Climate Change is a Threat to National Security
The world is undeniably a changing place, at that there are lot of factors that pay to it changing overtime, that change proving to be both positive and negative but most times negative on the lives of flora, fauna and human beings. Inevitably, climate is one of those changing factors that has a more negative than positive impact on people and as this occurs, the nation’s security is threatened because people are now forced to live in worsened conditions that in many ways than one damage their lifestyles, infrastructure, health and general safety at large. Evidently, the more we proceed toward the future, the clearer it becomes that significant changes are indeed taking place in our climate, the more it comes out in the open that we are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities. In that essence therefore, the paper below tackles the topic of climate change and how it is a threat to national security, looking firstly at the definition of the key concepts being climate change and national security. The paper then briefly goes into the causes of climate change and the background information of national security, together the aftermaths of such on people, and how that is a threat to national security.
Definition of terms
Climate Change- According to NASA Climate Kids, climate change describes a change in the average conditions, for instance temperature and rainfall over a long period of time, leading to rising sea levels, shrinking mountain glaciers and heat waves. The Australian Academy of Science on the other hand describes climate change as a change in the pattern of weather, combined with related changes in oceans and ice sheets occurring over time scales of decades or longer. In a nutshell, climate change is an after effect brought about by changes in weather and atmosphere that usually occurs after a long time. For example, floods occurring as a result of heavy rainfall, snowmelt and wet, saturated soils.
National Security- The United States National Security Strategy of 2010 (NSS) defines national security as a set of specific strategies outlining the goals, objectives, and foreign interests necessary to build a stronger and more secure America. For the most of 20th century, national security was focused on military security, but overtime it expanded beyond what armed forces could do. In his pivotal paper, Holmes alluded that national security has come to be defined in the context of economic security, environmental security, food security and even health security. In the context of the question at hand, national security is the security and defense of a nation, the ability of a nation to sustain itself and live well with what they have, whether or not they can survive any circumstances they come across. It has now become more than just about what the military can do to keep the people safe or what they do to stop wars and other unrests, it has become more about the dangers and the effects climate has on people overtime.
The possible causes of climate change
Human activity has proven to be top of the list when it comes to the factors causing change of climate. From overpopulation to pollution and overuse of chemicals, people are driving up the temperatures of the earth and causing more stuffing to occur, fundamentally changing the world around us. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons, are also part of the reason temperatures are increasing because the more they are released into the atmosphere, the more the temperature increases, causing the earth to warm up. Owing to this, the environment will start to change in many ways, volcanic eruptions taking place, solar radiation and tectonic plate movements which are all a danger to human life. The earth will begin to experience shakings, unexpected wildfires and eruptions because of it no longer being able to sustain itself. Additionally, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people burn and produce fossil fuels and have changed vast areas of land from forests to farmlands, thereby polluting the less possible polluted air there could be in the atmosphere. These gases like in the above statement, end up damaging the ozone layer, making the environment a less desirable area to possible live in and bloom while at it, making the environment to deteriorate and lose its good value. This deterioration then causes stratospheric ozone depletion which is a protective shield to prevent much of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation from reaching the earth.
Protocols and agreements to help with climate change repercussions
Given the causes of this phenomena, there come about the clear need for measures to institutionalize cooperation in mitigating climate, hence the need to have protocols that embody common norms and cooperative arrangements between states to live with climate change. This was because more states get affected than the others, some are the emitters while others are the receivers who end up being affected than the others, hence the Montreal Protocol and the Kyoto Protocol were imperative. According to the TEMIS website updated in 2005, The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is a treaty requiring states to end their use of ozone depleting substances while the Kyoto Protocol is an agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases aimed at cutting costs of reducing emissions so as to aid possible reduce in climate change. These protocols needed states to work hand in hand with each other and appreciate the pressing issue at hand of climate change, and the best possible ways to try and combat the impacts that may arise. It has however proven to be a difficult task as some of the states involved either pull out of the agreement or do not at all follow the stipulations of the protocol as stated, which makes it difficult for such protocols to fulfil their mandates.
