Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
initiated a far more systematic programme of research on the impacts of global
climate change on military requirements, operations, doctrine, organisation, train-
ing, material, logistics, personnel and facilities, and the actions needed to address
such impacts. In June 2010, the director of the US Navy
'
s Task Force on Climate
Change stated:
We want to basically pace the threat. We don
t want to get into a tail chase
over climate change, but at the same time, we do not want to spend ahead of
need, spending for things that may not be required for years or decades later.
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'
The 2010 Quadrennial Defence Review talks of climate change as an
'
accelerant
'
of instability, and in general accords the issue higher pro
le than most European
defence documents.
15
It is often now referred to by US planners as a
'
ring road
'
issue, through which all other security issues must pass.
Towards
'
climate interventions
'
?
Some observers detect
cant movement: even if a purely climate-related
common security and defence policy (CSDP) mission may be unlikely still, EU
planners have begun to assess climate factors as part of con
signi
ict management sce-
nario-building, as well as tighter coordination with the EU
s Civil Protection
Mechanism.
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However, while European militaries have begun to take climate
security seriously, there is little evidence of preparedness for armed interventions
being carried out systematically as a central part of this agenda. Sceptics have long
feared an over-militarisation of climate issues; in practice, militaries and the wider
EU security establishment remain extremely circumspect. At least for the moment,
the prospect of EU military missions being deployed regularly as a response to cli-
mate change events appears a distant one.
The European Parliament
'
s October 2012 report was largely negative in its
assessment of EU policies implemented to date. Climate security has been
'
'
over-
shadowed
by the eurozone crisis and climate-sensitive assessments have not yet been
incorporated into CSDP planning. No list of climate-stressed states has been pro-
duced in which the EU should prepare to act; no matching of generic threats to
actual EU policies has been forthcoming (with the report stressing that the United
Nations
'
s) Environment and Security initiative has similarly failed in this).
Climate impact is woefully short of being mainstreamed into EU defence coordina-
tion in the way that gender or human rights have been. The External Action Service
(EAS) has failed to take advantage of the new Lisbon Treaty provision that enables it
to launch a start-up fund as a means to enhance available capacities to respond to
climate con
'
s(UN
'
icts and disasters; indeed, defence cutbacks seriously compromise the
