (Patwary, 2011). There is a frustration at developed nations' lack of acknowledgement of their historical legacy. As the chief Bolivian climate change negotiator, Angelica Navarro, put it, "We are not begging for aid; we want developed countries to comply with their obligation and pay their debt" (Democracy Now, 2009). The dissatisfaction at the lack of a world movement to tackle climate change has led some governments and organisations to reject mainstream processes and work through alternative tracks, such as the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010. The 'People's Agreement' composed at this conference placed climate change and environmental damage in a wider context of an aggressive capitalism, exploitative to humans and destructive to the environment. Some environmental activists in the West have also embraced such critiques. The more Southern voices are excluded, the more the image of North versus South risks becoming entrenched.

It is crucial, also, to realise the diversity in the situations of 'Global South states'. As we have seen in this paper, climate change will affect different regions in very different ways, and is already doing so. There can be no 'blueprint' for how nations of the South should be engaged with on this issue, as they have just one thing in common - their situation outside the small groupings of economic and political power. Their union in climate change negotiations is in the name of solidarity, not a request for a unified identity in the eyes of the world.

To give one political example, Latin America has often found itself 'squeezed in the middle' - not sufficiently large (compared to Asia), but insufficiently poor (compared to Africa) - for aid donors to be interested in (Araya, 2011). It is unlikely therefore that states from Latin America and the Caribbean will be asking exactly the same questions in international negotiations around, for example, adaptation budgets (either as each other, or as other regions of the Global South). That does not mean that some good does not come of this region working with other Global South constituencies however. A positive step forward would be the building of a united front around the need for a more egalitarian basis for negotiations, based on the link between historical legacy, and the current responsibilities of the industrialised nations. When governments are around the table, 'Global South nations' may not all be calling for precisely the same course of action, but the combined will of these nations may ensure that governments are sitting round the table having the discussion based on a greater sense of fairness and equity.

Social and economic deprivation enhanced by climate change may also trigger radicalisation in some quarters. The extra pressure that climate change puts on already fragile states may mean that the government can no longer deliver services to its people. In such cases, civil society groups may fill the vacuum; some of these groups may be militant in their opposition to the state, and their engagement in social service provision can increase sympathy for them (Patwary, 2011). This may further disengage the population from democratic politics (Brock, 2011).

Finally, the groups most vulnerable to climate change are also not necessarily those at the most risk in terms of direct physical impacts. Vulnerability is actually largely 'determined by poverty'; not just income poverty, but a poverty of power, where countries are marginalised from policy debates and therefore from the ability to influence decisions (Tacoli, 2011). Hence, the way environmental change impacts on communities is not automatically and proportionally determined by the degree of environmental change, but via their level of resilience, which in turn is a result of power structures. To put it simply, even if, for example, Western countries were hit harder by climate change than poorer Southern countries, citizens in the West would still be likely to be less affected due to a far greater capacity to adapt to climate change. For citizens in poorer countries, already a smaller impact could mean life or death. It is non-environmental factors, therefore, which really determine the level to which communities will be affected by climate change.

Minority Rights

While climate change will hit the poorest hardest, it will also affect minority indigenous groups disproportionately, as these groups are often amongst the poorest and have such a close relationship with the environment (Baird, 2008); for example in the Niger Delta, those 'already marginalised by their social status' (Wapmuk, 2010) are the most disadvantaged by environmental degradation, as they are dependent for their immediate survival on ecosystem services and nature related trades e.g. fishing, forestry, farming and hunting.

During India's severe monsoon floods in 2007, three minority groups - Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims - were hit worst. There were many reasons for this. Firstly, many Dalits live in vulnerable homes outside main villages, leaving them particularly exposed. In some cases, relief workers were also not aware of their presence, and in others, dominant groups took control of aid distribution to the disadvantage of these three groups (Baird, 2008). With natural disasters even more likely because of climate change, service provision around aid must be entirely non-discriminatory; and where natural disasters are most likely, government and disaster relief NGOs need comprehensive knowledge about the population they will be called on to support. This is also true of longer-term development and climate change adaptation work. In some parts of northern Kenya, for example, the administration produces policies ill-suited to the pastoralist style of resource-management (Campbell, 2010). Whether this is due to ignorance or discrimination against a minority group, the results will regrettably be the same: adaptation policies unfit and or even damaging for the local community.

In a broader policy sense, minority and indigenous groups must fully participate in efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Cochabamba Declaration expresses it thus: 'We demand the full and effective implementation of the right to consultation, participation and prior, free and informed consent of indigenous peoples in all negotiation processes, and in the design and implementation of measures related to climate change' (2010).

Impacts on Infrastructure and Health

Even if only some of the predicted effects of a warmer climate materialise, key infrastructure, such as transport systems, energy supplies and communications will be put under stress, particularly in the Global South. Many of the world's cities are located on coasts and river deltas. There is a clear threat that with rising sea levels and extreme weather events, key infrastructure in these cities and ports will be damaged or destroyed, along with human life and property. The ability to cope with damaged infrastructure is obviously dependent on economic capacity, with less stable and economically buoyant states less able to absorb these stresses. A good example is Colombia, where the extensive coastlines and economic dependence on river systems will likely result in, increases in large-scale migration, and humanitarian and economic crises creating a greater need for international emergency responses. These, in turn, may drive people further into 'alternative' and illicit incomes streams such as the drugs trade and human trafficking (Ramirez and Butts, 2011). The Colombian government is already under strain due to on-going armed conflict. It is unlikely that it will be able to satisfy these growing demands on its capacity without assistance. If this is not forthcoming, then the state will become increasingly fragile.

The impacts of climate change on water supplies, agriculture, and fishing and livestock will result in increased food insecurity, causing malnutrition and other health problems. Shifts in disease patterns are also predicted. For example, mosquitoes, which transmit both malaria and dengue fever, will be able to survive in new areas as climate change results in increased rainfall and higher temperature providing more breeding pools, but with the potential for increased rainfall in other areas actually flushing out breeding sites, thus reducing the mosquito population (Tren, 2002). The relationship between climatic changes and diseases such as malaria is complex, with the exact consequences not being entirely predictable (ibid.); this makes planning more difficult, and in fact makes the problems potentially more severe, as not all scenarios can be effectively planned for. Where changes are expected, contingency planning will place stress on already stretched economies, for example in building pressure on health infrastructure as they provide new and expanded provision e.g. inoculations and preventative health measures such as mosquito nets.

Addressing the Security Implications of Climate Change

Public Education

Internationally, public understandings of climate change - the reasons behind it, the likely results, and methods of mitigation and adaptation - need to improve. Current levels of knowledge are very low in some areas. This hampers both the response of citizens - which is ultimately what creates the momentum for serious change - who lack 'relevant, useful information' (Africa Talks Climate, 2010), and decision makers, who can lack sufficient 'environmental literacy' (Memon, 2008) to back long-term, sustainable policy changes.

However, it must also be remembered that where formal scientific knowledge at a local level may be low, personal understandings of the effects of the changing weather may be well known. Though people may not label it 'climate change', a newly unpredictable weather pattern is often already an issue of real concern for them (Africa Talks Climate, 2010). Moreover, though climate change may be recognised as a threat, people may not be aware of the potential magnitude of the risk and the likelihood of the even more volatile future (Wapmuk, 2009: 2).

Public education programmes need adequate funding, in order to prepare populations, and mitigate the likelihood of unplanned reactions to environmental and social changes. Ultimately, kneejerk reactions to the issues described above increase the likelihood of instability and conflict unless adequate management systems are in place. Education will also give people greater capacity to be involved in participatory adaption strategies, becoming the 'subject, not the object' of development and climate change initiatives (El Hassan Bin Talal, 2010). Particular efforts should be made to include vulnerable and excluded groups in decision-making processes to minimise social and political tensions. Explicitly addressing unequal power relations - for example by focusing on gender equality and human rights - and promoting fair access to resources and services, should underpin all adaptation strategies (Wijeyaratne, 2009), thus also improving security.

Regional Forums

In a 2008-2010 series of consultations undertaken by Oxford Research Group with non-Western security analysts, effective regional architectures were identified as significant in addressing shared security challenges, such as climate change (Brock, 2011). In Asia and Australasia, strong regional groupings would give space for the formulation of negotiated settlements to pre-existing disputes, and to agree pan-regional responses to the problem of environmental refugees. Similarly, Middle East and North African states would profit from regional institutions that include all key players, as dialogue around climate-induced resource scarcity is desperately needed. It was suggested in this consultation that the Arab League must engage closely with Israel, Iran and Turkey (ibid.).

