New US Intelligence Report Highlights the Risks of Climate Change for Regional Instability

A new report from the US Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, for the House of Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has highlighted the regional impacts of climate change in his assessment of threats to US national security. In his public statement, Blair states that global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years because it will aggravate existing world problems-such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions- that threaten state stability.

The statement, on behalf of the wider US intelligence community, discusses climate change as a driver of insecurity in regions such as Southeast Asia, North Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. These regions have been the subject of recent work by the Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security Programme which also examines climate change as a key driver of insecurity over the coming decades.

The full statement can be downloaded here.