‘Climate change a growing security threat’
THE HAGUE: Climate change threats – from worsening water shortages in Iraq and Pakistan to harsher hurricanes in the Caribbean – are a growing security risk and require concerted action to ensure that they don’t spark new violence, security experts warned.
“Climate change is not about something in the far and distant future. We are discussing imminent threats to national security,” said Monika Sie Dhian Ho, general director of the Dutch think tank Clingendael Institute on Tuesday.
The drying of Africa’s Lake Chad basin, for instance, has helped drive recruitment for militant group Boko Haram among young people unable to farm or find other work, said Haruna Kuje Ayuba of Nigeria’s Nasarawa State University.
“People are already deprived of a basic livelihood,” the geography professor said at a conference on climate and security at The Hague.
“If you give them a little money and tell them to destroy this or kill that, they are ready to do it.”
Iraq, meanwhile, has seen its water supplies plunge as its upstream neighbours build dams and climate change brings hotter and dryer conditions to Baghdad, said Hisham Al-Alawi, Iraq’s ambassador to the Netherlands.
“Overall, we are getting less by nearly 40% of the waters we used to get,” he told the conference.
Faced with more heat and less rain, “we need to be wise and start planning for the future, as this trend is likely to continue”.
The threat of worsening violence related to climate change also extends to countries and regions not currently thought of as insecurity hot spots, climate and security analysts at the conference warned.
The Caribbean, for instance, faces more destructive hurricanes, coral bleaching, sea-level rise and water shortages that threaten its main economic pillars, especially tourism.
In recent years, hurricanes have flattened the economies of some Caribbean nations, with Hurricane Maria in 2017 costing Dominica about 225% of its GDP, according to World Bank estimates.
At the Planetary Security conference at the Hague on Tuesday, they announced the creation of a new International Military Council on Climate and Security, made up of senior military leaders from around the world.
The panel aims to help build policy to address climate security risks at national, regional and international levels, backers said.
“Climate change fuels the roots of conflict around the globe and poses a direct threat to populations and installations in coastal areas and small islands,” said General Tom Middendorp, a former Dutch defence chief who will chair the new council.
“It should therefore be taken very seriously as a major security issue that needs to be addressed. The military can and should be part of the solution,” he said. — Reuters