In other regions, the Organisation of American States (OAS) works together closely, as does CARICOM (the 'Caribbean Community'). The OAS issued the 'Santo Domingo declaration' in November 2010 calling for 'deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases' (OAS, 2010:4) and citing the use of Inter-American networks established through the OAS to 'promote cooperation, and the exchange of experiences with respect to integrated water resources management, renewable energy, biodiversity information, disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, and environmental law and to promote synergies with other pertinent sub regional mechanisms' (ibid.).

The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) is an example of such cooperation. Founded in 1985, it aims to strengthen cooperation between African governments on issues relating to environmental degradation and the food and energy needs of the continent's people (IISD, 2011). Such organisational structures should be strengthened, and focus particularly on the need for greater clarity on the security implications of climate change.

Civil Society and Local Governance

Civil society organisations have an important role to play in driving governments and communities to act in mitigating climate change, exploring and disseminating adaptation techniques, and also highlighting marginalised voices in climate change debates.

November 2010 saw the world's first 'Shadow Climate Tribunal' in Bangladesh, organised by the NGO the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods. In this meeting, people, who have been affected by climate change, spoke out about their suffering. Mamtaz, the widow of a fisherman, who had been killed in a storm, spoke of the impact upon her life. Mamtaz said that her husband died in an 'unpredictable, sudden, and very violent storm, a recent phenomenon in the Bay of Bengal' (Green, 2010). The tribunal heard that rising sea surface temperatures have caused more volatile, more frequent, and more unpredictable storms in past years. This unpredictability means that storm warnings often come too late, when fishermen are already at work. This volatility is what caused the death of Mamtaz's husband (Green, 2010). Such meetings may prove a vital tool for recording the human consequences of climate change, and giving victims a space in which they may have a voice and an opportunity to influence others.

Civil society can also work alongside local governance initiatives to encourage the use of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms in dealing with newly constrained circumstances e.g. competition over natural resources. In many parts of the Global South, local informal mechanisms (e.g. forest-user community groups) are more relevant, trusted and therefore effective than state-administered justice and security policies (Campbell, 2010). These are 'effectively the safeguards which, depending upon their responsiveness and effectiveness, will - or will not - prevent the additional pressures on resources from translating into insecurity or violence' (ibid., p. 4). Support for local institutions and civil society (from international NGOs, international institutions and national governments) is thus integral to the progress of successful adaptation and mitigation policies (Tacoli, 2011).

There may be occasions, however, where civilian agencies are insufficient or absent, for example in distant frontier and border areas. In these areas, resilience could be driven by interagency cooperation, including the military. In Latin America in particular, the military already fill many roles unoccupied by civilians - for example military doctors in remote areas (Brock, 2011). Now, forces may be called upon to support civilian authorities in adaptation and building resilience (Ramirez and Butts, 2011). There is already a lot of collaboration and military involvement in disaster relief and emergency, and of the military working with civilian agencies to protect natural resources in regions, such as Latin America (Zala, 2010: 5).

Adaptation: An Opportunity for Cooperation

Though mitigation must be the main focus of government responses to climate change today, necessary adaptation can be promoted and financed, in order to delay and manage the effects of climate change on communities. These adaptation policies must be implemented in a 'conflict-sensitive' manner.

Across the Global South, community-based organisations are training and building capacity in their villages, towns and cities for livelihood and farming strategies that allow people to cope with a changing climate. In Bangladesh, varieties of rice developed by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute are being adopted that are able to cope with levels of soil salinity up to four times higher than rice varieties currently in use (IRIN, 2010). In Burkina Faso, Reseau MARP - an NGO working on food security for rural populations - is promoting techniques for soil protection, including 'rock belts', designed to prevent rain from sweeping soil away in the increasingly regular floods (Baird, 2009).

Effective coping strategies such as these are likely to defer or prevent migration (internal or external), which will limit the likelihood of conflict between 'host' and 'migrant' peoples. It will also reduce impacts upon human welfare, which in turn will reduce tensions driven by marginalisation and frustration around the inequities in the main impacts of climate change (those who have caused global warming the least, and have the least capacity to deal with climate change, suffering the most).

Resettlement of communities displaced by climate change could also have positive affects, in galvanising international cooperation to solve environmental issues and particularly to provide mitigation and adaptation funding, and giving 'host' communities in the Global North a personal relationship with those most affected by climate change, spurring them into action (Kelman, 2008).

Climate change has the potential to reshape our economic and social systems. As such, it is also an opportunity to promote collaboration and co-existence between Northern and Southern states, forcing people to work together to find solutions (PACJA, 2009). This scenario would foster mutual dependence, solidarity and trust; industrialised states independently securing themselves against the adverse effects of climate change will only exacerbate the sense of "the West versus the rest".

Conversely, unilateral adaptation strategies may actually drive insecurity further. For example, Iran has constructed a dam on the Khabour River that cuts off vital supplies to the wetlands and marshes of Southern Iraq (Assaf, 2010: 26). Both nations can be expected to divert water from their rivers over coming years, particularly through extended periods of drought - this will accentuate water scarcity in neighbouring Syria (ibid.). Policies like this that hinder the water access of other nations (particularly nations already living with water insecurity) will increase tensions. It is important, therefore, that adaptation addresses power relations - expressed in gender inequalities, economic inequities and human rights violations - promoting fair access to resources and services (PACJA, 2009). Where adaptation measures are unilateral, rather than cooperative, conflict is more likely to occur.

In terms of climate change displacement, the task is to urgently build a coalition of all stakeholders: from communities, who are likely to have to move (permanently or temporarily), through to civil society and inter-governmental groups, working across disciplines, who can work with governments and regional institutions (such as the European Union) of those countries, whose citizens are likely to move as a result of climatic change, and those likely to welcome externally displaced peoples. This task has begun recently in the UK with the foundation of the UK Climate Change and Migration Coalition, which aims to bring together humanitarian, human rights, refugee, conflict, environment, and development agencies. Such coalitions need to work across and between local, regional and international levels.

It is vital that these are managed well. A 'closing the castle gates' attitude may only breed greater tension. Repressive responses to migration spark unrest, such as in April 2011 when asylum seekers[16] in a Sydney detention centre rioted and set fire to the facility, with a small group raising banners on the roof reading "We Need Help" (Hockley, 2011).

Pioneering initiatives could build on the interpersonal links between communities: bringing together community leaders and groups of 'migrant' and 'host' communities, building links between them in preparedness for the migration that is likely to occur. This is an alternative to the securitisation of migration that is already occurring. Whilst New Zealand, for example, has already agreed to accept the population of Tuvalu once their island becomes uninhabitable, India has started to build a 2,500 mile security fence along its border with Bangladesh, with the influx of climate change migrants being cited as a motivation (Chowdhury, 2011).

A Shift Away from Carbon-based Economies

The recognition of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxide, is occurring at a time when readily accessible fossil fuels, such as oil, are running out. We need to diversify our energy resources. The alternatives we turn to must be renewable and sustainable. A move away from carbon-based economies is crucial if the security implications of climate change are to be avoided. This diversification will also ease tensions around competition over energy resources.

Investment into renewable energy sources must increase. Onshore and offshore wind power, thermal energy, and photovoltaic solar technology, as well as some forms of marine energy (wave, tidal etc.) are all technologically viable alternatives to production of energy from fossil fuels. However, uptake of these should not occur without meaningful consultation with local groups, else the problems related to biofuels in Paraguay will be repeated.

Investment in energy efficiency technologies and practices is also crucial. Simply making the technologies and buildings we have now more efficient would make a huge difference to our carbon emissions, and prevent the potentially environmentally and politically destructive scramble for new sources of fuel.

As we have seen with the increasing cultivation of crops for biofuels in Latin America, just because a source of energy is renewable does not mean it does not have the potential to be environmentally and socially damaging. In some cases land cleared for these crops can lead to the reduction in carbon dioxide absorption that deforestation causes. 'We cannot sacrifice the poor to meet the rich world's energy demands' (Tansey, 2011), this would only intensify marginalisation and resentment in areas of environmental degradation, and make insecurity and violent conflict between law enforcers and local populations more likely. Future energy policies must thoroughly consider issues of environmental and social impact before embracing renewable energy solutions.

