By KUNA
London : Climate change over the coming decades will create new security threats both in Britain and overseas, a report warned Thursday.
As higher temperatures cause sea levels to rise and weather patterns to change, the world faces the prospect of wars over resources like water and food, according to the document from the Oxford Research Group.
There will also be pressure from hundreds of millions of “environmental refugees” fleeing their devastated homelands.
And in Britain, police and security services may have to cope with demands for tougher border controls, potentially violent protests against polluting companies and intercommunal tensions.
Resistance to British Government measures to mitigate global warming, on top of the additional burden of policing new laws to limit greenhouse gases, is also a possibility, the report added.
Author Chris Abbott, a fellow of Bristol University’s Centre for Governance and International Affairs, in south-west England, warned that attempts to tackle these new problems using existing strategies are doomed to failure.
He called for leadership from politicians to develop new co-operative approaches which focus on preventing and managing climate change.
“If governments simply respond with traditional attempts to maintain the status quo and control insecurity they will ultimately fail,” Abbott wrote.
“In today’s globalised world, using military force to secure resources overseas, while attempting to create a fortress state at home, will not work, despite the potential attraction of such policies for governments faced with such an uncertain future,” he said.
“The security consequences of climate change will not just manifest themselves ‘over there,’ there will be domestic security concerns for both developed and developing nations alike.
“Leadership within the police, security services and military will need to use their considerable influence to make this clear to policymakers and impress upon them the importance of taking steps now to prevent and manage climate change, rather than relying on force to try and control the insecurity later,” he added.
It is “almost certain” that, by 2050, droughts, food shortages and flooding will lead to the mass movement of up to 200 million environmental refugees, warned the paper entitled “An Uncertain Future: Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change.” This will inevitably lead to “kneejerk” demands for tighter border controls which are “unlikely to succeed in the long-term.” The report called for extensive construction of disaster protection measures like flood defences, “massive and sustained” funding for renewable energy and international agreement on the management of environmental refugees.
It also demanded consideration of the effects of climate change in foreign aid programmes and more research on the areas of instability most vulnerable to global warming.