Latest Articles by Chris Abbott

Climate Change: the real threat to security

Chris Abbott — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:54:30 +0000

Ensuring the long-term security of all countries will mean responding effectively to climate change, says Chris Abbott of the Oxford Research Group.

- The effects of climate change are likely to lead to the displacement of peoples from coastline and river delta areas, severe natural disasters and increasing food shortages. This would lead to increased human suffering, greater social unrest, revised patterns of living and the pressure of greatly increased levels of migration across the world.

- This has long-term security implications for all countries which are far more serious, lasting and destructive than those of international terrorism.

- However, the response to climate change should not be the increased use of nuclear power, which would only encourage the spread across an unstable world of technology and materials that can also be used in the development of nuclear weapons and their use by ‘rogue states’ or terrorist networks.

- Instead, a more secure and reliable response is the development of local renewable energy sources and radical energy conservation practices.

The Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) identifies climate change as a threat which vastly eclipses that of terrorism. A report commissioned by the head of the ONA, Pentagon insider Andrew Marshall, and published in late 2003, concluded that climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. The authors argue that the risk of abrupt climate change should be “elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern”.

Anyone doubting the serious security implications of environmental disasters, even for rich and powerful countries such as the United States, should simply look at the large-scale loss of life and social breakdown in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities (as well as rising petrol prices across the world) following Hurricane Katrina in August and September 2005. This is especially worrying because there has been a near doubling in the number of category 4 and 5 storms such as Katrina in the last 35 years, most likely as a result of rises in the temperature of the surface levels of the sea.

The Social Impacts of Climate Change

In January 2004, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, wrote a guest editorial for the journal Science, warning that “climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism”. He argues that as a result of global warming “millions more people around the world may in future be exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding, and debilitating diseases such as malaria”.

Most scientists now believe there has been a considerable increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, mainly as a result of human activity such as burning fossil fuels and the cutting down of the world’s forests, which has led to a large-scale loss of biodiversity and a global average temperature increase. Studies differ, but models are predicting a future temperature rise of 1.5 to 5 degrees Centigrade by the year 2100. This could cause thermal expansion of the sea and global ice melting, resulting in an alarming rise in sea levels and a significant redrawing of the world map.

Among the many consequences are the effects on metropolitan areas. As most of the world’s large cities are positioned on coasts it could mean many of them would be lost to the sea. The gradual displacement of peoples from coastline and river delta areas could number in the hundreds of millions with disastrous economic and social consequences.

Furthermore, climate change is likely to involve elements of ‘positive feedback’ in that it will encourage further environmental changes that will lead to an acceleration of carbon emissions. The melting of Arctic sea ice may result in more open water during Arctic summers which will absorb more solar radiation, speeding up the process of ice melting. A second possibility is that the progressive melting of Arctic and near-Arctic permafrost will release large volumes of methane from rotting vegetation which is, itself, an even more potent cause of climate change than carbon dioxide. Losing the sea ice of the Arctic is likely to cause dramatic changes in the climate of the northern region and will have a very big impact on other climate parameters.

There are also indications that over the next fifty years there will be considerable shifts in the distribution of rainfall, with more rain tending to fall on the oceans and polar regions and progressively less falling on the tropical land masses. The tropics support a substantial part of the human population, much of it surviving by subsistence agriculture. A shift in rainfall distribution is likely to cause a partial drying-out of some of the most fertile regions of the tropics, resulting in a significant reduction in the ecological carrying-capacity of the land and decreases in food production. China and India, in particular, could be hugely affected, with profound national and regional implications. Many of the countries in this region would have very little capacity to respond to such changes, and the resulting persistent food shortages and even famines would lead to increased suffering, greater social unrest and greatly increased migration.