In some areas, energy insecurity is already necessitating the use of sustainable energy sources, such as solar panels. Palestine has more solar water heaters per capita than anywhere else in the Middle East. This is due mainly to the security situation, which results in an unreliable water supply from Israel to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Gelil, 2009: 24). China, also, which up until recently has largely relied on coal (the commercial energy source with the highest emissions of carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced), has launched a massive renewable energy programme. This programme makes it likely that China's emissions will keep growing (at a slowing rate) until 2025, but then stabilise and decline from then on (Siddigi, 2010).

Conclusion: Mainstreaming Climate Change - A Whole of Government Response

With the number of people affected by climate change set to significantly increase in the next twenty years, potentially making it the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time (BIPSS, 2009), the issue is fast becoming an important security challenge. When the increased instability of this humanitarian challenge (such as food insecurity) is combined with persistent socio-economic divisions, the potential for social unrest and political instability is considerable (Zala and Rogers, 2011). As well as generating new conflicts, climate change acts as a threat multiplier - exacerbating existing tensions and divisions - especially in already fragile situations.

Direct impacts and secondary impacts will include an increase in extreme weather events, competition over natural resources, food and water insecurity, displacement and increased migration of peoples, destruction of infrastructure and changing health risks. Such factors may all increase the likelihood of 'fragile states toppling over, becoming failed states' (Juma, 2010). It is just such situations, when a government can no longer deliver services to its people, that 'conditions are ripe for extremists (...) to fill the vacuum' (Patwary, 2011).

The security implications of climate change need to be addressed at a local and international level, through the United Nations, regional forums, national government, through local administrations and civil society.

Climate change demands a whole-of-government response, with environmental change and degradation taken account of in an integrated effort from Ministries of Environment, Defence, Energy, Development, Finance, Health, and Foreign Affairs. This needs to amount to more than a 'green wash', characterised instead by bold and visible steps towards an economy not based on carbon (for example through a massive scale-up of funding for research and development into renewable energy sources), which recognises the joined-up nature of security threats, examining key determinants e.g. water, land, agriculture, health, energy, disaster risk management and early warning systems, in concert (Campbell, 2010).

With the defence policy community also 'on board', it must also go further, and recognise the value in engaging with their counterparts in the South on this issue, giving civil society organisations and analysts from the Global South a greater say in shaping security policies that will ultimately affect them. Initiatives such as the Cartagena Dialogue for Progressive Action - a grouping of around 30 developed and developing countries from all regions of the world that works to 'circumvent the north/south divide' (Independent Diplomat, 2011) - are crucial if progress is to be made. This group was instrumental in the Cancún Agreements at COP-16 in Mexico (ibid.). Such engagement will help ensure that the issue of climate change is approached by security analysts using a human security framework; cooperation with development and human rights agencies, who work on climate, change should follow.

A militarised response that relies on the control paradigm - attempting to 'keep the lid' on threats through military force and political containment, without addressing the root causes - will not only be ineffective, but is likely to exacerbate conflicts and insecurity. What is needed instead is a shift in the security community towards strongly advocating for a rapid shift to a low-carbon society, as a precaution against future conflicts. Such voices can highlight that 'securitising' a concept (making it the object of security analysis) does not necessarily mean militarising the response.

Internationally, the security concerns associated with climate change are likely to engage the military sooner rather than later. Adaptation to climate change has been labelled a 'powerful vehicle' for U.S. military engagement in Latin America for example (Ramirez and Butts, 2011). The undertaking of such operations must continue with the full engagement of national governments in Latin America, given the history of American intervention in the region, and the negative associations this has.

Mitigating conflicts around climate change can be achieved mainly through mitigating the effects of climate change itself. Whilst there must be conflict-sensitive adaptation and diplomatic preparations for the impacts of climate change that we already know are likely to occur (such as migration and competition over natural resources), the most significant response to the security impacts of this issue should be action to reduce green house gas emissions and protect existing 'carbon sinks' (such as rainforests); these steps will prevent the more catastrophic expected elements of climate change[17] and thus prevent the most dangerous conflicts.

Notes

[1] A note on terminology: 'Majority world' refers to the majority of the world's population living in poorer nations. It also relates to the 'Global South', which denotes countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Australasia, and the Middle East and North Africa (with some exceptions that are included in the consultations, given their membership of poorer regional communities e.g. New Zealand, Japan). The 'Global North' relates to countries of Europe, North America and parts of Oceania; and the term is used interchangeably in public discourse with 'the West'. The concept of Sustainable Security and the four drivers of insecurity were laid out in our book, ' Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World' by Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers and John Sloboda, April 2007 (Rider).' For more information on our Sustainable Security programme, please visit the Sustainable Security programme section on our website.

[3] This series of papers follows a sequence of reports published between 2008 - 2010, which details the result of four regional security consultations that examined specific drivers of insecurity in regions of the Global South (one each covering Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa and Asia and Australasia). Many of the security experts who attended these consultations have also been active in the development of these research papers. The reports of the consultations are all available for download on the ' Regional Sustainable Security Consultations ' pages of our website.

[4] Many 'southern' energy-supplying nations have not had positive relationships with Western powers historically, including Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Libya.

[5] This has already been subject to much debate. For example, the Global Governance Group (3G) - an informal group of small and medium sized non-G-20 member states - recently came together to assert the need for 'more effective global governance mechanisms' that recognise the impact of G-20 decisions outside of G-20 countries, and engage all nations in decision-making on issues of global concern (Ambassador Vanu Gopala Menon, 2010).

[6] The UK's Stern Review recognises that 'Climate change is a grave threat to the developing world and a major obstacle to continued poverty reduction across its many dimensions (...) developing regions are at a geographic disadvantage: They are already warmer, on average, than developed regions, and they also suffer from high rainfall variability (...). Second, developing countries - in particular the poorest - are heavily dependent on agriculture, the most climate-sensitive of all economic sectors, and suffer from inadequate health provision and low-quality public services. Third, their low incomes and vulnerabilities make adaptation to climate change particularly difficult' (2006: vi).

[7] For example in the UK, the Ministry of Defence's Development Concepts and Doctrines Centre 'Global Strategic Trends' programme, and the focus on climate change from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (including though the appointment of a Special Representative for Climate Change in 2006); and in the US, the release of CNA's landmark report from their Military Advisory Board, 'National Security and the Threat of Climate Change' (2007).

[9] NB. This may not be the case in natural disasters affecting highly impoverished states, where the richer and poorer in communities suffer together, for example in Haiti. In such cases it is the marginalisation of their states e.g. lack of resources and weak governance, which determines their resilience and survival, not their personal assets (which are more relevant in terms of competition over resources outside of natural disasters).

[10] As well as immediate effects, such as the displacement of farmers, the cultivation of biofuels in some regions will also decrease food security and accelerate deforestation (Altieri and Bravo, 2007), which in turns enhances the risk of flooding and drought.

[11] As a result of sea level rise.

[12] The temperature in Alaska has risen by between 2 and 3.4 degrees Celsius since 1974, wildfire is increasing, and artic sea ice is decreasing. 'Four Alaskan indigenous communities must relocate immediately and dozens of others are at risk; meanwhile, government agencies are struggling to meet the enormous new needs of these communities' (Bronen, 2008.)

[13] Concerning the protection of refugees from being returned to places where their lives or freedoms could be threatened.

[14] Some NGOs exist to counter the imbalances of diplomatic summits [see Marginalisation of the Majority World: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South in this series for more details]. Independent Diplomat, which provides independent and confidential advice and assistance in diplomatic technique and strategy (Independent Diplomat, 2011), worked with the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Alliance of Small Island States through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Cartagena Dialogue for Progressive Action [see 'Mainstreaming Climate Change: A Whole of Government Response' section of this paper below].

[15] 'A wealthy minority of the world's countries and corporations are the principal cause of climate change; its adverse effects fall first and foremost on the majority that is poor' (Adow, 2009).

[16] Many of whom originally came from Sri Lanka, Iraq and Afghanistan.

[17] For example, if temperature rise goes beyond 3 degrees on average since 1990 levels (Lynas, 2008).

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Global Militarisation (not y et published)

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Climate Change: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South | Oxford Research Group

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The Oxford Research Group is a leading independent think-tank that has been influential for 30 years in pioneering the idea of sustainable approaches to security as an alternative to violent global confrontation, through original research, wide-ranging dialogue, and practical policy recommendations.

