briggs: climate change and strategic environmental intelligence

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EnvironmEntalsEcurity, abrupt

climatEchangEandstratEgicintElligEncE

Chad MiChael Briggs

FeBruary 2009


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This paper assesses the current policy eorts to dene and conront environmental security chal-lenges. National and international organizations (eg ENVSEC, NATO, US DOE, OSCE) have maderenewed attempts in recent years to address environmental links to security, and since 2002 havebeen orced to redene and reassess eorts in light o new data, emerging

political pressures, and accelerating environmental conditions. While classically dened environ-mental security problems remain yet unresolved, institutions are attempting to adapt to new expec-tations and responsibilities, including a broadening o geographical responsibility into

regions such as the Arctic, where previously no involvement was thought necessary. This researchocuses on the opportunities o such eorts, the likely challenges they aces in the uture, and rec-ommendations or how to link environmental security research to intelligence needs and strategicpolicies. The case o abrupt climate change risks as a security issue in the Arctic will highlightthese concerns.

Abstract

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Introduction

The past two decades have witnessed increasingconcern over new security threats and risks, romenvironmental issues to terrorism and economic in-stability. The traditional denitions o national orinternational security, based upon narrowly dened

and easily measured metrics o violent interstateconfict, have proven inadequate or describing thespectrum o risks that the international communi-ty now ace. The shits in security discourse andpolicy since the end o the Cold War have aectedacademic, policy and intelligence communities,while increasingly engaging certain scientic com-munities that had previously little contact with orinterest in issues o international security. Policyinterest in environmental security since 1989 hasrested upon both a need to dene new operationalmissions or existing security orces, and growingrealization that environmental changes may bring

overwhelming pressures to bear upon critical sys-tems and vulnerable regions.

The need to dene environmental security andmethods or identiying insecurity contain similari-ties with previous security concerns, while otherattributes o environmental issues necessitate newtools and approaches. Environmental concerns aretransnational and oten non-deliberate, rie withuncertainty and requiring new communities o ex-pertise. In practical terms, however, abrupt and se-vere environmental change is little dierent romCold War conceptions o security as elucidated byBernard Brodie. To Brodie, whose experiences withGerman V-2 attacks on London during the Sec-ond World War led him to conclude that securitydeenses were imperect, the consequences o al-lowing confict to erupt were unacceptable in thenuclear age. The most eective strategy, arguedBrodie, was to deter confict and ensure that theworst consequences did not come to pass. Even ithe probability o a nuclear exchange between theUS and USSR was low, the potential impacts wereso severe that strategies needed to be adopted toprepare and prevent that eventuality.

The concern or precaution may have shited romBrodies age, that in acing the risks and dangers oabrupt climate change, security policies must dealwith systems rather than individuals, unintendedrather than deliberate actions, and time scales that

require action ar in advance o emerging threats.Security policies must be based upon strategic ore-sight, o knowing where vulnerable systems and re-gions exist beore catastrophic changes occur in theenvironment, and how to mitigate or avoid the worst

consequences. This study reviews the need or newsecurity denitions in regard to environmental secu-rity, specically the role o vulnerability and risk inanticipating critical environmental changes. In as-sessing the potential role o new, global intelligencesystems, the potential risks and impacts o abruptclimate change in the Arctic are examined as illus-trative. In contrast to many past approaches to cli-mate change as an external orce acting upon statesecurity, we emphasize that greater integration oenergy, environmental, economic, social and politi-cal systems are necessary. Rather than attemptingto alsiy or substantiate causal relationships be-

tween climate change and one measure o insecuri-ty (eg violent confict), risk assessment techniquescan be employed to help estimate potential areas oinsecurity in terms o plausible risk and severity oconsequences. It is this vulnerability oresight thatmay prove o use to policymakers concerned aboutabrupt climate change and security issues.

The need or greater oresight and warning involvesnot only development o analytic systems to providerelevant data, but we also need more robust un-derstanding o critical system-level vulnerabilities,and how these vulnerabilities can be understood assecurity concerns. Where are the weak spots or keyactors that connect together two apparently discon-nected systems? Are there latent systems whoseexistence only becomes maniest i current systemsbreak or are perturbed beyond sae and assumedoperating limits? How do these systems span acrossboundaries o geography, o governance, o jurisdic-tion, o discipline? What orms o governance andadaptation may need to evolve in order to deal withthese? Not all o these questions can be answeredin such a report, but a good starting point is con-sideration o the nature o environmental security,

and its relationship to intelligence and orecasting.