While Africa will be most affected by drought and desertification, researchers are also reporting a general drying out of the land and spread of desertification in the Mediterranean region. One of the worst droughts on record hit Spain and Portugal in 2005 and halved some crop yields, causing both countries to apply to the European Union for food assistance. Droughts have also badly affected crops in Australia, and one in six countries in the world face food shortages because of severe droughts that could become semi-permanent. In fact, new climate prediction research by the UK Meteorological Office indicates that expected shifts in rain patterns and temperatures over the next 50 years threaten to put far more people at risk of hunger than previously thought.

That is, unless carbon dioxide levels can be stabilised and the threat of global warming and climate change taken seriously. Time is of the essence. The average temperature of the earth’s surface has risen by 0.6 degrees Centigrade since reliable records began in the late 1800s. The European Union believes that the eventual rise in the global average temperature must be kept to within two degrees Centigrade of pre-industrial levels to ensure the continued safety of the world’s human population. However, some leading climate scientists suggest that if the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere exceeds 400 parts per million (ppm), then there will be little hope of achieving this goal. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently 378 ppm, and is increasing by about 1.5 ppm per year. If the scientists are correct, that leaves just 14 years before the 400 ppm point is reached and, in fact, some of the early effects of global warming are already apparent. In 2004, for example, the World Health Organisation estimated that current mortality attributable to man-made climate change was at least 150,000 people per year – with the highest proportion of these deaths occurring in Southern Africa (see map).

While some governments are taking this threat reasonably seriously, the reaction from the USA has been unhelpful; withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol was their best known response to what some in the Bush administration still consider the ‘myth’ of climate change. Even though it accounts for only 4% of the world’s population, America is the world’s greatest polluter – producing 20% of the global emissions of greenhouse gases. As the world’s only superpower, the United States must face up to its responsibility to take the threat of climate change seriously. It is also important that China and India, as two of the largest developing countries who have not signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, be brought into greater dialogue on the issue. China has the second highest carbon dioxide emissions behind the USA, with a rapidly developing economy and increasingly high levels of energy use, especially from coal-fired power stations. In the next 20 years China looks set to overtake the USA as the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases.

Nuclear is not the Answer

However, the response to global warming should not, as some suggest, be the increased use of nuclear power. Some environmentalists are now promoting nuclear energy as the environmentally sound solution rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Aside from the obvious environmental, economic and safety issues associated with radioactive waste, there is a very serious global security issue.

This ‘nuclear renaissance’ will involve the development of facilities – reactors, waste tanks and reprocessing plants – that are potential terrorist targets, as well as encouraging the spread of technology and materials that can be used in the development of nuclear weapons by ‘rogue states’ or terrorist networks. The peaceful atom and the military atom are what the Swedish physicist Hannes Alven, a Nobel Prize laureate, called “Siamese twins”. Civil nuclear activity and nuclear weapons proliferation are intimately linked: one of the ‘twins’ cannot be promoted without the other spreading out of control. This is where much of the current concern over Iran’s nuclear programme comes from, but it is important to note that the development of nuclear power in other countries – for example, China, the USA or Japan – is just as worrying in terms of global security.

There are serious dangers associated with producing plutonium in large quantities for civil use in conditions of increasing world unrest. In particular, the potential use of plutonium in a terrorist weapon – a radiological dispersal device (so-called ‘dirty bomb’) or a crude nuclear weapon - would have a devastating impact if detonated, for example, in a capital city, but also if the threat of detonation were used to blackmail a government. The problem of safeguarding society against these hazards would become formidable in a ‘plutonium economy’ (that is, an economy significantly dependent on nuclear reactors using mixed oxide fuel and/or plutonium to meet its energy demands). The security measures that might become necessary could seriously affect personal freedoms and have genuine consequences for civil rights.