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U.S. Defense Department Develops Map of Future Climate Chaos

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U.S. Defense Department Develops Map of Future Climate Chaos

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University of Texas researchers have developed a sophisticated new mapping tool showing where vulnerability to climate change and violent conflicts intersects throughout the African continent.

More than a year in the making and part of a $7.6 million, five-year Department of Defense grant, the Climate Change and African Political Stability project culls data on riots, civil unrest and other violent outbursts dating back to 1996. It overlaps with information about climate-change-induced vulnerabilities like drought, as well as the type of aid that is being delivered to various parts of Africa.

The end result, researchers said, is something they hope can be used to help policymakers understand vulnerability better, and eventually help the Pentagon decide where resources might be best placed in order to ensure regional stability.

"It's a starting point for a conversation," said Joshua Busby, an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas. "These maps and this process of understanding climate vulnerability starts a conversation that gets people to start thinking about how we prioritize resources."

Though their efforts have been complicated by an absence of organized or publicly accessible details about the millions of dollars that flow to Africa in development aid each year, researchers who helped design the mapping system said they hope the project will be a first step. Even as countries make plans to tap into a multibillion-dollar Green Climate Fund, researchers said many organizations still have a hard time deciding what exactly climate change adaptation funding is, or how to ensure that it is really helping.

"There's a great deal of debate about what constitutes climate change adaptation," said Kate Weaver, an associate professor at the University of Texas' Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law who led the aid portion of the mapping.

She noted that much development assistance for things like agriculture or even education has components that could help countries address climate vulnerabilities. Countries and agencies that dole out money, though, have a hard time coming up with ways to categorize the aid, which she said could lead to complications when trying to assess how much good the money has done.

Trying to match aid with results
"It's absolutely imperative that aid organizations demonstrate persuasively how much they're doing to address climate change in the developing world, and how much they're spending on it," she said.

Ashley Moran, program associate at the center, said researchers from the outset wanted to look at ways in which conflict, climate vulnerability and aid intervention intersect in Africa at very local levels. She noted that, through the project, it has become clear that several areas that are experiencing intense vulnerability also are home to violent conflicts, like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"We have to have more localized data to pinpoint the impact of both climate change and intervention," she said. "This mapping tool puts large amounts of data in the hands of people who really need it. They can see how climate change and conflict and aid projects will impact their communities of interest."

While compiling information on conflicts was relatively easy -- researchers in large part relied on public news clippings -- compiling aid information proved much harder. Weaver noted that 95 percent of aid groups worldwide don't publish basic project description documents online -- or even make them available upon request. The World Bank, she said, is one of the few agencies that has a robust and transparent system. Most countries' data come from there and the African Development Bank.

But her research team also linked with the government of Malawi, which, through a nonprofit called Development Gateway, was interested in mapping the development aid flowing into the country. Weaver described Malawi as having a uniquely progressive aid management platform, which requires donors to report on a monthly basis. Still, with only scattered Internet access and with most documents stored in closets at the Malawi finance ministry, student researchers spent weeks hunting down and using hand-held scanners to copy-capture the data.

Weaver said researchers are working to develop similar agreements with other countries as well, something she and others said could be used to coordinate and reduce redundancy in foreign aid, eliminate corruption and help nations plan their budgets.

"I think the big policy punch line is that these kinds of data visualization and analytical tools can be huge for transparency and accountability," Weaver said.

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500

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U.S. Defense Department Develops Map of Future Climate Chaos

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University of Texas researchers have developed a sophisticated new mapping tool showing where vulnerability to climate change and violent conflicts intersects throughout the African continent. More than a year in the making and part of a $7.6 million, five-year Department of Defense grant, the Climate Change and African Political Stability project culls data on riots, civil unrest and other violent outbursts dating back to 1996.

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Ethiopian farmer Teshoma Abera laments the absence of rainfall and the failure of his crops.

Photograph: Panos / Sven Torfinn

It was not an easy life. But for fisherman Mohammadu Bello and his nine children the shallow waters of Lake Chad, a vast body of fresh water at the intersection of Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon, at least provided a living. Sales of lake catfish were brisk at the Doron Baga fish market, sustaining his family. But no more. Over the past 30 years the lake has steadily retreated from its former shores, leaving Mr. Bello and his neighbours high and dry and raising the prospect that the lake - once one of Africa's largest - could vanish entirely. "Some 27 years ago when I started fishing on the lake," he told the British Broadcasting Corporation in January, "we used to catch fish as large as a man." Now, he said, the fish are small and what little is available is trucked into the market over the dry lakebed.

The causes of the lake's shrinking, say scientists and researchers, include its increased use for irrigation and drinking. But more important, they say, are changes in the region's climate, which have reduced the rainfall that once kept the lake and its feeder rivers full. These changes, which are occurring in every part of the world, are now widely understood to be caused by human activities, particularly those that use pollution-producing oil and other fossil fuels such as industrial processes, electricity generation and motor cars. Gases created by such activities are building up in the atmosphere, trapping too much of the sun's heat and raising the earth's temperature - a process known as global warming. As the earth heats up, it alters rainfall and other weather and climate patterns, threatening human, animal and plant life with potentially calamitous climate change.

The science is a bit abstract for fishermen like Mohammadu Bello, but the impact is not. "I don't know what global warming is," he said. "But what I do know is that this lake is dying and we are all dying with it."

While some parts of Africa will get less rain, other areas will experience greater flooding.

In fact, Mr. Bello has found ways to cope. He and his family now till the rich soil left behind by the vanishing lake, growing vegetables for the Doron Baga market. He has acquired the skills and tools needed for his new profession as a farmer. But prospects for the 20 million people who depend on the lake and its rivers for water are less certain, and plans to divert water from other rivers into Lake Chad remain on the shelf for want of funding.

As the world prepares for the inescapable effects of global warming and seeks ways to reduce the emissions that cause it, Mr. Bello's struggle to adapt will be shared by untold millions of people around the world. It is a challenge that looms particularly large in Africa.

Global warming, local impact

After a divisive and decades-long debate over the causes and potential impact of global warming, a series of studies by 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, part of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has finally laid the issue to rest. In February 2007 the IPCC provided overwhelming scientific evidence that the use of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas is releasing billions of tonnes of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases into the atmosphere every year, causing air, ground and ocean temperatures around the world to rise at an alarming rate.

Countries can reduce harmful emissions and halt warming, noted IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri in April, by investing in cleaner "green" technologies and changing consumer habits. But it is too late to prevent climate change from having sometimes severe impacts on the planet, and "it is the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit."

Demonstrators in Nairobi, Kenya, protest failure of developed countries to curb emissions of gases that contribute to global warming.

Africa, the poorest and least developed of the world's regions, will be especially hard-pressed to adjust. Although sub-Saharan Africa produces less than 4 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, scientists predict with "very high confidence" - as close as scientists get to saying they are certain - that the region's diverse climates and ecological systems have already been altered by global warming and will undergo further damage in the years ahead.

Among the most worrying effects of global warming is the impact on water supply. Africa is fortunate to have large reserves of untapped water and some dry areas are likely to benefit from increased rain, but the Sahel and other arid and semi-arid regions are expected to become even drier. A third of Africa's people already live in drought-prone regions and climate changes could put the lives and livelihoods of an additional 75-250 million people at risk by the end of the next decade. Flood-prone areas in Southern Africa, on the other hand, are likely to become wetter as rainfall patterns shift, causing floods to become more frequent and severe and diverting resources from development to emergency relief.

Farming, coastlines at risk

Africa's agricultural sector is already hampered by its reliance on rain-fed irrigation, poor soils and antiquated technology and farming methods. It is likely to be hit hard as droughts and flooding worsen, temperatures and growing seasons change, and farmers and herders are forced off their land.

This could spell humanitarian and economic disaster on a continent where farming accounts for 70 per cent of employment and is often the engine for national economies - generating export earnings, industrial raw materials and inexpensive food. In some countries, scientists project, farmers will harvest just 50 per cent of current yields by 2020. The important fishing industry, as Mohammadu Bello's situation reveals, is also likely to suffer as lakes and rivers dry up and rising water temperatures destroy commercial species of fish.

Coastlines and islands around the world are threatened by rising ocean levels as warming temperatures melt the earth's polar icecaps. But East Africa's low-lying islands and coastal regions are at particular risk of frequent flooding or becoming permanently submerged.

Higher water temperatures are expected to increase the power and frequency of hurricanes and other violent ocean storms. Africa's coastal fisheries and the fragile ecosystems that support them could also be damaged if higher sea levels push salt water inland and destroy freshwater estuaries and coastal farmland.

'Environmentally displaced'

As life becomes more difficult, the UN estimates, as many as 50 million "environmentally displaced" people around the world could join the exodus of migrants already crossing borders and oceans in search of new livelihoods. Many will move into overcrowded cities that today strain to provide jobs, housing and basic services, and will themselves be under threat from the effects of climate change.

Africa's vast forests help absorb harmful gases in the atmosphere, and governments are working to slow excessive logging and other practices that contribute to deforestation.

Climate change will also affect parasites like the tsetse fly and parasitic diseases such as malaria. Malaria is the single greatest killer of African children and imposes a $12 bn annual drain on African economies through death, medical costs and lost productivity. The mosquitoes that spread it thrive within a relatively narrow range of temperature and moisture, and some infected areas may become malaria free as they become drier. Yet simultaneously, regions currently outside the malaria zone may become infested as they get hotter and wetter. The World Health Organization has warned that globally, as many as 80 million more people could become infected as malaria spreads among populations lacking both natural protection against the disease and awareness of prevention and treatment methods.

Nor will Africa's diverse plant and animal populations be spared. A study of nearly 5,200 plant species throughout the continent found that about 5,000 of them would lose much of their natural habitat to climate change. Of these, some 2,100 could lose all of their native habitat by 2085. Wildlife will fare no better. In South Africa's famous Kruger game reserve, for example, studies show that two-thirds of animal species could disappear.

Adapting to climate change

African leaders, aware of the continent's vulnerability, have long supported international efforts to combat global warming and climate change. African governments were prime movers behind the 1994 UN convention to combat desertification - a particular concern on a continent where two-thirds of the land is arid or semi-arid. Many African countries also were early signatories to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first and to date only international treaty setting binding limits on pollution emissions.

"Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen."

- Sir Nicholas Stern, former World Bank chief economist

But because Africa's small industrial base and limited transport system and power grid generates comparatively few greenhouse gases, reducing emissions has not been the region's top priority. Instead African governments, civil society and their development partners are focused on planning for the coming climate shocks and assisting vulnerable communities to adapt. In September 2006, for example, the UNFCCC secretariat convened a workshop on climate-change adaptation attended by 33 African governments and a number of international agencies and civil society groups. The meeting highlighted the need for greater monitoring and early warning of climate changes and severe weather events like droughts and floods, and called for integration of long-term adaptation strategies into development and disaster-preparedness programmes.

Indeed, many aspects of Africa's development agenda strengthen the ability of communities and countries to cope with climate change. Irrigation schemes, for example, are a vital component of efforts to improve food security and raise farm incomes in many parts of Africa. Only about 4 per cent of Africa's farmland is irrigated. Bringing water to more acreage figures prominently in agricultural development plans. As seasonal rains become more erratic and less frequent due to climate change, irrigation also becomes an important adaptive strategy - helping farmers keep their livelihoods, increasing the food supply and allowing rural communities to remain on the land.

The problem, Sierra Leonean climate scientist Ogunlade Davidson told Africa Renewal from his Freetown office, is finance. "Climate change will have a major impact on agriculture in Africa," he said. "Africa will have to change its agricultural systems. But if [Africa] doesn't have enough money, it can't," since irrigation, fertilizers, improved technology and better seeds all require expensive investments. "Africa never enjoyed the financial benefits generated by putting greenhouse gases up there in the first place," he continued, "so it never accumulated the wealth to be able to bear the shocks." Because they now have to cope with the effects of a situation they did not create with resources they do not have, he noted, global warming is "a double loser for countries in Africa."

'Time for implementation'

Africa is receiving some assistance through two funds operated by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a funding agency established in 1991 to assist developing countries finance environmental protection projects. The Least Developed Countries Fund is only for those countries classified as LDCs, while the Special Climate Change Fund supports adaptation, energy management, technology transfer and climate-related economic diversification projects in all developing countries. Since its launch in 2001 the LDC fund has attracted almost $116 mn in pledges, less than half of which has so far been received. Pledges to the special fund total $62 mn, over $52 mn of which has arrived.

Participating governments in consultation with the private sector and civil society develop National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs) which identify vulnerabilities and needs and set country-specific priorities for action. Projects emerging out of the NAPA process are then eligible for funding. The GEF is administered by the UN Environment Programme, the World Bank and the UN Development Programme.

Ethiopia has now received $1 mn from the special fund towards a $3 mn programme to conduct pilot projects in the arid northern half of the country aimed at halting soil erosion. The project also seeks to strengthen the ability of pastoralists and farmers to cope with drought. Kenya has received $6.5 mn towards a $51 mn project to build national, provincial and community capacity to recognize and manage climate change and promote private sector involvement in climate-change adaptation.

The problem with the grants, says Mr. Davidson, a specialist in energy and the co-chair of the IPCC report on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, is that they are too small to have a dramatic impact on threatened communities. Until very recently, he observed, international climate-change funding focused largely on scientific research into the causes and mitigation of global warming rather than on local adaptation programmes: "Take energy. If you upgrade to cleaner energy technology it will take considerable investment - more than a country would make otherwise. Who will pay that additional cost?"

The need to answer that question is one reason that a global commitment to combat climate change is important, Mr. Davidson said, "because it is the international community that can come up with the means. But if we put a long list of bureaucratic obstacles and conditionalities on it, those countries will not be in a position of accessing those funds and the problem will persist." The time for studies and pilot projects is over, he asserted. "Now is the time for implementation."

NEPAD's plan: green growth

Whether those resources will be made available, however, is an open question. Africa has struggled for decades to find the capital needed for poverty reduction, and has fallen far short. Critics point out that despite Northern promises to boost development assistance to Africa and other developing regions to ease poverty and achieve the modest quality-of-life improvements set out in the Millennium Development Goals (see Africa Renewal, July 2005), aid actually decreased last year by over 5 per cent.

It is little wonder then, that the environmental action plan in Africa's continental development blueprint, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), begins with the observation that "Africa is characterized by two interrelated features: rising poverty levels and deepening environmental degradation."

The action plan, developed in 2003 with the assistance of the UN Environment Programme, notes that "throughout Africa, poverty remains the main cause and consequence of environmental degradation and resource depletion.... For African countries alleviating poverty is the overriding goal and priority of their development policies.... Without significant improvement in the living and livelihoods of the poor, environmental policies and programmes will achieve little success."

The action plan emphasizes local, national and sub-regional responses to environmental degradation, improved environmental monitoring and research, and more effective international partnerships to promote "green" technology transfer, improve disaster preparedness and early warning systems and ease the consequences of climate change on the most vulnerable.

Because Africa contributes so little to planetary warming, the NEPAD programme on climate change stresses the region's contribution to slowing the rise of global temperatures. Among the most important factors in the slowdown are its forests, which absorb and trap the carbon dioxide gas that is a principal contributor to warming. Africa contains 17 per cent of the earth's remaining forestland and fully a quarter of its dense rain forests, which clean the atmosphere of emissions caused by polluters thousands of miles away. The forests also support an astonishing diversity of plant and animal life, an estimated 1.5 mn different species, which in turn provide sustenance for many millions of people.

Forests dwindling

But Africa's forests are now vanishing at a rate of over 5 mn hectares per year, NEPAD reports, casualties of wasteful and unsustainable commercial logging and "slash and burn" clearing for agriculture. Almost two-thirds of all energy generated in Africa comes from firewood, particularly for household cooking and heating, which adds to the pressure on existing woodlands.

Although Africa and the international community have stepped up efforts to protect and restore forests in recent years, the results have been limited. Between 1980 and 1995, researchers note, some 66 mn hectares of forests have been destroyed. And despite initiatives like Kenya's Green Belt movement, a grassroots women's campaign that has planted 10 mn trees since 1977, the rate of deforestation is increasing.

