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Move to Identify Climate Change Security Hotspots    •

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    Global Warming Impact Like "Nuclear War" - Report
    By Jeremy Lovell
    Reuters

    Wednesday 12 September 2007

    London - Climate change could have global security implications on a par with nuclear war unless urgent action is taken, a report said on Wednesday.

    The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) security think-tank said global warming would hit crop yields and water availability everywhere, causing great human suffering and leading to regional strife.

    While everyone had now started to recognise the threat posed by climate change, no one was taking effective leadership to tackle it and no one could tell precisely when and where it would hit hardest, it added.

    "The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition ... that if the emission of greenhouse gases ... is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic - on the level of nuclear war," the IISS report said.

    "Even if the international community succeeds in adopting comprehensive and effective measures to mitigate climate change, there will still be unavoidable impacts from global warming on the environment, economies and human security," it added.

    Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport.

    The IISS report said the effects would cause a host of problems including rising sea levels, forced migration, freak storms, droughts, floods, extinctions, wildfires, disease epidemics, crop failures and famines.

    The impact was already being felt - particularly in conflicts in Kenya and Sudan - and more was expected in places from Asia to Latin America as dwindling resources led to competition between haves and have nots.

    "We can all see that climate change is a threat to global security, and you can judge some of the more obvious causes and areas," said IISS transnational threat specialist Nigel Inkster. "What is much harder to do is see how to cope with them."

    The report, an annual survey of the impact of world events on global security, said conflicts and state collapses due to climate change would reduce the world's ability to tackle the causes and to reduce the effects of global warming.

    State failures would increase the gap between rich and poor and heighten racial and ethnic tensions which in turn would produce fertile breeding grounds for more conflict.

    Urban areas would not be exempt from the fallout as falling crop yields due to reduced water and rising temperatures would push food prices higher, IISS said.

    Overall, it said 65 countries were likely to lose over 15 percent of their agricultural output by 2100 at a time when the world's population was expected to head from six billion now to nine billion people.

    "Fundamental environmental issues of food, water and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three," it added.

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    Move to Identify Climate Change Security Hotspots
    By David Adam
    The Guardian UK

    Tuesday 11 September 2007

    The Ministry of Defence has asked climate change experts to identify regions of the world where global warming could spark conflict and security threats.

    The Met Office will today announce a £12m research contract with the MoD as part of an effort to map the likely impacts of increased temperatures. The research aims to identify countries where battles could break out over increasingly scarce supplies of food and water, as well as predict the likely conditions in which British troops may have to fight in future.

    Roy Anderson, the MoD's chief scientific adviser, said: "The MoD has identified climate change as a key strategic factor affecting societal stresses and the responses of communities and nations to those stresses. We have a pressing need for the best available advice on future climate change and, based on these predictions, assessments of the impacts of those changes on human societies at the regional and local scale."

    The MoD project is part of a wider programme of research at the Met Office which marks a change in emphasis from whether climate change is occurring to what the likely impacts will be and what society should do about them. The environment department, Defra, has pledged £74m to help scientists provide more detailed forecasts of how UK weather is likely to shift over the coming decades.

    Computer models suggest the Middle East will get much drier and hotter this century. By 2100, rainfall is predicted to decrease by 30% across Turkey, Lebanon, northern Syria, western Iran and Afghanistan. The number of days with temperatures classed as dangerously hot for soldiers to operate in is projected to increase from about 10 a year today to as many as 130 a year by the end of the century.

    The MoD move marks a growing awareness in recent months that global warming could exacerbate existing conflicts across the world and trigger new flashpoints.

    The environmentalist James Lovelock, who believes climate change will claim billions of lives this century, has talked of countries fighting over newly fertile farmland created in a warmer Siberia. And a report for the US government warned in March that the US must prepare to intervene in a growing number of crises across the world brought on by climate change, such as water shortages, collapses in civil order and "the implosion of one or more major cities".

    Unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions and the expected temperature rise over the coming decades could provoke social unrest in vulnerable places from Delhi and Mexico City to Lima, said the report, by Global Business Network, a consultancy group in San Francisco.

    It said action may be needed soon to "forestall the worst effects of collapsing ecosystems, water systems, or radical restructuring of the global insurance industry" and warned that US policies on global warming could threaten its strategic interests abroad and weaken its bargaining power on issues such as trade and security.

    Britain put climate change on the agenda at a meeting of the UN security council for the first time in April, despite protests from countries including China and the US.

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