Adversities of climate change and their upshot on national security
Health
With the apparent change in climate, people’s health is at jeopardy because the atmosphere that houses their lives, expectations and existence at large is slowly deteriorating. The gases mentioned above pollute the air, they cause precipitation patterns to fluctuate, leading to an increase in temperatures that are not really possible to contain. With this on the table, human health is both directly and indirectly affected because people now have to change their patterns to accommodate the change that has taken place so that they try to live well. The environment no longer becomes conducive for people to live and actually thrive in it, adaptation therefore has to take place, for instance living in very high temperatures, contaminated water sources, damaged food supplies and polluted air.
A nation’s security is endangered once the environment is no longer conducive for their health, thermal stress as one of the aftermaths of climate change has over the years been reported to cause an increase in mortality rate which may have come as a result of heat waves or the fluctuating coldness and warmness. With the deterioration already stated above, contaminated water sources, poor food supply and proper sanitation become a more draining issue for the people. They no longer have clean and safe water sources like they used to have, they compromise and live with what they can get, making them susceptible to any water-borne, air-borne and any infections one can get from using unhygienic resources. Weather patterns as mentioned afore have also changed, which has in turn influenced the level and location of outdoor air pollutants such as ground level zone, leading to a change in the air that human's breath both indoors and outdoors. With all these, human respiratory and cardiovascular systems are endangered, there also comes about the issue of increased sensitization and illnesses such as asthma which in many ways than one limit the best potential of an individual. In relation to weather patterns, a more recent example is that of the wild fires in California, with warmer spring and summer temperatures, reduced snowpack and earlier spring snowmelt created a longer, denser dry season that increased moisture stress on vegetation and made forests more susceptible to forest fires. In the process many people lost their lives, wine businesses were destroyed and more air and water sources were polluted. People's food security and security at large became questionable, together with their water supply sources because if all of that is in good shape, then the risks associated with one’s health are lessened.
In addition, indicated that ozone layer depletion also contributes to immune suppression, where the ultraviolet radiation may cause appropriate immunization to fail and UV-induced immuno-suppression appear to be a risk factor for skin carcinomas. Simply put, the body because more delicate to sickness and infections which may cause the immune system to fail the body because it has now succumbed to the infections and illnesses. This at the end of it all means the health of the general public is at risk, with some more at risk than the others such as pregnant women, children and elderly people because their bodies are more vulnerable. Whether they are aware of it or not, they pose serious danger to anyone they may interact with because their body may no longer be as strong as it used to be, everyone now has to take their health seriously and try to be safe in any way they can, though at the level climate is, that is not guaranteed. The military, though not insusceptible to climate change repercussions are charged with the role of taking care of the people, ensuring they are safe in all the ways they could possibly use. Military and intelligence capacity are however not guaranteed to be the much-needed help in this case, they may become less effective than it would have been in the past decades as they are dealing with problematic situations they are not used to and definitely have no control over.
Infrastructure
In the previous decades, experience has provided persuasive evidence of how vulnerable infrastructure is to the vast climate change that occurs time and again. On its newest release, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posited that rising sea levels and storm surge, together with the pattern of heavy development in coastal areas, roads, buildings and ports were already being damaged. The rapid melting of snow packs and the rise in temperatures provided nothing more than damage to the already strained roads and buildings as well railway lines and airport runways to inflate and move further apart from each other.
Infrastructure such as electricity, communication networks and transportations are linked to each other in one way or the other, for example a failure of the electrical grid can affect everything from water treatment to public health to production facilities. In agreement, concur as well that each of these infrastructures are interdependent one another because disruptions within one networked infrastructure will cascade into other infrastructures which may in turn cause disruptions in a third infrastructure. In these instances, the most important question is which other infrastructures are linked to the one that is affected because its impacts are definitely going to affect them. This leads to reduced power line capacity, and reduced efficiency of water treatment processes, leading to instances such as the one in September 9 2011, Mexico had a blackout that lasted close to 12 hours, it caused the release of untreated sewage and required San Diego residents to drink boiled water. A disruption of communication lines was at that experienced, making it difficult to notify people of the infiltrated water.
