Is there any upside to climate change? There might be, if the international community turns it into an opportunity for peace-building, according to a new report from International Alert.
The report, “A Climate of Conflict: The Links Between Climate Change, Peace and War,” doesn’t sugar-coat the global security threats posed by global warming. In fact, its projections are downright frightening: 46 countries with a total population of 2.7 billion people face a high risk of violent conflict as the effects of climate change worsen; another 56 nations with 1.2 billion more people are threatened by a strong possibility of political instability, with violent conflict posing a more distant risk.
“There is a real risk that climate change will compound the propensity for violent conflict, which in turn will leave communities poorer, less resilient and less able to cope with the consequences of climate change,” write the report’s authors, Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda. In many of the countries identified as at-risk, they add, “it is too late to believe the situation can be made safe solely by reducing carbon emissions worldwide and mitigating climate change.”
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim to do those things, Smith and Vivekananda say. But it does mean the international community should be taking action now to help those threatened countries to better adapt to the effects of climate change. Accomplishing that could cost anywhere from $10 billion to $40 billion, they estimate. Unfortunately, only a few hundred million dollars are now invested in such efforts, with another billion “somewhere in the pipeline.”
There’s a better way, though, Smith and Vivekananda say: working to build peace by helping at-risk communities develop social processes for adapting to climate change and managing conflicts before they become violent.
“It is an approach that brings the hard science of climate change – which local communities do not and cannot be expected to know in the first instance, and which must be communicated clearly – together with local knowledge and understanding to figure out the best mode of adaptation,” they write.
That’s no easy task, certainly, but it’s doable if the international community can muster the political will and commitment that’s needed. Smith and Vivekananda recommend 12 actions that could move things in a more positive direction: They include making conflict and climate change a higher priority in international politics, more research into the social and political consequences of climate change, putting a higher priority on climate adaptation rather than mitigation in fragile states, preparing for ways to deal with climate-caused migration, and working with businesses to find solutions.
It sounds daunting … until you consider the alternatives outlined in Smith and Vivekananda’s report.
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Shirley Siluk Gregory
Shirley Siluk Gregory, a transplanted Chicagoan now living in Northwest Florida, represents the progressive half of Green Options' Red, Green and Blue segment. She holds a bachelor's degree in Geological Sciences from Northwestern University but graduated in 1984, just when the market for geologists was flatter than the Florida landscape. Just as well, though: she had little interest in spending her life either in a laboratory or, heaven forbid, an oil field. So, of course, she went into journalism. After extremely low-paying but fun and educational stints at several suburban Chicago weeklies and dailies, Shirley and her then-boyfriend/now-husband Scott found themselves displaced by a media buyout and spending the next several years working as freelancers. Among their credits: The Chicago Tribune, a publication for the manufactured-housing industry, and Web Hosting Magazine, a now-defunct publication that came and went with the dotcom era. Shirley's always been concerned about nature and conservation (and an avid pack-rat, as her family can attest to), but became even more rabidly interested in the environment primarily due to two factors: the growing signs that global warming was real and threatening, and the birth of her son, Noah, in 2003. Suddenly, the prospect of a world that might not be quite as habitable in 40 or 50 years took on a whole new, and personal, meaning. Living where she lives now also helped light the fire of Shirley's environmental awareness: her hometown was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and beaten up again by Hurricane Dennis in 2005. That, and the fact that she and her family were vacationing in New Orleans until the day before Katrina -- and spent 12 hours driving home for a trip that normally takes 3 -- has made Shirley deeply appreciate how fragile our lifestyles are, and how dependent they are on sound management of natural resources and sustainable living practices. That's why she's become a passionate reader and writer about all things green and sustainable.
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The Global Warming debate, now more accurately called Climate Change, involves CO2 levels, but what about all the other chemical gasses forming urban smogs around the world. Surely dioxins and the like are far more dangerous than CO2 which is essential for plant life- is CO2 really the threat, or are the multitude of other airbourne chemicals more relevant to the cleanliness of the air that we breathe, and the fumagated greenhouse debate?