Climate change is among the most persistent global threats to quiet and security at this age. Even so, only a few individuals would record this as a chief element in worldwide associations and domestic welfare. In actual fact, climate change touches all areas of security, peacebuilding, and expansion. In reality, the effects of climate change are already being felt in weak populations and testing the capabilities of governments as well as societies. For this reason, it is only best to understand climate change as a “risk multiplier” (Goldstein, 2016). This means that it is a theme that works in collaboration with existing pressures such as economic inequality, social conflict, competition for resources, and extensive migration. In addition, it goes ahead to complicate these matters which results in mounting the possibility of insecurity or hostile conflict. For this reason, the answer to the question of whether climate change is a growing global security issue could be basically reliant on an individual’s perception of security. However, the fact is that it an issue.
The first and least controversial way in which changing climate could affect global and domestic security is in the impact it has on the manner in which, as well as the locations where military forces operate. According to the White House (2015), the United States administration has drafted the limitations if these impacts in a various latest policy documents. From the point of view of an International Relations (IR), a thing that could grab one’s attention is the opening of the Arctic regions at a time when the sea ice thaws out, obliging the adjustment of military forces to function well there, particularly if fresh shipping paths need security or if there arises fighting over natural resources in this area that was in the past unreachable (White House, 2015). An illustration that is clearly apparent is the subject of extra US heavy icebreakers. At the moment, there are only two such machineries, a number that is way behind Russia which has twenty-seven among other countries such as Finland, Canada, and Sweden (Goldstein, 2016). According to Goldstein, the navy is presently dependent on the coast guard for icebreaking. Even so, he explicates that the cost of a single heavy icebreaker is too costly as it would need a billion dollars which would chomp through the whole acquisition budget for the coast guard.
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Military planning is an area that is mostly affected by the possibility of sea-level going up, storm surges, as well as extensive weather abroad or at home. There is a normal tendency about naval bases being situated on the coast which makes them vulnerable. Other factors that challenge military forces with an extra difficult operating environment include risks to significant infrastructure like water systems, electricity, runways, roads, and communications. As such, since this world experiences high temperatures and increased moisture and sand, there is a demand for artillery systems to be redesigned for this reason.
Climate change is a phenomenon that is gradually taking place and could, therefore, lead to possible population displacements, natural disasters, as well as numerous outbreaks of infectious diseases. The military is responsible for humanitarian operations and with the change in the climate, military forces will also have to evolve as it reaches out to respond to these issues. All these alterations in military planning affect all key military powers and play a significant role when it comes policy decisions, though they are not predominantly interesting from the perspective of IR.
The second question that is more IR-related regards the degree to which the change of climate could initiate an increased violent disagreement. The upsurge in universal hostility during the four years that have passed that has turned around decades of rejection basically comes from the civil fighting in Syria. Fountain (2015) has mentioned drought to be a causative reason fot that confrontation. With such a claim, one can only argue that this climate outcome has already reached us. The fact is that a world that experiences a shortage of resources such as land, water, and forests can only experience an augmented violent conflict. Goldstein confirms this fact and considers it to be predictable astuteness. However, he claims the reality to be extra confusing as there is only limited substantiation that can in the real sense support a chief consequence of climate change on intergroup aggression at both the national and sub-national points. Moran (2011) argues that the situation differs from nation to nation though the impacts like floods, droughts, crop letdowns generally result in poverty and not predominantly hostility. Refugee populations are commonly the consequence of armed clashes but hardly ever their cause. It is important however to note that there are often expectations as was in the outcome of refugees who originated out of Rwanda after 1994 on the following the civil war in Congo. Nevertheless, different countries could be unified by resource scarcity thus stimulating international cooperation.
A way to evaluate future climate effects is to look at the natural tragedies that have happened in the earlier periods even if they do not relate to climate change as they could give various similar results. An example of this is the earthquake that took place in Nepal in 2015. Instead of reigniting the serious civil war, it prompted a political breakthrough that brought to an end years of stalemate over the postwar governance of that country. In the same way, the destructive tsunami that clouted the Indonesian province of Aceh in 2004 looks like it strongly contributed to bringing to an end the long-enduring war in the area the next year. More essentially and time and again ignored in discussions that pertain the environment is the scores of people from the poorest countries in the world who have been arising from the utter lack in the latest number of years that use coal and other fossil fuels for power. Poverty is known to be the distinct best predictor of the threat of civil war (Goldstein, 2016). Owing to these mounting earnings, it is very likely that they have added to the decrease of armed disagreement after the Cold War. For this reason, burning coal perhaps results in disastrous climate change and lowers the dangers of violent clash. As such, it is important that poor economy countries equip themselves better for them to adapt well to climate change in the coming years and this renders trade-offs a bit challenging.