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Strategic environmental

intelligence

Intelligence services and operations have existedor centuries, becoming more proessionalized inthe 20th century in response to greater needs ortechnical expertise, and in recognition o severeconsequences o inaction or surprise. The combina-tion o events during the Second World War (nota-bly, the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor), combinedwith the advent o nuclear weapons largely shapedcurrent institutions in the United States, while othercountries have either relied upon allied intelligenceor had their own institutions shaped in other waysby the Cold War. Simply put, however, intelligence

analysis has been overwhelmingly concerned withactions o oreign countries and risks o violent (o-ten military or terrorist) action. Yet viewed rom theperspective o intelligence as a general activity oanalysis, the Central Intelligence Agencys (CIA)denition can be interpreted more broadly:

Reduced to its simplest terms, intelligence is knowl-edge and foreknowledge of the world around us- theprelude to decision and action by US policy makers.(As quoted in: Warner 2009: 4)

Despite the preponderance o eort spent on opera-tional and tactical intelligence in government, theknowledge that is oten most needed are long-termtrends and ideas concerning what the world aroundus will look like in the uture. Environmental condi-tions are paramount among such concerns, yet havebeen lacking in most analyses. Even when strategicanalyses have included environmental actors, theyhave applied political or economic models that maybe inappropriate or complex, ecological issues, andhave relied upon identication o what seems mostprobable rom the perspective o widely acceptedinormation.

The true value o strategic intelligence, however,is not to provide inormation on what is generallyconsidered most probable. Such inormation is o-ten already available, and does not provide warningcapabilities that allow or eective preparation opotentially disastrous events. Rather, what is mostuseul may be identication o black swans, some-

times statistically reerred to as at tails or longtails. These are the high-impact, low-probabilityevents that create enormous disruptions when theydo occur. The impacts and dislocations that suchevents create are disproportionate in large part pre-cisely because we are not expecting them to occur,

and people underestimate their likelihood becausethey have no past experience with such conditions.Yet things that have never happened beore happenall the time. Whether one reers to the attacks on

September 11, 2001, or the sudden collapse o theNorth Atlantic sheries, events occur that peopleinsist should have been anticipated, yet are irrevers-ible once they take place. Had certain scenarios butconsidered plausible, the anticipatory actions mayhave reduced related risks, and the non-linear shitin conditions may not have taken place. Enormousdiculties lay in identiying potential risks, assess-ing the system complexities and tipping points, and

being able to communicate these threats eectivelyto policy makers.

To use the terminology rom security studies o asurprise attack, the three primary ingredients canapply to abrupt climate change impacts i one re-moves the deliberate action and existence o anaggressor. According to Kam (1988) and reviewed

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by Parker and Stern (2002), the three componentsare: the event is contrary to expectations o utureevents, that there is a ailure o advance warning,and that the event exposes a lack o preparednessor the given situation. Admittedly, removing theaggressor and the action make early warning and

advance preparation dicult rom a cognitive per-spective, as past security issues have almost alwayscontained primary actors. Environmental condi-tions, by contrast, tend to be unintentional out-comes o collective action, and are thereore per-haps less visible. Strategic surprises, like emergentenvironmental problems, have generally occurredwhen ample inormation is available to respondto the situation, yet the risk was not recognized oracted upon by policy makers. The obstacles to e-ective oresight in environmental security consisto several major actors: organizational stovepipespreventing communication, scientic expectations

or strong causality and methodological conserva-tism, and cognitive risk perception biases o pastexperience and underestimation o rare events.

The organizational obstacles or abrupt climatechange warning exist both at the scientic commu-nity and within the larger policy communities, andare not limited to specic countries. The problemsrelate to a mismatch between rules or uncertaintyin scientic and policy communities, and organiza-tional fows that prevent data sharing between con-cerned parties. As to the rst issue o uncertainty,scientic enterprises rely upon methodologies thatare inherently conservative in making judgmentsaccording to available evidence. The internal logico scientic research posits that when uncertaintyexists in describing causal relationships, it is bet-ter to commit the possible error o alse negativesin drawing conclusions, and that overwhelmingevidence in the eld is generally necessary beoreconclusions can be reached. In other words, in anygiven study, scientists are proessionally obliged toclaim more research is needed rather than riskclaiming a causal relationship that might be untrue.By this process, which is strictly regulated by peer

review, scientists try to ensure that the scienticliterature does not contain signicant alse claimsthat, or example, chemical A at levels o 5 partsper billion in drinking water will cause adversehealth eects.

The practical implication o such methodologicalrules is that research into environmental and health

elds can seem painully slow at times. Epidemio-logical rules o evidence and causality, which arevery strict in preventing alse claims, are oten in-sucient or providing advance warning o publichealth risks. Likewise, climate science, dependentupon modeling o complex and chaotic systems

where prediction is extremely uncertain, will asa eld be reluctant to claim causal relationships.When combined with IPCC rules on consensusamong all scientists and brokering by political ac-tors, the evidence presented in the IPCC reports isoten somewhat dated, and only mention the mostprobable outcomes and most widely accepted mod-els. The IPCC is thereore criticized both or theinaccuracy o its predictions (it has been consistentin under-predicting the rate o climate change),while at the same time its admission o scienticuncertainty is amplied by climate change skepticas supposed evidence that the research isnt ac-

tually scientic, a gross misunderstanding or por-trayal o the process.

Such scientic rules or uncertainty are made morecomplicated by the organizational challenges ocoordinating research and communicating inorma-tion. Understanding the risks and impacts o abruptclimate change requires interdisciplinary coopera-tion among researchers, which is oten hamperedby disciplinary boundaries and organizational rag-mentation at universities and research centers. Se-curity impacts o abrupt climate change are evenmore dicult to coordinate, owing to a nascent eldo environmental security (which does not even pos-sess its own research journals), and historic lacko cooperation between environmental scientistsand those specializing in traditional security elds.Among policy makers and the intelligence commu-nity the issue becomes one o historical securityrewalls, meant to prevent unauthorized accessto sensitive or classied inormation. Lack o inor-mation sharing among and within agencies is prob-lematic even or traditional security concerns, butit is especially ill-tting or environmental scienceissues that rely upon ree fow o data, and where

expertise exists not in the government agencies, butamong international communities o researchers.

Even when inormation is available, however, therecan be cognitive barriers to eective recognition opotential risks. I one treats oresight as an exer-cise in risk assessment, the bias o past experiencemust be taken into account. This bias, which ap-

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plies both to risk perception and to construction omethodological tools, results in underestimation outure risk probabilities. Probability estimations arebased upon past experience and amiliarity, andin general people do not expect nor plan or thoseevents with which they have had little experience.

The bias can be made structural by the manner inwhich assessments are constructed, where onlycertain measurements and observations are con-sidered, while others are largely ignored. The exis-tence o the ozone hole over the Antarctic, the basisor the landmark Montreal Protocol on CFCs, wascontained within NASA data but not actually seenuntil much later. Simply put, ew people thoughtto look or it. Likewise with climate change issues,abrupt change was not even considered a possibil-ity until paleo-climatological studies in the 1990sdemonstrated the historical record o rapidly shit-ing temperatures. Until that had been established,

the common perception o climate change was thatit shited over much longer, oten geological, timeperiods.

Even within statistical analyses, people largely un-derestimate inrequent events or the interactionsbetween increased probability in complex systems.For example, Freudenberg (1988) demonstratedthat in a system with dependent components, weunderestimate those areas more vulnerable whenthe risk is reduced to numerical probabilities. Ipart o the time (10%) a system has a one-in-a-billion chance o ailure (10-9), most oten (80%)has a one in a million chance (10-6), and or onlya short period has a one in a thousand chance oailing (10-3), people would oten assume that themore ragile and more resilient time periods wouldbalance each other out. In terms o actual prob-abilities, however, the chance o system ailure overthe entire period would be approximately one in tenthousand (10-4). People underestimate the eectso changing conditions on total risk, and also willoten ocus on probabilities and ignore the enor-mous magnitudes o some events. Even i unlikely,the total risk is a unction o hazard and probability,

so that those hazards with extremely high impactsare taken seriously even when rare.

The nal obstacle to assessing environmental risksto security has been the diculty in translatingenvironmental risks to security concerns. Peopletypically understand risks in terms o preconceived

categories o thought, and when applied to securitysuch categories involved Cold War models o state-level analysis and explanations or violent confict.The challenge or understanding abrupt climatechange and security is not only to understand tip-ping points or climatic and ecological systems,

but deeper understanding o how such changes areboth caused by and impact groups and regions arevarying levels. (Halden 2007; Paskal 2007)

Security and climate change

Connections between environment and security be-gan with medical concerns over nuclear weaponstests in the early 1960s, but the debate over envi-ronmental determinants or security concerns dates

to 1989. Dominant among the earlier 1990s stud-ies were those postulating that increased resourcescarcities would lead directly to violent confictbetween states, oten as a result o population in-creases in less developed countries. Such scarcity-confict models relied upon traditional models osecurity as interstate confict, and largely assumedlinear relationships in terms o both causality anddecision-making. Academic criticisms highlightedthat scarcity does not necessarily result in confict,that such causal relationships were nearly impos-sible to substantiate even post-acto, and that aocus on the state level misleadingly ignored inter-state economic relationships that exploited natu-ral resources rom aar. (Gleditsch 1998; Hauge& Ellingsen 1998) From a policy perspective, thescarcity-confict theses could result in a orm oparalysis, as conficts were blamed on natural con-ditions and population levels in oreign countries,with little i any direct connection to wealthier,western states. (Kaplan 1994) Although generaldevelopment may help in the long-term, the logi-cal response to scarcity-confict explanations was tobolster border deenses and justiy the issue as anexternal problem. Even those concerned with cross-

border environmental issues in environmental secu-rity tended to downplay the potential role o climatechange. (Homer-Dixon 1991)

Recent events have shited perception o potentialimpacts rom climate change. Yet despite popularintuition that climate change issues aect national

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and international security, it remains dicult toconceptualize what these connections may be, par-ticularly or a global process so rie with uncertainty.Without a useable ramework or analysis, policy ac-tion and discussion will remain dicult and a ormo policy paralysis may result. (Barnett 2001) The

ollowing sections explain briefy the contradictionsthat climate change possesses with regard to tradi-tional security, beore reviewing alternative deni-tions o vulnerability and risk assessment.

