{"id":51111,"date":"2019-10-09T10:00:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T23:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=51111"},"modified":"2019-10-09T09:45:23","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T22:45:23","slug":"climate-change-poses-a-direct-threat-to-australias-national-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/climate-change-poses-a-direct-threat-to-australias-national-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change poses a \u2018direct threat\u2019 to Australia\u2019s national security"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It is evident from Australia\u2019s increasingly severe droughts and record-breaking heatwaves that time is running out to take action on climate change.<\/p>\n

Yet, despite persistent calls from eminent scientists to reduce global dependence on fossil fuels, a call to action has gone unanswered by our political leaders.<\/p>\n

And we aren\u2019t facing just an environmental threat in Australia\u2014there are significant implications for our national security and defence capabilities that we haven\u2019t fully reckoned with either.<\/p>\n

This point was made abundantly clear in a\u00a0speech prepared for<\/a> defence force chief Angus Campbell\u00a0in June, excerpts of which have been recently\u00a0published by the media<\/a>. It noted that Australia is in \u2018the most natural disaster-prone region in the world \u2026 [and] climate change is predicted to make disasters more extreme and more common. If the predictions are correct, it will have serious ramifications for global security and serious ramifications for the ADF.\u2019<\/p>\n

Climate change works as a threat multiplier\u2014it exacerbates the drivers of conflict by deepening fragilities within societies, straining weak institutions, reshaping power balances and undermining post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s\u00a0IISS armed conflict survey<\/a>\u00a0noted that \u2018climate-related drivers for armed violence and conflict will increase as climate change progresses\u2019.<\/p>\n

The survey points out that the 2011 uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that escalated into civil war was preceded by the country\u2019s deepest and most prolonged drought on record.\u00a0One study found<\/a>\u00a0that the drought was two to three times more likely to happen due to climate change, and that it helped fuel migration to large cities, which in turn exacerbated the social issues that caused the unrest.<\/p>\n

In May 2018, I was among numerous experts\u00a0who gave evidence<\/a>\u00a0to a\u00a0Senate committee<\/a>\u00a0examining the potential impacts of climate change on Australia\u2019s national security. One of the biggest threats I identified was the possibility of mass migration driven by climate change.<\/p>\n

There will be\u00a0nearly 6 billion people<\/a> in the Asia\u2013Pacific by 2050. And if the region has become increasingly destabilised due to climate change, many people will likely be affected by rising sea levels, water and food shortages, armed conflicts and natural disasters, and desperate to find more secure homes.<\/p>\n

This is already happening now. Since 2008, it\u2019s estimated that an average of\u00a022.5 million<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a024 million<\/a>\u00a0people have been displaced globally each year due to catastrophic weather events and climate-related disasters. And a\u00a0new World Bank report<\/a>\u00a0estimates that 143 million people in three developing regions alone\u2014sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America\u2014could become climate migrants by 2050.<\/p>\n

Australia, with its very low population density, will likely be an attractive place for climate migrants to attempt to resettle in. The World Bank\u00a0has called on Australia<\/a>\u00a0to allow open migration from climate-affected Pacific islands, but successive governments\u00a0haven\u2019t exactly been open<\/a>\u00a0to refugees and asylum seekers in recent years. If we don\u2019t have a plan in place,\u00a0our estimated 2050 population of 37.6 million<\/a>\u00a0could be overwhelmed by the scale of the national security problem.<\/p>\n

Other experts agree. American climate security expert\u00a0Sherri Goodman<\/a>\u00a0has described climate change as a \u2018direct threat to the national security of Australia\u2019, saying the region is \u2018most likely to see increasing waves of migration from small island states or storm-affected, highly populated areas in Asia that can\u2019t accommodate people when a very strong storm hits\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Australia would also struggle to respond to worsening natural disasters in our region either caused by or exacerbated by climate change.<\/p>\n

As part of the Senate inquiry, the Department of Defence noted an \u2018upwards trend\u2019 in both disaster-related events in the Asia\u2013Pacific region and disaster-related defence operations in the past 20 years. As\u00a0alluded to in the speech<\/a>\u00a0prepared for Campbell, we could easily find ourselves overwhelmed by disaster relief missions due to the severity and scale of future weather events, or due to a series of events that occur concurrently in dispersed locations.<\/p>\n

This would stretch our available first-responder forces\u2014defence, police, ambulance, firefighters and other emergency services\u2014even in the absence of any other higher priority peacekeeping missions around the world.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Senate report listed 11 recommendations<\/a>\u00a0for action by national security agencies and the government. Among these were calls for:<\/p>\n