E3G

Climate Change - The Global Security Impact

By Chris Littlecott

Over the past couple of weeks there has been a sudden wave of discussion here in the UK on the issue of Climate Security.

The theme has been picked up on TV news and in the print media, and we’ll be adding further posts on these over the next couple of days.

RUSI webpage

Much of this interest seems to have been sparked by an event entitled ‘Climate Change - The Global Security Impact’ which was hosted on the 24th January by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI). This included a contribution from E3G Founding Director John Ashton in his role as Special Representative for Climate Change at the UK Foreign Office.

The discussion at the event was reported by defence and security specialists Jane’s.com, in an article entitled ‘Climate change creates security challenge ‘more complex than Cold War’ ‘ with quotes from John Ashton to the fore:

Climate change is creating the most difficult security problem since the Cold War, according to a senior UK foreign policy official… John Ashton, the UK Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change, said: “There is every reason to believe that as the 21st century unfolds, the security story will be bound together with climate change.” He added: “The last time the world faced a challenge this complex was during the Cold War.” Yet the stakes this time are even higher, because the enemy now “is ourselves, the choices we make”.

Speakers at the conference stressed that the effects of climate change are not only negative in themselves, but may also exacerbate existing areas of political and social tension. As an example, Ashton mentioned that recent climate change was a factor in the Darfur conflict’s “complex roots”. Rainfall in northern Darfur had declined by almost 40 per cent over the last century, creating increasing competition for water between previously co-existing peoples.

Yet as Ashton pointed out, defence and security planners must face a paradox when assessing their responses to the problem. Most security threats in today’s world are amenable to some extent to a “hard power” or conventional reaction, he said, and demand will rise for such responses to climate change-related security problems. “But there is no hard power solution to climate change - you cannot force your neighbour to change its carbon emissions at the barrel of a gun.”