Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
will arise from scarcity but also increased climate variability that may cause short-term
economic shocks, reduced employment opportunities and increased recruitment to
armed groups.
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International Alert insists that a total of 46 nations and 2.7 billion
people are now at high risk of being overwhelmed by armed con
ict and war
because of climate change. A further 56 countries
face political destabilisation,
ecting another 1.2 billion individuals.
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James Lee distinguishes between sustained periods of divergent climate patterns
acting as a background factor to con
a
ict; climate change interacting with other,
intervening variables; and the more proximate triggers required to set o
strife. He
'
'
argues that
Hot Wars
will erupt in an Equatorial Tension Belt, due to deserti
-
cation; a
moving from being temperate or tropical to becoming
semi-arid; and other countries moving from being
'
transition zone
'
'
tropical forest to tropical grass-
land
'
and thus having to readjust economic and livelihood systems. All
such
dynamics can be termed
. This will tend towards a militarisation of
resources. Internationally, the threat of climate change will become a justi
'
livelihood wars
'
cation
for preventative war: con
icts perpetrated to stop another country from taking
harmful environmental actions that impact another, to prevent countries from
depriving others of their fair share of environmental resources and in order to
acquire basic resources.
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One comprehensive report on water scarcity in the Levant describes how this
area already stands as one speci
c microcosm of what the future is likely to hold
more generally. Tensions over water management have long plagued negotiations
in the Middle East and been the subject of periodic social
are-ups. Most key
water sources in the region are trans-boundary, with the largest water aquifers
shared between two or more states and territories. Severe droughts from 2008 have
been linked to the region
'
s worsening political climate. Climate change here is
both cause and e
ect of rising tensions. Most obviously it increases the premium
on retaining control over dwindling water sources. It makes governments less likely
to cede land in the name of peace accords and increases the risk of pre-emptive
resource seizures. It is one factor underpinning the persistence of patronage-based
governance. But the general level of existing political distrust is also a causal e
ect
of failures to cooperate on resource management. Over-in
ated military budgets
drain resources away from climate mitigation and adaptation.
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Climate change is also likely to have an impact on the broader patterns of
international relations. Ian Morris argues that no other factor will come close as a
determinant of geopolitics, not even China
'
s rise or the devastating post-2008
nancial crisis. Political history since the earliest times can, he argues, be explained
in part by the relationship between geography and the succession of di
erent
models of production. With the capacity ceiling of the current mode of production
now imminent, a fundamental change in global politics is likely.
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