CLIMATE CHANGE IS A DIRECT SOURCE OF CONFLICT. DISCUSS.

7197 WORDS

According to Article 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992, climate change is “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.” An increase in the global temperature may have non-linear effects with disproportionate consequences (Scheffran et al, 2014). It could set in motion cascading events which may overburden nation-states’ ability to adapt (Scheffran et al, 2014), particularly to flooding, drought and natural disasters (Smirnov et al, 2018; Gleditsch, 2012).

The former UK Secretary of State for Climate Change and Energy, Ed Davey (2012), warned that climate change multiplies threats around the world by increasing resource pressures, particularly in weak states, and creates political instability (Davey, 2012). Equally, the president of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, cautioned that in Africa climate change will have devastating consequences and will cause political unrest in 13 countries and additionally armed conflicts in over 20 countries without preventative steps being taken (Foreign Commonwealth Office, 2012; Selby and Hoffman, 2014). Developing states may be particularly hard hit (Raleigh, 2010), e.g. due to lower agricultural yields, migration and disturbance of social interactions (Homer-Dixon, 1991). Davey and Ondimba are advocates of the “climate-conflict nexus” (Scheffran et al, 2014, 370) thesis which has become a central tenet within the environmental security literature (Dabelko and Simmons, 1997; Barnett, 2000). This thesis posits that climate change may have a profound impact on international security by affecting a country on the macro level and reinforcing social rifts between communities (Rodrik, 1999), causing security risks which range from food insecurity, freshwater scarcity to environmental migration (WBGU, 2008).