[Radix] Climate Change as a Continuation of War by Other Means

[Patrick Meier]

A short Op-Ed perhaps of interest given the recent discussion on climate and
international security (pasted below).

Climate Change as a Continuation of War by Other Means
Journal of International Develoment, Environment and Sustainability (IDEAS)
http://blogs.fletcher.tufts.edu/ideas/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/meyer_climatechangeandwar.pdf


Best,
Patrick
---
PhD Associate
The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/phd/students/Meier.html


Patrick Meier (Fletcher PhD Candidate)
An Opinion Editorial submitted February 2007
IDEAS, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/ierp/ideas/default.html

If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then climate change
can be used as a
continuation of war by other means. Clausewitz's oft-quote dictum warns that
war should not be
considered an end in itself but rather as a means of using force to achieve
political gains. While
the Sudanese government executes genocide as a continuation of its
statecraft, there is no single
crisis in the Sudan—there are multiple crises cascading into a complex
series of disastrous
emergencies. The complicity of the Sudanese government is indisputable but
the genesis of the
current crises in the Sudan is fundamentally ecological in nature and
exacerbated by long-term
climate change.

In the early 1980s, the low-lying plains used by pastoral nomads in Darfur
were
disproportionately hit during one of the worst droughts in over half a
century. Increasing
poverty, famine, desertification, and land degradation followed the drought
and nomads
migrated north in search of better pastures. Hundreds of thousands sought
water and forage in
the Jebel Marra region of Darfur. This intensified and escalated the
occasional conflict between
local farmers and migrating nomad. The drought further decimated the
environmental
productivity of the region and violence flared.

This was not a natural disaster, however. It was a political disaster that
resulted from the
conscious decisions or intentional indecisions by those holding the reigns
of power in
Khartoum. As in other complex emergencies, if crises are not produced
deliberately they are
often allowed to progress. The government exploited the multiple ecological
crises, effectively
using the impact of climate change as a continuation of genocide by other
means. To be sure, the
government is directly responsible for the orchestrated extermination of
some 150,000 people
(and counting). At the same time, these premeditated atrocities coupled with
the ongoing
ecological crises displaced millions and killed 250,000 civilians. The
leading causes of death
were health-related but the crime was committed in Khartoum. In effect, the
Sudanese
government has exploited the impact of climate change by using it as a force
multiplier to carry
out the execution of 400,000 civilians.

There is little doubt that climate change will spawn new ecological crises
across Africa that could
then be subsequently exploited by corrupt governments as a continuation of
war by other
means. Indeed, the occurrence of "natural" disasters amid complex political
crises is
increasingly widespread: over 140 natural disasters have occurred alongside
complex political
crises in the past five years alone. Furthermore, the dramatic increase in
major disasters
witnessed in the last 50 years provides worrying evidence of this trend, and
as climate change
produces more droughts in the Horn of Africa, this pace will accelerate.
However these need not
become complex political emergencies unless perilously managed—perhaps
deliberately so—by
outdated strategies of war and veto-diplomacy.

Can dedicated early warning or surveillance systems untangle the multiple
but interdependent
crises that characterize complex emergencies, particularly in response to
climate change? More
importantly, can high quality and continuous information gathering identify
the ecological
ingredients of complex crises before they are exploited for perverse
political purposes? No one
knows because the disaster management and conflict prevention communities
simply do not
collaborate despite the cascading conflation of climatic hazards and
political crises in Africa and
beyond.

Perhaps practitioners in their respective fields do not see the functional
parallels that exist in
their risk assessments, monitoring and warning systems, dissemination and
communication
activities, and response capabilities. Yet these analogous functions have
real operational
consequences for implementing organizations and stakeholders. Furthermore,
disaster early
warning systems are too narrowly focused on meteorological and agricultural
information at the
expense of socio-political indicators while conflict early warning systems
really need to
mainstream environmental change indicators into their analyses. These
intellectual and
operational gaps can be addressed by promoting more cross-disciplinary
research that generate
joint IDEAS based on innovative studies in International Development,
Environment and
Sustainability.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.ecie.org/pipermail/radix/attachments/20070425/72978c7c/attachment.html