Home » climate-security (Page 3)
Category Archives: climate-security
El Niño Geopolitics
This is a cross-post by Mehmet Burk with Relief Analysis Services.
For international security analysts, humanitarian operations planners, and humanitarian logisticians, the ability to identify emerging global hot spots is crucial. Over the coming months, areas such as Syria, the Crimea, Venezuela, Sudan, and the Central African Republic will no doubt make a list of potential shatter belts, complex emergencies, and geopolitical flashpoints worth monitoring. But there’s another region on the Earth’s surface that the security and humanitarian community absolutely must monitor. It’s a relatively obscure swath of ocean to the west of South America stretching into the vast Pacific. It’s the fertile ground where an El Niño event may unfold over the coming months, and the implications are significant. (more…)
The U.S. is a Pacific Nation, Here Is Why That Is Relevant to National Security In A Changing Climate
On March 10, the U.S Senate hosted a discussion on climate change. Sen. Schatz, representing a Pacific state, has a unique perspective on how climate change will play a role in the security of the Asia-Pacific region, and his statement for the Congressional record goes into great detail on this facet of the issue. The statement also provides a thorough look at how the U.S. is preparing for the security risks of climate change in the Pacific, in the Arctic and in the U.S. homeland.
Below we have copied Senator Schatz’s statement for the record. You can find the full Congressional record here. It is worth a read for all those interested in national security writ large.
Special Issue on Climate and Security: Evidence, Emerging Risks, and a New Agenda
The Journal Climate Change has just released a new special issue titled “Climate and Security: Evidence, Emerging Risks, and a New Agenda.” This issue provides a timely assessment of the current state of peer-reviewed climate and security research. It is critically important to continue research in the space and disentangle the links between climate change, peace and conflict. This body of research suggests that there is ample evidence that climate change can act as a “threat multiplier” – exacerbating other socio-political, economic and environmental conditions, but that there is a need to continue investigating the minutiae of how exactly climate change interacts with these factors, and what it could mean for a future with a greater intensity and frequency of climatic events. (more…)
Secretary Kerry Follows the Military’s Lead on Climate Change
By LtGen John Castellaw, USMC (Ret) and RADM David Titley, USN (Ret)
Secretary of State John Kerry recently gave a speech in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he compared climate change to other transnational security threats such as “terrorism, epidemics, poverty, [and] the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” But the U.S. military was already there.
Secretary Kerry was following the lead of four-star Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear II, head of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), who in a speech in Jakarta a year earlier also identified climate change as the biggest security threat facing the region, with the capacity to even “threaten the loss of entire nations.” (more…)