Climate change, human security and the role of the military in the coming global politics of a carbo

1
Climate change, human security and the role of
the military in the coming global politics of a
carbon-constrained worldConference on Climate
Insecurities, Human Security and Social
Resilience Conference, Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, Nanyang University,
Singapore, 27-28 August 2009

• Richard Tanter
• Nautilus Institute Australia
• http//www.globalcollab.org/Nautilus/australia
• rtanter_at_nautilus.org

2
Outline

• Climate change as a security issue
• Whats missing in the current field of climate
  change and security?
• Climate change impacts on bilateral security
  relations
• Salient characteristics of mitigation and
  adaptation
• Core contemporary forms of security threat from
  organized violence
• Climate change and conflict sources of
  uncertainty
• Psycho-social frames for conflict and cooperation
• Global politics in a carbon-constrained world
• REDD politics as a paradigm of destructive
  interdependence
• The military, human security and climate change

3
1. Climate change as a security issue

• Booming field
• different players/interests/definitions of
  security
• almost all deeply flawed
• Three main groups
• Informed enthusiasts
• Academic sceptics
• (gtgtAcademic adaptation approaches as compromise)
• Systems approaches
• Comprehensive list of studies in English
• Climate change and security - analysis, Nautilus
  Institute
• http//www.globalcollab.org/Nautilus/australia/ref
  raming/cc-security/cc-sec-policy/

4
Commonly anticipated climate change threats and
roles of military force
5
2. Whats missing in the current field of climate
change and security?

• applications of systems approaches vs analytic
  approaches where relevant
• integration with energy security analyses
• incorporation of mitigation and adaptation
• incorporation of mal-adaptation as a feedback
  element
• application to advanced high-tech highly
  interdependent social-ecological system
• incorporation of global/national political
  dynamics
• analysis of more fundamental threat to
  bio-diversity
• models of bilateral security impacts and
  application to real world situation

6
3. Climate change impacts on bilateral security
relations

• Key real world requirement - for all of us.
• Bilateral emphasis is an artificial extraction
  from complex larger systems, but actual.
• Most existing work on climate change and security
  is either global, regional or abstractly
  national.
• Interesting anthropological/geographic work on
  micro-regions, but ...
• Both state- and human-security concerns require
  inquiry on significant bilateral relations
• There is no extant work, either theoretical or
  applied.

7
Layered frames for analysing bilateral security
impacts of climate change

• bio-physical and social-ecological systems under
  consideration
• historically formed relationship between the two
  societies and states
• intentional collective efforts to address actual
  and expected climate change through mitigation of
  greenhouse gas generation and release, and
  adaptation to specific patterns of climate change

8
Definition and data requirements for each frame
for analysis of bilateral security consequences
of climate change e.g. Indonesia-Australia

• bio-physical and social-ecological systems
• which parts of Indonesia and Australia?
• how to disaggregate national analyses/data?
• what interactive systems analyses/data?
• historically formed relationship
• almost no serious deep and broad analysis of
  actual relationship beyond trade/tourism flows
• consequences of mitigation and adaptation
• almost nothing systematic known

9
4. Characteristics of mitigation and adaptation
(Bosello et al, 2007)

10
5. Core contemporary forms of security threat
from organized violence

• Consequences of break-down of law, organised
  crime, and terror
• Transnational non-state networks aiming at
  destabilization of governments
• Wars of always incipient genocide aimed at the
  reconstitution of the nation-state (internal
  make-up and borders)
• Wars of imperial intervention
• The re-constituted imaginary total war of global
  scale involving potential nuclear exterminist
  means and uncontrollable consequences.