For this mere fact only, a nation’s security is at jeopardy because they do not know what to expect, when to expect it and what to do when it occurs. They are faced with more than one problem at a time because the collapse of one infrastructure would definitely be the collapse of the other. Buildings that collapse kill many people, leave some with injuries and life-time disabilities that may or may not shorten their life span, giving more work to their caretakers and the government as well. In addition, people who really on others for new and improved infrastructure may get affected in the process should the state they rely on be faced with such demise, for instance if South Africa’s airport was to collapse, then Botswana’s economy and its people would definitely be headed for disaster because they rely heavily on its airport. Therefore, if state properties collapse and they held in the upkeep of their economies and lifestyles as a whole, then everyone is doomed.
Economy
One cannot talk about climate change and possibly live behind the issue of economy, which is the main factor affected by this scourge. The damaged infrastructure, people’s health that deteriorates with time, affected water and food supplies are all factors that fall under the wing of the economy, ones that the government has a responsibility of ensuring that its nation receive well irrespective of circumstances. Negative impact on a government’s practical capacity is noticed, with some territories such as the Maldives being at risk of disappearing under rising seas therefore are left worried with their safety, how they will now be referred to as their states fail them.
Climate extremes, such as droughts, floods and extreme temperatures, can lead to crop losses and threaten the livelihoods of agricultural producers and the food security of communities worldwide. Depending on the crop and ecosystem, weeds, pests, and fungi can also thrive under warmer temperatures, wetter climates, and increased CO2 levels, and climate change will likely increase weeds and pests. The government now becomes laden with the issue of having to provide food for people who can no longer do that for themselves, with this becoming a farfetched idea especially for low-income countries which may lead to the prevalence of acute and chronic illnesses because of adverse weather conditions. Inflation in this instance is likely to rise as shortages arise, particularly in the agricultural sector and most severe cases, it will increase due to the cost of having to provide food, energy and insurance for the nation at all.
Economies of countries differ on the basis of whether the country can adequately sustain itself or not, for instance there are countries with poor economies, that cannot necessarily sustain themselves when climate change occurs. As global temperatures increase, rich countries' economies may continue to prosper, while the economic growth of the poor ones is seriously being impaired. Poor countries are likely to suffer greater adverse effect of climate change because they rely on agricultural industries to sustain their economies, there is less risk-management factors in these countries. Workers in poor economic countries suffer the most because some are outdoor workers who may find it hard to work during floods and heat waves, this meaning their production becomes limited hence worsening their economic status. The more extreme weather has a great potential to weaken the economic growth through damage to the capital stock, labor supply and labor productivity will weaken, and as the economy tries to adapt to the changes taking place, monetary policy will also be limited as it attempts to combat the stagflation pressures of climate.
According to Keith Wade and Marcus Jennings of the Schroder’s Economics team in their duo research, global growth would be hindered by rising operational costs as global temperatures rise, with studies suggesting that a 1% reduction in GDP growth per year could be realized. In continuation, more countries are adversely hit by this more than the others, which may lead to displacement and migration of people to the ‘better states,’ unaware that they are multiplying the other state’s economic challenges of having to provide for them and their citizens as well. The population as this happens is bound to increase, leading to a shortage of the available resources and that combined with extreme meteorological phenomena is just recipe for poverty. The displacement of people across ethnic, economic and political boundaries leads to epic humanitarian crises that no economy can possibly handle, because of the increase in hard-to-manage events and daunting layer of developments.
Conclusion
It is prudent, both intellectually and practically, to accept that the oceans and atmospheres are indeed warming, and this is a crystal-clear indication of the world being far from achieving a safer atmosphere as these changes persist year in, year out. At that, people feel this wrath of climate change; therefore, it is up to them to take a stand to find other forms of renewable energy sources to use, initiate mitigation policies that will work in the favor of all. It is the people who can find any other forms they can sustain themselves during any form of climate change and keep living their lives as usually, noted that it may not be as before, because it is best to keep on keeping on than to give up because of what one may have less control over.
