CLIMATE CHANGE

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CLIMATE CHANGE SECURITY AT COPENHAGEN - IIThe
Contribution of the Global Security Community to
Success7th - 8th October 2009, European
Parliament, BrusselsGLACIAL MELT AT THE THIRD
POLEA Study in Environmental Security
Geopolitics

• Tom Spencer
• Vice Chairman, Institute for Environmental
  Security

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Dont get involved in partial problems, but
always take flight to where there is a free view
over the whole single great problem, even if this
view is still not a clear oneLudwig
Wittgenstein
Lobbying has consequences. The Tibetan Plateau
is now warming faster than anywhere else on the
planet. Black Carbon settling on the ice and
snow is speeding up the melting of the Himalayan
glaciers by 40. The loss of summer water to the
seven great rivers of Asia will, within a
generation, lead to geo-political turmoil
www.dailygalaxy.com/01/record_Himalaya.html With
best wishes for a Happy Christmas and an
ambitious New Year! From all at the ECPA
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THE NEED FOR INTEGRATED THINKING

• False dawns for Environmental Security
• - the danger of over-claiming
• A mixture of disciplines
• - academic jealousies the contest for budget
• Environmental Security or Environment
  Security?
• - the fear of securitization
• Development Policy - Foreign Policy - Military
  Policy
• Food Security - Energy Security - Climate Security

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CLIMATE CHANGE THE MILITARY I

• CNA Report National Security the Threat of
  Climate Change
• CNAS Report The Age of Consequences The Foreign
  Policy and National Security Implications of
  Global Climate Change
• Abrupt Climate Change timing is all

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TIPPING POINTS SQUEALING
Source Durwood Zaelke, IGSD, Institute for
Governance and Sustainable Development Climate
Governance Brief August 2009 www.igsd.org
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CLIMATE CHANGE THE MILITARY II

• Montreal Protocol - Ozone Depleting Substances
• -The untold story of global military
  co-operation
• Stephen Andersen the EPA
• -The fully burdened cost of fuel
• -GHG emissions / solar power / managing military
  land
• -Mindset / analysis / research / action

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ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY MILESTONES

• Drought in the Amazon Drinking water in Sao
  Paolo
• Darfur
• Katrina
• Peruvian glaciers
• Failing states terrorism
• The Arctic sea ice the Greenland glacier
• The UN Secretary Generals Report on Climate
  Change Security

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THE LOSS OF THE THIRD POLE GLACIERS?

• 22 of humanity rely on summer melt water from
  the
• Hindu Kush / Himalayan / Tibet glaciers
• The great rivers of Asia
• Yangtze-Brahmaputra-Ganges-Huang
  Ho-Indus-Mekong-Salween
• Flooding as the glacial dams burst
• Loss of summer melt water
• Loss of hydro-electric power schemes
• Changes to the Monsoon? Earthquakes? Extra sea
  level rise
• Damage to Tibetan permafrost

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THE COUNTRIES AT RISK

• India Pakistan Afghanistan
• The Central Asian Republics China
• The Mekong Riparian Countries Burma/Myanmar
  Bangladesh
• Nepal Bhutan
• Hindu Kush/Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau

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THE MILITARY IMPLICATIONS

• Unrest in rural China
• political stability of China
• Afghanistan Pakistan
• impact on existing wars
• India Bangladesh
• displacement migration
• The diversion of the Brahmaputra
• a casus belli?

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WHEN?

• By 2050? By 2035? By 2020?
• The political impact can be delayed by denial
• - but the military may want to apply the
  precautionary principle!

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BLACK CARBON I

• It causes warming in two ways. First, Black
  Carbon in the atmosphere absorbs solar radiation,
  which heats the surrounding air second, surface
  deposition of airborne Black Carbon can darken
  snow and ice and accelerate melting. In the
  Himalayan region, Ramanathan and Carmichael
  estimate that solar heating from Black Carbon at
  high elevations may be as important as CO2 for
  melting snow and ice. Their model simulations
  indicate that approximately 0.6?C of the 1?C
  warming in the Tibetan Himalayas since the 1950s
  may be due to atmospheric Black Carbon.
• Ramanathan V, Carmichael G, Global and regional
  climate changes due to black carbon, NATURE
  GEOSCIENCE Volume 1, pp. 221227, 2008.

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BLACK CARBON II

• Black Carbon is as important as CO2 in driving
  the warming of the Third Pole
• Mario Molina, Durwood Zaelke, K. Madhava Sarma,
  Stephen O. Andersen, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, and
  Donald Kaniaru, Reducing abrupt climate change
  risk using the Montreal Protocol and other
  regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2
  emissions, Proceedings of the National Academy
  of Science USA, forthcoming in November 2009

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THREAT MINIMIZERS

• Reduce Black Carbon
• - Indian cooking stoves, scrubbers on Chinese
  power stations, marine fuel diesel, reduce the
  burning of forests
• Talk to each other honestly share research
• Involve the global military now and highlight at
  Rio20 in 2012

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INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY

• www.envirosecurity.org
• Climate Change The Military The State of the
  Debate

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