NEWS

Climate change will bring violent conflicts—study

05/28/2008

Lisa Friedman, ClimateWire reporter

Sinking water levels in the Jordan River could inflame tensions over water rights between Israel and Jordan. Ethiopia’s uneasy peace with Eritrea could shatter if food and water scarcity hits new peaks. And almost any catastrophic weather event in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and a hotbed of international terrorism, could destabilize the country.

That’s just for starters, warns a new study out of Germany linking climate change and international security.

"Climate change may in the future become a key factor determining the eruption of violent conflict and crisis beyond locally and regionally limited, low-intensity conflicts," the authors cautioned.

Food and water scarcity brought on by weather disasters, coupled with mass immigration and an urban growth explosion, they wrote, "may indeed ultimately change the international security architecture."

The report, "Climate Change and Security: Challenges for German Development Cooperation," offers a sweeping analysis of global risks in a warmed world. Drawing on findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. Center for Naval Analyses and others, the authors said the aim is to spur Germany and other governments to act quickly to address the looming threats.

Outlines of a more dangerous world

"We have it on the agenda, and now we need to integrate it in our regional studies," said Dennis Tänzler, an author of the report, which was commissioned for the German Technical Cooperation and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The study comes amid a growing awareness of climate change as a national security issue in the United States as well. A National Intelligence Estimate on climate change is expected out within weeks, and former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Sheri Goodman, who reviewed the report, said the authors "very much" take seriously the implications for U.S. security.

"The German government has been paying attention to this for quite some time, as has the British government," Goodman said. But in recent years, she added, "climate change as a security matter has been getting a lot more attention here as well."

Among the German report’s major findings:

• Growing mega-cities pose a major threat. As living and working conditions deteriorate in rural areas, cities—particularly in Africa and Asia—are growing at a rapid clip. The United Nations Development Programme estimates 60 percent of the world’s population could be living in cities by 2030. Poorly planned, teeming with slums grasping for resources, many can barely handle their current population levels. Rising temperatures could see the spread of disease, and an extreme weather disaster—especially in a coastal city—could wreak havoc with public order.

• Glacier melt in the Himalayas could mean cross-border water skirmishes. Scientists say the Himalayas may be ice free as early as 2035. That would directly threaten the water supply of about 500 million people. India already sees water distribution conflicts between various provinces, and the authors warn that cross-border disputes between India and Pakistan could heighten animosity between the two nuclear powers.

• Individual hot spots could brew regional trouble. The report notes that both in South Asia and Africa, "crisis hot spots" are located in close proximity to one another. Simultaneously occurring problems—floods in Bangladesh propelling immigration to India, for example, even as water availability dries up in northeast India—could rapidly become a widespread crisis.

Describing the various dark pictures they present as "plausible scenarios," the authors urged government to take major actions within the next five to 10 years.

"It is essential that state action is geared to development and that governance issues are tackled," they wrote, noting that "there is not yet any consistent strategy at present for addressing the issues at a national or international level."

Poverty has already set the stage

At the same time, Tänzler cautioned against making simplistic cause-and-effect relationships between climate change and conflicts. Many of the countries likely to experience problems, the report notes, are vulnerable precisely because they already suffer from poverty, disease, lack of education, nutrition and poor governance structures.

"We should not see destabilization as an isolated consequence of climate change, but we are facing converging trends," Tänzler said.

Some, for example, have described the genocide in Darfur, where drought and famine have ravaged the land, as the world’s first "climate war." The authors, however, said they strongly oppose viewing the conflict in easy sound bites.

"A one-dimensional view of this kind would not only misuse the real issues surrounding climate change as a rhetorical device, but could in the worse case contribute to freeing further regional instigators of conflict from their responsibility," they warned.

The report recommends that the European Union and European Commission adopt a communication on climate change and also called for a dialogue with other countries as well as pilot studies on climate change and conflict and coordination of international donors to systematically address the biggest problems.

And the authors also offered hope for averting some of the biggest international conflicts.

"If the impacts of climate change analysed here are taken seriously within development institutions and are integrated accordingly within sector programs and sector policies, new goals and options for action emerge," they wrote.