Nuclear energy is not a carbon free technology. Electricity is used in many stages of the nuclear cycle – from building reactors to waste disposal and decommissioning – and this electricity will mainly have been produced from fossil fuels. Even under the most favourable conditions, the nuclear cycle will produce approximately one-third as much CO2 emission as gas-fired electricity production. Furthermore, nuclear power could only supply the entire world electricity demand for three years before sources with low uranium content would have to be mined. Given that one of the main factors is the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the mining and milling or uranium ore, the use of the poorer ores in nuclear reactors would produce more CO2 emission than burning fossil fuels directly, and may actually consume more electricity than it produces. Furthermore, the problems of the depletion of uranium mineable at economic prices would become as serious as the depletion of oil and gas if a significant nuclear renaissance were to occur.

Therefore, while some may argue that nuclear energy could provide a ‘solution’ to climate change, the implications of such developments would be disastrous. In fact, the UK Government’s own advisory body, the Sustainable Development Commission, concluded in March 2006 that nuclear power was dangerous, expensive and unnecessary. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee reached similar conclusions the following month, raising serious concerns relating to safety, the threat of terrorism, and the proliferation of nuclear power across the world. So, rather than constructing new nuclear reactors, attention should be focused on the protection and security of existing facilities and options for phasing out their use altogether. This, combined with an accelerated implementation by the nuclear weapon states of their “unequivocal commitment” to nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the negotiation of a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) to ban the further production of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons, and the development of policies designed to increase confidence in the nuclear non-proliferation regime, would go a long way to making the world a safer place.

Renewable Energy

Fortunately, there is no need to rely on nuclear energy. A more sustainable and secure response is the rapid development of local renewable energy sources – wind, wave, tidal and solar – and comprehensive energy conservation practices.

In 2003, the Institute for Sustainable Solutions and Innovations (ISUSI) found that today’s technology could allow a highly-developed industrialised country to completely cover its energy needs with local renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind energy. Using the example of Japan, ISUSI concluded that it is possible to eliminate fossil fuels and nuclear power without reducing living standards or industrial capacity.

Another more recent study by the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford found that wind, solar and Combined Heat and Power (co-generation) could together meet the electricity demand of England and Wales (with a minimum necessity for stand-by capacity from non-renewable sources for times when renewable electricity supply is low and demand is high). The UK is particularly well suited to the development of wind power, as the wind tends to blow more strongly during the day and the winter months, when energy demands from the national grid are greatest. This is one of the advantages of renewable energy sources because they tend to produce greater levels of electricity during peak demand points of the day (between 6am and midnight) and during the months of highest demand (winter months), whereas nuclear power can only produce a constant ‘base-load’ 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Diverting resources and personnel from military science to civilian renewable energy programmes would greatly help to accelerate the technological developments already happening in this important area – for example, third generation photovoltaic concentrator cells. However, the ‘war on terror’ has had the effect of reversing the drop in UK military expenditure that followed the end of the Cold War. For example, in 2003-04 the UK spent about £2.7 billion on military research and development – approximately 30% of all UK government research and development spending. Overall, in 2003 the world’s military spent a massive $956 billion. A substantial proportion of this funding could be reallocated to civil uses, with an emphasis on the development of renewable energy technologies.

A rapid move towards local renewable energy sources and energy efficient practices would reduce the security and political risks associated with a reliance on nuclear energy programmes and/or fossil fuel supplies from increasingly unstable regions of the world. It is just a matter of finding the political will to make it happen.

This article is excerpted from Global Responses to Global Threats: Sustainable security for the 21st Century, written by Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers and John Sloboda and published by Oxford Research Group, June 2006.

Chris Abbott is Global Security Research Officer at the Oxford Research Group.

Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and is Global Security Consultant to the Oxford Research Group.

John Sloboda is Executive Director of the Oxford Research Group, he is the co-founder of www.iraqbodycount.net, and coordinator of www.PeaceUK.net.

Toward sustainable security

Chris Abbott, Sophie Marsden — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:08:00 +0000

For Asia and Australasia, a change in thinking could lead to an era of progress in developing a socially just, environmentally sustainable regional order, write Chris Abbott and Sophie Marsden.

