Climate Change, Policy and Security

State and Human Impacts

Donald Wallace, Daniel Silander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351060455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the multiple strategies proposed by the international community for addressing global climate change (GCC) from both human and state-security perspectives.

It examines what is needed from major states working within the UN framework to engage with the multiple dimensions of a strategy that addresses GCC and its impacts, where such engagement promotes both human and state security. Two broad frameworks for approaching these issues provide the basis of discussion for the individual chapters, which discuss the strategies being undertaken by major state powers (the US, the EU, China, India, Japan, and Russia). The first framework considers the multiple strategies, mitigation, adaptation, and capacity-building required of the international community to address the effects of GCC. The second framework considers the differentiation of GCC policies in terms of security and how the efficacy of these strategies could be impacted by whether priority is given to state security over human security concerns.

This book will be of much interest to students of human security, climate change, foreign policy, and International Relations.

1 Introduction

Security and global climate change

Don Wallace

In the nineteenth century Swedish physical chemist Svante Arrhenius was the first to quantify a connection between human industrialization and the warming of the planet. His 1896 paper observed that the reflective property of atmospheric carbon dioxide could raise global temperatures. Yet, there was no distress in this prediction. Instead, Arrhenius foresaw considerable benefit from increased anthropogenic carbon discharges that might result in a warmer climate preventing another ice age and increasing food production (Nagel, 2010).

This sanguine view stands in complete contrast to the present-day alarm that has arisen from the seeming existential challenges presented by the impacts of global climate change (GCC). Yet, despite this recent recognition of the potential for disaster posed by GCC, the international community is only slowly developing strategies to address this phenomenon. The limited promise of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement in which nations agreed merely to make voluntary pledges to reduce carbon emissions was placed in turmoil in 2017 by the United States (US) opting to withdraw from the agreement. With the growing global recognition of the challenges posed by the changes to the Earth’s atmosphere there has been an expanding discourse of the concept of national and international security that some observers argue should include the impacts of GCC and, consequentially, there has been a call for political actors to include such environmental issues in national and international security agendas. The international community and major power nations variously conceptualize the effects of GCC as a major environmental concern that challenges human security or as leading to violent conflicts that pose threats to state security. The choice of perspectives on the consequences of GCC, either as a threat to human security or to state security, can impact the likelihood of success for the strategies needed to address GCC. Various national military institutions have been issuing statements regarding the emerging threat to state security due to the increasing potential of conflicts over basic resources, whereas an earlier recognition of GCC was viewed in the context of a growing risk to human security due to a shortfall of basic resources.

Among the many crises presently confronting the international community, the impacts of GCC reside on a unique plane in their comprehensiveness, raising challenges for all human society. As such, they necessitate both international and national responses for solutions (Snyder & Binder, 2009). The challenge for the international community is finding a means to respond to this complex environmental challenge through a coordinated and comprehensive framework (de Chazournes, 2014). No one country can prevent, let alone adequately address, the impacts of climate change. As observed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), collective action is not an option but an imperative (UNDP, 2008, p. 12). However, the international community remains dominated by powerful states and the overriding concern for protection of their sovereignty and security.

This book examines the multiple strategies proposed by the international community for addressing GCC from the human and state security perspectives of major states. The examination will discuss the challenges for these states for addressing broad and possibly conflicting concerns of human and state security as they implement GCC strategies of mitigation, adaptation, and capacity building. Serving as an introduction to the project of this book, this first chapter considers whether concerns for state security may be counterproductive to the interests of human security in the context of these GCC strategies. In this examination, the first part of this chapter considers the developments in the recognition of GCC by the international community in addition to an overview of the identified threats to the environment. This part of the chapter examines the progress that has been made and remains to be accomplished by the international community for addressing GCC. The first part of this chapter outlines the development of GCC as a security issue and its securitization. The second part provides an overview of the concerns of state and human security in the context of GCC. The third part then delineates the strategies of mitigation, adaptation, and capacity-building that the international community is proposing to address GCC. The next part discusses how varying conceptions of security could impact these strategies for addressing the challenges of GCC. This part also discusses the role of major powers in implementing these GCC strategies and the potential of frustration for the success of these strategies when values of human security confront securitization processes for concerns of state security. An overview of the project of this book is presented to conclude this chapter.

