Climate change and security: a coherent framework for analysis

Abstract

The international political environment will change substantially as the Earth enters a period of rapid bio-physical transition driven by climate change. While it is true that climate change will have considerable impact on the national security of states around the world, the link between climate change hazards and security threats is not direct. The academic literature has been haphazard in presenting a theoretically consistent paradigm for assessing the security implications of climate change. Because of the global scale of climate change and the regional variation of specific climate change hazards, the traditional, human and environmental security paradigms can and should be reconciled to ascertain how conflict develops from climate change hazards and predict the probability of conflict scenarios developing at a given location. This paper attempts to redress this through a four-step framework for mapping how climate change hazards can lead to human and traditional security problems at a specific location and in surrounding areas.