Environmental security

contradictions

Conceptions o national security oten used by both

political science and popular understanding con-tain a number o arteactual assumptions, ways othinking that must be addressed beore we can un-derstand the diculties inherent in climate changeand security connections. Daniel Deudney rst ex-plained many such contradictions at the end o theCold War (1991), at least in reerence to traditionalsecurity denitions. It is arguable that potentialobstacles have expanded since that time. In brie,these potential problem areas are:

1. Complexity o variables and non-linear nature orelationships.

2. Irreversible nature o environmental systems.

3. Vision o environmental issues as external to po-litical, economic, and social systems.

4. Focus on state level analyses imposes alse divi-sions between relevant actors.

5. Visions o environmental systems as naturaland root causes o issues.

These issues have been present in many o theattempts to address climate change and securityin recent years, with abrupt climate change rstappearing as a security issue in the 2003 GlobalBusiness Network (GBN) report commission by theUS Department o Deense (Schwartz and Randall2003). Since that time, similar reports have been

released by the Center or Naval Analysis (CNA2007), Directorate or National Intelligence (NIC2008), Global Business Network (GBN 2008), USClimate Change Science Program (CCSP 2008),German Federal Ministry or Economic Cooperation& Development (2002), German Advisory Council

on Global Change (WGBU 2008), Swedish Devel-opment Agency (SIDA 2008), European Commis-sion (2008), and others. These reports have beenvaluable in raising awareness o climate risks, andsome (particularly the CNA report) have lent con-siderable credence to climate change scenarios inaudiences that ormerly had not readily acceptedsuch possibilities. Most o the reports however, withthe notable exception o the 2008 Swedish contri-bution, were hampered by several shortcomings inanalysis which are detailed below and which led topotentially conficting policy prescriptions. An over-reliance on IPCC data and projections, continued

use o violent confict as the measure o insecurity,and use o the state as the unit and level o analy-sis, narrow our understanding o the risks o abruptclimate change in several crucial ways.

To take one example, the 2007 GBN report is agood start on vulnerability, but in some ways theauthors employ terminology like systems theory andnonlinear eects without really changing views othings. Climate and the environment are still seenas external actors, not integrated within systemsthemselves. They also mention threshold eectswithout really mentioning eedback mechanisms,which thus remains a (biurcated) linear relation-ship. They do not dene what is meant by vulner-ability, and imply ragility without using the termor explaining it. The notion given is one o eithera working or collapsed system, not the ecologicalunderstanding o multiple stability points that moreaccurately describes nonlinear shits. And underly-ing many o their explanations o resource changesare assumptions o scarcity-confict, little dierentrom the 1990s linear-causal models (Homer-Dixon1991, 1994).

Popular perceptions o environmental issues arebased upon notions that environmental conditionsare largely static, that they remain more or less thesame over time save or outside intererence byhuman actions or some other overwhelming inter-erence. Ideas o a stable environment even infu-ence ecological sciences by the earlier adoption o

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climax ecosystem models, positing that disruptedenvironments return to one optimum level oncehuman intererence is removed. Such ideas areurther reinorced by the widespread use o stockmeasures as a metric or environmental health,where measurable amounts o orested land, opengrassland and similar items are considered compa-rable and meaningul (Lomborg). Such approach-es, however, limit understanding o non-linear andcomplex environmental systems.

Systems Theory

In contrast, ecological systems (including the glob-

al climate) are better understood as complex emer-gent systems. The units o environmental systems,however dened, are not nearly as important as therelationships and networks between a systems com-ponents. Properties o the system cannot be deter-mined simply by reerence to its components, norcan the uture state o a system be understood inreductionist terms. Change can occur while main-

taining the integrity o the system, but the systemmay shit to multiple points o stability. Such shits,as with eutrophication o lakes, may occur quitesuddenly and with little indication that conditionsmay suddenly worsen. Likewise, paleo-climatolog-ical studies have indicated that atmospheric tem-peratures can shit very suddenly, perhaps as muchas 10-20 degrees Celsius within a ew years. Simi-lar, sudden temperature shits occurred 12,000years ago at the end o the Younger Dryas Period,when temperatures in Greenland dropped 19 de-grees Celsius in less than twenty years. (NRC 2002)

