NYTimes | The
accelerating rate of climate change poses a severe risk to national
security and acts as a catalyst for global political conflict, a report published Tuesday by a leading government-funded military research organization concluded.
The Center for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board
found that climate change-induced drought in the Middle East and Africa is leading to conflicts over food and water and escalating longstanding regional and ethnic tensions into violent clashes. The report also
found that rising sea levels are putting people and food supplies in
vulnerable coastal regions like eastern India, Bangladesh and the Mekong
Delta in Vietnam at risk and could lead to a new wave of refugees.
In
addition, the report predicted that an increase in catastrophic weather
events around the world will create more demand for American troops,
even as flooding and extreme weather events at home could damage naval
ports and military bases.
In an interview, Secretary of State John Kerry signaled that the report’s findings would influence American foreign policy.
“Tribes
are killing each other over water today,” Mr. Kerry said. “Think of
what happens if you have massive dislocation, or the drying up of the
waters of the Nile, of the major rivers in China and India. The
intelligence community takes it seriously, and it’s translated into
action.”
Mr.
Kerry, who plans to deliver a major speech this summer on the links
between climate change and national security, said his remarks would
also be aimed at building political support for President Obama’s
climate change agenda, including a new regulation to cut pollution from
coal-fired power plants that the administration will introduce in June.
“We’re going to try to lay out to people legitimate options for action that are not bank-breaking or negative,” Mr. Kerry said.
Pentagon
officials said the report would affect military policy. “The department
certainly agrees that climate change is having an impact on national
security, whether by increasing global instability, by opening the
Arctic or by increasing sea level and storm surge near our coastal
installations,” John Conger, the Pentagon’s deputy under secretary of
defense for installations and environment, said in a statement. “We are
actively integrating climate considerations across the full spectrum of
our activities to ensure a ready and resilient force.”
The
report on Tuesday follows a recent string of scientific studies that
warn that the effects of climate change are already occurring and that
flooding, droughts, extreme storms, food and water shortages and damage
to infrastructure will occur in the near future.
In March, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review,
the agency’s main public document describing the current doctrine of
the United States military, drew a direct link between the effects of
global warming — like rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns —
and terrorism.
“These
effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad,
such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability and
social tensions — conditions that can enable terrorist activity and
other forms of violence,” the review said.
