WSJ: US Intelligence - Global Warming Creating Security Risks
online.wsj.com
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WASHINGTON -- Global climate change will have "wide ranging implications for U.S. national security interests" over the next two decades, affecting the stability of some developing countries and potentially contributing to civil conflict, according to the first public intelligence analysis of the security impacts of global warming.
The report's sweeping conclusions will likely add fuel to the political debate as battles over climate change and energy heat up on the campaign trail. Last year's congressional mandate for this intelligence report sparked fierce partisan clashes as Republicans argued that intelligence resources shouldn't be used for a report that relied on information that wasn't secret.
Partisan fights over the security impacts of climate change date back at least to the Clinton administration, when then-Vice President Al Gore launched an initiative at the CIA in 1997 to study the security implications of environmental degradation. It collapsed a few years later under political pressure from congressional Republicans.
The biggest impact on U.S. security will be indirect, the report finds, resulting from "climate-driven effects on many other countries and their potential to seriously affect U.S. national security interests," Thomas Fingar, chief of analysis for the director of national intelligence, will tell Congress Wednesday, according to the draft of his opening statement.
Climate-driven resource problems -- such as water shortages, extreme weather, and increased disease -- are likely to have the greatest impact, prompting conflict over dwindling resources and prompting migration as climate grow harsher, analysts found.
While intelligence analysts found that climate change is unlikely, by itself, to prompt states to fail, they say it is likely to amplify existing problems stemming from poverty, social tensions and weak political institutions. Environmental decline could contribute to civil wars or, less likely, conflicts between countries.
Climate change has the potential to affect domestic stability "in a number of key states," as well as international trade, and the broader global economy, the analysts found. Closer to home analysts anticipate more severe storms, a rising demand for energy and increased pressure on infrastructure in the U.S. Government and business efforts to mitigate these problems may affect U.S. national-security interests more than the direct impact of climate change, analysts found.
The impact on global economic growth through 2030 is likely to be minimal, analyst found. Countries in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southeast Asia, however, may feel disproportionate economic effects because they will have greater difficulty coping with climate change. In the U.S., while there will be economic costs to increased natural disasters, they may be balanced by a rise in agricultural productivity. The U.S. will also have to prepare for growing pressure from migration from affected countries.
Drawing on the work of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and tapping experts from around the government, the intelligence report notes that changes in ecosystems and natural resources are occurring faster and with greater magnitude than scientists anticipated a decade ago.
Sub-Saharan Africa will continue to be the most vulnerable region because it faces multiple stresses on the environmental, economic and political fronts. There, climate change is expected to hit agricultural yields hard, reducing them by as much as 50% by 2020.
In the Middle East, where impacts are harder to predict because of limited data, the report projected that water availability in the critical Tigris and Euphrates rivers may be affected as the average temperature is expected to rise by one degree Celsius. In Asia, environmental change could lead to as many as 50 million new people at risk of hunger by 2020. The Arctic is expected to continue warming, analysts note, adding that historically these regions have heated up at twice the rate as the whole globe.
Because intelligence agencies don't normally tackle environmental issues, Mr. Fingar said, the report "used a fundamentally different" type of intelligence collection and analysis method that drew heavily on scientists inside and outside the government. One key finding, he said, was that the level of scientific understanding of climate change is not as specific as the information normally needed for a detailed intelligence analysis, especially on the regional impacts of climate change. Mr. Fingar plans three follow-on reports. |