11
Note salient characteristics of contemporary
militaries

• Core role professionals in application and
  management of lethal force
• Significant expansion of role-sets from
  war-fighting peace-making, peace-keeping,
  border-/refugee control, resource protection,
  narcotics interception, environmental policing
• Symbol of nationalized identities and visible
  protector of national integrity
• High level of international isomorphism of
  national militaries and military cultures
• Agents/bearers of bilateral, regional and global
  alliances

12
6. Climate change and conflict sources of
uncertainty

• Military security and human security unavoidable
  two-way ambiguities
• Benefits and risks of securitizing climate change
• Pre-existing resilience issues and conflicts
• Level of success or failure in timely global
  mitigation action
• Mal-adaptive or conflict consequences of
  adaptation
• Timing, visibility and consequences of non-linear
  climate processes tipping points
• Climate change as a global problem highly
  interdependent with other persisting global
  problems

13
Climate change as a case of the species of
global problems

• Characteristics of global problems
• Effects are potentially universal
• Effects are cascading
• Complex/non-linear
• Highly inter-related
• Causes and effects may be separated by time and
  geography
• Solutions/strategies may be separated
• Knowledge ranges from open knowledge to
  classified information
• Knowledge is multi-disciplinary/inter-disciplinary
  
• Solutions must be multiple, interlinked, and
  close to simultaneous to avoid destructive
  feedback

14
7. Psycho-social frames for conflict and
cooperation

• Universal capacity for negative psycho-social
  dynamics in politics will be salient to
  perceptions of climate change impacts and
  responsibilities
• existential and intangible character of threat to
  bio-social basis of life and livelihood
• parallel to Cold War exterminist character of
  nuclear terrors
• psychological mechanisms will be central to the
  maintenance and articulation of carbon politics
• denial what climate change? Nothing to do
  with us.
• projection and displacement Well cut emissions
  when . does. They are the ones causing.
• scapegoating Its all the fault of insert
  least favourite global actor.

15
Psycho-social mechanisms in politics and military
role

• political utility resource for politicians
• Bush and Howard re Kyoto Protocol
• already in play displaying root senses of threat
• rich countries our standard of living is
  threatened both by those that imitate us, and
  those whose chaos undermines us.
• developing countries response rich countries
  common and differentiated responsibilities
  unlikely to be met climate change as an
  historical crime
• key is resistance, displacement and splitting
  that work together to undermine concepts and
  practice of indivisible security
• salient to enforcement of carbon regimes - and
  resistance to them

16
8. Global politics in a carbon-constrained world

• Some assumptions - unless a climatic tipping
  point is reached early with socio-ecological
  major consequences socially visible to
  power-holders
• technically efficacious mitigation efforts will
  be inadequate in our lifetime
• dependent on spatial/national/class location,
  conscious, planned adaptation efforts will be
  inadequate and widely perceived as unjust
• some adaptation processes will have highly
  negative consequences, with uneven degrees of
  local, or geographically or sectorally
  constrained vs universal impacts

17
Global politics in a carbon-constrained world
best parallel Cold War, but

• no historical precedents for the coming
  carbon-constrained world
• There is no precedent in human history for a
  global disaster that affects whole societies in
  multiple ways at many different locations all at
  once. J.R. McNeill, Age of Transitions
• global bio-physical systemic driver, with lethal
  socio-ecological consequences differentially
  distributed
• global carbon regime system imperatives will
  penetrate and shape domestic national politics
• cross-cutting formations of interest and
  resentment overlaying and mobilizing existing
  conflict formations
• core carbon governance model reluctant, partial
  and incipiently failing interdependence between
  rich and poor worlds

18
New version of the west vs the rest

• new carbon regime will be marked by the global
  conditions of its birth rather than by the
  characteristics of the problem it is trying to
  solve
• new version of the west vs the rest, but
  cross-cut by contested multipolarity
• rise of China and India in fact closely tied to
  carbon regimes
• China unlikely to continue linear growth path
  without disruption
• diminished American hegemony coupled to
  simultaneous domain crises climate, finance,
  culture, military overstretch
• effective global governance will only follow
  catastrophe
• more nuclear weapons states, more nuclear energy
  higher risk of nuclear next-use
• carbon policing missions disposition to
  carbon-regime intervention

19
9. REDD politics as a paradigm of destructive
interdependence

• REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
  Destructive forest practices
• REDD Plus - Bali Action Plan
• Policy approaches and positive incentives on
  issues relating to reducing emissions from
  deforestation and forest degradation in
  developing countries and the role of
  conservation, sustainable management of forests
  and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in
  developing countries.

