Climate war alert: Fears over national security as global warming hits

Sunday Mail Adelaide
Sunday 9/3/2008 Page: 38

TWO months ago British Foreign Secretary David Miliband spoke with his Australian counterpart Stephen Smith via telephone. The call coincided with the release of a report by the Oxford Research Group in the UK that showed climate change will lead to wars with scarcity of water, displacement of large populations and general mayhem. It was a short but pointed call. "Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue but a security threat that has to be addressed by all," Miliband told Smith, who readily agreed.

And so he should with the Australian Government and the Federal Police tasked with dealing with national threats already talking contingencies. So too have all police chiefs in the Pacific region with many concluding the threat was now no longer an if but a when. Hollywood loves a good global threat from the world freezing over in The Day after Tomorrow four years ago to the likes of Kevin Costner's Weterworld and Mel Gibson's Mad Max trilogy.

But for the more than seven million people in the Pacific Ocean, the threat was already materialising and is literally swamping their livelihoods. Nations like Tuvalu, a string of tiny atolls 26km square, are like the early warning system for the rest of the world as rising oceans have already washed over roads and rendered crop lands unsuitable due to salt. It is already assumed within the next 50 years the 12,000-strong population will have to be moved. Tuvalu is expected to be the first country to be wiped off the map by global warming.

According to the prestigious Oxford Research Group, climate change will have serious environmental, socio-economic and security consequences for developed and developing nations. Among its listed risks are an increase on border security demands, changes in rates and types of crimes and demanding response to natural disasters. There are also operational concerns such as difficulty maintaining military capability, loss of strategic defence assets, mass peacetime military deployments and regional instability.

The report concludes governments need to act now with five key policies: defending essential supply network infrastructure, more funding for research and development into renewable energy resources, national and international consensus on the management of mass environmental refugees and aid programs with an adaptable measure to take in at-risk nations or regions.

Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Drennan, the national manager of counterterrorism, said this week climate and security now went hand in hand. "It's not about agreeing or disagreeing (with perceived threat), this is just what the facts tell us," he said. "Climate change has an impact and that impact can manifest itself in a number of ways. If you look at, say, an example what climate change will do to the displacement of people then that's only going to manifest itself as a security issue." He said it was "certainly something we need to deal with with our eyes open."

Drennan's boss, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty, has given the issue priority status in budgeting and developing contingency plans for the future. Such is the issue emerging, the UN Security Council as recently as last April convened its first discussion on climatic security. It found if the world's temperatures were to rise, as predicted, by between 2C and 4C (some scientists believe it could be higher) the heat would raise sea levels and threaten numerous nations.

Bangladesh has a population of 17 million but is not even lm above sea level. Miliband said it was not only the Pacific that was already feeling the effects of change. He compared the humanitarian crisis in Darfur - where up to 200,000 people have died as a result of drought, desertification and overpopulation leading to tribal tensions - as an example of what could happen globally.

"You can make the argument that Darfur is a resource war," he said, adding a similar issue could be seen in Australia with severe climate patterns. He said the British Government hoped to speak more with Asia Pacific nations like Australia in a bi-partisan or multi-partisan approach. "Australia is a key player on the climate change issue because you have changed your position," he said. "Obviously there's a new government with a great sense of energy and drive which from our spectrum is nice."