Climate change and national security- the elephant inside the room

By Adnan Pavel

It is evident that we need science to understand that climate change is real, but we need politics to solve this crisis. Politicians need to take pragmatic steps to tackle this crisis. It is palpable that lack of understanding of this crisis and the lack of tenacity among politicians have made this issue more critical. Globalisation and wealth creation through individual entrepreneurship have connected us more than ever. Frictionless mobility of goods and human has made us economically rich more than ever before. The function of state has become delusional and the need for greater adjudication of the international bodies has become paramount. But as of yet, due to politicisation and biasness of the international organisations, people and states do question the audacity of the international organisations. It needs international organisations to step up their endeavours and politicians to act promptly to tackle climate change.    

It is no surprise that none of the top 10 worst carbon polluters is from the developing countries but the developing countries are the worst victims. Let’s try to evaluate the impact of climate change on internal migration of Bangladesh. The case of Bangladesh is very interesting as it only produces .23% of the total global carbon footprints but remains as of the worst victims of the climate change. Bangladesh has been penalised for a crime that it has not committed.  The geographical location of Bangladesh has made her more vulnerable of this crisis. During heavy monsoon, 10% of Bangladesh goes under water as 80% of the total land is floodplain. It is predicted that by 2050, 25 million people in Bangladesh will be affected by sea-level rise. Increase of water salinity will reduce crop yields, particularly rice production in coastal areas by 15.6%, threatening food security. Bangladesh was projected to lose around 2,270 hectares of land this year due to riverbank erosion. Riverbank erosion displaces 64,000 people every year and threatens food security further. In the last 20 years, almost 2,000,000 people of Sirajgong and adjacent districts suffered directly or indirectly from river erosion. Almost 50,000 people have lost their houses and livelihoods to the river. These events have exacerbated internal migration situation further. Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. At least 400,000 people move to Dhaka every year. Slum-dwellers make up about 40% of the total population of Dhaka city and it has been found that 70% of Dhaka’s slum-dwellers moved there fleeing some forms of climate change related events. This additional population has added more stresses on the public services including transport, healthcare, education and housing. Bangladesh has taken many pragmatic steps in recent time but it also needs financial and strategic support from the developed countries and international institutions.

The resource scarcity created by climate change, particularly scarcity of water sources, exhibits a greater risk of conflict in the developing countries. Only 3% of the total water bodies is freshwater, that means the dependency on very limited water sources is growing for commercial agricultural production and for the increase of salinity intrusion. A recent paper published by Chatham House highlighted that about 1.2 billion people already live in the area of physical water scarcity. Situation will worsen further if the earth’s temperature increases to 2C at the end of this century. Existing literature show that resource scarcity is particularly dangerous in politically unstable states; particularly climate change has already been linked to violent conflict and communal upheaval in many parts of the world i.e. disputes over fertile land and fresh water fueled the war in Darfur, the current crisis in Syria began after successive droughts pushed Syrians from rural areas into cities. The conflict among nations have decreased since the end of Second World War but almost 40 million people were killed till today due to conflicts within countries.

Civil unrest depends on a number of political, social, economic and environmental factors. Climate change can damage or weaken these factors significantly in developing countries due to a lack of mechanisms in place to mitigate climate change or adopt resilience plans. By weakening the factors necessary to maintain civil order, climate change therefore threatens national security in these countries with weaker institutions. But whenever we hear climate change, two words crosses our mind; mitigation and adaptation. The concept of national security via civil unrest is still remotely considered in climate change debate. National security has not been discussed as meticulously as it should have been by both developed and developing countries. Developed countries may think they have enough financial means to tackle any adversities caused by climate change and developed countries may think their economic prosperity will be at tatter if they focus too much on climate change in national security nexus. This dilemma refers to the previous point about the lack of political willingness and international cooperation. We need to pay attention to the solution, but it would be only possible if everyone starts discussing the elephant in the house that is the national security risk induced by climate change through civil unrest.