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In-Depth Information
interventions in Pakistan and Haiti. However, while such missions and support
re
ect an evolution in military thinking, they have been extremely low key and
cannot be said to represent major deployments triggered primarily by climate fac-
tors. No EU military deployment has been countenanced to safeguard supplies
coming into Europe, as one might expect in a
'
lifeboat
'
security scenario.
s climate security envoy stressed that climate change would begin to
shape UK military deployments and missions. However, while the British military
has begun to think in terms of climate security, tangible and operational changes
remain limited. The UK
The UK
'
'
s Strategy and Defence Review contains nothing on
recon
guring the military for a climate-threatened international system. Those
close to the centre of planning decisions reveal
that
the priority attached to
resourcing existing missions
guration
appropriate to climate change impacts. It has proven impossible for ministers, under
intense public pressure for under-equipping troops in theatre, especially in Afgha-
nistan, to use scarce resources for nebulous long-term threats rather than plugging
the gaps in basic operation equipment. As forces are removed from Afghanistan,
the conviction is that more scope will exist to focus on longer-term climate threats.
In 2007, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) signed a three-year, £12 million
deal with the Met O
is delaying the necessary military recon
ict and
security threats might emerge as a result of climate change.
23
However, in 2009 it
retracted over a third of that budget, justifying the cut as a necessary diversion of
resources to
ce Hadley Centre designed to identify where con
'
prioritising success in current operations, such as Afghanistan
'
.
24
The
programme was not renewed after 2010. O
cials complain that in a time of
shrinking overall defence spending, the easiest cuts to make are those that relate to
preparations for longer-term risks. While the MoD may have come to accept the
need to take climate change seriously as a long-term risk factor, its o
cials tend to
think in a relatively con
ned way about how environmental pressure will condition
military missions; they have done little to suggest that they conceive climate change
as a factor that is likely to condition the broader politics of international security and
the UK
s strategic positioning. In private, diplomats admit that they are only able to
paint the very broad impacts of climate change at a regional level and do not have
the detail to understand country level e
'
ects in a way that reshapes concrete con
ict
interventions and peace work on the ground.
As commented, Spain
'
s Unidad Militar de Emergencias (UME) was established
speci
cally to deal with natural disasters and environmental catastrophes, including
those triggered by climatic factors. The unit consists of 4,000 personnel, and
answers to the minister of defence. The UME was activated in Haiti, during the
Lorca earthquake relief operation, and in response to
res in Galicia and the
Baleares. The UME has been studied as a model by o
cials from the US, China
and Latin American countries.
25
However, while it is true that the UME deployed