NEPAD's action plan argues that enacting and enforcing sustainable logging laws and reducing agricultural demand for forest land by improving yields on existing farms are critical aspects of any successful programme to protect Africa's forests. But it is not easy. Logs are an important export commodity for some countries, and reducing exports could create budget shortfalls that may be difficult or impossible to fill. Boosting agricultural production and farm incomes is a NEPAD priority, but reforming Africa's rural economy is a costly and long-term project and progress has been too slow to halt the addition of 1 million people each year to the ranks of the hungry.

In late May 2007, the NEPAD Secretariat announced that detailed climate-change responses for each of the continent's subregions had been developed by a consortium of 800 African environmental, conservation and economic experts for consideration by African environment ministers. Those studies will form part of the presentation African heads of state will make at the next UNFCCC meeting in Bali at the end of the year.

Greening the market

The challenge of meshing urgent environmental needs with stubborn economic realities is particularly pressing in Africa, but it is scarcely unique to the continent. The expense of reducing greenhouse emissions has been a major obstacle to action against climate change over the past decade, even for rich countries. While scientists generally argue that it is cheaper to cut emissions now and prevent the worst effects of climate change, some governments argue for slower and smaller reductions, pointing to the cost to industry and consumers and the risk of damaging the global economy.

In a major study of the economics of climate change for the UK in 2006, Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist for the World Bank, argued that the nature of free markets prevent them from being naturally greener. It works like this: The financial benefit of manufacturing a tonne of steel is enjoyed by a small number of people - the mill owners, workers and shareholders. But the cost, when measured in greenhouse emissions and environmental damage, is distributed over billions of people around the world over many generations. This provides little incentive to the mill owners to raise their production costs to reduce pollution. "Climate change," noted Dr. Stern "is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen."

Changing the economic processes by raising the cost of pollution is therefore important if global efforts to halt global warming are to succeed. One proposal is to tax greenhouse gas emissions, thereby making it cheaper to prevent them than to generate them. But "carbon taxes" have encountered strong opposition in many countries and have been adopted by only a handful of governments.

A different way to put a price on pollution, called "cap and trade" schemes, has proven more popular since the Kyoto Protocol came into effect. Kyoto requires industrial country signatories to reduce greenhouse gases by about 5 per cent from 1990 levels. The agreement also established the UNFCCC's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows heavily polluting industries to, in effect, buy pollution rights from a country with low emissions by investing in green projects there.

If, for example, the theoretical steel mill owners are required by their Kyoto-compliant government to reduce their carbon emissions by 10 tonnes, they can invest in improved anti-pollution and manufacturing technology to meet that target. But the mill owners may find it cheaper to plant enough trees in Africa to absorb 10 tonnes of carbon pollution instead. Under the CDM, the mill owners are permitted to count the carbon trapped in the new trees against their reduction target, saving them money and creating incentives to invest in the continent.

The same rules would apply to a project to replace a polluting coal-fired power plant in Africa with one producing cleaner hydro or natural gas power, allowing Northern investors to count the reduction in power plant emissions in Africa against their domestic reduction requirements. The agreement even allows CDM "carbon credits" to be bought and sold in much the same way that corporate stocks are traded.

Since it was first suggested at the end of 1997, carbon trading has developed into a $22 bn industry. Africa hoped to capitalize on its low emissions to attract CDM investments and help finance green development. But to date Africa has attracted less than 2 per cent of CDM projects worldwide, owing to the absence of sophisticated financial and marketing institutions and limited administrative and management capacity.

The programme has proven controversial for other reasons as well, with critics arguing that wealthy countries and businesses use the mechanism to avoid reducing their emissions and cheat on their Kyoto obligations by inflating the environmental value of their offsetting projects.

But with the Kyoto agreement set to expire in 2012 and evidence mounting that the earth is heating faster than expected, Africa's green development agenda may yet benefit from efforts to change the economics of global warming. "We have a very short window for turning around the trend we have in rising greenhouse gas emissions," the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri told reporters in Bangkok in May. "We don't have the luxury of time."

Security Council: climate change may threaten peace

The economic, political and social consequences of climate change could threaten world peace unless the world acts to prevent it, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on 17 April. "Throughout human history people have fought over natural resources," he noted. "Changing weather patterns, such as floods and droughts and related economic costs ... could risk polarizing society and marginalizing communities," thereby increasing the risk of conflict and violence.

The unusual day-long session, an initiative of the UK, marked the first time the Council addressed climate change. Its presence on the agenda was not without critics. Pakistan's Ambassador Farukh Amil, speaking on behalf of the influential G-77 and China group of developing countries, argued that the topic was outside the Security Council's mandate and an encroachment on the authority of larger and more representative bodies, including the General Assembly and the UN Economic and Social Council. But the session was welcomed by other speakers, including those from small island states facing the prospect of inundation from rising sea levels.

The meeting was chaired by UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who said, "Today is about the world recognizing that there is a security imperative, as well as economic, developmental and environmental ones, to tackling climate change." Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, she noted, has already described climate change as "an act of aggression" by the polluting industrial North against the developing South - a comment that underscored the link between the environment and world peace. "He is one of the first leaders to see this problem in security terms," she asserted. "He will not be the last."

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Ethiopian farmer Teshoma Abera laments the absence of rainfall and the failure of his crops. Photograph: Panos / Sven Torfinn It was not an easy life. But for fisherman Mohammadu Bello and his nine children the shallow waters of Lake Chad, a vast body of fresh water at the intersection of Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon, at least provided a living.

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Climate change drives political instability: CIA director

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Climate change drives political instability: CIA director

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If climate change is not brought under control, the world will face more humanitarian crises such as the one unfolding in Syria, one of the world's most prominent security experts warned.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan said in a speech Tuesday morning that climate change causing compromised access to food and water "greatly increases the prospect for famine and deadly epidemics."

During his talk to the Global Security Forum 2015 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Brennan said humankind's relationship with the natural world is a potential source of security threats.

Noting that 2014 was the warmest year on record and 2015 promises to surpass that, Brennan pointed out extreme weather, along with public policies affecting food and water supplies, can increase or create humanitarian crises.

"Of the most immediate concern, sharply reduced crop yields in multiple places simultaneously could trigger a shock in food prices with devastating effect, especially in already-fragile regions such as Africa, the Middle East and South Asia," Brennan said.

Food shortage exploited in Islamic State recruitment

Kimberly Flowers, the director of the center's food security project, backs up Brennan's assertions in an essay titled " Food Insecurity, Conflict and Stability," released Sunday in the Center's 2016 Global Forecast.

"Lack of access to affordable food has proven to trigger revolutions and spark unrest across the world," Flowers writes.

Flowers points out the first signs of the Arab Spring in 2011 were riots in Algeria and Tunisia over dramatic increases in the prices of basic necessities such as sugar, oil and flour.

Flowers echoes Brennan when she warns:

"In 2016, regions within the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa will be most sensitive to food insecurity and several countries are likely to suffer political unrest and costly humanitarian crises because of their inability to meet their populations' basic food demands."

She calls Syria the biggest humanitarian crises of this generation, and notes nearly 10 million Syrians are presently unable to meet their daily food needs.

Flowers says that food is used as a weapon of war in the Syrian conflict, asserting that Syrian President Assad is waging a starvation campaign to purposely cut people off from humanitarian assistance.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State is using food as a recruitment tool, using food as a lure and then enlisting men into their ranks, she contends.

"Points along the Turkey-Syria border that are used as aid distribution points have become violent hot spots controlled by armed men ready to use humanitarian aid as valuable leverage."

Flowers also says Yemen faces a potential famine from extreme drought and violent conflict. In that country, a staggering 21 million people out of a population of 24.8 million are in need of humanitarian aid; of those, 13 million do not have enough to eat.

Climate change is a security risk

In July, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a report in which it said it was already observing the impacts of climate change in shocks and stressors to vulnerable nations and communities.

The report cited four general areas of climate-related security risks, including persistently reoccurring conditions such as flooding, drought, and higher temperatures. The report noted that from 2006-2011, a severe multi-year drought affected Syria, contributing to massive agriculture failures and population displacements.

The other areas of climate-related security risks identified were more frequent and/or severe weather extreme events; sea level rise and temperature changes; and decrease in Arctic ice cover, type and thickness.

An accompanying news release to the report stated: "The report finds that climate change is a security risk, Pentagon officials said, because it degrades living conditions, human security and the ability of governments to meet the basic needs of their populations."

The Department of Defense identifies its primary responsibility as protecting national security interests around the world.

