World militaries told to prepare for climate change

THE HAGUE: Militaries must prepare now to deal with more frequent disasters, new conflicts and other risks as accelerating climate change brings threats that could draw in troops at home and abroad, military and defence officials said.

‘‘The threats are real. We already see them. And the threats will grow as the temperature rises,’’ James Clayden, of the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, warned at a conference on climate change and security at The Hague this week.

About a thousand Dutch troops, for instance, were called out for a month to provide humanitarian help and security when powerful Hurricane Irma slammed into Sint Maarten, a Caribbean island that is part of the Netherlands, in 2017.

That was manageable — but as hurricane disasters become more frequent and devastating, as warming oceans spur larger storms, the pressures on military resources will grow, as will the costs, Clayden said.

Jane Neilson, a senior policy analyst for the New Zealand Ministry of Defence, said her country’s military forces regularly turned out to help South Pacific island neighbours hit by cyclones and other disasters.

But New Zealand officials worry that the country’s rela tively small forces could struggle to cope with bigger, harsher and more frequent disasters, or the threat of several crises happening at once.

‘‘Our worst nightmare’’ is another big earthquake hitting New Zealand just as a Category 5 hurricane hits the South Pacific she said.

‘‘Globally, militaries are going to be more stretched with operations deriving from climateinduced impacts,’’ she said, calling climate change ‘‘the single greatest threat to the security, livelihoods and wellbeing of people of the Pacific’’.

For many nations, threats at home are also growing. The Hague sits 3m below sea level, protected by a system of dykes and pumping stations, retired general Tom Middendorp, a former Dutch defence chief, said.

Dutch forces already spend about 25% of their efforts supporting civil authorities, including by protecting the antiflood systems, Middendorp said.

But if the sea level rises significantly — by a metre or more by the turn of the century, under some scenarios — ‘‘imagine the impact it could have. The military needs to be ready for that’’, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In the United States, such preparations have been difficult, because President Donald Trump’s administration has been reluctant to accept climate change as a risk, military officials said.

In fact, the White House is readying a presidential panel that would question US military and intelligence reports showing humandriven climate change poses risks to national security, according to a document this week.

But retired US Navy rear admiral Ann C. Phillips, who sits on the advisory board of the USbased Center for Climate and Security, said climate threats are clear, and the forces are already addressing them. — Reuters