What are less well understood are the tippingpoints in such systems, technically known as ca-tastrophe sets. How ar can a system be pushedbeore it shits to a new level o stability? What are

the most relevant relationships? In climate terms,the most pressing questions concern what amounto greenhouse gases (GHGs) can the ecosystem ab-sorb beore a large-scale shit in climate stabilityoccurs? Atmospheric temperatures may rise gradu-ally over the years, as per the standard IPCC projec-tions, but then suddenly rise (or all) precipitously.The National Research Councils 2002 report on

Figure 1: Simplistic visu-alization of small margin-al forcing at point A, lead-ing to catastrophic shiftof a system at point B toa new stability level. Thesystem does not return tothe origina relationshipuntil point C. The sys-tem in this example fipsbetween two chaotic at-tractors.Graphic MikeHolderness


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abrupt climate change described several qualitieso the system that creates abruptness. First, thesystem is non-linear, and shits rom one condition(oten measured as temperature) to another rapid-

ly, perhaps within a number o years. Second, thischange is irreversible as measured by human timescales, a condition made even more likely by thelong-term orcing o GHG emissions and atmospher-

ic CO2 lietimes. Third, the changes may occurdue to second-order eects o the global system,as positive eedback loops originally unrelated tothe more obvious orcing (eg Arctic methane gas re-lease caused by melting permarost). Finally, abruptchanges are oten categorized as such due to theinability o related systems to adapt, leading to thepossible description dangerous climate change.The danger does not necessarily stem rom threatso violent confict between people. Climate change

is very unlikely to lead directly to confict, but mayadversely aect social, political and economic sys-tems at varying levels, and these overlapping sys-tems may contain eedback loops that acceleratethe stability shits.

Most issues concerning resources and confict stemnot rom changes in the environment as a root

cause, but rather, the ailure o political and eco-nomic systems to provide adequate resources or ad-aptation measures. At times such ailure can be de-liberate, as with resilience and livelihood targeting

during violent conficts. (Briggs et al 2009; Brown2004) At other times these ailures can be sec-ond or third-order eects, such as the breakdownin ood and health security currently being experi-enced in Zimbabwe. The eects o climate changein such situations have been conceptualized asthreat multipliers, conditions that exacerbate risksand make adaptation more dicult, but not condi-tions which could be understood as the root causeso confict. The concept o abrupt climate changeis both quantitatively and qualitatively distinct, inthat such sudden shits in environmental conditionswill not merely emphasize existing inequalities and

conficts. Vulnerable systems, be they ecological,political or economic, may ail completely shouldenvironmental conditions shit much more quicklythan adaptation allows. (Gallopin 2007) Failures osystems need not be understood in simple, binaryterms oten used to describe ailed state in politicalscience. Rather, unstable systems will nd a new,oten lower, level o stability and operation, otenresulting in severely negative consequences or cer-tain components or populations.

Environmental issues are not necessarily more com-plex than the socio-political conditions that give riseto violent confict, but it is ar more dicult to at-tribute intentions or divination o rational thoughtto how conditions change. Global environmentalconditions are also inextricably linked to social, po-litical, and economic systems, which can urthercompound uncertainty when analysts would preerto study systems as discrete collections o isolatedvariables. Thus climate change is not merely the in-teraction o a ew variables, where a simple, linearrelationship exists between levels o atmosphericgreenhouse gases and average atmospheric temper-atures. Rather, the global climate is a complex sys-

tem, exhibiting emergent properties and infuencedby numerous eedback eects, none o which caneasily be predicted in advance. Just as with eco-logical systems, the climate may rest upon multiplepoints o stability, but these stable levels may beunsuitable or both existing human and environ-mental adaptation.

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The concept o abrupt thereore applies not onlyto the sudden shits in average air temperature, butalso adaptive capacity and our ability to anticipatesuch changes. The ability o people to respond to

environmental change depends, at least in part,on the congruence between the rate o expectedchange and the actual physical changes that a-ect a particular group. Ecosystem resilience doesnot depend upon perception o the problem, but isvery much tied to both rate and extent o change.Overall, there are our primary components to theconcept o vulnerability, and to understanding whatmakes a particular system more or less able toadapt to changing circumstances. Responses to en-vironmental changes can be both positive or nega-tive, and the ability o a system to react positively oradequately does not merely depend upon the most

visible characteristic o the system in question. Re-silient ecosystems may have high or low numberso species, economic systems may be more vulner-able as wealth increases, and adaptation to climatechange may depend upon actors not yet well un-derstood.