Nuclear power brings about a unique predicament. It possibly gives one of the incredibly limited scalable energy sources that are free of carbon that could present crucial ‘deep decarbonization’ of the international economy by the middle of the century. Still, it also creates rising hazards that could result in international violence settings such as terrorism using nuclear weapons which could be far more brutal than anything experienced in the modern period. As of now, there is the dilemma of nuclear weapon threats and climatic threats, with the increasing nuclear risks facing rejection at the cost of working out the issue of climate risk. The irony of the incident in Japan that involved the 2011 earthquake and tsunami is that most people who lost their lives died from the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant. Nevertheless, the resolution of Japan and Germany to obliterate nuclear power in the aftermath of that occurrence compels them to use coal and this has caused the deaths of many numbers of people from the pollution of air in the short-range (Goldstein, 2016). On the long-term, Germany has been pulled from its targets for climate change. Observably, this ciphering would utterly change if the negative aspect of nuclear energy comprised nuclear weapons exploding cities as opposed to the sporadic meltdown forcing lasting evacuations close by. As a result, the energy nexus, technology, security, and political opinions in the nuclear power field is intricate.
The third factor is that climate change results in global warming which implicates global security and is thus a threat. If global warming revolves around human safety and economic security as opposed to austerely martial defense, then civilization seems prone to experience its greatest dangers from the inevitable and shocking effects of climate changed as opposed to the rather expected threat from weapons of war. The increasing ruthlessness of disasters that will be climate associated such as fires, storms, and droughts are what will lead to the consequences of war such as hunger, death and injury, disease, and displacement.
For the elite IR community to connect a universal danger that is devoid of conflict that involves weapons, it will need to first adapt to the situation (Keohane, 2015). This author argues that the change of climate presents a fresh and brutal test to the competence of political societies. According to him, the convolution of global concession as well as the challenge of endorsing domestic policies has resulted in politics that does not work as it should. There have been international attempts to deal with the issue of global governance like the 1997 Kyoto protocol as well as other wide-ranging establishments but all these have been unsuccessful. As such, Keohane (2015) observes that countries like Russia and China which are authoritarian governments holding a pitiable record yet some countries such as Japan, Australia, and Canada which are key developed democracies have backed off considerably after Kyoto. IR scholars should be familiar with the demoralizing governance disputes as identified by Keohane as they are similar to the huge, collective goods matters in global safety like nuclear proliferation, armaments races, as well as the impending outer space militarization. The international North-South split is a chief element of interest to IR academics and has proved essential in the collapse of universal governance in the matters of splitting up the charges of stopping disastrous climate change. The Kyoto protocol assigned few obligations to the poor countries considering their little contribution to carbon in the environment. Even so, China which is as of present the world’s largest carbon polluter in collaboration with nations like Brazil and India are lagging behind in this matter. Political scientists are therefore left with a tough duty of elucidation on how to achieve teamwork in a society where world governments fail to present themselves. The scientists can, therefore, claim to having done what they can though there is even much more that can be done with the collaboration of world governments. For this reason, Javeline (2014) thinks that the adjustment to the change of climate is primarily political since most of the technical concerns in topics like coastal protection and the innovation of energy highly depends on political action which is currently obstructed both domestically and internationally. However, Javeline points out that a small number of political scientists are researching on adaption to climate change. Goldstein (2016) is of the opinion that the IR has lost its bearing by listing climate change under environmental politics due to the overlapping of the topics caused by pro-environmental policies and ways of life that utilize little energy. However, he notes that a large section of effort regarding environmental politics contains diffident effect on climate transformation even though they relate creatively to the change of climate. This is especially so due to the existing perception that climate change involves saving attractive animals which makes finding political solutions difficult. Carbon pollution is different from the assortment of new technical and constricted environmental fears as it is caused by elementary money-making processes that powered industrialization and keep doing so in needy nations as they try to get an economic footing. This would therefore make Climate seem like an economic problem than an environmental one. The only way that could enable political scientists in making valuable contributions is through revising change of climate as a universal security issue and passing on this discussion. By reacting to safety menaces, it would be easier to stop attempting to alter everything and instead end a calamity by finding and employing practical and focused solutions such as carbon pricing, energy innovations, and treaty commitments among others. Political scientists would then be better placed to examine and what they are acquainted with concerning politics and making such resolutions virtually practicable. IR scholars would stop placing much focus on polar bears and instead study the way frail worldwide standards and institutions can determine the joint goods issues brought about by the materialization of disastrous worldwide dangers in a world split into self-governing states.
References
Henry, F. (2 March, 2015). Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html
Goldstein, J. (1 February 2016). Climate Change as a Global Security Issue, Journal of Global Security Studies , Volume 1, (Issue 1), Pages 95-98, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogv010 .
Javeline, D. (2014). “The Most Important Topic Political Scientists Are Not Studying: Adapting to Climate Change.” Perspective on Politics. 12: 420-434
Keohane, R. (2015). “The Global Politics of Climate Change: Challenge for Political Science.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 48:19-26
Moran, D. (2011). Climate change and national security : a country-level analysis . Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press. .
White House (2015). Findings from Select Federal Reports: The Naitonal Security Implications of a Changing Climate. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/national_security_implications_of_changing_climate_final_051915_embargo.pdf .
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