Security Implications Of Climate Change Research Articles

Climate change and the Bay of Bengal region: vulnerabilities, risks and the absent cooperation

ABSTRACT There are three challenges specific to the Bay of Bengal region in the context of climate change. Firstly, this is a climate-sensitive region that sits on the brink of several climate and human-induced environmental changes and challenges. Secondly, it is still a relatively understudied geographic area from the perspective of climate risks. Third, the process of securitisation of climate change and long-term risks to resources in this region has not taken place fully as traditional security challenges, geopolitics, and great power competition have become primary concerns. This paper looks at the climate vulnerabilities and risks prevalent in this region. It also looks at human-induced challenges like marine pollution and IUU fishing. It then evaluates the reasons why several of the collective promises in the region remain unfulfilled. It is followed by a brief discussion on the security implications of climate change which is followed by a conclusion.

Accepting responsibility? Institutions and the security implications of climate change

Who has responsibility for addressing the security implications of climate change? States and the United Nations justify their existence on the promise of providing security. Yet, although the national and international security implications of climate change are increasingly acknowledged, incorporation of climate change in national security planning or institutional arrangements is far from universal, while debates in the UN Security Council about its role in addressing climate change have been characterized by contestation. This article examines key debates about the responsibilities these institutions have for providing security in the face of the threats posed by climate change, examining the extent to which these institutions accept responsibility for providing security in these contexts. Drawing on Toni Erskine’s notion of institutional moral agency, the article examines a 2017 inquiry into the national security implications of climate change in Australia, and the September 2021 UN Security Council debate on the international security implications of climate change. These two case studies explicitly focus on the question of institutional responsibility – of the Australian Government and the UN Security Council respectively – for addressing the threat of climate change. In both cases these institutions stop short of accepting responsibility for providing security in the face of climate change, with limited policy responses or institutionalization as the result. With the security implications of climate change increasingly apparent, and increasingly recognized by these (and other) actors, the failure to accept responsibility raises potentially significant questions about the legitimacy of these institutions themselves.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SECURITY: THE CASE FOR BLACK SEA

Climate change poses significant challenges to global security by exacerbating existing threats and creating new ones. Competition over scarce resources such as food, water, and land will likely increase as extreme weather events and temperature rise will become more frequent. Climate-related migration is expected to increase political tensions, and in some regions, could contribute to instability and conflict. The changing climate will also impact infrastructure, the economy, and public health, which will have far-reaching security implications. The current issue of climate change highlights the spectre of a new source of instability and conflict that can affect national/international peace and security. Although comparative research and projects on the security implications of climate change are expanding, there are still major knowledge gaps. The paper presents the specialized literature on short-term climate change and its possible influence on the Black Sea regional security. It is increasing the potential insecurities that can arise from extreme environmental phenomena. Based on the assessment, the authors outline priorities for future research in the area of interest and cover the necessary adjustments to facilities, materials, and equipment due to progressive weather changes. It also highlights that natural disasters may increase in number or virulence, necessitating the contribution of armed forces to national security.

Immovable objects? Impediments to a UN Security Council resolution on climate change

Abstract The security implications of climate change are increasingly acknowledged in academic scholarship and in national security strategy documents. Climate change has also increasingly featured in UN Security Council (UNSC) debates since the first discussion of this topic in 2007. However, the UNSC has yet to agree a resolution formally recognizing its own role in addressing the implications of climate change for international security; a draft resolution on this issue was voted down in late 2021. Examining the statements and contours of 2021 debates preceding this vote, this article points to fundamental impediments to such a resolution, with the position of opponents (Russia, China and India) suggesting intractable obstacles linked to different visions of world order. While opponents' stated concerns about the UNSC's role in addressing climate change find some support in existing scholarship, the authenticity of claims made by opponents is called into question by the internal inconsistency of these arguments, the gap between stated concerns and foreign policy in other contexts, and the broader foreign policy interests and identities of these states. These factors present key impediments not simply to a UNSC resolution, but arguably to international action consistent with the urgency of the climate crisis.

Climate, flood, and attitudes toward violence: micro-level evidence from Karamoja, Uganda

Concerns about the security implications of climate change are increasing. The growing academic literature on the topic suggests that linkages between climate change and armed conflict are shaped by structural risk factors, but micro-level variation and mechanisms remain poorly understood and flood responses are hardly studied. In this paper, we strive to contribute to a better understanding of such micro-level patterns and investigate how flood exposure affects the support for violence in the Karamoja region of Uganda, which is characterized by many structural vulnerabilities to climate change and armed conflict. We use unique household-level survey panel data and investigate changes in survey responses following a destructive flood. Our study finds that flood exposure was associated with greater support for the use of violence. However, while we identify some adverse impacts of flood exposure on the perceived and actual socio-economic conditions of households and a decrease in perceptions of government support, these do not seem to mediate the estimated flood impact on support for violence against expectations. Our findings point to the limited explanatory power of natural hazards’ economic impacts alone for conflict risk. Further investigation of causal mechanisms between climate hazards and conflict remains an important priority for future research.

Global Climate Change and Human Security Nexus: A Case of Pakistan

Pakistan is susceptible to climate variations such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and the glaciers melting have all had devastating effects on human security. Furthermore, people are forced to leave their homes due to continuous floods, making them more vulnerable to disease and economic collapse. The international cooperation needs to adopt policy responses and adaptation plans to develop resilience and reduce vulnerability to the effects of climate change. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Paris Agreement, adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are two landmark international legal instruments when it comes to addressing the human security implications of climate change. Despite these legal frameworks, climate change implications on human security are not being adequately addressed. Effectively human security crisis needs meaningful participation of affected communities that prioritize the most vulnerable populations and promotes the protection and fulfilment of human needs.

Climate change and Australia’s national security

ABSTRACT Climate change can undermine human, national and planetary security in various ways. While scholars harve explored the human security implications of climate change and climate security discourses in Australia, systematic scientific assessments of climate change and national security are scarce. I address this knowledge gap by analysing whether climate change impacts the national security of Australia before 2050, focussing particularly on climate-related threats within Australia and on countries of high strategic importance for Australia. The results indicate that climate change will very likely undermine Australia’s national security by disrupting critical infrastructure, by challenging the capacity of the defence force, by increasing the risk of domestic political instability in Australia’s immediate region, by reducing the capabilities of partner countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and by interrupting important supply chains. These impacts will matter most if several large-scale disasters co-occur or if Australia becomes involved in a major international conflict. By contrast, international wars, large-scale migration, and adverse impacts on key international partners are only minor climate-related risks.

Climate security reversed: the implications of alternative security policies for global warming

ABSTRACT Policymakers and scholars have in recent years paid increasing attention to the climate–security nexus. However, discussions have been overwhelmingly focused on the security implications of climate change, neglecting the question of the climate implications of alternative approaches to security. On closer inspection, security policies can impact global warming in at least four ways. First, security apparatuses produce direct greenhouse gas emissions. Second, security policies can condition domestic decarbonisation efforts by competing, to a greater or lesser extent, with green transition efforts for public investment. Some policies will also be more likely than others to foster climate-friendly technological spill-overs. Third, security policies can affect spending priorities in other states, thus shaping decarbonisation efforts overseas. Finally, security competition can influence the wider climate for environmental cooperation. Accordingly, when assessing alternative security policies, observers should factor in known climate costs as well as the potential for creating negative externalities vis-à-vis decarbonisation efforts.

AGGRAVATING EFFECTS OF FOOD EXPORT RESTRICTIONS UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE ON FOOD SECURITY: AN ANALYSIS OF RICE ECONOMY BASED ON ALTERNATIVE INDICATORS

The impact of climate change (CC) on food security has been widely discussed in the literature. However, the role of food export restrictions induced by CC is poorly understood. In this study, we take rice as an example and apply a global economic model to investigate the food security implications of CC and food export restrictions based on both self-sufficiency rate (SSR) and household rice consumption indicators. We find that for capturing the impacts of CC and export restrictions on food security, the household rice consumption indicator is much more suitable than the SSR indicator. The impacts of the export restrictions on food security vastly exceed CC effects in over half of the regions. Regarding household rice consumption indicators, the sign of the impact of rice export restriction for each country depends on its position in the global rice market and whether it enforces the restriction policy. The magnitude of impacts depends on the changes in consumer prices of rice and the affluence level of each region. Facing CC, household rice consumption in regions without export restrictions will be negatively affected. Interestingly, not all the regions enforcing export restrictions would benefit from the restrictive policy. Only the net rice exporters benefit slightly, while net importers are adversely affected. The export restriction policy would make the harmful effects of CC transmit from South Asia to Africa and the Middle East. For adaptation/mitigation policies, more attention should be paid to the leading exporters imposing export restrictions where the adverse effects are originated and the more impoverished regions with close trade connections with such regions.

Understanding the Politics of Climate Security Policy Discourse: The Case of the Lake Chad Basin

ABSTRACT Policy discourse on the conflict and security implications of climate change has repeatedly found it to be overstated, misleading, and out of line with the balance of scientific evidence. However, the reasons for this recurring science-policy divide have not yet been systematically investigated. To explore this issue, we examine the case of Lake Chad, which over the last decade has become a poster child for climate conflict. We seek to understand and explain how this climate security narrative has gained such traction. Drawing on interviews and documentary analysis we examine the key practices, interests and hierarchies underpinning the narrative’s rise and reproduction, and show that it is essentially a political construct, reflecting a combination of questionable epistemic manoeuvres and geopolitical, economic and climate mitigation agendas. Our findings suggest the need for change, and increased caution, in how the climate security community engages with scientific evidence.

Gender in the Climate-Conflict Nexus: “Forgotten” Variables, Alternative Securities, and Hidden Power Dimensions

The literature on the security implications of climate change, and in particular on potential climate-conflict linkages, is burgeoning. Up until now, gender considerations have only played a marginal role in this research area. This is despite growing awareness of intersections between protecting women’s rights, building peace and security, and addressing environmental changes. This article advances the claim that adopting a gender perspective is integral for understanding the conflict implications of climate change. We substantiate this claim via three main points. First, gender is an essential, yet insufficiently considered intervening variable between climate change and conflict. Gender roles and identities as well as gendered power structures are important in facilitating or preventing climate-related conflicts. Second, climate change does affect armed conflicts and social unrest, but a gender perspective alters and expands the notion of what conflict can look like, and whose security is at stake. Such a perspective supports research inquiries that are grounded in everyday risks and that document alternative experiences of insecurity. Third, gender-differentiated vulnerabilities to both climate change and conflict stem from inequities within local power structures and socio-cultural norms and practices, including those related to social reproductive labor. Recognition of these power dynamics is key to understanding and promoting resilience to conflict and climate change. The overall lessons drawn for these three arguments is that gender concerns need to move center stage in future research and policy on climate change and conflicts.

Climatizing the UN Security Council

Since 2007, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has debated the security implications of climate change on several occasions. This article addresses these debates by exploring two interrelated questions: What drives the continuous efforts to place climate change on the UNSC’s agenda and to what extent do the UNSC’s debates illustrate an ongoing process of climatization? To answer these, the article draws on the concept of climatization, which captures the process through which domains of international politics are framed through a climate lens and transformed as a result of this translation. It suggests that climate change has become a dominant framing and an inescapable topic of international relations and that the UNSC debates follow a logic of expansion of climate politics by securing a steady climate agenda, attributing responsibility to the Council in the climate crisis, involving climate actors and advocating for climate-oriented policies to maintain international security.

Security implications of climate change: A decade of scientific progress

The study of security implications of climate change has developed rapidly from a nascent area of academic inquiry into an important and thriving research field that traverses epistemological and disciplinary boundaries. Here, we take stock of scientific progress by benchmarking the latest decade of empirical research against seven core research priorities collectively emphasized in 35 recent literature reviews. On the basis of this evaluation, we discuss key contributions of this special issue. Overall, we find that the research community has made important strides in specifying and evaluating plausible indirect causal pathways between climatic conditions and a wide set of conflict-related outcomes and the scope conditions that shape this relationship. Contributions to this special issue push the research frontier further along these lines. Jointly, they demonstrate significant climate impacts on social unrest in urban settings; they point to the complexity of the climate–migration–unrest link; they identify how agricultural production patterns shape conflict risk; they investigate understudied outcomes in relation to climate change, such as interstate claims and individual trust; and they discuss the relevance of this research for user groups across academia and beyond. We find that the long-term implications of gradual climate change and conflict potential of policy responses are important remaining research gaps that should guide future research.

Looking Back on the German Term in the UN Security Council

Germany’s two-year stint on the United Nations Security Council in 2019 and 2020 was constructive and bruising in equal measure. German diplomats made significant contributions to Council debates on issues ranging from the future of Sudan to the security implications of climate change. But they also clashed with China, Russia and, most strikingly, the United States. It was Germany’s misfortune to serve on the Council during one of the more dysfunctional periods in its post-Cold War history.

\u2018Climatizing\u2019 military strategy? A case study of the Indian armed forces

Climate change is increasingly shaping security narratives, including military strategy. While considering climate change a security issue, the military’s role in this discourse and praxis becomes critical as a security actor. However, the interrelationships between climate change, security and the military are conceived and approached by different states diversely. Within different states, this triangular relationship is guided by processes with varied practical/policy implications. While ‘securitization’ has generally been used to explain climate security, other processes such as ‘climatization’ have assumed significance, wherein security practices are climatized. The Indian military too has been engaging with security implications of climate change, but by using approaches distinct from Western states, which have been the usual focus in such analyses. In this paper, the framework of climatization is used to analyse the triangular relationship, using the case study of the Indian military—by categorizing climatizing moves as symbolic, strategic, precautionary and transformative.

Multi-method evidence for when and how climate-related disasters contribute to armed conflict risk

Climate-related disasters are among the most societally disruptive impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Their potential impact on the risk of armed conflict is heavily debated in the context of the security implications of climate change. Yet, evidence for such climate-conflict-disaster links remains limited and contested. One reason for this is that existing studies do not triangulate insights from different methods and pay little attention to relevant context factors and especially causal pathways. By combining statistical approaches with systematic evidence from QCA and qualitative case studies in an innovative multi-method research design, we show that climate-related disasters increase the risk of armed conflict onset. This link is highly context-dependent and we find that countries with large populations, political exclusion of ethnic groups, and a low level of human development are particularly vulnerable. For such countries, almost one third of all conflict onsets over the 1980-2016 period have been preceded by a disaster within 7 days. The robustness of the effect is reduced for longer time spans. Case study evidence points to improved opportunity structures for armed groups rather than aggravated grievances as the main mechanism connecting disasters and conflict onset.

Climate Change as Socioeconomic Threat: International Perspectives

This paper seeks to explore the impacts and perception of climate change nationally and internationally. The multidimensional nature and security implications of climate change are discussed, with a focus in impact reduction and the need for mitigation and adaptation. Pakistan has recurrently appeared in climate vulnerability lists and currently stands fifth in the long-term climate risk index. Regardless, the country’s share of carbon emissions at its current trajectory are set to increase four-fold by 2030, thus showing the need for implementation of both mitigation and adaptation strategies, particularly in terms of its effects on various socioeconomic strata.

The Security Implications of Climate Change

The Security Implications of Climate Change

Framing the climate-development nexus in the European Union

This paper aims to assess the framing of adaptation in the development discourse of the European Union (EU). Theoretically, three frames (security, growth and justice/equity) are constructed. Overall, we find clear traces of the EU’s normative aspirations as a global actor. Instead of framing climate change as a national or global security threat, human security implications of climate change are emphasised, representing it as a threat to individual livelihoods. Justice/equity considerations are also voiced, acknowledging the disproportionate impact of climate change on developing countries. In terms of agency, we find mostly a global, top-down framing of adaptation in developing countries.

Securitization and Chinese Climate Change Policy

The efforts of the securitization of climate change have been witnessed since 2007 at both international and national level. While the effectiveness of those securitization efforts needs to be further assessed, the security implications of climate change have come to be recognized at both levels. In the above context, this article attempts to explore why China has not gone so far in the securitization of climate change, especially compared with the EU who acts as one of the securitizing actors? This study mainly applies the methods of case study and comparative analysis. It draws on securitization theory as developed by the Copenhagen School of Security Studies to assess climate securitization practice in a critical way, with China as a case and focus. It also compares the divergent views of China and the EU on international securitization of climate change and their different approaches. China has been generally reluctant to climate change securitization at international level and has embraced the climate securitization at domestic level to a limited extent although it recognizes the security implications of this issue. The concerns of the political ramifications of the United Nations Security Council’s involvement and different priority agenda could explain why China has not gone so far in the process of climate securitization. The awareness of the potential security implications of climate change has been increased since the UNSC's first debate on this topic in 2007. However, there are divergent views between China and other players on the question of whether it is appropriate to consider climate change a threat to international peace and security and whether the Security Council is an appropriate forum in which to consider climate change. Meanwhile, the EU and China have responded to climate security with a converging trend in terms of mitigation.