Vulnerability: risk, sensitivity,

resilience and fragility

Policymakers and analysts perhaps assume thatregions like Arica are more vulnerable to climatechanges, and recent reports have ocused on lesser-developed regions to create risk scenarios or cli-mate change and security. (Brown et al 2007) Thatestimation o vulnerability is true to an extent, butonly by one aspect o the components o vulnerabil-ity. As security implications are based upon notionso vulnerability to climate change, it is notable thatoten a ull denition o vulnerability is omittedrom analyses, and what is meant by these terms

makes little reerence to previous work in risk andecology. Vulnerability in disaster studies (Wisner etal 2005) and livelihood models (Lantze & Raven-Roberts 2006) can provide a guide to raming risksrom abrupt climate change. Vulnerability is a gen-eral term or risk rom environmental change, but isconstituted rom risk/hazard, sensitivity, resilience,and ragility measures. (See also Brooks 2003; De-

Fur 2007; Gallopin 2006)

The rst component o vulnerability is risk, or theprobabilistic measure o adverse outcomes to which

a particular group is exposed. Oten the most tradi-tion measure o vulnerability, the extent o risk is aunction o probability o hazard and the exposurelevel (R=[H, E]). In some iterations, this unctionis modied by the level o vulnerability, meaningthe extent to which the eects o hazards can bemitigated and withstood. In such a construction,

however, the hazard becomes something externalto the group in question, a orce to be withstoodrather part o the complex, adaptive capacity o thepopulation. Rather than make such vulnerability anexternal modier o risk, or purposes o clarity wedene this variable instead as sensitivity, the sec-ond component o vulnerability.

Sensitivity is the degree to which a group is aect-ed by the occurrence o a hazard, or how ar roma baseline livelihood one is pushed. Sensitivity canbe a result o particular geography, such as a com-munity placed on sandy hillsides where landslidesare common, or it may be aected by actors suchas physical characteristics, cultural practices, ageor past negative pressures. Climate changes can

interact with sensitivity measures along multiplepathways, and can create situations o negativeeedback loops that create ever greater vulnerabil-ity. Certain groups, or reasons o geography, age,livelihood or cultural practices, can be much moresensitive to environmental changes. The degreeo exposure to a climate changes alone cannot beused to predict impacts (ie, temperature changes


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alone do not indicate harm), but past exposure todisease can increase the sensitivity o populationsto uture exposures o similar or related pathogens.Sensitivity depends not merely on location and ex-

posure, but oten is aected by numerous smallchanges in the underlying support structure o thegroup. Dynamic systems such as social groups canbe highly sensitive to small pressures, ampliyingdynamic pressures into generating large eects.Low sensitivity can be the result o robust systemsthat dampen such pressures, providing negativeeedback loops that actually strengthen collectiveresponse to risks.

The mitigative actor in vulnerability is known as re-silience, or the ability to return to a baseline condi-tion in a reasonable time period ollowing exposure

to a hazard risk. Resilience cannot be measured in

terms o material wealth o aggregate individuals,but is rather a qualitative and emergent measure onetworks and social capital, such as the ability andwillingness to reallocate resources to assist those in

need. Resilience is thereore oten not measured atthe individual or state level, but rather at intermedi-ate levels o analysis that include amilies, neigh-borhoods, cities or larger collectives within society.Health studies have demonstrated that those groupswith the largest stocks o social capital are mostlikely to recover rom outbreaks o illness, whilerecurring illnesses leave neighborhoods and citiesvulnerable to any number o additional stresses, o-ten creating a downward spiral o vulnerability.

The last actor in vulnerability is ragility, a mea-sure that represents the variable nature o the

actors above. Rather than conceive o resilience

Figure 2: Acceleration of the Greenland ice sheet melt. Source: Envi-ronment Canada


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as a stock that merely exists and is drawn downover time, ragility represents the extent to whicha group can be stressed beore its underlying resil-ience and support networks are permanently weak-

ened. Resilience is an emergent property o socialnetworks and interaction, a societys ability to re-spond rom taxing events may be permanently dam-aged i pushed beyond a particular limit state. Oncethis limit state is exceeded, the ability o groups torespond and adapt is undermined in crucial ways,possibly resulting in the society alling to a lowerlevel o stability. Fragility is not a matter, as somepolitical analyses would suggest, o a binary stable/unstable categorization, but rather describes howvulnerable a group is to a stability shit (catastropheset) to an entirely dierent set o relationships andadaptive capacity. When combined, these actors o

vulnerability help to describe those system compo-nents or conditions that need to be assessed i weare to understand potential security risks o abruptclimate change. One can begin by considering thegeographic region where the climate system is mostsensitive and potentially ragile, the Arctic.

Abrupt climate change risks in

the Arctic

The Arctic may provide a useul illustration o howoresight o environmental conditions and knowl-edge o non-linear eects can contribute to a great-er understanding o potential impacts. Rather thanexamine global models o average climate change,a number o potential tipping points exist in Arcticecosystems that can trigger abrupt climate changesworldwide.

