Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Assessments of the risks of climate change to the military are now routine
in the United States, where strategic analysts have identified threats to
critical infrastructure and other assets (particularly overseas military bases),
key transportation corridors and sources of raw materials. The US Center for
Naval Analysis also concluded that the US's excessive national dependence
on oil burdens the military, undermines combat effectiveness, and exacts
a huge price tag - in dollars and lives' (CNA, 2009: vii). The 2010 US
Quadrennial Defense Review not only recognizes climate change as a 'threat
multiplier' but identifies energy efficiency as 'force multiplier' and the US
Department of Defense (DoD) has emerged as an aggressive energy innovator
and has embarked upon a program of retrofitting its military installations with
energy saving and renewable technologies to ensure its own energy security
by reducing exposure to disruption of supply and also reduce running costs
(DoDUS, 2010: 87).
While the ADF plays a different role from the US military, they can and should
take steps to reduce their own contribution to climate change while minimizing
their exposure to its threats. This would include reducing the ADF's overall
carbon bootprint and increasing energy security by reducing its dependence on
fossil fuels (Australia, like the US, is a net importer of oil).
The ADF also has an important role to play in remedial adaptation, both
domestically and in the near Asia Pacific region, providing emergency relief
and humanitarian assistance in response to extreme weather events and other
sudden and severe climate impacts, as it did following the 2004 Boxing Day
tsunami.
However, there are also limits to what the ADF can do. While it may
have the capability to defend the nation from invading armies and to
provide emergency relief in times of disaster, it is not equipped to handle
encroaching oceans, deserts or diseases, or prevent the loss of biodiversity,
fisheries, agricultural productivity and human livelihoods of Australian
citizens. If the impacts of climate change are to be minimized, then it is
necessary to look beyond defence policy and the role of the military to other
policy domains.
National security in the service of human security
There are good reasons for the development of a 'whole-of-government' national
security strategy in response to climate change (Camilleri, 2012). Neither the
Australian Department of Defence nor any other single government department
or agency (whether federal, State or local) is able to manage the complex
security challenges raised by climate change, many of which offer a fundamental
challenge to the idea of territorial defence. However, a 'whole-of-government'
approach to national security is nonetheless needed, which transcends the idea
of territorial defence from external attack, along with the Cold War mentality
of 'us-versus-them', and recognizes the complex interdependencies that now
characterize our globalized world.
