Commentary | Why Climate Change and Environment Don’t Matter to National Security

Looking back on 2007, the year might become known as the “Climate Change Ides of March” for U.S. National Security. With major reports released from the IPCC, Center for Naval Analysis Corporation, CSIS with the Center for a New American Security, and the Council on Foreign Relations detailing impacts of global warming on national security, the logical conclusion would be that policy makers and the Department of Defense are undertaking serious reviews of this nefarious future. Yet, this has not happened. More importantly it is unlikely that it will in the near future.

Sour grapes? Pessimism? Hardly. The challenge of getting policy makers and Pentagon brass to seriously consider the devastating impacts of Climate Change and Environmental Shock isn’t one of neglect or unwillingness, but the lack of a grand national security strategy driven by a security paradigm capable of creating the proper context for threats and vulnerabilities of a post-Cold War era. And the finger can’t be pointed solely at the Pentagon either. Well intentioned leaders in academia, NGOs, and most international agencies have viewed the near term challenges to global security equally myopically through a linear, parochial Cold War security syntax. Until this narrative is expanded to encompass the security challenges of today and the future in a synchronous, holistic manner, we run the risk of doing more harm than good through entrenched, antiquated bureaucratic approaches falling along traditional interest lines.

In 1994, the United Nations Development Program Report entitled “New Dimensions of Human Security” recognized that the relaxing of hostilities between the United States and the USSR should allow for greater focus to be placed on root causes of global insecurity. The report was a seminal work in beginning the dialogue for future security through identifying seven components of human security: Political, Economic, Personal, Community, Health, Food, and Environment. It recognized that in the developing world, security was very much an issue of internal concerns with fragile governments either unable or unwilling to provide these basic components of human security.

Over a decade after the release of this UN report, we still fail to shift our thinking from a state-centric power model to a human security paradigm as we have yet to view our vulnerabilities through a lens of One Degree Separation. Because the security challenges of the near future are most pronounced in the developing world governed at best by fragile states with little capacity to mitigate shocks, the elements of human security—personal, political, economic, food, health, environment, community—impact directly on one another in a system of systems, non-linear complexity. Because this Human Security System has so little resilience, an impact on one creates a higher level of insecurity throughout the entirety of the system. Too much shock in one area or a combination thereof creates an intolerable amount of insecurity draining hope of resolution except through expressions of force or violence.

By way of example, compare the aftermath here in the United States of Hurricane Katrina. Most don’t view it as such, but the United States had environmental refugees strewn throughout the country. Yet, for the billions of dollars of damages and suffering inflicted on the population of the Gulf Coast, the U.S. government was not toppled. The United States as a robust system was able to absorb the shock with multiple degrees of separation between economy, food production, health services, etc. (Although those on the ground would argue the system in the direct vicinity was taxed beyond capacity and personal security became an issue in the aftermath.) Yet, take the flooding of a country such as Mozambique or the toxic chemical spills off the coast of Cote d’Ivoire, which brought the country into chaos nearly toppling the government.

How do we arrive at a human security paradigm and prevent the security challenges of the near future from continuing to fall along the strategic seams of our bureaucratic institutions? Getting to a fix requires new dynamic endeavors amongst government agencies, NGOs, international agencies, and the private sector. NGOs must begin to see the advantages of working with the Department of Defense in proactive ways before vulnerabilities become threats and threats become conflict. The private sector has begun to seize the notion of environmental security as well. In the October 2007 Harvard Business Review, “Investing in Global Security” Peter Schwartz writes “the systems vulnerabilities created by climate change can turn into ‘systems opportunities’ for businesses to develop novel partnerships with government” and others. No small statement.

The Department of Defense has a tremendous over the horizon opportunity to forge a new era of partnership through forwarding the idea of environmental security as an engagement strategy rather than environment as a logistical afterthought. The DOD should seriously consider creating a task force consisting of experts in the field of security and environment into a Global Environmental Security Survey Team (GESST) to look at how global warming is driving human insecurity. This task force would be the first step in recreating an office devoted to environmental security as an engagement policy. This office would work proactively and inclusively with partners across the spectrum to mitigate environmental shock now and investigate adaptation strategies in the future.

As John Podesta has said, this is an age of consequence. Talk of the “Climate Change Ides of March” is necessary but insufficient to explain the creeping vulnerabilities of a larger human security paradigm. Lacking a more comprehensive discussion in this arena, we are pushed dangerously close to the consequences for all ages.

Shannon Beebe is the Senior Africa Analyst on Army staff and a leading thinker on environment and security. The opinions expressed here are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense or United States Army.