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Climate change amplifies existing threats to national security

We need to stop thinking of climate change as future hazard. It is
happening right now, and it is damaging our national security as well as
our way of life.

Global warming has not yet reached the Paris-agreed limit
of 1.5C, and already the shocks to global weather are ravaging communities
around the world.

Speaking as the IPCC delivered their latest assessment,
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres called it a “ticking climate time
bomb”. In a troubled world, with real concerns about cost of living, the
creeping dangers posed by climate change are too easily ignored. But we do
so at our peril.

Borders are no protection against its effects and, as
authoritarian states mount a challenge to the entire international system,
climate change further amplifies existing threats to UK national security.
Heat, drought, water shortages, food scarcity and fuel conflict drive huge
numbers of people from their homes.

Changes in the climate are having a
devastating social and economic effect, putting severe pressure on many of
the most vulnerable countries. This can exacerbate unrest and play a role
in the outbreak of war. Ethnic tensions in Sudan in 2003 were inflamed when
drought and hunger took hold. As then UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon
warned at the time: “The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis,
arising at least in part from climate change.” For decades before clashes
erupted, the Sahara Desert had advanced a mile a year into Sudan.

 Independent 26th March 2023

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/britain-climate-change-threat-national-security-b2308198.html

March 29, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change