As in much of the world, the current security discourse in Asia and Australasia is dominated by what might be called the “control paradigm”, based on the premise that insecurity can be controlled through military force or balance of power politics and containment. The most obvious global example is the so-called “war on terror”, which aims to “keep the lid” on terrorism, without addressing the root causes.

Such approaches to national, regional and international security are flawed -– particularly if not complemented by diplomatic efforts -- and are distracting the world’s politicians from developing sustainable solutions to non-traditional threats.

There is an alternative approach, that of “sustainable security”. The central premise of sustainable security is that you cannot control all the consequences of insecurity, but must work to resolve the causes: “fighting the symptoms” will not work, so policies must instead “cure the disease” through an integrated analysis of security threats and a preventative approach to responses.

Sustainable security focuses on the interconnected, long-term drivers of insecurity, including:

* Climate change -- loss of infrastructure, resource scarcity and the mass displacement of peoples;

* Competition over resources, including food, water and energy;

* Marginalisation of the majority world -- the political, economic and cultural marginalisation of the vast majority of the world’s population.

* Global militarisation -- the increased use of military force

Asia is a region in transition, and transition creates uncertainty. The political, economic and societal landscape is shifting and, at the same time, climate change and other long-term emerging threats to security will require regional responses. All of these trends are present in the Asian security dynamic.

The sustainable security analysis makes a distinction between these trends and other security threats (for example, terrorism or organised crime). It promotes a comprehensive, systemic approach, taking into account the interaction of different trends which are generally analysed in isolation by others. It also places particular attention on how the current behaviour of international actors and western governments is contributing to, rather than reducing, insecurity.

Sustainable security takes global justice and equity as the key requirements of any sustainable response, together with progress towards reform of the global systems of trade, aid and debt relief; a rapid move away from carbon-based economies; substantial steps towards nuclear disarmament and the control of biological and chemical weapons; and a shift in defence spending to the non-military elements of security. This links long-term global drivers to the immediate security pre-occupations of ordinary people.

Sustainable security is inherently preventative in that it addresses the likely causes of conflict and instability before the ill-effects are felt. It builds on elements of previous attempts to reframe thinking on security to include the concepts of common, comprehensive, human, just and non-traditional security. Many of these approaches have long been recognised in Asia, though national security policies continue to be dominated by the “control paradigm”.

While there are many immediate security concerns in the region, there are three principal drivers of insecurity over the medium- to long-term: maintaining state integrity, particularly against internal instability; a regional power shift; and environmental and humanitarian disasters. The economic downturn of recent months may aggravate some of these sources of insecurity, since economic growth in Asia has been a major factor in mitigating conflict.

While the United States may remain the ultimate guarantor of security for many for some time, it is undeniable that it is experiencing a relative decline in economic and military power and is heavily bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exact implications of waning US influence in the region are not yet clear, but the shifting power dynamic is itself a potential source of uncertainty and instability.

Among the most serious challenges facing Asia are the numerous environmental and humanitarian disasters to affect the region. In the last few years, there have been three major environmental disasters in Asia: the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunami which devastated costal regions in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand; the catastrophic Cyclone Nargis in Burma in May 2008; and, in the same month, the terrible earthquake and aftershocks that hit Sichuan province in China.

These three disasters alone caused nearly half a million deaths, with massive destruction to property and infrastructure. But, in addition, the region is hit by many smaller tropical storms, earthquakes, landslides and floods every year, each one killing hundreds and displacing many tens of thousands.

Events such as these place massive demands on governments, threatening internal stability and potentially displacing peoples across borders, adding to pressure on neighbouring countries. They are often made worse by inadequate or slow responses, which can turn an environmental disaster into a humanitarian catastrophe. There has already been much comparison of the differing responses of the Chinese and Burmese governments in May 2008. The Chinese authorities were quick to put rescue plans into action and commit 130,000 troops to a massive relief effort. Had the Chinese government response not been so prompt and efficient, many more would have died.

