Fire. Floods. Drought. All are impacting the fundamentals of life, economics and politics the world over. Now a new analysis says the increasing tempo of these “stressors” will increase the frequency – and scale – of war.
The California-based think tank RAND Corporation says the unfolding fallout of climate change is stressing nations and populations worldwide and exacerbating tensions in already strife-torn regions such as the Middle East and Central Asia.
“Switzerland’s running out of water. California has too much water … and the global weather patterns are at risk of even changing further,” states the moderator of a RAND Corporation report panel discussion this week.
Change is accelerating, Vago Muradian told the audience.
“Things are not good. They’re going to get worse. It’s probably irrevocable now, unfortunately, the damage we’ve done,” he said at the release of RAND’s Climate Change and Conflict report.
But the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has been told that “doomerism” is not helping efforts to avert catastrophic global climate change.
“I push back on doomism because I don’t think it’s justified by the science,” says leading climate scientist Professor Michael Mann. “And I think it potentially leads us down a path of inaction.”
“And there are bad actors today who are fanning the flames of climate doomism because they understand that it takes those who are most likely to be on the front lines, advocating for change, and pushes them to the sidelines – which is where polluters and petrostates want them.”
Instead, he says, the climate shocks we are now experiencing should serve as a warning – and urgent impetus – to act.
“Profound” consequences
“The scale of the challenge and the diversity of the risks is profound,” added US Department of Defence global resilience director Greg Pollock.
“The CENTCOM (US Central Command) leadership, the various combatant commands — They are hearing from allies and partners, day in and day out, that this is an existential threat to them.”
He says any diplomatic approach to a Pacific Island state or desert-bound nation like Jordan demands recognition of the climate struggles they are engaged in.
And he adds that the US military is “war gaming” the social and economic impacts on governments and international conflict “to better understand the problem, to make sure that we have a good sense of what the risks are and on what timelines they will emerge”.
US Department of State Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs official Christ Backemeyer told the RAND audience: “We all are talking about climate change, but the security consequences of it – especially in the region that I cover, which is the Middle East and North Africa – are really profound.”
He says the big oil-producing Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran have economies built entirely around fossil fuel exports. Others, like Jordan, are experiencing a water shortage crisis. Iraq is experiencing both. And Israel is facing a dramatic increase in the days of extreme heat it experiences each year.
“The security in the region is something that can change at the drop of a dime,” Backemeyer warned.
“We have to help these countries. We have to help the Gulf countries transition to a new, clean economy. But they need to help us, frankly, with their investment, their innovation, and with their willingness to transition. And then we need to help these countries adapt to climate change.”
Fighting chance
Pollock says the US Department of Defence is seeking ways to make its own bases and troops more resilient in the face of flash floods, fires, and weather extremes.
“We’ve seen, just in the last few years, $US8 billion in damage just associated with the storms that affected (the bases of) Tyndall, Lejeune, and Offutt,” he explained.
While all parts of the world are experiencing such extremes, Pollock says, “the challenges of climate change are going to hit the most vulnerable parts of the world first”.
And that means demands for larger and more frequent international relief operations.
But RAND senior defence researcher Jeff Martini says the risk of climate challenges compounding existing tensions is “the real headline”.
“As for the big — let’s call it that hundred billion dollar question — of will climate change beget more big interstate war, state-on-state conflict? There’s a lot of uncertainty,” he adds. “So it’s tough to give you a point estimate on to what degree climate will exacerbate that.”
But RAND research has shown “credible paths” that social and economic unrest can be inflamed by fire, flood and drought into a regional war.
“We may see a big war, say, a water war, from this,” Martini added.
Nations are building more dams. This has downstream effects on other nations through which those rivers pass.
The Mekong River is already a source of dispute between China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Turkey is also damming rivers flowing into neighbouring nations. And the new Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – one of the world’s largest – will give it control over a resource critical to a vast region.
Martini says analysis of defence acquisitions in that North African region has led him to conclude that “they are at least preparing for that type of war over resource scarcity”.
Live and let live
Professor Mann told the Belfer Center that human civilisation began its rise in Mesopotamia 6000 years ago amid a “remarkably stable” global temperature curve.
“There have been regional climate changes that have had an impact on civilisations, but there was always somewhere you could move to escape from that,” he said.
“Today’s warming and its consequences are global. There is no place to escape to. And that’s what makes this such a fragile moment.”
Modern economies, infrastructure and technologies are also fragile, he adds. Some eight billion people depend on their stability.
However, the professor says a careful look through examples of climate change in Earth’s history – either from extremely slow volcanic processes or rapid events such as comet impacts – suggests there is still time to act.
“The climate doomers say that we only have 10 years,” he said. “This claim was made almost 10 years ago, so look at your calendar.”
He says the observed pace of climate change is tracking along at the centre of International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) projections.
“The truth is bad enough,” Mann says. “Because if you look at the impacts of continued warming along this trajectory, they will be devastating. The consequences of that warming will be devastating. We don’t have to exaggerate the science to make an argument for urgency. It’s already there.”
But “doomerism” leads to a sense of defeat. And people – and nations – will stop trying, he warns.
“It’s not too late for us to take the actions to keep warming below one and a half Celsius,” Mann concludes. “The obstacles at this point aren’t physical, they are not technological, they are entirely political, and political obstacles can be overcome.”