Climate change

Climate change is high on both domestic and international political agendas as countries face up to the huge environmental challenges the world now faces. Whilst this attention is welcome, less energy is being focused on the inevitable impact climate change will have on security issues. The well-documented physical effects of climate change will have knock-on socio-economic impacts, such as loss of infrastructure, resource scarcity and the mass displacement of peoples. These in turn could produce serious security consequences that will present new challenges to governments trying to maintain stability.

Copenhagen: the challenge ahead

Paul Rogers | Oxford Research Group | December 2009

Issue:Climate change

Copenhagen failed dismally to set firm targets either for greenhouse gas reductions and the aid offered to poorer countries to counter the impact of climate change was minimal. Scarcely anything was achieved other than most states accepting that the global temperature increase must be kept below 2ºC. In this article, Paul Rogers, looks at at what should have been the result of the climate change negotiations and why it failed, before turning his attention to where we go from here.

Photo: Julie Grath 

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Posted on 21/12/09

Climate change, conflict and fragility: understanding the linkages, shaping balanced responses

Janani Vivekananda | Exclusively written for sustainablesecurity.org | December 2009

Issues:Climate change, Competition over resources

In this recent article, Janani Vivekananda, International Alert's Senior Climate Policy Advisor on climate change and security, turns her attention to the negotiations in  Copenhagen. She argues that any global agreement must address the links between climate, conflict, governance and development; yet issues three cautions in doing so.

Photograph: Opening Ceremony of UN Climate Change Conference, Miguel Villagran/Getty Images

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Posted on 14/12/09

Climate change and conflict: lessons from community conservancies in northern Kenya

Issues:Climate change, Competition over resources

In November 2009, Saferworld, the Conservation Development Centre, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development launched a new report on climate change and conflict in Kenya. "The theoretical case for the connections between climate change and conflict has been well articulated, but we're still learning how this relationship manifests itself in practice," said Ivan Campbell, Senior Advisor on Conflict and Security at Saferworld. "This study tests that theory against realities on the ground in Kenya - and then makes practical and targeted recommendations in response to the actual policy context".

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Posted on 1/12/09

Global Security after the War on Terror

Paul Rogers | Oxford Research Group | November 2009

Issues:Climate change, Global militarisation, Marginalisation

This paper examines the context of the decision to go to war after 9/11 and the anticipated results. It goes on to analyse the actual  consequences and seeks to explain why they have been so radically different to original expectations by the United States and its closest coalition partners such as the UK. The paper then updates the analysis of the major global challenges that Oxford Research Group has previously discussed and the need for a new paradigm focused on sustainable security. It concludes by assessing how the experience of the eight years that have followed the 9/11 atrocities might make a change of paradigm more likely.

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Posted on 1/12/09

The climate peril: a race against time

Paul Rogers | Open Democracy | November 2009

Issue:Climate change

The approach to the United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen on 7-18 December 2009 is mired in controversy as blocs of states vie with each other to determine the real agenda.  The multiple interests involved range from elite trading-networks and powerful oil-producers to small-island states in the global south. The underlying reality is a deep-seated inequality in bargaining-power in which the United States and leading European Union member-states can assemble delegations of a hundred or more specialist advisers, whereas the poorest states may have two or three diplomats with no special help. The stark injustice is reinforced by the fact that the climate dynamics of the world’s environment put the majority world most at risk.

Originally published in Open Democracy. Image taken from New Scientist.

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Posted on 24/11/09

Climate Change and the Military

Issues:Climate change, Competition over resources

Tom Spencer, CCTM Project Coordinator The Climate Change and The Military (CCTM) Project, based on the co-operation of a group of leading think tanks, "will orchestrate a strong message from the security sector to the December 2009 climate change negotiations taking place at COP 15 in Copenhagen" according to Tom Spencer, the CCTM Project Coordinator (pictured left).

A recent report  for the CCTM "aims to describe the state of the current debate on climate change and security, and provide a framework for discussion in which the military can play a clear role in the debate on climate change mitigation and delivering sustainable human security, while starting to address the direct impacts of climate change on its core aims of national security, regional and global stability."

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Posted on 18/11/09