When the research community

began to uncover worrying evidence of human-induced climate change in the

1970s and 1980s, the emerging problem of ‘global warming’ was seen by policymakers,
when it was not ignored altogether, as an environmental issue of peripheral
concern, to be dealt with by environment ministries.

By the 1990s, climate modelling had become more sophisticated, actual patterns
of change in regional climate conditions were being observed and policy-makers
began accepting that ways must be found to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissionsEmissions. Given that doing so would necessitate drastic changes to the use of fossil
fuels, climate change quickly became an economic and energy policy issue. But
in just the past few years, the language of climate change has shifted once again.
Climate change is now being recast as a threat to international peace and security;
and the region seen as most likely to suff er its worst eff ects is Africa.

Debate at UN security council:

more than 50 countries attended the day-long debate and the

majority agreed both that climate change presented a threat to international security
and that the Security Council was an appropriate, albeit not the only, forum in
which to discuss the issue.

In short, the issue of the security implications of climate change has caught the
political imagination, generating a perceptible shift in the way a growing number
of decision-makers are talking about the subject. There are perhaps two reasons for
this. The first fi rst is self-evident: it is becoming increasingly clear that future climate
change threatens to exacerbate existing drivers of confl ict in a way that could roll
back development across many countries.

For example, a June 2007 report by the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) suggested that the confl ict in Darfur has in part been driven by climate
change and environmental degradation.12 Over the past 40 years rainfall in the
region has fallen by 30 per cent and the Sahara has advanced by more than a mile
every year. The resulting tension between farmers and herders over disappearing
pasture and declining water-holes underpins the genesis of the Darfur confl ict.
It also threatens to reignite the half-century-long war between north and south
Sudan, currently suspended by a fragile 2005 peace accord. The southern Nuba
tribe, for example, have warned that they could ‘restart’ the war if Arab nomads
displaced south by the drought continue to cut down ‘their’ trees for fodder to
feed their camels.

Picking up on this
message in a subsequent Washington Post editorial, the UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon argued: ‘Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military
and political short-hand—an ethnic confl ict pitting Arab militias against black
rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex
dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur confl ict began
as an ecological crisis, arising in part from climate change.’ 13 [B. Ki-moon, ‘A climate culprit in Darfur’,
Washington Post, 16 June 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061501857.html, accessed 2 July 2007.]

The scientifi c basis for climate change is increasingly well

established, and there is continuous growth in the amount of research being done
on the biophysical impacts of climate change in terms of raised sea levels, altered precipitation
patterns, and more frequent and fi erce storms, and the likely consequencesof all these eff ects for
human well-being. However, there is comparatively

little empirical evidence on the links between climate change, state security and
confl ict.

This is to be expected, for the international community has found it very diffi -
cult to predict confl ict between or within nations with any degree of accuracy,
even in the absence of obvious climatic or environmental stimuli. Adding climate
change to the analytical mix further complicates matters, given the complexity of
climate science and the mass of potential biophysical outcomes. A further analytical
challenge is to disaggregate the role of climate change from other environmental,
economic, social and political factors, if it is at all possible to do so.

climate change could contribute to destabilizing,

unregulated population movements, most of which will be internal, but the ripple
eff ects of which will be felt beyond national boundaries.

Diagnoses
of the Rwandan genocide done after the fact place heavy blame on population
pressure on increasingly scarce land resources, but the scarcity–confl ict argument
has not been used terribly successfully to predict confl ict before the fact. Scarcity
of water has for decades been identifi ed as a potential trigger for confl ict in the
Middle East;34 yet while there has been and continues to be much confl ict in that
region, competition for water has not been a signifi cant causal factor. [34- P. H. Gleick, ‘Water and confl ict:
fresh water resources and international security’, International Security 18,
1993, pp. 79–112.]

‘Adaptation’ is a broad concept informed by both the natural and the social sciences,
usually implying a process of adjustment to survive and, ideally, thrive in the
face of change. In the context of climate change, adaptation takes place through
adjustments to reduce vulnerability or enhance resilience to observed or expected
changes in climate, and involves changes in processes, perceptions, practices and
functions.35 Adaptation may be initiated on a variety of scales, from institutionally
driven policies and programmes at national or subnational levels to adjustments
and risk management decisions within individual households. 36

[35 Parry et al., Climate change 2007.

36 R.McLeman and B. Smit, ‘Changement climatique, migrations et sécurité’, Les Cahiers de la sécurité 63, 2006,
pp. 95–120.]
the link between adaptive capacity and confl ict can be understood in
terms of a positive feedback loop. A lack of adaptive capacity can contribute to
confl ict, which can go on to undermine adaptive capacity further. Confl ict can
deplete human resources (through injury, death and illness), destroy infrastructure,
exhaust the natural resource base, undermine critical social networks, and weaken
governance institutions needed for economic development and innovation.

