by Ros Donald, via Carbon Brief
The next few decades may be unsettled ones. Global stability looks under threat as new global powers rise and a changing climate puts pressure on populations in vulnerable areas. That’s part of the conclusion of the latest report from the UK Ministry of Defence’s Global Strategic Trends programme, which aims to map the threats and opportunities of the future world.
If you thought climate change was just going to be warmer summers and fewer winter deaths, it makes for sobering reading.
The report says higher temperatures and food and water shortages exacerbated by climate change could play a part in bringing tensions between different groups to a head. But it’s not easy predict where or how it might happen. The limited literature on climate change and conflict suggests it’s premature to make a direct link between the changing climate and increased geopolitical tension. So we spoke to Ian Shields, a former MoD forecaster who worked on the report, about how researchers and the military try to make sense of the relationship between climate change and conflict.
Future planning
Shields spent 32 years in the Royal Air Force as an aviator before becoming an academic later in his career. At the Global Strategic Trends programme, he worked on long term strategic planning, of which climate change forms a major theme. The findings of the programme are used to inform MoD planning, says Shields, and also broader governmental planning, “since only the MoD appears to undertake this sort of long-range analysis.”
Shields says the programme considered three key climate issues: “The impacts of changing rainfall and how that will affect food production, with hunger possibly leading to instability and conflict. Desertification is another key issue that will have a profound effect on North Africa, a region that is already unstable and close to Europe. Finally, we also looked at melting Arctic ice, which has profound implications for access to resources and to shipping lanes and again may lead to disputes over borders and ownership of resources.”
The MoD worked closely with the Hadley Research Centre at the Met Office to undertake the work, and it was noticeable, says Shields, that when they compared their findings with similar surveys from across the world – including the USA, Canada and Japan – the outcomes were very similar.
A threat multiplier
A recent literature review published in the journal Science suggests there isn’t enough research to directly link climate change to conflict. Shields agrees that we may not be able to link climate change and conflict directly at the moment, but believes that this will change: “The impacts of climate change are insidious and may not directly cause conflict, but as evidence grows and the impacts of climate change increasingly threaten human security, I anticipate that this will change.”
Global Strategic Trends calls climate change a “threat multiplier” in an attempt to capture that it can exacerbate the pre-existing issues that cause conflict. Shields explains: “While it is too early to attribute conflict directly to climate change as the sole, or main, driver for conflict, what is already true is that the worst effects of climate change are affecting areas of the world already stressed. It’s likely to add yet more threats to human security, increasing the likelihood of conflict. So while climate change in itself may not - yet – cause conflict, its impacts multiply the threat of conflict by increasing pressures and making conflict more common.”
One of the studies in the review suggests that at the moment existing legal structures, like water treaties or the international laws governing the Arctic, may be restraining some areas of potential tension. But Shields says that’s not guaranteed to continue. “These treaties will only avert conflict if the potential disputing parties recognise and abide by the treaties, or the international community is willing and able to enforce the treaties. To date, water treaties seem to be holding good in general, and give some cause for satisfaction, if not optimism,” he says.
The Arctic
Following rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic over the past five years, the world’s attention has focused on the region as symbolic of the changes the planet is experiencing. In geopolitical terms, Shields sees the Arctic as a special case because as the region loses ice countries are showing ever more interest in issues such as oil exploration, fish stocks and transport. He says:
“Given that the Arctic has several cases of disputed boundaries and is a very fragile eco-system on one hand, and the rapacious appetites of some of the Arctic nations on the other, I see this as a potential flashpoint for conflict in future decades.
“Will [current] treaties themselves be enough to avert climate-related threats in the future? That’s unlikely, but it is a good thing that they exist as they offer both a structure and a degree of stability in the international order, and offer at least a partial way forward.”
The future – a new face of war
Looking to the future, Shields believes we face a new kind of conflict. The wars between states that abounded in the last two centuries will be less common, but conflicts will still be at least as likely to break out as they were then, he thinks. The new face of war will be “multi-faceted and far more complex in both origin and solution,”he says.
“We presently have a relatively stable international order based on the state. But as demographics and the impacts of climate change challenge demand for resources – including food, water and living space, the dichotomy of national interests and needs versus international cooperation and the interdependencies of the globalised world offers both threats – and great opportunities.”
Ian Shields is a tutor on the Global Energy and Climate Policy course at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and is in the final year of his PhD in International Relations at Cambridge University. He is the founder of Cambridge Advanced Strategic Training.
Ros Donald is a writer for Carbon Brief. This piece was originally published at Carbon Brief and was reprinted with permission.
