How do we connect climate with security?
Plus: Pakistan flooding ripple effects, too hot to desalinize and podcast likes
This newsletter represents my personal views only, and not necessarily those of my employer.
Welcome back! The past few weeks have seen wildfires in southwest China, a heat dome over California, devastating flooding in Pakistan (we’ll get to that) as wars grind on in Ukraine and Ethiopia. It can be a bit of a downer.
We’ve seen headlines labelling these events as “climate disasters,” laced with fears of something worse to come from nature and people. But how does this connect with war and insecurity? Linking climate impact ←→ conflict isn’t a straight shot, though.
Let’s start with definitions: as put by the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, climate security “represents the physical, economic, or societal impacts associated with climate change that substantially alter political stability, human security, or national security infrastructure.” Similarly, the United Nations Environment Programme frames environmental security as “how environmental degradation and climate change interact with peace and security dynamics – both negatively and positively.”
Both terms describe systems of risk, impact and consequences. Breaking it down further:
A climate hazard is a physical, natural phenomena which presents a threat to the natural or human environment. Floods, droughts and the polar ice caps melting go in this bucket.
A climate change impact is an outcome of a climate hazard. Put differently, if a climate hazard is a defender tripping a striker about to score, the impact is that striker hitting the ground screaming (let’s not start on VAR).
The climate change response, or consequence, represents the human outcomes of those impacts. Food shortages, civil unrest, forced migrations, commodity price spikes are some of the possibilities. Or, your striker, fuming, triggers a penalty that is overturned by VAR, changing the course of the match.
As the many arrows going ⬅️ and ➡️ suggest below, the relationship between climate change hazards and security threats is not cause-and-effect, but best understood as a system of pathways and feedback loops.
Source: Chatham House Climate Change Risk Assessment (2021)
Let’s get a bit more familiar by applying this model to a current example: the flooding in Pakistan 🇵🇰, to demonstrate one set of pathways into insecurity.
Source: AP.
The flooding (our climate impact), triggered by the worst monsoon in over a decade (climate hazard) has already caused, as of 6 September:
Over 1,300 dead and 12,500 injured
1 million homes destroyed or damaged
2 million acres of cropland submerged or affected
Over 33 million people, or 15% of the population, displaced
The worst-hit areas received 5x rainfall compared to the 30-year average
The country’s largest lake may burst its banks, threatening cities downstream
Source: Reliefweb, 2 September 2022
Ground reporting already flag a number of other immediate impacts: the health infrastructure is hurt out in large parts of Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan, with the rest of the country’s health system and military struggling to respond to the the disaster. Aid agencies are warning of the emergence of cholera as people come into contact with contaminated water. Roads and highways are washed away. Then there is the lost cotton harvest, along with the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people.
Cascading down to consequences, which taken together present risks to the country’s stability and security:
🌾 Food and crops: Pakistan is a top 10 global producer of cotton (1.3 billion metric tons in 2021 or about 6% of global supply; it is also a top importer), wheat (over 28 million tonnes in 2021, but it had to import over 2 million tonnes), sugarcane and rice (1.5% of global production). Comparing the map above with the one below, the production from Sindh, Balochistan and southernmost Punjab are almost certainly hit badly. With the cotton harvest traditionally running through to October, the loss is tremendous and may push global cotton prices higher and disrupt global supply chains relying on Pakistan’s large textiles industry. Moreover, the loss of income and food crops means without massive foreign aid, a disruption can become a catastrophe.
Source: USDA
💸 Economic damage: It’s too early to count losses but one minister placed damages to date at least US $10 billion. That figure will almost certainly climb. Before the floods, the IMF estimated Pakistan’s 2022 GDP growth at 4%. A better-late-than-never next tranche of IMF aid, coupled with relaxing of utility subsidies and pledges of fiscal austerity, gave hope for some that the country may yet avoid another economic crisis. That is in jeopardy as the aftermath of floods require funds for disaster recovery, health, food security and rebuilding - cash reserves which Pakistan can ill afford to part with. Cost-of-living pressures and food insecurity contributed to food protests over a decade ago in the Middle East; Islamabad’s response should be watched closely.
🪧Political instability: Former prime minister Imran Khan was ousted only in April this year, and has continued to hold large rallies haranguing the government and army. The floods have not slowed his tempo, presenting a major thorn in the side of Shehbaz Sharif’s fragile government. Decades of entrenched corruption, weak rule of law, poor local governance of water access and infrastructure, political interference from the military, and public mistrust in state institutions have left the country structurally vulnerable to climate hazards. It’s unclear what the coming weeks may hold politically, but a poorly handled response to the flood’s impacts could cascade into major political consequences for the Sharif government, Khan’s fortunes and the army’s political posturing. The public, not seeing sufficient aid and support, may be inclined to hit the streets in a country where activism has often turned violent.
🛫Migration: There is some evidence in the Sahel linking climate impacts with migration. With the devastation to farmland and villages, would this climate disaster force some families to migrate to cities like Karachi and Lahore, which are already under heavy water stress due to climate, poor governance and infrastructure. Would they be welcomed or would they strain social tensions? Or would we see a rise in emigration to the Gulf States and Southeast Asia, popular destinations for migrant workers in recent decades - and would they be welcomed there?
Using scenarios to understand systems outcomes is instructive not just for policymakers, but innovators and investors. That’s because forecasting systems behaviour can be tricky if not impractical without huge amounts of high quality geospatial and political time series data - which is not often available. Over the coming months we’ll pick apart some more of these pathways while gradually leaning into the “now what” and $ side of things.
And now, what caught my eye:
🥼 The US National Academies of Sciences’ Climate Impact Lab has been doing something quite cool: empirically modeling the social costs of carbon. They’ve developed a model which incorporates damages across different economic sectors, improving on integrated assessment models which often narrowly define value, cost and impact. Read about their work here.
🚰 Water or power in a heatwave? That appears to be a tradeoff the desalination plant in Carlsbad, California had to make this week amid a(nother) record-breaking heatwave over the Golden State. The plant, which can pump up to 50 million gallons a day and represents 1% of peak power demand in San Diego, had to cut 20% of production. Is the desal’s power source green? 🤔
🇪🇹 The first grain shipment out of Ukraine in months, 23,000mt’s worth, arrived in Djibouti last week, bound for Somalia and Ethiopia. But I wonder how much of that grain will get beyond Oromo and other eastern regions. Ethiopian president Abiy Ahmed’s war against Tigray is at a crossroads, with domestic regional support eroding. Add a severe drought across the Horn of Africa, and suddenly Ethiopia looks vulnerable to a famine, and a change in government, at a time when global wheat supplies are tight from wars elsewhere.
🎙️ I’m finding podcasts are one of the best ways to learn about the climate space especially when it comes to tech and policy. Two recent episodes I enjoyed listening to on my commutes - yay hybrid working! - are Sustainababble’s episode on green capitalism with author Adrienne Buller, and My Climate Journey’s interview with Cris Stainbrook president of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. For the finance-inclined among you who are looking for a good climate podcast to distract you, these are great places to start. My thought on the MCJ podcast: imagine ignoring guardianship issues with your project and then finding a helluva mess of angry people at your doorstep.
Until next time!
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