The Case for Integrating a Climate Security Approach Into the National Security Strategy

OxfordResearchGroup | August 2017 Sustainable Security Research Paper | August 2017 The case for integrating a Climate Security approach into the National Security Strategy Oliver Scanlan Executive Summary The argument that a changing climate poses • Risks of food price spikes from a fragile a threat to national and global security is not global agricultural system; new. Following a flurry of activity and research on the issue in 2007 – 2009, • Similar vulnerabilities in trade and however, interest has waned. Although energy supply chains; climate change is referenced repeatedly in • Physical threat to overseas assets and the United Kingdom’s (UK) National Security UK international investment in general; Strategy (NSS) and Strategic Defence and • Increasing costs to the UK insurance Security Review (SDSR), there is insufficient industry; detail addressing the full range of security implications of a changing climate for stated • Challenges to the insurance industry’s Government strategic objectives. Generally, ability to effectively manage risk in discussions of “climate security” tend to general. focus on its role as a “risk multiplier” in strategically important regions abroad and/or 3. New and multiplying risks in strategically its physical effects on military infrastructure important regions of the world: and tasking implications. • The “risk multiplier” effect of a changing climate on conflict is now supported by A more comprehensive treatment would an emerging scientific consensus; include: • This risk is compounded by second order 1. The direct physical threat to the UK mainland issues based on existing adaptation and and Overseas Territories: mitigation policies, e.g. REDD and large- scale land purchases in Global South; • Excess deaths and productivity losses from heatwaves; • It is further complicated by the increasing mobility of people, both in • Vulnerability to flooding and extreme response to a changing climate and weather events; adaptation and mitigation policies; • Drought and water deficits; • Risks of increasing inter-state conflict, • Risks to farmland and fisheries; not necessarily violent stemming from climatic changes, e.g. The Arctic and • New pests and diseases. river management in South and East Asia. 2. The indirect threat to the UK mainland and Overseas Territories: 1 OxfordResearchGroup | August 2017 4. An existential challenge to the global nuclear • Direct and indirect impacts of a changing non-proliferation regime: climate, and mitigation and adaptation • A nuclear renaissance is currently strategies will be felt by every country in underway as Global South countries the international system seek emission-free energy security; • Cleavages during climate negotiations • The scale is vast, promising the spread between Global North and South are of nuclear expertise, material and replicated in institutions such as the UN infrastructure across dozens of different Security Council, G20 and the regulatory regimes that poses severe Commonwealth challenges to nuclear material tracking, • As impacts increase in severity, the verification, monitoring and safety rules-based international order will face standards; increasing strain, possibly to breaking • The acquisition of civilian nuclear point programmes for avowedly peaceful • UK obligations to allies in responding to purposes will introduce further severe climate-induced impacts are diplomatic and strategic tensions into unclear; the international system. • Potential for emergence of “climate coercion” and “eco-terrorism”. 5. A major challenge to security priorities, planning and capabilities: Recommendations • Increasing requirements for UK forces: ▪ humanitarian and disaster relief With these threats, risks and challenges in operations at home and abroad; mind, there is an urgent requirement that: ▪ evacuation of UK citizens in response to natural disasters and 1. A rigorous and comprehensive risk political instability; management exercise is undertaken across ▪ peacekeeping operations in regions the UK Foreign Policy, International facing increasing instability and, Development, Defence and Security potentially, “environmental architecture that responds adequately to enforcement”; them; • Direct physical threat to strategic 2. The results of this exercise inform the defence assets from extreme weather creation of a properly funded strategy to events and sea level rise. address these risks as an integral part of the National Security Strategy and Strategic 6. A significant challenge to UK allies and Defence and Security Review process. alliances, and the ‘rules-based international order’: 2 OxfordResearchGroup | August 2017 1.) Introduction – Climate Security: the threat with no enemy “When I first entered the field of climate Executive of the climate change think tank change policy research, a little over two E3G, observed that 2007 was “the year that decades ago, I was warned by a former the security implications of climate change deputy administrator of the US started to be taken seriously” and what once Environmental Protection Agency that I appeared radical had become the norm9. was wasting my time because ‘climate change will never be a major policy Today, with few exceptions 10 , this interest issue…the science is too uncertain, the has dwindled in the UK. Discussion, debate impacts are too far in the future, and and planning for climate security does not there is no readily identifiable villain.’” constitute “the norm”. Climate security represents an abandoned consensus. The - Steve Rayner, James Martin Professor of reasons are unclear; the bureaucratic silos Science and Civilisation, University of that dominate climate change work and the Oxford, 20091 resilient perception of the issue as a solely environmental concern are probably partially The scientific consensus on climate change to blame. The fact that Climate Change still was largely settled when Prof Rayner wrote lacks a “readily identifiable villain” likely those words, and has since further solidified. captures the real problem. The truism that it The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate comprises a “non-traditional” security threat Change released its latest report in 2014 does not do justice to the problem. The (AR5). The conclusions are clear: complexity of the relationship between observed and projected changes in the Earth “Human influence on the climate system is system on the one hand, and human clear; the more we disrupt our climate the systems, including states, international more we risk severe, pervasive and alliances, financial flows and energy and food irreversible impacts.2” supplies on the other, are simply illegible to the modern foreign policy toolkit. Specific trends associated with the warming climate include a higher incidence of heat These dynamics cannot be negotiated with, waves, heavy precipitation events and balanced, deterred or contained. Détente is droughts (particularly in West Africa and the impossible and sanctions inapplicable. They Mediterranean) and some likelihood of cannot be bombed, invaded, or otherwise increases in tropical cyclone activity, and neutralised; they have no networks that can warming oceans 3 . Finally, the latest be infiltrated, disrupted or arrested. And yet, estimates from the IPCC are that sea levels a changing climate remains a challenge to will rise by between 28cm and 98cm by the global security an order of magnitude at least end of the century4. Although these effects equal to that posed by international will be uneven across different regions, this is terrorism. For all the significance of the Paris a global phenomenon that will impact every Agreement and its stated target to maintain square inch of the planet’s surface. global temperature rises to no more than 1.5°C, even the full implementation of That such a trend has repercussions on current commitments under the agreement national and global security might seem would still lead to an estimated 2.7°C rise. obvious, and the period 2007 – 2009 did see “Even in this scenario the uncertain a high tempo of academic and policy debate sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases on the subject, as well as political action.5 mean there would remain at least a small Led by then United Nations Secretary General chance of 4°C of more of warming by Ban Ki-moon 6 and UK Foreign Secretary 210011”. Margaret Beckett7, the issue was debated for the first time at the UN Security Council, The UK’s National Security Strategy and following UK lobbying. 8 Nick Mabey, Chief Strategic Defence and Security Review sets 3 OxfordResearchGroup | August 2017 out the Government three central objectives has been produced on the subject, including for UK security policy: the Government’s own reports, scientific assessments from international and national • Objective 1: “Protect our People”, statutory bodies and peer-reviewed articles including the UK territory, citizens abroad published in scientific and security policy and Overseas Territories12. journals. • Objective 2, “Project our global influence”, The three most comprehensive sources are includes a commitment to strategic the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment’s alliances like NATO and partners in the EU Evidence Report of 2017, the UK and the Commonwealth. It also includes Government’s Foresight Report of our ongoing commitment to a “rules- 2011, 15 and Nick Mabey’s extensive based international order” including the treatment published by RUSI in 2008. This UN, the G20 and the nuclear non- paper synthesises and updates the key proliferation

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