20

• basic model industrial/rich countries purchase
  carbon emission reduction credits by paying
  developing/tropical rainforest countries to avoid
  deforestation or plant/manage forests
• to be established as global institution under
  UNFCC at Copenhagen? Market or fund?
• already pilot schemes, aid projects, carbon
  credit trading, and widespread consequent crime
  and unrest
• existing and planned rich country emissions
  reduction schemes highly dependent on huge REDD
  Plus plans

21
REDD problems

• Some variation dependent on scheme structure
• Cross-national institutional interdependence for
  viability of national carbon regimes
• Criminal/fraud possibilities very high
• Sub-prime carbon carbon derivatives markets
• With best will, very hard to implement
• Buyer country view failure of compliance on a
  massive scale, and exacerbation of existential
  threat
• Seller country view imposition of ecological
  debt external exacerbation of social tensions
• Carbon-complicance aid and intervention

22
Mal-adaptation possibility Australian-Southeast
Asia energy adaptation

• SEA countries and Australia adapting to climate
  change by shifting nuclear energy issues
• Indonesian, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia,
  Philippines, nuclear power proposals
• Australian uranium expansion waste import
  proposals uranium enrichment advocacy
• last now justified by likely NE Asian and
  possible SEA nuclear proliferation
• regional response to Australian arms spending and
  doctrine, now amplified by Australian nuclear
  developments.
• Perfect vicious circle feedback system unless
  altered intentionally by rectification of
  perceptions and avoidance of maladaptive
  responses.

23
10. The military, human security and climate
change

• Role of the military depends on the perceived
  threat and the salient aspect of the structure of
  global politics
• Real question then concerns the structure of
  conflict formations and the accepted role of
  organised state violence in conflict resolution
• Carbon regime maintenance military missions will
  be come normal unless cooperative solution
  frameworks are embedded
• Without such frameworks, carbon regime politics
  will intersect with and potentially act through
  the existing contemporary forms of threats from
  organised violence
• Reform of global governance requires addressing -
  again - relation of organised violence and the
  establishment of human security, but on a basis
  of the ultimate indivisibility of global security
• Key question for global reformers is there a
  legitimate role for violence in the establishment
  and maintenance of human security in the face of
  threats from climate change?
• .

24
Human security and military security beyond
nation-states and predatory globalisation

• Climate change, cosmopolitan values, law, and
  civil society
• Mary Kaldor the aim should be
• a global social contract or bargain in which
  global security is provided through upholding
  human rights and humanitarian law in exchange for
  readiness to commit resources through global
  taxation or other forms of financial transfers,
  and a readiness to risk lives, though not in an
  unlimited way, in the service of humanity.
• Muscular cosmopolitanism is a corollary of
  democratic regulation of global society.
• Accordingly, the UN and its ancillary
  institutions should be a key target for
  democratic regulation, coupled with the
  establishment of a capacity for effective
  impartial intervention.

25
Conclusions

• Caution about securitizing climate change
• Key is understanding genuinely global character
  of climate change generates rational cross-border
  basis and necessity for shared, cooperative
  solutions
• Deeper understanding of complex causality of
  climate change impacts and responses crucial
• Understanding of interdependence of multiple
  global problems a prerequisite to effective
  action on any one
• National, regional and global civil society
  formation of value- and interest-based
  pre-figurative relations of cooperation crucial
• Reform of global governance urgent

26
Nautilus Institute - climate change and security

• Climate change and security - analysis and
  policy, Nautilus Institute
• http//www.globalcollab.org/Nautilus/australia/ref
  raming/cc-security/cc-sec-policy/
• Mapping Causal Complexity in Climate Change
  Impacts and Responses - Australia and Indonesia
• http//www.globalcollab.org/Nautilus/australia/ref
  raming/cc-security/mapping/
• Climate change, Security and Complexity, Richard
  Tanter, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre,
  ANU, 19 September 2008.
• http//www.globalcollab.org/Nautilus/CC-workshops/
  melbourne/research/related-docs/Tanter-CC-security
  .ppt
• Climate Change and Security The Test for
  Australia and Indonesia Involvement or
  Indifference? Allan Behm, Austral Peace and
  Security Network Special Report 09-01S, 12
  February 2009
• http//www.globalcollab.org/Nautilus/australia/aps
  net/reports/2009/climate-behm.pdf/view