Greenland and Arctic ice

melting

The geopolitical implications o loss o Arctic sum-mer sea ice are potentially proound, but are beyondthe scope o this assessment. From an ecologicalperspective, loss o sea ice will aect global albedomeasures and wildlie, but would not have any e-

ect on either sea level or reshwater intrusion intodeep ocean currents. The more problematic issueor Arctic-climate systems is the stability o theGreenland ice sheet (GIS), a rozen reservoir o resh

water locked into 2.85 million km o ice that hasexisted since the late Pliocene period over 100,000years ago. Should the entire ice sheet melt, the re-sulting meltwater would raise global sea levels byapproximately 7 meters (23 eet), while signicantmelting may aect the salinity and

stability o the thermohaline circulation (THC) thatdrives the warm waters o the Gul Stream. (Alley etal 2003)

Original estimates o global climate change as-sumed the long-term stability o the Greenland ice

sheet, indicating that any signicant melting o theice sheet would take hundreds o years, i not mil-lennia. (IPCC 2001) More recent observations oice melt indicated that the rate o net runo wasar higher than expected, and that loss o GIS wasaccelerating rapidly. The melt rate exceeded possi-ble scenarios rom ice sheet models, and scientistssoon discovered that water intrusion to the glacialbases through moulins resulted in lower riction be-tween the glacial and underlying rock. Other non-linear dynamics were also at work, such as orceimbalances between calving sections o the glacierand inland sheets. The resulting changes in condi-tions, combined with higher summer temperaturesin Greenland o some 2 degrees Celsius, have re-sulted in signicant reductions in glacial cover andthickness in some regions (especially coastal areas,where summer average temperatures average closeto reezing). More recent estimates o GIS stabilityindicate that it may largely disappear by the end othe century, an abrupt shit that is matched by pastclimatological records.

The potential impacts o GIS melting are twoold.The rst and more obvious concern is rising sea

level, a risk that has been downplayed in standardIPCC projections at least until the end o the 21stcentury. In the potential abrupt climate change sce-narios o sudden warming, accelerated ice melt romGreenland could raise sea levels by anywhere rom1-4 meters in the short term or decadal measure,and up to seven meters in a worst case scenario.Historical climate records indicate that abrupt rises


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Figure 3: Methane lev-els by latitude 1993 -2003. Source: NOAA

in sea level are possible, and would cause obviousand severe dislocation in coastal areas globally. Theareas at most risk o coastal fooding or inundationare airly easily mapped, although the cascadingeects o large-scale dislocation must be assessedand measured according to regional social, econom-ic and political systems.

The second impact o GIS melt is the possible inter-action between a sudden infux o reshwater into thenorth Atlantic, and the stability o the thermohalinecirculation o ocean currents. Climate researchershave hypothesized that the sudden cooling recordedat the end o the Younger Dryas Period 11,400 yearsago, a drop o 10 degrees centigrade over a decade,was caused by the sudden release o meltwater rom

the Saint Lawrence in North America. The resh wa-ter released into the north Atlantic decreased thedensity and salinity o the waters at the northernedge o the warm Gul Stream, preventing the waterrom sinking. This action eectively shut down theglobal THC, and may have the cause o the sud-den, global cooling o the period. Recent scienticreports have indicated that the northern extent o

the Gul Stream has been shortening, with regionalimpacts o more severe winters in the British islesand Scandinavia, although it is dicult to discernlong-term trends rom natural variation. The risk oglobal warming turning to sudden global cooling is aplausible risk, considering past and geologically re-cent climatological records, and the global impactscould be quite severe in terms o ood security andshocks to ragile ecosystems.

Terrestrial and oceanic

methane releases

Much o the ocus on global GHG emissions re-mains on carbon dioxide, but increasing attention isbeing paid to methane (CH4) concentrations in theatmosphere. Methane is released in greater quanti-ties in the northern latitudes than elsewhere, andthe rate o release has been increasing over the pastdecade (see Figure 3). Explanations or the increase


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in methane releases initially rested on terrestrial re-lease rom melting lakes and permarost. As warm-ing trends increase more rapidly in the Arctic thanelsewhere, ground-cover and lakes begin to melt,

thereby releasing methane as a by-product o biot-ic decomposition. As methane cannot be releasedwhile these sources remain rozen, any warming cancreate a positive eedback eect o increasing meth-ane release increasing warming eects, which thencycle back into increasing warming. This so-calledClathrate Gun Hypothesis is thought to have contrib-uted to or triggered the warming periods o the lateQuaternary period. (Kennett et al 2002)

The Arctic areas o Siberia and North America con-tain large carbon deposits in the orm o peat bogsand decomposed organic matter, and scientists es-

timate that thawing o the region may signicantlyincrease Arctic methane contributions to the globalcarbon balance. As methane is over 20 times moreeective than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas1,releases have a potentially disproportionate impacton climate change risks. Estimates o natural con-tributions rom only a ew years ago have alreadybeen revised upwards by approximately 50%, andresearchers warn that new surprises in methanesources and eedbacks are likely in the years tocome. (Walter et al 2006, 2007)

One such surprise has come rom the Arctic oceans,particularly the shallow seas over the continentalshelves (eg the Barents Sea). The Arctic seas con-tain large amounts o methane hydrate deposits, alsoknown as methane clathrate or methane ice, a ormo rozen water containing large amounts o meth-ane within a crystal structure. This orm o methanedeposit is created by the decomposition o organicmatter in low-oxygen marine environments, where acombination o low temperatures and high pressurecreate the hydrates. The Arctic deposits alone con-tain up to 400 gigatons o carbon, compared with the700 gigatons o carbon present in the atmosphere.

