Monday, November 16, 2015

Neil Bhatiya — Climate Change as a Development & Security Threat

In his first answer at Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary debate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders reiterated his belief, even in light of Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, that climate change was the principal threat facing the United States:
In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism. And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say, you're going to see counties all over the world...they're going to be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops, and you're going to see all kinds of international conflict.
As someone who has written about the connection between the effects of climate change and its impact on human security, I am of two minds when politicians raise this issue. On the one hand, my hope would be that the more attention paid to potential climate change-conflict links the better, especially if it leads to more attention and political will to fight climate change in the first place. On the other hand, these links are highly complex, and it is easy to over-simplify the issue. Vox's Brad Plumer summarized this best when he wrote: “The truth about climate change and conflict is more complex and nuanced than a short soundbite can allow, but it's foolish to dismiss the entire topic out of hand.”
Bhatiya does the nuance.
The bottom line is that climate change as a “threat multiplier” can make a lot of pre-existing security issues worse, especially in states with weak governance, long-standing ethnic or sectarian tensions, or resource-dependent economies (in other words, states that were susceptible to conflict risk even outside of climate concerns).…
As important as climate change is as a security threat, it is much more immediately serious as a development problem.…
The Century Foundation
Climate Change as a Development & Security Threat
Neil Bhatiya

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