Director of National Intelligence: The Climate Threat to National Security

ATA FEB 2009–IC STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD 43

ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY

Climate change, energy, global health, and environmental security are often intertwined, and while not traditionally viewed as “threats” to US national security, they will affect Americans in major ways. The Intelligence Community has increased its focus on these three critical issues as a result of unprecedented developments in the last year.

Access to relatively secure and clean energy sources and management of chronic food and water shortages will assume increasing importance for a growing number of countries. Adding well over a billion people to the world’s population by 2025 will itself put pressure on these vital resources. An increasing percentage of the world’s population will be moving from rural areas to urban and developed ones to seek greater personal security and economic opportunity. Many, particularly in Asia, will be joining the middle class and will be seeking to emulate Western lifestyles, which involves greater per capita consumption of all these resources.

The already stressed resource sector will be further complicated and, in most cases, exacerbated by climate change, whose physical effects will worsen throughout this period. Continued escalation of energy demand will hasten the impacts of climate change. On the other hand, forcibly cutting back on fossil fuel use before substitutes are widely available could threaten continued economic development, particularly for countries like China, whose industries have not yet achieved high levels of energy efficiency.

Food and water also are intertwined with climate change, energy, and demography. Rising energy prices increase the cost for consumers and the environment of industrial-scale agriculture and application of petrochemical fertilizers. A switch from use of arable land for food to fuel crops provides a limited solution and could exacerbate both the energy and food situations. Climatically, rainfall anomalies and constricted seasonal flows of snow and glacial melts are aggravating water scarcities, harming agriculture in many parts of the globe. Energy and climate dynamics also combine to amplify a number of other ills such as health problems, agricultural losses to pests, and storm damage. The greatest danger may arise from the convergence and interaction of many stresses simultaneously. Such a complex and unprecedented syndrome of problems could cause outright state failure, or weaken important pivotal states counted on to act as anchors of regional stability.

Six to nine months ago we were worried about the implications of increasing high oil prices: the situation has reversed sharply with oil prices falling to close to a third of their July 2008 peak of $147 per barrel in response to the sudden drop in world oil demand growth and slower economic growth resulting from the global financial crisis. Although we believe the longer-term trend is toward high oil prices, the current lower oil prices reduce pressures on the global economy. Emerging economies previously concerned about busting their budgets on fuel and food subsidies are breathing a sigh of relief now that prices have fallen substantially over the last six months. Most forecasters expect global oil demand and oil prices to remain depressed through 2009 as the financial turmoil continues to unwind. The decline in price may, however, lead to delayed or cancelled investments in the upstream oil and gas sectors, creating the conditions for another spike in oil prices once global oil demand recovers. We also are concerned that lower oil prices may weaken momentum toward energy efficiency and the development of alternative sources of energy that are important for both energy and environmental security. The fall in energy prices also has had the side benefit of undercutting the economic positions of some of the more troublesome producers.

Assessing the Impact of Climate Change

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a failure to act to reduce green house gas emissions risks severe damage to the planet by the end of this century and even greater risk in coming centuries. In a fossil fuel-intensive scenario that IPCC examined (A1FI), global average temperatures increase by almost four degrees centigrade.

In such a scenario, water stored in glaciers and snow cover would decline significantly, reducing water availability in regions supplied by melt water from major mountain ranges, where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives. Sea-level rise could be up to 59 centimeters by the end of the century and would cause substantial flooding. Individuals in densely populated and low-lying areas, especially the mega deltas of Asian and Africa, where adaptive capacity is relatively low, and which already face other challenges such as tropical storms or local coastal subsidence, are especially at risk. At a four-degree rise, according to the IPCC, up to 30 percent of plant and animal species would be at risk of extinction, global productivity in cereals would decline, intensity of tropical cyclones would increase, and extreme drought areas would rise from 1 percent land area to 30 percent. 

The Intelligence Community recently completed a National Intelligence Assessment on the national security impacts of global climate change to 2030. The IC judges global climate change will have important and extensive implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years.

Although the United States itself could be less affected and is better equipped than most nations to deal with climate change and may even see a benefit in the near term owing to increases in agriculture productivity, infrastructure repair and replacement will be costly. We judge the most significant impact for the United States will be indirect and result from climate driven effects on many other countries and their potential to seriously affect US national security interests. We assess climate change alone is unlikely to trigger state failure in any state out to 2030, but the impacts will worsen existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions.

Climate change could threaten domestic stability in some states, potentially contributing to intra- or, less likely, interstate conflict, particularly over access to increasingly scarce water resources. We judge economic migrants will perceive additional reasons to migrate because of harsh climates, both within nations and from disadvantaged to richer countries. From a national security perspective, climate change affects lives (for example, through food and water shortages, increased health problems including the spread of disease, and increased potential for conflict), property (for example through ground subsidence, flooding, coastal erosion, and extreme weather events), and other security interests.

The United States depends on a smooth-functioning international system ensuring the flow of trade and market access to critical raw materials such as oil and gas, and security for its allies and partners. Climate change could affect all of these—domestic stability in a number of key states, the opening of new sea lanes and access to raw materials, and the global economy more broadly—with significant geopolitical consequences.

In addition, anticipated impacts to the Homeland—including warming temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and possible increases in the severity of storms in the Gulf, increased demand for energy resources, disruptions in US and Arctic infrastructure, and increases in immigration from resource-scarce regions of the world—are expected to be costly.

Government, business, and public efforts to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with climate change—from policies to reduce greenhouse gasses to plans to reduce exposure to climate change or capitalize on potential impacts—may affect US national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself. Multilateral policymaking on climate change is likely to be highly visible and a growing priority among traditional security affairs in the coming decades. We observe the United States is seen by the world as occupying a potentially pivotal leadership role between Europe, which is committed to long-term and dramatic reduction in carbon emissions, and a heterogeneous  group of developing states wary of committing to greenhouse gas emissions reductions, which they believe would slow their economic growth.

As effects of climate change begin to mount, the United States will come under increasing pressure to join the international community in setting meaningful long-term goals for emissions reductions, to reduce its own emissions, and to help others mitigate and adapt to climate change through technological progress and financial assistance.