"It is in this context," the release continued, "that the department must consider the effects of climate change - such as sea level rise, shifting climate zones and more frequent and intense severe weather events - and how these effects could impact national security."

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Climate change drives political instability: CIA director

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If climate change is not brought under control, the world will face more humanitarian crises such as the one unfolding in Syria, one of the world's most prominent security experts warned. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan said in a speech Tuesday morning that climate change causing compromised access to food and water "greatly increases the prospect for famine and deadly epidemics."

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How Climate Change is Behind the Surge of Migrants to Europe

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How Climate Change is Behind the Surge of Migrants to Europe

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How Climate Change is Behind the Surge of Migrants to Europe

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Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor.

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Climate change: A new threat to stability in West Africa? Evidence from Ghana and Burkina Faso

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Climate change: A new threat to stability in West Africa? Evidence from Ghana and Burkina Faso

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Over the past decades, the way we talk about climate change has evolved. Traditionally seen as an environmental and an energy issue, climate change is now also being cast as a threat to international peace and security. Analysts argue that climate change will exacerbate existing tensions and triggers new conflicts by redrawing the maps of water availability, food security, disease prevalence, coastal boundaries and population distribution.

The security implications of climate change have become the subject of unprecedented international attention; in 2007 the focus of a Security Council debate and the Nobel Peace prize. There have been some attempts to construct scenarios of the security implications of climate change at a global scale. But the country-level security impacts of climate change have been lost in the midst of the political rhetoric. Local experts in the subject countries are rarely consulted.

In this article for the September 2008 edition of the African Security Review, published quarterly by the Institute for Security Studies, Africa's leading human security research institution, Oli Brown and Alec Crawford draw on their fieldwork in Ghana and Burkina Faso to see to what extent the links that have been hypothesized reflect a realistic future for two different countries in West Africa as the impacts of climate change gather pace.
Key findings:
1. Ghana and Burkina Faso already face considerable development challenges from existing economic, population and environmental stresses.

2. Climate change is not new to West Africa. West Africa in general and the Sahelian region in particular are characterized by some of the most variable climates on the planet.

3. Future climate change will likely make many current development challenges more complex and urgent.

4. There are links between climate change and security in the region. However, there is little research that has managed to construct an empirical link between climate change and conflict in the region (or, for that matter, anywhere else).

5. Climate change could exacerbate existing, latent tensions in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

6. But only in the extreme scenarios does climate change begin to present a determining factor in future economic and political instability.
Key recommendation:
Adaptation needs to focus on the full range of development problems affecting countries. Adaptation to climate change clearly needs to be integrated within wider plans for development assistance, and the additional costs for that adaptation need to be funded with "new money" so as not to undercut development priorities elsewhere.

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Climate change: A new threat to stability in West Africa? Evidence from Ghana and Burkina Faso

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Over the past decades, the way we talk about climate change has evolved. Traditionally seen as an environmental and an energy issue, climate change is now also being cast as a threat to international peace and security.

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Climate pressures threaten political stability - security experts

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Climate pressures threaten political stability - security experts

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LONDON, June 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Politically fragile countries face breakdown as a result of mounting climate change pressures, and even stable ones may find coming shocks too big to manage peacefully, security and development experts warned.

But work now to protect food security, reshape water sharing agreements and cut risks from worsening weather disasters could play a huge role in reducing future conflict and instability, they said in a report commissioned by G7 governments.

Both at-risk and stable countries would benefit, as they attempt to deal with problems such as uncontrolled migration, rising emergency relief bills, and demands for military assistance in conflict zones, the report said.

"The scale of security risks we're talking about is potentially enormous," said Dan Smith, a co-author of the report and head of International Alert, a UK-based peacebuilding organisation.

The report termed climate change "the ultimate threat multiplier", and said it should be a top foreign policy priority for the Group of Seven major industrialised democracies.

As food and water security worsen in many fragile parts of the world, "you can see the climate thread" in social upheaval from Egypt's revolution in 2011 to the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, Smith said at a discussion on the report at Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office this week.

SYRIA DROUGHT

The start of Syria's crisis was preceded by a brutal five-year drought in its main northeastern food-producing region, the report said.

The loss of crops and animals pushed many rural families to already overcrowded cities, increasing unemployment, it added.

Lukas Ruttinger, an author of the report from Adelphi, a German policy thinktank, emphasised that drought was not the main reason for Syria's crisis.

"We're not saying climate change caused the conflict in Syria. But it combined with other pressures that a repressive and non-responsive government was unable to manage," he said.

In Asia, Thailand's severe 2011 floods, which affected 2 million people, came on the heels of years of anti-government protests. After the disaster many people complained that state compensation had been unfairly distributed - and the government eventually fell in a 2013 coup, Ruttinger said.

Looking ahead, regions from the increasingly water-short Indus River basin in India and Pakistan to states already afflicted by conflict and poverty, such as Somalia, Afghanistan and Niger, will probably face some of the biggest risks of instability, the report noted.

In all of them, "we have to think about this in terms of managing risk, not solving the problem", Smith said.

The good news, he added, is that many of the elements of what needs to be done are starting to fall into place. Efforts to coordinate climate change adaptation, aid and peace-building efforts are growing, though they are "not systematic", he said.

Maintaining a distinction between financing for climate change and financing for development "is misleading and potentially dangerous", he warned, saying climate and development action must be integrated to be effective.

But many poorer countries want to keep the two types of aid separate to ensure that rich-country promises to mobilise $100 billion a year in international climate funding - on top of existing aid flows - are met, the experts said.

Insurance could play some role in reducing risks and providing stabilising payouts to disaster-hit families, Smith said. But the cost of providing insurance depends on analysing risks based on long-term trends, and climate change is bringing "profound disruption of existing trends", he said.

That could make the cost of providing insurance cover for some climate risks excessive, the experts said.

CREATIVE THINKING

Innovative thinking could help. A project to negotiate open border agreements for drought-hit nomadic herders who move from country to country in Africa's Sahel may ease pressures in the region's fragile states, said Baroness Joyce Anelay, a minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The project, by French aid group Acting for Life, is supported by Britain's Department for International Development through its Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) programme.

On a broader scale, reducing climate-related security risks will require many changes, including better global risk assessments and support for food security through measures to build stocks and curb price fluctuations, experts said.

Improving local abilities to cope with climate stresses and finding ways to defuse water disputes between neighbouring nations will also be important, the report said.

Water sharing across national borders has in the past been a shining example of how to build cooperation and head off disputes, Smith said.

But with populations growing and demand for water rising as climate change in many cases cuts flows, a process for renegotiating water deals in line with those shifts is needed, he said.

Trying to reduce as far as possible the pressures driving world instability is crucial, Ruttinger said, because "we are already at the limit of what we can manage". (Reporting by Laurie Goering; editing by Megan Rowling; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, women's rights, trafficking and corruption. Visit www.trust.org/climate)

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cyclical consumer goods and services (trbc)

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Climate pressures threaten political stability - security experts

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LONDON, June 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Politically fragile countries face breakdown as a result of mounting climate change pressures, and even stable ones may find coming shocks too big to manage peacefully, security and development experts warned.

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The Politics of Climate Change and its Implications on Africa

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The Politics of Climate Change and its Implications on Africa

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The Politics of Climate Change and its Implications on Africa

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LSE's Martin Namasaka urges caution in ascribing climate change as the cause of some of the continent's conflicts without taking into account local structures and complexities. Burgeoning dystopian...

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Climate Change In Africa: African Global Warming Role Small But Crucial To Crisis Solution, Experts Say

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Climate Change In Africa: African Global Warming Role Small But Crucial To Crisis Solution, Experts Say

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Photo: Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

While Africa's lack of modern energy and minimum carbon footprint have made it the slightest contributor to the growing global warming crisis, the massive continent bears the brunt of the world's rising temperatures with damaging effects such as massive droughts, flooding, unreliable crop yield and waning ecosystems. And yet, analysts have indicated that Africans represent just a small fraction of the global voices partaking in the crucial conversation about climate change.

As more than 2,000 researchers from across the world met at Unesco headquarters in Paris last week for the largest international scientific conference on global warming, only 10 percent of those participants came from Africa, one of the world's worst-affected regions. And while Africa was increasingly more involved in the worldwide discourse on the topic, many agreed that it's still not enough because scientific research and innovative solutions from African pioneers at the conference would not translate into concrete action if they were not heard loud and clear by policy makers at the much-awaited, upcoming global climate summit in December, experts said.