Modernisation n d survival

where traditional coping strategies

can no longer be used because of structural changes such as trade liberalization or
government policies, persistent violence has depleted the herders’ productive assetbase, thereby
restricting their livelihoods and increasing the number of destitute
groups who must rely on survival strategies such as charcoal burning and gathering
wild foods.47

[47 S. Eriksen, K. Ulsrud, J. Lind and B. Muok, ‘The urgent need to increase adaptive capacities: evidence from
Kenyan drylands’, African Centre for Technology Studies Confl icts and Adaptation policy brief 2, Nov. 2006.]

Adaptation as confl ict prevention and peacebuilding

The political momentum behind climate change and (by extension) adaptation
provides the international community with a new entry point to revisit some
longstanding development problems. ‘Adaptation’, if well done, could help direct
international money and attention to reducing vulnerability not just to climate
change but also to environmental degradation, poverty and confl ict.
The World Bank, in a much-cited fi gure, estimated that the annual bill for
adaptation in developing countries could fall somewhere in a wide range from $10
billion to $40 billion. The British NGO Oxfam argued that this was too conservative
and suggested that the necessary fi nancing could top $50 billion annually. 53
These fi gures are, of course, somewhat fanciful; current funds for adaptation are a
tiny fraction of this. But if anything approaching this level of funding did come to
pass it would represent a radical reallocation of the global aid budget, which was
$103 billion in 2006.54

[53 Oxfam International, ‘Adaptation to climate change: what’s needed in poor countries, and who should pay’,
Oxfam briefi ng paper 104, May 2007, p. 3.
54 OECD, ‘Development aid from OECD countries fell 5.1% in 2006’, 2007, http://www.oecd.org/document/1
7/0,3343,en_2649_201185_38341265_1_1_1_1,00.html, accessed Aug. 2007.]

The sort of adaptation activities that emphasize information (on vulnerability

and climate risks) and early warning could contribute to confl ict prevention.
Likewise, adaptation could contribute to longer-term peacebuilding in confl ictprone
areas through measures that build adaptive capacity (co-management of
water resources; improved resource management in general). That sort of investment
might be money well spent; after all, pre-confl ict prevention tends to be less
expensive than post-confl ict peacekeeping (quite aside from the costs of confl ict
itself ).
Meanwhile, the way in which
the climate change debate is becoming a debate about security (and in so doing
displacing focus on its developmental or environmental consequences) presents
both risks and opportunities.
First, the more dire predictions border on scaremongering and risk spreading
‘climate change fatigue’—a sense of hopelessness and resignation in the face of
an unbeatable challenge—among the wider public. Climate change campaigning
has a tendency to gravitate towards worst-case scenarios for political shock value.
It is these headlines that get picked up by the media. Too often, it seems that
campaigners (and the media) are presenting climate change as an imponderable
force, a fi fth horseman of the apocalypse that will inevitably usher in confl ict
regardless of the specifi c context or the international community’s response. But
the future is not set in stone; communities are capable of adaptation, given the
will, the leadership and the resources to do so.

dire predictions about coming environmental wars imply that climate

change requires military solutions, to secure by force one’s own resources or erect

solid barriers to large-scale distress migration. But focusing on military responses

both raises the stakes and diverts attention from the more cost-eff ective alternative
of adaptation.

In the literature on securitization it is implied that when a problem is securitized it is difficult

to limit this to an increase in attention and resources devoted to mitigating the problem
(Brock 1997, Waever 1995). Securitization regularly leads to all-round ‘exceptionalism’ in
dealing with the issue as well as to a shift in institutional localization towards ‘security
experts’ (Bigot 2006), such as the military and police.

The portrayal of climate change as a security problem could, in particular,

cause the richer countries in the global North, which are less affected by it, to strengthen
measures aimed at protecting them from the spillover of violent conflict from the poorer
countries in the global South that will be most affected by climate change. It could also be
used by major powers as a justification for improving their military preparedness against the
other major powers, thus leading to arms races.

On the positive side, a ‘securitized’ climate debate might be able to marshal

suffi ciently compelling arguments to encourage the politicians to do something
about reducing emissions and investing (carefully) in adaptation. These are things
the international community should be doing anyhow and, done well, are consistent
with enhancing security and reducing the potential for confl ict at all scales. So
if securitization speeds their implementation, it will serve a useful purpose.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been renewed interest in what is now called 'non-traditional'
security issues. As late as 1985, the old George Kennan wrote in, identifying the threat to the world
environment as one of the two supreme dangers facing mankind. But it was really in the post Cold
War era that the world saw a dramatic increase in international activity around environmental issues.
The United Nations Environmental Program has reported that about 170 treaties have been
negotiated in recent years on various issues of the global environment.
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