The international recognition of GCC and its threats

In 1972 Sweden again provided a role in the recognition of the impact of human activity on the climate by organizing the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). This was the first international conference to systematically evaluate global environmental issues and led to the Stockholm Declaration and the subsequent formation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This was a seminal event in the history of international environmental politics (Conca & Dabelko, 2014), raising popular and political awareness of environmental change and the causal role of humans (Linnér & Selin, 2003). In 1988 the UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization furthered the internationalization of GCC as an environmental issue by establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UNGA endorsed the IPCC in late 1988 to provide internationally coordinated scientific assessments on the impact of climate change and realistic response strategies. These activities culminated in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which yielded the Convention on Biological Diversity, the action plan of Agenda 21, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC is the principal UN convention addressing GCC and epitomizes a global understanding “that change in the Earth’s climate and its adverse effects are a common concern of humankind” (UNFCCC, 1992, Preamble). The negotiations undertaken within the UNFCCC framework have eventually resulted in a recent international instrument for the global community to deal with GHG emissions, the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. This instrument focuses on efforts starting in the year 2020 for mitigation of GHG emissions, adaptation measures, and financial support of nations addressing the effects of GCC. The 2015 Paris Agreement articulates a goal for holding the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C” (UNFCCC, 2015a).

The IPCC has compiled extensive, highly scrutinized data and through its periodic reports has become the source of the internationally accepted science on climate change that is relied on by governments around the world. In 2007, the IPCC (2007) reached the conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” In the fourth assessment review, the IPCC presented an immense scientific consensus that GCC is not only real, but also human caused (UNDP, 2008, p. 12). In 2014, the IPCC issued its most recent synthesis report concerning GCC, where it provided an estimate that average global temperature increases are on course to range from 3.2° to 7.2°F (1.8° to 4.0°C) during the twenty-first century, and that GHG atmospheric concentration levels will reach 550 ppm by 2050 (IPCC, 2014a). It will be necessary to achieve stabilization of concentrations at a level below 400 ppm to allow for some certainty that global temperature increases will not exceed the Paris Agreement’s less ambitious goal of an increase of 2°C. In April 2016, at its 43rd Session, the IPCC agreed that its next Synthesis Report would be finalized in time for the first UNFCCC global stocktake when nations examine their progress towards the Paris Agreement climate goals (IPCC, 2016). The steady flow of compelling and too visible evidence underscores the large base of scientific certainty on the issue (Wallace, 2009; for a contrary perspective see Hertzberg & Schreuder, 2016).

In its 2014 report, the IPCC observed that climatic heat waves will very likely occur more frequently for longer durations. As the oceans get warmer, the global mean sea level will continue to rise. According to one of the IPCC prediction models, sustained substantial warming could result in the near-complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet and over a millennium could contribute to a global mean sea level rise of up to seven meters (IPCC, 2014a). The IPCC projected that GCC will intensify existing risks and create new ones for biological systems. Marine organisms will face progressively lower oxygen levels and higher magnitudes of ocean acidification with associated risks exacerbated by rising ocean temperature extremes, and with coral reefs and polar ecosystems being highly vulnerable. Many surface plant and many animal species cannot naturally shift their geographical ranges sufficiently fast to keep up with current and projected rates of climate change and will face increased risk of extinction (IPCC, 2014a).

The IPCC observed that, at present, increases in the frequency and intensity of ecosystem disturbances, such as extreme weather events, droughts, windstorms, cyclones, wildfires, retreating glaciers, and pestilence outbreaks, have been detected in many parts of the world (IPCC, 2014a, p. 51). In addition, global warming is acknowledged by scientists to exacerbate vector-borne and water-borne diseases (Beard & Eisen, 2016; Trtanj & Jantarasami, 2016; Physicians for Social Responsibility, n.d.). The earliest and most direct of the various negative consequences arising from GCC will be those that impact fresh water systems around the world (Eckstein, 2009). With the great variability in weather patterns across the globe, the impacts will not be uniform, as some areas of the Earth will have substantially more precipitation and others much less.

