Most people no longer deny that global warming could submerge coastal towns or leave many species extinct. But they do debate just how bad the problems could get.
And now experts see more ominous links in the chain of rising temperatures and melting icebergs. Both global security and disease have been moved front and center among the top concerns as the effects of climate change begin to manifest.
According to a 2007 report, 11 of the 12 preceding years had been among the warmest on record since 1850. The summary report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by two United Nations organizations in 1988, outlined the impact likely to result from the gradual warming of the planet. It covered coastal flooding, inland drought and more severe hurricanes. The IPCC then went a step further to discuss how individual populations might find their crops, water supplies and health changed by climate change. Governments are viewing these threats through the prism of national security.
“If you have states that are fragile or potentially at risk anyway, climate change is something that could potentially aggravate the circumstances,” said Rich Engel, director of climate change and state stability programs for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The ODNI originally planned to tackle the role of climate change in global security in November 2006, but the Intelligence Community Assessment which was supposed to be prepared eventually became a much higher-level document.
“You can think of it like we were going to write a term paper, and instead of a term paper, we wrote a PhD thesis,” Engel said.
Concers include the risks that water scarcity and agricultural degradation could become large problems throughout much of the southern hemisphere. In Africa alone, the IPCC estimated that some countries could see agricultural yields reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.
Problems such as lack of food and water, Engel pointed out, could easily lead to mass migration, which would place an additional stress on resources.
Though migration has often been pointed to as a potential source of conflict, Engel said intelligence has deemed that relatively unlikely before 2030 — the closing date for current intelligence reports.
“As we looked at complications to security we generally found that climate change acts in combination with other sets of circumstances,” he said. “Our overall assessment was that climate change by itself would probably not result in inter- or intra-state conflict.”
He added that historically, during water shortages, humans have cooperated rather than RESORTED to fighting.
But food and water shortages are likely to contribute to migration and both facilitates the spread of certain diseases. Climate change will only exacerbate preexisting conditions, according to Sally Edwards, regional advisor in environmental epidemiology for the Pan American Health Organization.
PAHO has already seen slight changes in diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Patterns aren’t changing drastically, however, so this doesn’t mean that malarial mosquitoes will descend on Europe and the United States.
Philip Stevens, director of policy for the U.K.-based Campaign for Fighting Diseases, calls some of the messages sent by the IPCC “alarmist.” Due to changes in the way humans use the land in developed countries, the malarial mosquito breeding grounds have been largely destroyed, he said. Instead policy-makers should be focusing on Africa’s other woes.
“There are massive environmental problems right here [in Africa] and now that have absolutely zero to do with climate change,” he said.
Experts agree that the real danger lies in areas that already lack adequate medical care and face major health obstacles. Diseases that already exist will become bigger threats as developing countries face shortages of water and food.
Edwards said the four biggest worries center on respiratory diseases, aggravated by burning materials for fuel; nutritional diseases; gastrointestinal diseases from lack of clean water and diseases transmitted by insects such as mosquitoes or ticks.
Because AIDS is a disease that affects the immune system, a lack of clean water or adequate nutrition could accelerate spread of the disease and counteract the effects of medication to control it.
Rather than focusing on the havoc climate change may bring in upcoming years, PAHO is concentrating on strengthening existing health infrastructures.
“Only by [governments] being able to deal with the problems they have today will they even be able to contemplate effective responses to new and changing patterns under climate change,” Edwards said.
Famine and disease are already undermining communities and stable governments in sub-Sahara Africa. But, as evidenced during Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, damage to expensive infrastructure due to extreme weather is a very real threat. With every storm, roads and bridges are damaged and individual property is also lost, displacing people and destroying all they have.
Climate change is not expected to impact oil production in the Middle East, Engel added. However, the IPCC predicts an increase in storm intensity, which could harm U.S. coastal refineries.
Although global security issues aren’t usually mentioned as a driving force behind climate change legislation, it’s definitely on the minds of policymakers. The European Union has established a clean plan to reduce emissions at least 20 percent by the year 2020. There are many reasons for the plan, according to Kasper Zeuthen, senior press officer for the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States.
“Us reducing emissions is because we don’t want to have the effects of climate change, and the effects of climate change include increased risk of conflict and other issues,” he said.
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