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Climate Change and the DoD
›Global climate change is extremely complex, and the potential responses to it are equally complicated, involving efforts to both mitigate and adapt to a changing climate. These efforts will require domestic, regional, and global leadership—and, most certainly, U.S. leadership. The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest producer of greenhouse gases within the U.S. federal government and will therefore need to be heavily involved in any U.S. response to climate change. Typically, the DoD explores future U.S. national security interests and strategy in congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Reviews (QDRs). However, the current QDR (2007) does not address climate change, so I have taken the liberty of crafting an article, “Climate Change, National Security, and the Quadrennial Defense Review: Avoiding the Perfect Storm,” that addresses climate change in a QDR-like manner. If you want the DoD’s attention, you must speak their language.
The 2007 QDR groups potential international security challenges into four broad categories: traditional, irregular, disruptive, and catastrophic. Traditional challenges to U.S. interests require employing military forces in conventional activities to prevent military competition and conflict. Irregular challenges to U.S. national security can come from state and non-state actors employing asymmetric tactics (such as terrorism or insurgency) to counter U.S. strengths. Disruptive challenges include situations where competitors employ revolutionary technologies or methods that might counter or negate current U.S. military advantages. Finally, as defined by the March 2005 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, catastrophic challenges encompass terrorists or rogue states employing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or other methods producing WMD-like effects against U.S. interests. In my article, I classify several climate change-driven security threats into the four categories employed by the QDR. If several of these threats happened concurrently, they could create a “perfect storm” with cataclysmic results.
The DoD can help avert this perfect storm, but to do so, it must act quickly, decisively, and comprehensively to achieve what I call “sustainable security.” This involves integrating the democratic peace theory with the core principles of sustainability. Let me briefly explain these two ideas. The democratic peace theory is based on the presumption that democracies do not fight with each other because they share certain pacifying characteristics (e.g., democratic governments, membership in international organizations, economic interdependence) that encourage them to resolve conflicts peacefully. The core principles of sustainability have been described as the 3 Es: equity, economics, and environment. However, I have modified them for my argument; my modified 3 Es are: social/ecological equity, ecological economics, and environmental security. (Additional detail on how the DoD can work toward sustainable security is provided in my article.)
U.S.—including DoD—efforts to achieve sustainable security will enhance “freedom, justice, and human dignity” around the world, “grow the community of democracies,” increase global stability, prosperity, and security, and make it possible for the international community to “avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable” consequences of climate change. Some may consider my proposal a pipe dream. But in solving the biggest security threat of them all, dreaming big is not a luxury—it is a necessity.
John T. Ackerman is an assistant professor of national security studies at the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC), Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and the research course director for the ACSC Department of Distance Learning. The opinions expressed in this article are solely his own and do not reflect the positions of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, or ACSC. -
Changes Wrought By Melting Arctic Demand U.S. Leadership, Argues Expert
›April 8, 2008 // By Sonia Schmanski“Washington must awaken to the broader economic and security implications of climate change,” writes Scott G. Borgerson, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former lieutenant commander in the U.S. Coast Guard, in an article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs that explores the consequences of a melting Arctic. “Being green,” emphasizes Borgerson, “is no longer a slogan just for Greenpeace supporters and campus activists; foreign policy hawks must also view the environment as part of the national security calculus.”
Borgerson outlines a mixed bag of sometimes-dramatic changes with important environmental and security implications for the United States. There will be damaging consequences for the fragile Arctic ecosystem, where polar bears are becoming increasingly endangered and fish have been appearing much farther north than ever before. Conversely, the huge new swaths of water now open to shipping and naval vessels will cut the distance between Rotterdam and Yokohama by 40 percent, and between Rotterdam and Seattle by 20 percent, significantly reducing ships’ fuel needs. Ships will also find it easier to avoid potentially unstable waters around the South China Sea and the Middle East (recall the Strait of Hormuz confrontation in January of this year).
During the last 23 years, 41 percent of the Artic’s multi-year ice has melted, and the American Geophysical Union predicts the first ice-free Arctic summer will occur in 2013. Russia’s behavior last summer indicates that it is keenly aware of the new ocean territory being uncovered; there could be as much as 586 billion barrels of oil in the territory it will seek to claim under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). And Russia is not the only country poised to lay claim to the newly available Arctic sea; Norway, Denmark, and Canada have also petitioned the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf for additional Arctic territory. Additionally, because Greenland’s recent farming boom could only be helped by a warming climate, Borgerson believes the country might be emboldened to petition Denmark for independence.
The United States has remained largely on the periphery of these issues, last issuing an executive statement in 1994. Borgerson writes that “the combination of new shipping routes, trillions of dollars in possible oil and gas resources, and a poorly defined picture of state ownership makes for a toxic brew.” The situation is especially unstable because it is not progressing within a single, clearly defined international legal framework. UNCLOS cannot be easily applied to the Arctic because of the region’s unique geography and a host of other complexities—the world’s longest and most geographically complicated continental shelf, legally defining the “Northwest Passage,” competing claims to the territory—working to confuse the situation. In addition, it deals exclusively with territory and does not address the many other ramifications of a warming Arctic. Furthermore, the United States prohibited the 1996 Arctic Council from addressing security concerns, so it is unavailable to deal with many of the burgeoning questions.