In contrast, the Burmese junta failed to recognise the scale of the emergency, and, at first, refused to accept foreign aid. It is likely that this government failure caused further unnecessary deaths and suffering.

Such disasters may occur more frequently with climate change over the coming decades. The latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that coastal areas will be hit by more frequent tropical storms and increased flooding, particularly the heavily populated megadelta regions in south, east and south-east Asia. They are also predicting a shift in rainfall patterns and a decrease in freshwater availability in most of Asia (particularly for those states dependent on Himalayan glacier melt water).

In addition, serious food and water security problems can be expected in Australia and New Zealand within the next twenty years. With Tuvalu and other Pacific islands set to disappear under rising sea levels and Bangladesh likely to lose a third of its land mass to flooding, perhaps the biggest problem for the region will be managing huge numbers of environmental refugees. New Zealand has agreed to accept the Tuvaluan population once the island becomes uninhabitable, but India has accelerated the building of a 2,500-mile [4,000-kilometre] security fence along its border with Bangladesh. The problem of environmental refugees will hit Asia hard and regional responses should be developed with some urgency.

Many of the drivers of insecurity outlined above can be addressed and mechanisms put in place to resolve the long-term causes, but there are impediments. These include the regional focus on sovereignty, the lack of inclusive and effective regional security architecture and the absence of a powerful, neutral country to take the lead.

Many of the post-colonial countries in the region are understandably reluctant to compromise their own sovereignty in any way, even if this creates difficulties in addressing pan-regional issues. Often national security takes precedence over regional stability and global security. Furthermore, there are still many unresolved historical grievances that make cooperation difficult and feed unhelpful political rhetoric.

Co-operation is made more difficult by the lack of an inclusive regional security architecture with the strength to implement a new security agenda. Asian integration and intra-regional cooperation would surely help to address the long-term drivers of insecurity in the region. The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) does encourage such regional communication and has been successful in many respects, but its makeup is perhaps too localised to have any wider impact (despite the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Security Community and ASEAN+3 processes). This lack of effective security architecture means that policy responses will continue to be formed at national level, even though regional cooperation is vital to address these sustainably.

If the blockages to change were addressed, mechanisms could be developed to prevent the growth of insecurity and conflict in the longer term. Specific initiatives could include:

*Climate change: Countries in the region that are not signatories to the Kyoto Protocol need to recognise that they too have a responsibility to stabilise then cut their greenhouse gas emissions and accept that economic development cannot come at the expense of social and environmental stability. The United States and other developed countries must negotiate a fair post-Kyoto agreement that includes radically reducing their own emissions.

* Regional architecture: International institutions such as the United Nations and European Union, and other influential players both within and outside the region, should support the development of a strong, inclusive regional security architecture.

*Power shift: President Barack Obama’s new administration should accept the rise of China and move from balance-of-power politics to policies of engagement and trust-building, particularly in the areas of trade, environmental protection and regional security.

*Taking the initiative: Given the lack of one powerful, respected and neutral country, Asian civil society organisations might draw together an independent, high-level panel of respected individuals, including security experts and elder statesmen, to promote a sustainable security framework for Asia and Australasia, with a particular focus on preventative diplomacy and educating publics and governments on the seriousness of the threats the region faces.

Over the next five to ten years, a radical shift towards sustainable approaches to security will be hugely important. If there is no change in thinking, security policies will continue to be based on the mistaken assumption that environmental problems can be marginalised. A change in thinking could lead to an era of substantial progress in developing a socially just and environmentally sustainable regional order for Asia and Australasia.

Chris Abbott is the deputy director of Oxford Research Group (ORG).

Sophie Marsden is an ORG research assistant.

This article is an edited version of the report Tigers and Dragons: Sustainable Security in Asia and Australasia, published by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) and the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), following a consultation that ORG and SIIA held in Singapore in September 2008.

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