"The African voice is there," Edith Ofwona-Adera, a senior program specialist at Canada's International Development Research Center, who manages climate change projects in Africa and attended the conference, said during a telephone interview. "But the voice of Africans needs to be at the table of the higher-level global talks in terms of scientific evidence that's being produced. Developing country researchers, including those from Africa, need to be at the forefront."

At nearly 12 million square miles, Africa covers 6 percent of Earth's surface area and more than 20 percent of its total land space. The continent's sheer enormity coupled with its vast natural resources and unique weather patterns make it particularly vulnerable to the severe consequences of global warming, which permeate every aspect of African life.

Rising sea levels and coastal storms have destroyed parts of Kenya, where some streets have turned to virtual rivers. The coastal city of Mombasa is no stranger to flash floods, but this year the torrents were stronger than usual, which environmental scientists have attributed to climate change. The floods have contaminated drinking water storage, leading to shortages and disease. Severe droughts in sub-Saharan Africa -- like the one that gripped East Africa in 2011, slashing crop yields and triggering food shortages and a refugee crisis -- also have been linked to global warming.

The impacts of global warming vary for different regions around the world, underscoring the dire need for Africa to play a larger role in framing policies on climate change -- especially when the continent is the second-largest and second-most populous in the world, Ofwona-Adera said. "Africa is the most-affected continent and the least capacity in global climate change. If we are to find common solutions, then you need the voices of those who are affected and those who are highly affected."

In order for a global approach on climate change to work, experts said there must be local scientists on the ground researching the effects across the African continent, developing innovative solutions and presenting them to policy makers. A financial contribution from various sponsors, including the International Development Research Center, was dedicated to recruiting and funding about 150 scientists from developing counties to attend last week's meeting in Paris, which was the largest international science conference ahead of December's, according to Benoit Martimort-Asso, an organizer of the event. But that number of scientists was small compared to its international community, and Africa needs financing to foster more homegrown scientific minds.

"We are facing a global issue and we need the mobilization of every scientist," Martimort-Asso said in an email last week. "To have a better global model to understand climate change at the global level, Africa is a key place and the international science community needs local data to upgrade that model."

African nations often lack the infrastructure, equipment, material and teachers necessary to improve on higher education. Enrollment rates for higher education in sub-Saharan Africa were by far the lowest in the world, and individuals who study abroad often never return, a Harvard University study found. An estimated 30 percent of the region's university-trained professionals live outside Africa, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

"We've got this enormous brain drain just at the time we need their expertise on the ground," said Tom Smith, founding director of the Center for Tropical Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We build centers of excellence that focus on the developing world but we base them in New York City or Paris. That's just a poor business model. What we need are centers of excellence that can build capacity in these countries."

However, some oversight across the continent does exist at a regional level when it comes to international policy framework on global warming. An alliance called the African Group of Negotiators was charged with representing each of Africa's 54 independent nations - which all have varying needs and characteristics -- with a common and unified front during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. An African national government gets elected to chair the group every two years and receives some technical support from numerous organizations.

"African governments have one voice in negotiations at the [Climate Change Conference of Parties]," said Shem Wandiga, the director of the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. "African voices have been very loud since [the 19th Conference of Parties]. But there is room for improvement."

African leaders have hoped that by speaking with one voice during the 194-nation process on climate change, their position would be loud and clear. The region has collectively asked for compensation for Africa because of the damaging effects it suffers due to global warming primarily caused by richer nations, such as the United States. Although African countries are among the world's lightest polluters, some experts agreed the region still has its responsibilities and cannot follow in the carbon-heavy footsteps of developed countries.

"If African cities develop in the same carbon-intensive way that developed cities have, the climate change outlook of our planet could be devastating," said Kobie Brand, regional director of Local Governments of Sustainability - Africa.

Africa is becoming increasingly urban, which could either worsen or improve global warming. Currently, two out of three sub-Saharan Africans -- or 600 million people -- have no access to electricity at all. But that was slowly changing, as economists at Stand Bank Group Ltd. were expecting middle-class households in several leading sub-Saharan African economies to balloon from about 15 million to 40 million by 2030. Cell phone ownership also was booming and Internet access was rising, with companies such as Facebook investing in African consumers. Chinese firms have made huge investments in African infrastructure, targeting key sectors such as telecommunications, transport, construction and power.

However, with urbanization come environmental hurdles such as pollution, overpopulation, deforestation and strained resources. Still, the region has an opportunity to leapfrog over the damaging energy practices of industrialized nations, experts said.

"The African voice on climate change is not always well heard or represented," said Jim Taylor, director of environmental education for the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa. "But I really think the chance for change could come from Africa."

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Climate Change In Africa: African Global Warming Role Small But Crucial To Crisis Solution, Experts Say

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While Africa's lack of modern energy and minimum carbon footprint have made it the slightest contributor to the growing global warming crisis, the massive continent bears the brunt of the world's rising temperatures with damaging effects such as massive droughts, flooding, unreliable crop yield and waning ecosystems. And yet, analysts have indicated that Africans represent just a small fraction of the global voices partaking in the crucial conversation about climate change.

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The Cultural and Geopolitical Impacts of Climate Change

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The Cultural and Geopolitical Impacts of Climate Change

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Vincent Thian/AP

It used to be all about polar bears and trees, but these days climate scientists are paying more attention to people.

For years, climate change studies tended to rely on numbers-heavy charts and complex models to report on phenomena such as shrinking polar ice caps; melting glaciers and permafrost; caribou, reindeer and seal populations declining; and rising sea levels from Nigeria to the Maldives to the South Pacific.

But in recent years, ethnographers, sociologists and think tanks have begun looking more closely at the social and cultural impacts of climate change on indigenous communities. Studies have been published on subjects including the Wauja people in Brazil, who are impacted by the shrinking Amazon rain forest; Sami reindeer-herding communities across a warmer northern Finland, Sweden and Norway; Bantu- and Khoisan-speaking tribes in the bone-white Kalahari Basin in sub-Saharan Africa; and subsistence communities in Bangladesh and Malaysia whose coastal settlements are at risk of flooding from typhoons, monsoons and higher sea levels. Such research reflects a growing realization in academic and policy circles that cultures and societies tied to nature have multigenerational knowledge that gives them special insight into changes in nature.

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"In the last decade, it suddenly struck everybody that the impact on people is really important and not just an afterthought," says Douglas Causey, a biological sciences professor and director of the Applied Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. "There is an increasing realization that climate change is more than a scientific artifact."

In 2014, Earth had its hottest year since weather record-keeping began 135 years ago. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998, with nine of the total in the 21st century, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Recent studies show changes happening more quickly than predicted. The journal Science reported in March that the southern Antarctic ice sheet suddenly began losing its mass in 2009 at a steady, fast rate.

There is also growing interest in the geopolitical effects of climate change. The Brookings Institute estimates that for every percentage point rise in average temperature and drop in average rainfall, violent conflict between neighboring states rises 4 percent, while violent conflict between groups within states climbs 14 percent. Scholars foresee new shipping routes opening up as the Arctic ice cap shrinks, potentially leading to military conflicts, particularly with Russia, which planted a flag on the seabed below the North Pole in 2007 and has some 4,300 miles of Arctic coastline.

In violence-plagued northern Mali, a desiccated landscape of dust and mud huts where the average rainfall is a third less than it was nearly two decades ago, scholars recently blamed a climate change-induced drought for fueling conflict between Tuareg separatist rebels, who need water and grass for their cattle herds, and government-backed forces. In March, the National Academy of Sciences published a peer-reviewed study stating that "there is evidence that the 2007-2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers." Some studies suggest climate change will produce permanent refugees.

A Pentagon report from last October said, "Climate change poses immediate risks to national security." Chuck Hagel, then defense secretary, called climate change "a threat multiplier" that could exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases and armed insurgencies. President Barack Obama picked up that thread in May, telling graduating cadets at the United States Coast Guard Academy that climate change "constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cultural and Geopolitical Impacts of Climate Change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It used to be all about polar bears and trees, but these days climate scientists are paying more attention to people. For years, climate change studies tended to rely on numbers-heavy charts and complex models to report on phenomena such as shrinking polar ice caps; melting glaciers and permafrost; caribou, reindeer and seal populations declining; and rising sea levels from Nigeria to the Maldives to the South Pacific.