Arctic environmental security and abrupt climate change - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 101

atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) lifetimes. Third, the changes may occur due
to second-order effects of the global system, as positive feedback loops originally
unrelated to the more obvious forcing (e.g. Arctic methane gas release caused
by melting permafrost) (Marshall 2013). Finally, abrupt changes are often cat-
egorized as such due to the inability of related systems to adapt, leading to the
possible description 'dangerous' climate change. The danger does not neces-
sarily stem from threats of violent conflict between people. Climate change is
very unlikely to lead directly to conflict (Gleditsch 1998; Floyd 2008), but may
adversely affect social, political and economic systems at varying levels, and
these overlapping systems may contain feedback loops that accelerate the stabil-
ity shifts.
Most issues concerning resources and conflict stem not from changes in the
environment as a root cause, but rather, the failure of political and economic
systems to provide adequate resources or adaptation measures. At times such
failure can be deliberate, as with resilience and livelihood targeting during
violent conflicts (Brown 2004; Briggs et al . 2009). At other times these fail-
ures can be second- or third-order effects, such as the breakdown in food and
health security experienced in Zimbabwe. The effects of climate change in
such situations have been conceptualized as 'threat multipliers', conditions
that exacerbate risks and make adaptation more difficult (CNA Corp. 2007),
but not conditions that could be understood as the root causes of conflict. The
concept of abrupt climate change is both quantitatively and qualitatively dis-
tinct, in that such sudden shifts in environmental conditions will not merely
emphasize existing inequalities and conflicts. Vulnerable systems, be they
ecological, political or economic, may 'fail' completely should environmental
conditions shift much more quickly than adaptation allows (Gallopín 2007).
Failures of systems need not be understood in simple, binary terms often used
to describe failed states in political science. Rather, unstable systems will
find a new, often lower, level of stability and functioning, often resulting in
severely negative consequences for certain components or populations.
Environmental issues are not necessarily more complex than the socio-
political conditions that give rise to violent conflict, but it is far more
difficult to attribute intentions or divination of rational thought to how con-
ditions change. Global environmental conditions are also inextricably linked
to social, political and economic systems, which can further compound uncer-
tainty when analysts would prefer to study systems as discrete collections of
isolated variables. Thus, climate change is not merely the interaction of a few
variables, where a simple, linear relationship exists between levels of atmos-
pheric greenhouse gases and average atmospheric temperatures. Rather, the
global climate is a complex system, exhibiting emergent properties and influ-
enced by numerous feedback effects, none of which can easily be predicted in
advance. Just as with ecological systems, the climate may rest upon multiple
points of stability, but these stable levels may be unsuitable for both existing
human and environmental adaptation.