Climate Change and the Global Security Landscape
On Wednesday February 22, 2023, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest hosted a virtual webinar featuring five scholars from around the country to reflect on climate justice movements. This discussion, the fourth Climate Change in Historical Perspective event overall and first this semester, was moderated by Villanova Geography and Environment Professor Dr. Frank Galgano. Dr. Galgano was joined by Dr. John R. McNeill, Distinguished University Professor, Georgetown University; COL Mark Read, Professor and Department Head of Geography and Environmental Engineering, United States Military Academy; Dr. Marcus King, Professor of Environment and International Affairs, Georgetown University; Tom Ellison, Deputy Director, Center for Climate and Security; Marisol Maddox, Senior Artic Analyst, Polar Institute at the Wilson Center. If you happened to miss or wish to revisit the conversation, check out the recording here.
The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest restarted the annual event series with the fourth installment of Climate Change in Historical Perspective, focused on another aspect of historical understandings of climate change: climate security. The five panelists brought a variety of issues to the table, from climate induced migration and insurgent actors struggling over water to the actor-less threat presented by melting permafrost in the Artic. The moderator, Dr. Frank Galgano, established the conversation’s framework by introducing the idea of “environmental security” which he defined as “a broad range of issues triggered or exacerbated by demographic and environmental factors such as climate and environmental change, population growth and migration, disease, resource shortages, and non-sustainable practices.”
Deputy Director of the Center for Climate and Security, Tom Ellison drew on his background in the intelligence community to provide an overview of climate security. He focused on ways the complexity of climate security is compounded by inequity and socioeconomic injustice. He points out that “those most vulnerable to climate change…poor, still developing fragile countries are those that are not as responsible for causing climate change historically;” the most historically responsible countries often have “rich, advanced, longer-[established] industrialized economies.” Mr. Ellison applied this idea to nation-states, but it could easily be translated to smaller nations or racial/ethnic/minority groups as well, such as in Dr. Karen Jarratt-Snider’s discussion on indigenous groups position in climate change events during last semester’s Climate Justice Movements Seminar. Ellison’s work at the Center for Climate and Security puts climate policy and security policy in conversation to emphasize the relationship between the two and encourage smarter policy action.
The next speaker was award-winning historian, Dr. John R. McNeill. Dr. McNeill’s background in environmental history and his capacity for global history on a grand scale — exemplified in 2003’s The Human Web or 2020’s The Webs of Humankind — provided important historical context for climate security concerns. Dr. McNeill categorized climate events as “climate shifts” or “climate shocks” which have historically invited reactions that are not long-term solutions. Climate shifts are climate changes that occur slowly — rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity due to temperature changes in sensitive ecological areas, and higher carbon or emissions from freezing permafrost. Climate shocks are threats that call for immediate action, such as catastrophic floods, increasingly frequent devastating wildfires, or longer lasting, unpredictable droughts. Dr. McNeill also posited the future of climate security as understood through the pattern of major shifts in global economic and political power that correspond with the emergence of a new energy regime (i.e., the dominant ways in which humanity harvests, distributes, and utilizes energy). In the same way that the transition from coal to oil heralded a transition of global influence from Britain to the United States, whatever country, corporation, or person can spur on the next energy regime out of oil into something new has the possibility of shifting global power dynamics.
As Professor of the Practice in Environment and International Affairs, Dr. Marcus King brought important expertise on the questions of climate security. Dr. King researches the significance of water stress and scarcity in regions of North Africa and the Middle East as a threat multiplier for the states combatting these issues alongside internal class, ethnic, religious, or tribal divisions that can lead to global security concerns, such as control of the Mosul Dam by ISIS in 2014. ISIS control of the dam provided them strategic control over a huge area partially occupied by US and allied forces that would have been severely impacted by its destruction. In Syria, ISIS exerted control over the local population by extracting taxes for water access. Dr. King’s emphasis on water in these regions exemplifies how subnational actors were able to use water in a conflict because of the effects of climate change. Dr. King also alluded to climate change’s impact on migration, the topic of our next Climate Change in Historical Perspective panel. He discussed the importance of reconsidering the UN classification of refugee to include migration spurred from climate change events like flood or drought, currently not included in the original formulation from the UN’s 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
Still focused on water in climate security, Marisol Maddox of the Wilson Center’s Artic Institute brought the audience out of the scorching sun of North Africa and the Middle East and into the frozen lands of the Arctic. Ms. Maddox’s focus was on analyzing how global security is impacted when climate change and security interact in this region, such as how states position themselves in relation to the Arctic. Russia has a geographically certain and diplomatically unquestioned role in the Arctic, while China controversially tried to insert itself into Arctic policy making as a “near-Arctic” state because of the culminating effects of melting artic ice and permafrost. When addressing these climate security concerns, Ms. Maddox stressed the importance of understanding actor-less threats separately from more traditional actor-based threats, particularly in the less hospitable, sparsely populated Arctic.
Col. Mark Read concluded the presentations by returning us to the hot and dry desert climates in the Sahel region of Africa and other parts of the vast continent. Much like Dr. King’s focus, Col. Read spoke on the ways that water could be weaponized in armed conflict, such as control or distribution being disrupted by substate forces or water scarcity used to incite unrest. Col. Read brought an interesting perspective from his background working with AFRICOM, or the United States African Command. He explained how military humanitarian efforts are increasingly subject to climate concerns. In environmental disasters, military personnel are often used as relief workers, but with climate change increasing the severity and frequency of catastrophic climate events, military personnel are called on more and more for missions they are not explicitly trained or deployed for. This can affect military capability to address other security concerns. Col. Read detailed some changes in recent years that AFRICOM has made to contribute to better understanding of security implications in Africa, such as the creation of internal informational campaigns, an emphasis on creating partners with other governmental offices, NGOs and academic institutions that are addressing similar issues, and incorporating climate change into strategy plans, exercises, and simulations for training.
Climate security has become a growing concern for scholars, policy makers, the military, and the intelligence community as severe climate events increase in frequency and intensity. The panelists brought a wide array of perspectives, both historic and contemporary, to better understand and potentially address this growing global concern. The conversation made clear that climate security involves a variety of problems needing diverse solutions and provided interesting ways to reconsider how scholars, policy makers, and everyday people understand climate change and security differently. It is important that scholars from these varied fields and disciplines come together to have conversations on this topic. Climate security has implications for the global population and solutions won’t come from just scientists or military leaders or politicians or even academics. This problem necessitates discourse between all groups to address these issues. Hopefully more talks like this will contribute to a growing awareness of these kinds of problems, so that solutions might not be so far in the future.