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From a local standpoint…
The Psychological Impacts of Global Climate Change
Heat and Violence
Climate change is most concretely represented in the public mind as “global warming” (Meehl & Tebaldi, 2004). In addition to health impacts (Poumadere, Mays, Le Mer, &`Blong, 2005), the predicted warming is likely to have some direct impacts on human behavior. On the basis of experimental and correlational research, Anderson (2001) concluded that there is a causal relationship between heat and violence and that any increase in average global temperature is likely to be accompanied by an increase in violent aggression. Predictions include a rise of about 24,000 assaults or murders in the United States every year for every increase of 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the average temperature. In a more recent article, Anderson and DeLisi (in press) described some of the probable effects of climate change on violence. Both lab-based manipulations of temperature and comparisons of differences in violent crime associated with seasonal and regional temperature differences indicate that heat can have an immediate effect on violent tendencies. More subtle but possibly more powerful long-term impacts may result from an effect of heat on fetal and child development. http://climateprogress.net/item/the-psychological-impacts-of-global-climate-change.html
And resource limitation will exaggerate individual stress levels. On day 3 without drinking water people will start going from door to door.
On day 3 of not drinking water people will be dead, or close to death. Probably without the strength to go door to door.
Well, this is a rule of thumb and you get water from eating fruits or other foods. The wikipedia btw states “Survival without water is usually limited to three or four days.” http://bit.ly/3wOqjt
The point here is that law and order can slip in a matter of days or weeks, especially in the light of more extreme environments and catastrophes, climate change induced.
When in the past history of mankind civilization collapsed it has been isolated events. Today we face a global situation and we lack mitigation and preparedness.
Among the first things to fail are centralized electricity supply and fossil fuel infrastructure.
I wasn’t being entirely serious in my reply. But yeah, I get that there are deviations from the average.
Do you? [Insert silly emoticon here.]
“It depends.” is sort of an unofficial principle in permaculture, because it gets used so often. Everything is site dependent, person dependent, time dependent…everything dependent. Maybe electricity and fossil fuel infrastructure will go first, maybe not. Maybe federal law and services will be the first to go in a budget crisis; maybe a police strike or military coup or real or imagined terrorist attack will cause martial law to be declared—or simply imposed without a word. Maybe it will be so gradual and legal-seeming there won’t be any point at which we can point and say “That’s when it happened.” Like the way it’s been so far, the task of removing democracy virtually fully accomplished and who even mentions it?
There are so many ways it can go: Easter Island when maybe somebody cut down the last tree on an isolated island with no canoes left, and what’s the feeling of that?; Chile 1973 after a long wind up of sabotage and intentionally destructive policies combined with disaster capitalism; Argentina 1976; the Vikings in Greenland; Italy and Germany’s instability between the wars and the legal yielding of power and the legal taking of power one piece at a time over the course of just a couple of years… The fall of the Ottoman empire, on the other hand, took hundreds of years, so gradually probably very few people even knew it was happening until it was over.
If we can support Occupy well enough on its second round, follow through relentlessly and fearlessly and restore democracy before it’s too late to start on the important work—of building a civilization for the duration—the collapse will be completely different than if we don’t. Controlled demolition vs. runaway chain reaction. Soft landing or pitching, yawing and rolling crash? It depends.
Transition movement, permaculture, inner work and outer, homesteading and political organizing… Help with those or sit back and collect stats and quotes on how it will end. It depends.
Every time I read about conflicts that could be caused by climate change, I think about Canada and its neighbor, the #1 superpower with its the growing deserts. The U.S. has invaded countries for far less.
Harper, or the next Harper, would welcome an Anschluss.
Wealthy people tend to give all sorts of reasons why starving people will fight wars. In reality starving people don’t have much energy for wealth-stealing wars. They tend to either struggle for food or else they die.
Oil wars are fought against rich people by even richer people. If a tinhorn owns a trillion dollars of oilfields by oppressing his people, someone with the money and technology to swoop in and steal his personal oil will quickly crush his personal army by hook or by crook. The nation’s victims are an afterthought at best. Two possible defenses against nation-to-nation robberies are the accumulation of chemical weapons and the accumulation of nuclear weapons.
A truly legitimate struggle for democracy tends to be nonviolent, because democracy is a permanent state of nonviolent succession of power.
This was the past. In the future wars will be fought about water access. Good example the tension between India or Pakistan.
I’m sorry, but I can’t exactly recall where this ‘democracy’ actually exists, if by democracy you mean ‘rule by, of and for, the people’. Like ‘Western Civilization’ as the Mahatma observed, it sounds like a good idea that we ought to try some day.