The UN High Commissioner for refugee reports that climate change is exacerbating conflicts that are displacing 37 million people - and rising. They warn that this is the beginning of a trend. No shit.
Meanwhile the Washington horse trading continues around whether or not to do anything about anything at all, or just plod on in ever decreasing 4 year circles of election expediency. Does Obama think the American way of life is negotiable? Does McCain? Hmm

Have you ever noticed that after learning a new word it seems to pop up in all sorts of conversations and contexts? It can be quite hard to believe that you managed for so long without the word in question.

Something similar has happened with the idea of ‘climate security’ the connection between climate change and conflict seems to be quite a lively topic of discussion that i have largely missed.

Recently IPS and CFR have both released reports on this connection the latest report on the topic that i have found is by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

This paper analyses the key changes taking place in the national and international security landscape and assesses their implications for policy, examining the context within which a national security strategy must now be forged. As a result, it becomes clear that the contemporary security landscape is about much more than terrorism alone.

Related:
Climate Change Action posts on Conflict

Joshua Busby of the Council on Foreign Relations authors a November 2007 report about Climate Change and National Security. I`m uncertain at best about how he frames the issues, but if you are interested in how Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize then this is part of your explanation.

Report (PDF), Interview (MP3)

Relavent Links:

• Climate Change Action posts on Conflict.

The Institute of Policy Studies has just released a report comparing US expenditure on military and climate defence. Needles to say that the US is spending vast sums on arms and military wages while spending virtually nothing on preventing the destabilisation of the global climate, which promises to cause mass migration, resource conflict and a wide range of other malodies.

“We will devote 50 times as much to arming the rest of the world as to helping it prepare for and avoid global climate catastrophe.”

The Budget Compated: Military vs Climate Security (PDF)

(via Grist)

Related: 
Climate Change Action on Conflict and Climate Change.
Celsias Blog reports on senior generals on climate change.
De Smog Blog ‘climate change is as dangerous as war’.

Climate blog’s used to be a rarity (your reading one of the first) new ones are starting up all the time. DeSmog Blog, Celsias and SolveClimate come to mind.

SolveClimate has just posted an interesting article on US National Intelligence Advisor Mike McConnel. The interesting part was his response to a question on the threat of Al Qaeda.

Asked weather he believes that Al Qaeda is the greatest threat that the US faces he said:

“No, no, no, not at all. Terrorism can kill a lot of people, but it can’t
fundamentally challenge the ability of the nation to exist. Fascism could have done that. Communism could have. I think our issue going forward is more engagement with the world in terms of keeping it on a reasonable path, so another ism doesn’t come along and drive it to one extreme or another.

And we have to have some balance in terms of equitable distribution of
wealth, containment of contagious disease, access to energy supplies, and
development of free markets. There are national security ramifications to global warming.”

Related:

• I have written on security and climate change several times before here.

Al gore won the nobel peace prize for his work on climate change. The obvious question would seem to be, how does reducing climate change reduce the chances of war. How does climate protection link with conflict prevention.

In this video the nobel peace prize judges connect the dots.

This morning I recieved an email about a conference soon to be held in London on the security implications of climate change. Usually I`m pleased to hear of a new sector of society taking climate change seriously, but in this case no comfort is brought to me by the fact that the military are starting to see an emerging global threat. This is perticularly the case since that threat is drawn from the expectation of hundereds of millions of newly dispossesed and poverty stricken environmental refugees.

As the military establishment studies this impending tidal wave of desperate humanity, we stand so near yet so far from a global agreement that holds a chance of mitigating the worst of these possible scenarios. So near in that global awareness has never been higher, we have the technologies we know the policies required; so far, in that even suggesting the measures a the low end of what is required will have you labelled an extremist.

I decided to have a look and see how seriously this was being taken, the links bellow constitute the most interesting results from a short perod of web searching, there seems to be plenty of activity!

Websites:
Global Environmental Change and Human Security
Institute for Environmental Strategy
Woodrow Wilson Environmental Change and Security Program

Upcoming Conferences:
Royal United Services Institute, April 24th 2007 “Climate Security in Asia“
Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, March 30-31 2007 “National Security Implications of Global Climate Change“

Newsletter:
Global Environmental Change and Human Security

Reports:
US Department of Defence, Abrupt Climate Change
Tyndall Centre, Security and Climate Change
Nigerian Institute for Social And Economic Research, Climate Change, Population Drift and Violent Conflict Over Land Resources in North Eastern Nigeria
University of Kent, Stones in a greenhouse?–Global and regional conflicts over climate change
Department of Sociology and Political Science Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Climate Conflict: Common Sense or Nonsense?
Institute for Environmental Security Adelphi Research, Forum & Exhibition on Environment, Conflict and Cooperation

Video
Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Climate-Security Connections: An Empirical Approach to Risk Assessment

On A Lighter Note!

All of this reminded me of a superb website where “The Yes Men” masquerading as Haliburton representatives invited a wide range of high profile guests to a very posh hotel to see there new invention for a conflict ridden future.

“The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way,”

said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida.

“This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change,”

he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Climate change and poverty in Africa, two key foci of Tony Blair during last July’s G8 meeting. Two foci, but one issue according to economicst Jeffery Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

According to Sachs, a peace settlement in Dar Fur is dependant not primarily on political manovering but on measures being taken to secure water supplies.

“In general, crises like these are viewed through the optic of
geopolitics and the military,”

“But when you are dealing with very hungry people and desperately poor
people, unless you also put forward a realistic and viable development option,
you can’t make peace.”

He told reporters that the international community would need to come up with a global framework for dealing with growing migration caused by droughts, floods and other disasters linked to climate change.

“The world needs a better response than locked gates, barbed wire and
shooting people. The political challenge is enormous and governments need to get
serious about addressing it,”

With the current situation deteriorating by the day little mention is being made of the climate, such avoidance of the truth is damaging for action on climate change and therefore damaging to our prospects of avoiding many more such situations in the future.