Michael Richardson, Straits Times 17 Aug 09;
WILL Asia's armed forces find their role in national defence and security shifting significantly in the future as the effects of climate change caused by global warming intensify? If so, how quickly will it happen?
Television pictures and media reports last week of military helicopters and soldiers evacuating victims of Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan are just the latest sign of disaster relief becoming a more prominent part of military operations.
Of course, not all natural disasters are linked to climate change. But they are becoming more costly as global warming causes more extreme weather, including violent storms, floods and droughts.
In January, two United Nations agencies reported a marked rise last year in the number of deaths and amount of economic losses arising from disasters, compared to the 2000-2007 yearly average. They said that last year, 321 disasters killed more than 235,800 people, affected 211 million others and cost US$181 billion (S$260 billion).
As in previous years, Asia was the main affected continent. Nine of the top 10 countries with the highest number of disaster-related deaths were in Asia. The death toll last year was three times more than the annual average of about 66,800 for the eight years to 2007. This was chiefly due to Cyclone Nargis, which killed over 138,300 people in Myanmar, and the Sichuan earthquake in China, which caused the deaths of at least 87,470 people.
The UN refugee agency is making plans, based on what it believes are conservative estimates, that global warming will force between 200 million and 250 million people (an average of around six million a year) from their homes by 2050: about half displaced by sudden disasters, and the other half, economic refugees pushed out by gradual changes like rising sea levels.
The international aid group Oxfam said in April that it expected climate crises to affect more than 375 million people each year by 2015, up from nearly 250 million now.
Almost every military force in the Asia-Pacific region is configured and trained to some degree for disaster relief, not just within national borders but also beyond. Armed forces from Asean and partner nations worked together on an ad hoc basis after a devastating tsunami struck Indonesia and other parts of Asia in December 2004. The Asean Regional Forum is trying to build a more effective disaster response capability.
Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean noted last Tuesday that in an ever more connected world, 'the spectrum of threats we face will be wider and even more complex, going beyond the conventional threats to include terrorism, piracy, natural disasters, pandemics and others that we have not foreseen'.
Military planners in the United States, Europe, Australia and some Asian nations are weighing the potential impact of climate change and tensions over the supply of energy, food and fresh water on security.
Australia's Defence White Paper in May said that the security effects of climate change were likely to be most pronounced where states had limited capacity to respond to environmental strains. It added that the impact of sea-level rise, changed rainfall patterns and drought 'will place greater pressure on water and food security, including local fisheries'.
A 2007 study by a group of retired US admirals and generals published by the Centre for Naval Analyses described climate change as 'a threat multiplier for instability' in Asia and other volatile regions of the world.
A panel of scientists and officials advising the UN has warned that climate change will have a mostly adverse impact, with the consequences intensifying progressively after 2020 if nothing effective is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a warmer world.
Last year, the European Commission outlined a grim catalogue of possible threats in a report on climate change and international security. The list included resource conflicts, tensions over energy supply, risks to coastal regions from rising sea levels, loss of territory, border disputes due to receding coastlines, environmentally-induced migration, political radicalisation in weak or failing states, and the undermining of cooperative international relations.
Australia's Defence White Paper said that the first and main line of defence against instability caused by global warming and resource shortages should be three-pronged: agreement on international climate change mitigation; coordinated economic assistance strategies to countries in need; and concerted international action to assure energy supply and distribution.
If preventive strategies were to fail, it said Australia's military might face 'new potential sources of conflict related to our planet's changing climate or resource scarcity' - at the same time as more frequent and severe natural disasters increased demands on the armed forces and other government agencies to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
If these climate change and resource scarcity predictions are correct, Asia-Pacific armed forces will face pressures in the longer term that may be difficult to reconcile. They will be expected to guard national borders and protect overseas supply lines, while rendering more assistance both at home and abroad.
This will be a major challenge in a climate-stressed and resource-constrained world. It is one that will inevitably bring about changes in military force structure, deployment patterns and doctrine.
The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
