The Middle East is one of the regions of the world most exposed to climate change and desertification. The urgent challenges it faces include air pollution and sandstorms, temperatures in some areas that exceed a threshold for human adaptability, and extreme weather events, such as Cyclone Shaheen in October 2021 and the floods in summer 2022.
The rush to achieve net zero is driving massive global investments in renewable energy. Surges in energy prices as a result of the conflict in Ukraine make the green transition even more pressing and may further increase the benefits for investors. No one needs a net zero world more than the almost two billion people who live in fragile and conflict-affected places: for them, the climate emergency can be literally a matter of life or death.
The crisis in the Sahel shows that wars fuelled by climate change could make earth a place unfit for life earlier than rising temperatures.
Clingendael’s Planetary Security Initiative (PSI) will join the fourth Berlin Climate Security Conference (BCSC) to introduce its work on climate security in Iraq.
U.S. Air Force and Space Force officials released a climate action plan Wednesday that includes a goal of operating bases at net-zero emissions by 2046, an ambitious effort to rein in the sizable carbon footprint of the U.S. military’s air wing.
The plan, the first from the branches, also takes into account how the Air Force will need to adapt its operations to changing climate conditions, most notably within the infrastructure of its bases and where its energy comes from.
The South Caucasus, Azerbaijan in particular, is facing water shortages as precipitation levels are decreasing and the levels of the region’s rivers are dropping. Water tensions are also linked to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The Ukraine war has added to the pressure to address the links between the environment, natural resource management and conflict. This SIPRI Research Policy Paper assesses the priorities of selected European Union (EU) member states regarding climate-related security risks, explores their strategies for pursuing these at EU level and identifies steps for further action. It finds that member states’ level of political commitment to tackling climate-related security risks at the EU level varies.
2022 has brought environmental disaster to Pakistan as the country experienced a record-breaking heatwave in May, contributing to the collapse of many agricultural sectors. Even more ominously, these unprecedented high temperatures led to record melting amongst many of the glaciers in the north of Pakistan, increasing the rate of glacial melt water flowing in the Pakistani river system.
Iraq finds itself amid a water crisis that far exceeds previous experiences with water scarcity and acute shortages. Declining quantity and quality of water, outdated and damaged infrastructure, and inefficient water use have uncovered deficiencies in existing water governance, severely affecting the country’s socio-economic, political, and security situation. In the last years, basic water supply services in the south repeatedly broke down during the summer months which contributed to widespread antigovernment protests, particularly in 2018 (BBC News, 2018).
I recently spoke with Dr. Josh Busby, Center for Climate and Security (CCS) nonresident senior research fellow and associate professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs, about his recently-published book States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security. In the book, Dr.