These deposits were ormerly believed to be highlystable, and the 2007 IPCC report only made pass-ing mention o their existence. Recent research in2008, however, has indicated that continental ma-rine deposits may be highly sensitive to changes inwater temperature, and that high levels o methane

1 Over a 100-year period, while over twenty years the effectiveness

rises to over 70 times.

are now being released rom areas such as the Bar-ents Sea and Arctic Ocean north o Russia. (Rigby etal 2008; Schiermeier 2008; Shakhova et al 2008a,2008b)

Should even a relatively small proportion o the Arc-tic methane hydrate deposits be disturbed,

this process may create a powerul, positive eed-back eect that would have substantial eects onclimate change globally. Moreover, release o ma-rine hydrate deposits would accelerate release oCH4 rom northern permarost, ampliying a processthat, by itsel, would be unlikely to trigger abruptclimate change. One outstanding problem is that theresearch into carbon releases in the Arctic is airlynew, and it will likely take years or conclusive re-

search to establish the thresholds or methane hy-drates. Whether such thresholds may have alreadybeen crossed by the time that the research becomesconclusive is another question, and one which mustbe posed to policymakers. As a cautionary tale, theseinfuences in the Arctic are useul, or none o theabove-mentioned orces (Greenland melting, Arc-tic sea ice, methane releases) were included in the


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2007 IPCC report as potentially signicant infu-ences. (IPCC 2007: 372) As a result, they are alsomissing rom more recent security reports on cli-mate change, as they rely almost entirely on IPCC

data to substantiate potential risks and to estimateuture conditions.

Tipping points, cascading

effects and forward

assessments

Once the initial tipping points in certain systems is

better understood, and certain abrupt change sce-narios can be played out in terms o possible events,we can assess the potential impacts on various re-lated systems globally. The cascading eects enterwhere change in one system (eg the Greenland icesheet) results in conditions (rapid rise in sea lev-els) that have varying impacts elsewhere depend-ing upon the vulnerability o geographic region (egsensitivity to fooding rom low-lying coastal land),social systems (resilience to orced migration), eco-nomic systems (ragility o inrastructure), all ap-plied at scalable levels and according to analyticalneeds. Disruptions in those systems then have theirown cascading eects on related, complex systems.

Projects and initiatives are underway to provide stra-tegic environmental assessments to policymakers,and to link the research community more eective-ly with interested parties in government, non-protwork, and business. The Environment and SecurityInitiative (ENCSEC) provides assessments or theOSCE region o Europe and Central Asia, the UnitedNations Environment Program (UNEP) conductspost-confict and post-disaster environmental as-sessments, and individual governments provide sce-

nario and impact assessments according to nationalneeds. The larger need or environmental securityis o an open-source, international eort to provideresearch space or the growing environmental secu-rity community. Certain research centers already ex-ist (at the Woodrow Wilson Center and Institute orEnvironmental Security) and provide internationalora, but resource constraints and organization pre-

vent such centers rom drawing upon the larger aca-demic, business and government communities oanalysts in a systemic way. It may be argued thatthe bets way to approach a complex set o systems

with emergent order is to create a strategic intel-ligence system with similar attributes. Interdisci-plinary black swan research is more likely to besuccessul i it can bypass organizational barriers,national parochialism, and instead perhaps createthe sort o epistemic community that was success-ul in solving other transnational environmental is-sues. (Litn 1999)

Conclusion

Denitions or security (both energy and environ-mental) and climate change need to be constructedin such a way that policymakers have incentivesto pursue mitigation and adaptation, not merely toocus on GHG emissions as the only suitable goaland outcome o the current Copenhagen process.They must also allow integration o energy and en-vironment as key concepts, both as contributing toorcing o environmental systems, and as the pos-sible solutions or cooperation. Such concepts willbe inherently complex, involving large amounts ouncertainty and illustrating scenarios that containmultiple eedback eects and cascading perturba-tions (ripple eects ). Simple models and a con-tinued view that environmental systems lay outsideo human activity impose articial barriers on bothunderstanding and solutions.

The point o this exercise is not to provide immedi-ate and concrete answers. It is unlikely that this iseven possible, owing to the large amount o uncer-tainty inherent in the discussion. Rather, we needto provide workable denitions and rameworks orapproaching policy, ones that break rom past coldwar era denitions that assume state security, de-

liberate action, and violent confict. Should thesedenitions be used, we will be looking at the wrongplaces and at the wrong times.

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