Borgerson calls for more robust U.S. involvement in shaping the future of this important territory, recalling the successful 1817 Rush-Bagot Agreement between Canada and the United States that demilitarized the Great Lakes and eventually formed the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation to manage the area. He also argues that because the United States and Canada jointly administer the North American Aerospace Defense Council (NORAD), they should be “perfectly capable of doing the same on the Arctic frontier.” Eventually, they could include other states in this management, especially Russia. “Self-preservation in the face of massive climate change,” writes Borgerson, “requires an enlightened, humble, and strategic response.” -
Weekly Reading
›The Population Reference Bureau recently published several new resources on global family planning, including a data sheet on worldwide family planning and an article by James Gribble examining trends and patterns in family planning in West Africa. Gribble also recently co-authored an article on the successes and failures of Peru’s family planning policy, particularly among the poor.
An article published in Human Dimensions of Wildlife (subscription required) found that crop destruction by wildlife in three villages in northeastern Tanzania significantly reduced both food security and household income. The article recommends implementing several incentives—including microcredit for non-agricultural activities—for conservation.
A report from the Center for International and Strategic Studies’ Global Strategy Institute examines the future of water and energy in an increasingly urbanized Asia, with a particular focus on China.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development released a summary of the proceedings at the first African Water Week, which took place March 26-28, 2008. -
PODCAST – Evaluating Integrated Population-Health-Environment Programs
›April 3, 2008 // By Sean PeoplesIntegrated population-health-environment (PHE) development programs can often produce greater improvements—at lower total cost—than multiple programs that each target only one sector. ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko recently interviewed Lori Hunter, an associate professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, about her work evaluating integrated PHE programs with colleague John Pielemeier. In the following ECSP podcast, Hunter discusses the challenges associated with encouraging men’s involvement in family planning, implementing integrated development projects on the ground, and designing projects that are sensitive to local residents’ livelihoods and other priority needs.
Click below to stream the podcast:
Evaluating Integrated Population-Health-Environment Programs: Download. -
U.S. Military Must Respond to Climate Change’s Security Threats, Argues Air University Professor
›April 1, 2008 // By Wilson Center Staff“Africa is especially vulnerable to climate change, with many African states already suffering varying degrees of famine and food scarcity. Climatic changes could push these states toward failure and collapse,” writes John T. Ackerman in “Climate Change, National Security, and the Quadrennial Defense Review: Avoiding the Perfect Storm,” published in the Spring 2008 Strategic Studies Quarterly. Ackerman argues that climate change could cause a large-scale breakdown of natural ecosystems, which could destabilize or collapse weak, impoverished states. Terrorist organizations operate most effectively in weak or failed states, so it is clear that climate change poses serious traditional security threats, in addition to nontraditional ones.
Ackerman asserts that climate change could cause four varieties of security challenges: traditional, irregular, disruptive, and catastrophic.- Traditional challenges—which the U.S. military is currently best-equipped to address—include droughts, floods, and heat waves, which are set to increase in frequency and severity.
- Irregular challenges are nonlinear, and their timing or severity is therefore often unexpected. Examples include ocean acidification; mass migration due to environmental causes; and the unintended negative side-effects of geo-engineering schemes to mitigate climate change (such as installing 50,000 reflective mirrors above the atmosphere to deflect incoming sunlight).
- Disruptive challenges threaten or eliminate the United States’ and other developed countries’ advantages. Examples include famine, changes in water quality or quantity, and pandemic disease.
- Catastrophic challenges include melting ice caps, mass extinctions, and state failure. The archetypal catastrophic challenge among the U.S. traditional security community is terrorists’ use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the United States. Ackerman believes a one-to-eight meter rise in sea level (resulting from the partial or complete melting of the polar ice caps) or a temperature rise exceeding 1.5 – 2.5 degrees Celsius (which could cause widespread plant and animal extinctions) could produce comparable harm to the United States as a WMD attack.
Taking a reasoned and critical eye to current U.S. military thinking, Ackerman urges the Department of Defense (DoD) to “embrace a broader conception of security that incorporates environmental and climate concerns, focuses on the long-term, and emphasizes sustainability.” He calls this broader conception “sustainable security.” More generally, he argues that “all activities using US instruments of power [must] be unified to create sustainable security by peacefully spreading democracy, encouraging economic cooperation, and leveraging the cooperative functions of international organizations.”
The DoD receives the largest share of the U.S. government’s budget and is the single largest U.S. consumer of energy—although less than 10 percent of the energy it uses is derived from renewable sources. With these realities in mind, Ackerman calls for the DoD to aggressively embrace environmentally sustainable technologies and practices. The DoD possesses enough purchasing power that its new commitment to long-term sustainability could jumpstart the production of environmentally responsible products in both global and domestic markets. “The DoD’s existing approach to the natural environment is shallow and unremarkable,” says Ackerman, mincing no words.
Ackerman also calls on the DoD to be attentive to issues of political and social equity. Many countries that could desperately use U.S. military assistance with infrastructure and basic services projects distrust the U.S. military’s motives. “In sum,” he concludes, “democracy, prosperity, and security cannot counter the long-term threat of climate change without environmental sustainability and social justice.”
Monthly archive for April 2008. Show all posts