Despite these predictions concerning the environmental impacts of GCC, compromises appear to have been made within that part of the international community that has consistently agreed on the validity of GCC and the urgent need to address it. Flowers (2011) observed that although the IPCC is posited as the international body providing the critically needed scientific findings on GCC, it too, has been accused of some capitulation to pressure from major countries whose economic policies are greatly influenced by the fossil fuels industry; thus, the grim findings of the IPCC might be actually minimizing the impacts of GCC. Even if the pledges made by the parties under the Paris Agreement are fulfilled, global temperatures will continue to rise until at least the year 2030 (Kohona, 2016). The pledges made by the Parties as of early 2017 are not sufficient for the reductions that are needed to keep average global temperature from rising above 2°C, and certainly not for the more aspirational goal of 1.5°C (Mathai & Narayan, 2017; Höhne et al., 2016; Bodle et al., 2016). These pledges, as of November 1, 2016, are estimated to “limit warming to about 3.16°C above pre-industrial levels, or in probabilistic terms … below 3.5°C” (Climate Action Tracker, 2017). In its annual Emission Gap Report (Vega, 2016), the UNEP urged the world, in order to meet the targets set under the Paris Agreement, to ‘dramatically’ step up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions—by some 25% more than already pledged (UN News Centre, 2016).

GCC, security, and securitization

The above section alluded to the detrimental impacts of GCC on the environment and the struggle of the international community to achieve the political momentum to adequately addressing the phenomenon. This section of the chapter considers the consequences of GCC for international state and human security. Security as an international ideal was once defined exclusively in terms of state security, where regard was for the protection of the sovereignty of the affected state from organized violence. With the recognition of the challenges presented by environmental degradation scholars have seen an enlarged scope to the discussion in security studies that includes GCC (Barnett, 2003). Today, there is a greater discussion asserting a position that state security is incomplete without including a goal of human security. This discussion has stressed how state sovereignty embeds human security and how state sovereignty is dependent on human security (Pumphrey, 2008).

State-centric security

The traditional understanding of state security, limited to protecting the state from organized violence, would not have included GCC as a matter of concern. Yet, there was some recognition dating to the 1970s that environmental degradation could constitute threats that were not limited to the well-being of humans, but also to national security (Conca & Dabelko, 2014). There are those who continue to oppose any broadening of the traditional understanding of security for fear that the very term will become devoid of meaning (e.g., Deudney, 1990).

There has been a move for modification to the traditional perspectives of state-oriented constructs of security to place GCC issues on the security agendas of nations and international organizations. Buzan’s innovative work, People, States and Fear (1983) asserted that the traditional concept of security is too narrowly focused on threats to states and does not comport to a post-Cold War reality. The traditional understanding of state-centric security, based in terms of military aspects, could not adequately account for emerging present-day threats. Several observers (Ullman, 1983; Trombetta, 2008; Floyd, 2010; Detraz & Betsill, 2009; Diez et al., 2016) have argued for expanding from a narrow perspective limited to a military conception of security, to one that would include challenges to environmental quality. States have progressively placed more issues under a security rubric to include matters of economic distress, and natural disasters, in addition to terrorism and civil disturbances. As such it has become increasingly difficult to delineate the outer contours of the concept (Agamben, 2005). Security, then, can serve government leaders by expanding to include political, economic, social, and, importantly, environmental concerns (Spring, 2008; Hassan, 1991). GCC has become a multifaceted issue presenting a state security threat for all nations (Çolakoğlu, 2017).

Despite the conceptual dilemmas, the broadening of the concept of security to include environmental challenges, according to Trombetta (...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: security and global climate change
• 2 The UN regime on global climate change
• 3 Geography of GCC: Asia-Pacific—human and state security
• 4 Geography of GCC: the climate-security nexus in Africa
• 5 The United States and global climate change
• 6 The European Union and global climate change
• 7 China and global climate change
• 8 India and global climate change
• 9 Japan and global climate change
• 10 Russia and global climate change
• 11 Conclusion: state powers on global climate change—lessons learned
• Index