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On the Frontline of Climate Change: Asia and the Security Ramifications

The new spotlight on climate change has helped move the subject into the international mainstream. There is now growing recognition that the concept of climate security has to be tied to national and international security. The global debate on rising greenhouse-gas emissions, however, has still to move beyond platitudes to agreed counteraction to slow down climate change.

The strategic dimensions of global warming call for greater attention and debate. The planet warming greenhouse gases have been building up in the atmosphere since the advent of the industrial revolution. In the past half a century, the anthropogenic factors contributing to climate variation have been made stronger by rapid economic development in Asia. In keeping with the qualitative reordering of power underway, Asia now boasts the world's fastest-growing economies. Asian economies are now becoming major contributors to global warming. China, which has been completing one new coal-fired electric plant every two weeks, is set to overtake the United States in the coming weeks as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide on an aggregate national basis, although for the foreseeable future America will continue to be the biggest per-capita emitter.

As home to 60 percent of the global population, Asia is on the frontline of climate change. It also has many low-lying regions, including in Southeast Asia, that are likely to be affected by the rise in ocean levels. In Asia, the likely security-related effects of climate change can be put in three separate categories:

1. Climate change threatens to intensify inter-state and intra-state competition over natural resources in Asia, including water — already a scarce commodity in some areas. Such competition could trigger resource conflicts within and between states, and open new or exacerbate existing political disputes.

2. Increased frequency of extreme weather events like hurricanes, droughts and flooding, as well as the rise of ocean levels, could spur greater inter-state and intra-state migration — especially of the poor and the vulnerable — from delta and coastal regions to the hinterland. Such an influx of outsiders would socially swamp inland areas, upsetting the existing fragile ethnic balance and provoking a backlash that strains internal and regional security. Through such large-scale migration, the political stability and internal cohesion of some nations could be undermined. In some cases, this could even foster or strengthen conditions that could make the state dysfunctional.

3. The main casualty of climate change, clearly, is expected to be human security. Social and economic disparities would intensify within a number of states, as climatic change delivers a major blow to vulnerable sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, and to low-lying coastal and delta areas. In an increasingly climate change-driven paradigm, the tasks of good governance and sustainable development would become more onerous and challenging in Asia, as elsewhere.

While it is easy to exaggerate or underestimate climate change, viewing it in balance is important to understand its true strategic implications and to explore ways to move from the current sound bites to action. The challenge of climate change is really the challenge of sustainable development. At the core of the challenge is the need to mitigate the world's energy problems and encourage countries to reduce their energy intensity, which is the ratio of energy consumption to economic output. The way we produce and consume energy is by far the single biggest contributor to global warming. What is needed is a new political dynamic that is not so about burden-sharing as about the opportunity to move toward more sustainable policies and practices.

There is a clear link between global warming and security in Asia, given the spectre of resource conflicts, failed states, large-scale migrations and higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as cyclones, flooding and droughts. The potential effects of climate change could stress vulnerable nations and spur civil and political unrest. Such are its long-term geopolitical implications that some have characterized climate change as a "threat multiplier". That is why climate change ought to be on the national and global security agenda.

POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

• Creeping politicization of the subject.

• United Nations Security Council holds its first-ever debate on the security dimensions of climate change on April 17, 2007.

• "Securitizing" climate change in the present global geopolitics.

• The politics of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

• Can the line between climate change and man-made environmental change be allowed to blur, when the need is for greater clarity on the human causation of climate change?

• Addressing the core challenge — the energy dilemma.

• The consensual challenge.

SECURITY-RELATED IMPLICATIONS FOR ASIA

• As the largest and most-populous continent by far, Asia will bear the brunt of climate change.

• Just when climate change needs to be tackled, the Asian competition over energy resources is becoming sharper, driven by rapid economic growth.

• Linear projections on economic growth in Asia could be upset by climate change, a factor beyond the control of national policymakers.

• Asia a water-stressed region, and averting water wars will become a major challenge due to climate change.

• Deforestation, overgrazing, poor management of river basins, water contamination and inefficient irrigation systems already aggravating scarcity.

• Climate change-induced refugee flows in Asia would be socially and economically disruptive, upsetting the ethnic balance and provoking a potential backlash.

• Effects on human security likely to be profound.

• Given the sharpening Asian geopolitics, how can a multilateral approach on energy and climate security be developed?

POLICY CONSIDERATIONS

• Making sustainable development the basis for tackling the current climate crisis.

• Improving Asian and global geopolitics to facilitate a concerted response.

• Dealing with the front-end of the problem — energy — through major investments in "renewables".

• Mitigation strategies to focus on capping the greenhouse-gas level in the atmosphere.

• Devising new international carbon standards on manufacturing, transportation, housing and trade.

• Promoting emission cuts without recourse to offsets through third-party reductions.

• Building greater institutional and organizational capacity critical.

• Efficient water management, early warning systems, new farm varieties.

• Devising an enforceable regime post-Kyoto Protocol, expiring in 2012.

• Building on the international experience developed, among others, through the Basel Convention and the Montreal Protocol.