Will Climate Damage Create New Security Risks?
TOPSHOT - A man stands on top of a tree trunk in an area full of damaged trees, mud and debris ... More carried by water following flash floods and landslides in Mai Mahiu, on April 30, 2024. At least 48 people died on April 29, 2024 when a dam burst its bank near a town in Kenya's Rift Valley, President of Kenya William Ruto said on April 30, 2024. The disaster raises the total death toll over the March-May wet season in Kenya to more than 170 as heavier than usual rainfall pounds East Africa, compounded by the El Nino weather pattern. (Photo by LUIS TATO / AFP) (Photo by LUIS TATO/AFP via Getty Images)
This January was the hottest January on record, at a temperature of 1.75°C above the average for the month (2024 was the hottest year on record with 150 extreme weather events). February was the month with the highest level of economic policy uncertainty since the 1990's (excluding COVID). Something must be brewing but, the global narrative is so concentrated on the White House and intensely short-term that in a way, the future has been obscured.
Whether we like it or not, climate damage is part of that future path, and will play its own role in the disorder and re-ordering of the international political economic landscape to come. Regular readers will know that in the framework of my 'Levelling', imbalances like the crisis of democracy, climate damage and debt will have to be overcome before a new world order is fully established.
In particular, the deepening of climate damage and the rise of indebtedness are correlated and both are 'world' problems, at a time when coordination between the great powers is at its lowest ebb since the 1930's. For game theorists at least, this produces a tricky equation – how to achieve a global solution or compromise when the main players in the game are trying to steal a march on each other.
Some of the pathways for climate warming are worrying (taking a range of datapoints from the IPCC, Berkley-Earth institute and the Global Carbon Project), if countries implement the commitments agreed at COP-Paris then global warming will be 2.4°C higher than the long-term average temperature by 2050, with current climate policies the increase is expected to be close to 3.5°C and with no climate policy adjustment it might be in the range of 4-5°C. Granted that a 1°C change in world average temperature can translate into a 4°C increase in some of the most climate precarious countries, this last scenario is frightening.
If climate damage encroaches on some of the thresholds mentioned above, it will become even more of a strategic issue for the economy (there is a good literature review here), the technology sector, financial markets and security. Indeed, the 2023 yearly threat assessment produced by the US Director for National Intelligence highlighted that 'Climate change will increasingly exacerbate risks to U.S. national security interests'.
This report might well become a collector's item because Pete Hegseth the new Defence Secretary recently (Jan 25) tweeted that 'The (Department of Defence) does not do climate change crap'. Whilst the US economy is a very powerful driver of climate technology (Texas gets nearly a third of its electricity from wind power), its absence as a moral leader will mean weaker climate policy adherence by other countries.
In that context the link between climate damage and security will have to be made by others, notably the excellent team at UCL's Dawes Centre for Future Crime, with whom I spent time last week exploring how climate damage is provoking new forms of crime and threats to security that go beyond the simple theft of copper wires and solar panels (a vibrant trade apparently).
There are a few strands in this emerging, important debate to draw out. Climate damage will in the long-run change cities, geographies and economies and produce migratory trends that malevolent states or non-state actors (gangs and organised crime) will exploit. Energy infrastructure is becoming more stressed because of climate change and the side-effects of this were evident last week with the closure of Heathrow following a fire in a nearby electricity substation.
In a more futuristic vein, the response to climate warming will create new technologies, some of them in the realm of geo-engineering which may be able to alter the effects of climate damage, but that might also be commandeered for harm. Then there is AI, which itself will create much greater demand for electricity, but that can help optimise energy usage, though the AI itself is vulnerable to manipulation.
Climate change is also leading to the development of new marketplaces – for carbon credits for example, as well as ESG driven assets and debt, but these new forms of financial market infrastructure are often illiquid, improperly regulated and prone to fraud.
What all this points to is that as climate damage provokes innovation, new infrastructure, technologies and markets in the context of a world where security is now a priority and where non-state actors (i.e. gangs) become more powerful and daring, the response to climate damage now also needs to have countermeasures built into it.
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