[Vision2020] Oct. 2011: British Medical Journal Teams With Senior Military to Warn of Climate Change

[Ted Moffett]

Excerpt from article below:

"[We] felt that climate messaging at the moment has been tarnished,"
he told Deutsche Welle.

"It gets labeled as something that's pronounced upon by wooly-minded
thinkers, people who aren't very clever or well informed; people who
are perhaps well-meaning or left-wing. I don't think it's easy to
brand serving officers or senior physicians as stupid, ill-informed or
actually left-wing."

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15475314,00.html

Climate | 20.10.2011
Doctors partner with soldiers to warn of climate conflicts

Military planners fear climate change could be this century's conflict
multiplier and they're starting to talk about it. Together with
Britain's medical establishment, they're adding their voices to calls
to action.

Soldiers usually pride themselves on leaving politics to the
politicians. This week in London they spoke out. Senior European
officers urged action on what remains a polarizing issue in the
broader community: climate change.

"We've increasingly come to recognize that, as well as the
environmental and socio-economic impact of climate change, there is
the potential to increase the risk to global stability and national
interests," said Neil Morisetti, a Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy.

The British Medical Journal invited Morisetti, who is also an envoy on
climate change for the UK government, to speak on the health and
security implications of global warming alongside other high ranking
officers and senior physicians from across Europe.

Assembled security and health experts warned that rising global
temperatures this century threaten food and water security, and could
exacerbate tensions in some of the world's least stable regions.

Health warnings

A warming climate is expected to have a range of direct and indirect
effects on human health.

"To me the biggest and most short-term threat is food security," said
Anthony Costello, Director of the Institute for Global Health at
University College London (UCL).

Costello said a study he directed two years ago for UCL and the
medical journal The Lancet concluded that climate change presented
"the greatest health threat of the 21st century." He pointed to the
Russian heat wave of 2010 and the current floods in Thailand as
examples of the kinds of events that will become more common place in
future, menacing food security.

Last year, Russia lost 30% of its grain harvest as temperatures soared
above their average for three weeks. The losses sent international
grain prices skyrocketing.

"50-60% percent of all children who die in the developing world die
from malnutrition-related problems," Costello told Deutsche Welle.

Climate change is also expected to spread the range and infectiousness
of diseases like Malaria and drive migration, especially from coastal
cities.

Urban centers pose a special problem, because around 60% of people
will likely be living in cities by the middle of the century. Cities
also tend to concentrate heat, making their residents more vulnerable
to the ravages of heat waves.

"The clearest indication we have was the French heat wave of 2003,
which was in many ways an unprecedented event in which at least 30,000
people died," said Sir Andy Haines, Professor of public health and
primary care at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Drawn in

Some of the worst-affected regions will be in the tropics, but this
will still pose security problems for other nations.

"Often we've seen conflict in the past there (the tropics)...Climate
change is going to add to that problem," Morisetti told Deutsche
Welle.

"One of the real challenges is that that belt around the equator is
also where the world's trade routes run. Particularly energy, but also
other goods that are moving around the world, and if there is
instability and vulnerability in those parts of the world, it has a
bearing for all of us."

Many countries on the equator are already facing economic and social
hardships and further stresses could expand the world's list of
'failed states.'

"That's not to say that we think climate change is going to be a
direct cause of conflict. More likely, it's going to act as a 'threat
multiplier'," Morisetti said.

Other officers, speaking under the anonymity of Chatham House rules,
described climate change as an "amorphous threat" that would change
the "ranking order of states," creating new winners and losers.

Increased piracy, akin to that which takes place off the horn of
Africa, will be one of the typical problems industrialized countries
can expect to face.

One figure said "environmental security" had failed to figure among
the typical pillars of human security concerns, to our detriment.

More voices

Europe's military has been slow to appreciate the security
implications of climate change. United States defense forces haven't.

The Pentagon's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress stressed
the potential for climate change to contribute to "poverty,
environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile
governments."

Earlier this year Germany tabled climate change at the United Nations
Security Council. It was the first time in four years that the
Security Council formally debated the environment, and the first time
a Council statement linked climate change to global peace and
security.

Speaking in July, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was an
appropriate venue to bring up climate change, as it would help promote
the "interdisciplinary approach" needed.

Alejandro Litovsky - Director of the Earth Security Initiative, a
forum that brings together scientists, politicians, businesses and the
defense community - welcomed the Chancellor's initiative, but remains
concerned about "securitizing" the problem.

"We need to be very careful how we frame the military contribution to
this issue. Climate change is clearly an issue of resource scarcity,
but it's also an issue of access - who is going to get access to
resources?"

Hugh Montgomery, a professor of Intensive care medicine at University
College London and Director of the Institute for Human Health and
Performance, is pleased that doctors and soldiers are throwing their
weight behind efforts to take action on climate change.

"[We] felt that climate messaging at the moment has been tarnished,"
he told Deutsche Welle.

"It gets labeled as something that's pronounced upon by wooly-minded
thinkers, people who aren't very clever or well informed; people who
are perhaps well-meaning or left-wing. I don't think it's easy to
brand serving officers or senior physicians as stupid, ill-informed or
actually left-wing."

Author: Nathan Witkop
Editor: Matt Hermann

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett