The IPCC projects that many areas of the globe will experience more frequent and intense extreme weather events and natural disasters, including droughts, heat waves, wildfires, flash floods, and storms. Disasters have dramatic impacts on human lives, generate rising economic and social costs, cause large numbers of fatalities, and temporarily impair or collapse state functions. Regions at high risk from storm and flood disasters generally have weak economic and political capacities, making adaptation and crisis management more difficult. Storm and flood disasters along the densely populated east coasts of India and China could cause major damage and trigger large migration processes.

Developed countries are also vulnerable to natural disasters, as was seen during the 2003 heat wave in Europe, when more than thirty-five thousand people died and agricultural losses reached $15 billion. The record hurricane season of 2005 demonstrated that even the world's most powerful nation is vulnerable and unable to cope with natural disasters.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast with wind speeds of up to 230 kilometers per hour, it left a trail of destruction over an area as large as the British Isles (Campbell, 2007). In the Gulf of Mexico, 90 percent of oil refinery capacity had to be shut down. When New Orleans was flooded, over fifteen hundred people lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands fled their homes. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., called this outflux "the first documented mass movement of climate refugees." The city's entire infrastructure was devastated, including water, food, energy, transportation, communications, and sanitation. Public order broke down. Most vulnerable were those living in poor-quality housing in high-risk areas and having few financial resources and no insurance to cope with disasters.

In response to environmental degradation and weather extremes, or their indirect consequences such as economic decline and conflict, people will be forced to leave their homelands for other regions. Most vulnerable are high-risk climate hot spots, especially coastal and riverine areas and areas whose economies depend on climate-sensitive resources. Although most of the affected people in the Southern Hemisphere will remain within their national borders, industrialized regions face substantially increased migratory pressure--Europe from sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world, and North America from the Caribbean and Central and South America (Scheffran, 2008).

The potential pressure on China to resettle large populations from flooded coastal regions or dry areas may put migration pressure on neighboring countries, including Russia. Migration of people can increase the likelihood of conflict in transit and target regions where migrants have to compete with the resident population for scarce resources such as land, accommodation, water, employment, and basic social services. Immigrants are perceived as competitors who change the "ethnic balance" in the region.

Populated mega-deltas in southern and eastern Asia will be at greatest risk due to increased flooding from the sea and, in some mega-deltas, from rivers as well. Climate change would significantly aggravate human insecurity in Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most densely populated countries of the world. Since 1960, about 600,000 persons have died as a result of cyclones, storm surges, and floods. Improved warning systems and shelters have drastically lowered the number of such deaths in recent years. The impacts of projected sea-level rise could be disastrous, threatening the Bangladeshi economy and exacerbating insecurity.

A 1-meter increase in the sea level could inundate about 17 percent of Bangladesh and displace some 40 million people, according to the World Bank. On several occasions, the migration of impoverished people has already caused violent clashes within Bangladesh and between emigrating Bangladeshi and tribal people in northern India, where several thousand people have died. The complex interaction of both anthropogenic and natural trends and their socioeconomic and political implications may further lead to situations of political instability and violent clashes, undermining young democratic institutions.

The security risks of climate change are determined by the causal links among climate stress factors, human impacts and responses, and societal instabilities. Whether societies are able to cope with the impacts and restrain the risks depends on their responses to change and their ability to solve and moderate associated instabilities and conflicts. While a gradual temperature rise of several degrees will already severely affect national and international security, abrupt and large-scale climate change beyond critical tipping points (for example, the collapse of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation, the loss of the Amazon rain forest or of the South Asian monsoon, and the melting of the Greenland or the western Antarctic ice sheets with several meters of consequent sea-level rise) will likely have catastrophic consequences that could be comparable to major wars. Addressing the problem will require integrated approaches that combine climate and security policy in a mutually enforcing way. Adaptive strategies for mitigation and adaptation are needed that minimize security risks and mitigate conflicts by strengthening institutions, economic well-being, energy systems, and other critical infrastructures.

References

1. Campbell, K. M. The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007.

2. Scheffran, J. "Climate Change and Security." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June, 2008, 19-25.

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