|
›
UN & US experts warn: global warming is biggest security threat |
 |
Two influential think tanks in Washington warn, in an extensive report, about the challenges to global stability that climate change is likely to pose. Furthermore, UN experts urge action to limit impact of global warming on the developing world, before a key UN meeting in December.
|
2007-11-07
|
Latest studies by American and UN experts analyse the potential consequences of climate change on global security and its impact on developed nations. Calls for new global agreements thus intensify ahead of the key U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia from Dec. 3 - 14.
Washington Think tanks Report
Under a worst-case scenario, climate change's consequences "would destabilise virtually every aspect of modern life", according to experts from two leading think tanks, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS). Their joint report "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change”, released on Monday 5 November, examines three different scenarios and associated consequences of global warming.
The American experts predict "large-scale migrations of people, both inside nations and across existing national borders" even under more benign scenarios, due to rising temperatures and sea levels that are caused by climate change. Experts believe that mass migrations would trigger sharp increases in regional tensions and efforts by wealthier countries to prevent migrants from crossing their borders. Mass migrations is therefore identified, in all three scenarios, as “the most worrisome problems" to be faced by national security policymakers”.
CNAS president Kurt Campbell, who served as deputy defence secretary under President Bill Clinton said:. "In my view, climate change will quickly become the defining issue of our age”. The report aims to mitigate the "surprising and alarming lack of knowledge about climate change's geo-political implications within the U.S. national security community”, according to Campbell.
|
UN Experts Call
To have a realistic chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, rich countries need to make cuts of at least 80 percent by 2050, according to Kevin Watkins, lead author of the report "Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world,’’ to be released shortly.
|
|
|
"Rich countries need to demonstrate leadership by making deep, early cuts. They need to put in place a framework for finance and technology transfer, providing developing countries with the resources they need to make a low carbon transition," Watkins said, giving hints on possible agreement in Bali in December. He, however, warned that even the deepest cuts in emissions today will not prevent temperatures rising for at least another three decades
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who shares the 2007 Nobel peace prize with former United States vice-president Al Gore, supported the UN report saying that the world's richest countries need to do more to help the poorest nations curb GHG emissions.
Pachauri also urged China and India to find a new development path for GHG emission limits. ’We need leaders who can change' the current development model’’. “ The stability of human society could be destructed if we allow these impacts of climate change to continue unabated and emissions of GHGs remain unmitigated," he concluded.
|
More information:
 Report: The Age of Consequences, November 2007 (2.11MB)
|
