Climate is biggest security challenge

The Australian
June 10, 2006

Patrick Walters, National security editor

CLIMATE change now poses a graver long-term security risk to Australia than terrorism, with a high likelihood it will produce destabilising civil conflict and unregulated population movements in Asia and the Pacific. That is the conclusion of leading Australian security expert Alan Dupont, the co-author of a new study on climate change and security to be published next week.

The report concludes that the "now irrefutable" evidence the planet is heating up will generate major national security challenges for Australia.

"It is the most significant issue confronting us because of its global dimensions and because it's almost certain to happen," Dr Dupont said yesterday.

"In probability and magnitude, it's well ahead of terrorism and just about anything else I can think of, short of a major global war or a nuclear exchange."

The study, to be published by the Lowy Institute, argues that the wider security implications of climate change have been largely ignored and seriously underestimated in public policy, academia and the media.

It calls on the Howard Government to adopt a more strategic approach to climate change, including setting up a taskforce to examine the policy connections between climate change and national security.

The Australian intelligence community, led by the Office of National Assessments, should co-ordinate a wide-scale assessment of the climate change risk to Australia, the report says.

"The likely speed and magnitude of climate change in the 21st century will be unprecedented in human experience, posing daunting challenges of adaptation and mitigation for all life forms on the planet," Dr Dupont and leading climate scientist Graeme Pearman conclude after analysing the latest scientific evidence of climate change.

Dr Pearman, former head of the CSIRO's division of atmospheric research, says the evidence the earth is heating up is irrefutable. "We are in no doubt that the planet has warmed," he told The Weekend Australian.

"We are highly confident that most of that warming has been due to greenhouse gas increases and that those will continue into the future, at least for some time, because of the momentum of our energy systems. We can anticipate further warming through this century."

Scientists now concede there is a real risk that previously forecast estimates of a 1.4C to 5.8C rise in global temperatures could be exceeded by 2100.

Climate scientists now "overwhelmingly accept" that the world's glaciers and northern ice cap are melting at faster rates and sea-level rises will threaten many coastal and low-lying areas.

Weather extremes, including droughts and severe floods, could lead to food, water and energy shortages in Asia-Pacific nations.

Climate change could also lead to "destabilising and unregulated population movements in Asia and the Pacific" as well as the threat of state collapse in the most severely affected developing nations.