Climate may heat crises, too, military analysts say

It’s a complex task. “One of the major challenges is that models for climate change are not especially precise at the regional or country level, and less precise still for isolating local effects,” says Josh Busby, a public policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Possible tussle over resources in an ice-free Arctic
The Global Trends 2025 report noted that as global temperatures rise, scientists say more of the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer. The National Snow and Ice Data Center predicts that the Arctic will be seasonally ice-free by 2060; other studies put the date at 2013. The security implications of this involve greater access to potentially large energy and mineral resources. “[These] potential riches and advantages are already perceptible to the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, and Norway – as evidenced by the emergence of competing territorial claims, such as between Russia and Norway, and Canada and Denmark,” the report says.

Will climate put populations on the move?
Many experts say developing countries, already burdened by poverty, conflicts, and poor governance, are most vulnerable to climate change. And as climate-related stresses drive instability, waves of so-called environmental refugees will cross borders. Retired Air Force Gen. Lawrence Farrell has stated that droughts and floods in Latin America could generate population waves of migration to the United States.

“I agree with the notion shared by The World Bank and some generals,” says Corinne Graff, a fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington, “that poor countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change,” and that this concerns the US. She focuses less on the danger of environmental migrants and more on the impact of extreme weather events. She predicts that the US will be asked to help vulnerable nations and regions. “Unfortunately our resources are limited,” she says. “Can we focus on ­longer–term global threats when we have our own economic problem to worry about?”

But Clionadh Raleigh, a lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, says data don’t support claims that climate change leads to migrations or civil conflict.

“There is no evidence that substantial increases in cross-border migration has occurred during past ecological disasters,” Dr. Raleigh says. “In fact, increases in international migration tend to occur during periods of plenty, as that is a very expensive undertaking for people within the developing world.”

Strained mission
Climate change stands to shift the Pentagon’s mission focus as extreme weather events pummel more and more of the planet’s population centers, requiring massive humanitarian support.

“One main problem is that the US military could quickly become overextended while dealing with large-scale and simultaneous humanitarian disaster,” says University of Texas Professor Busby. “Violent, destabilizing change is part of the picture. But it can be a distraction from the more urgent and likely risks relating to the mass mobilization of military for humanitarian efforts.”

State failures
Shifts in ecological systems are most likely to occur in places around the globe that are already structurally and politically weak. Many experts contend that, for several African nations in particular, climate-related stresses are a main contributor to instability, with Somalia and Darfur emerging as cases in point. “We judge that sub-Saharan Africa will continue to be the most vulnerable to climate change because of multiple environmental, economic, political, and social stresses,” Deputy Director Fingar told the Congressional panel last year.

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