Chinese walker

Although China`s assistant minister of foreign affairs, Hu Zhengyue, has said that “China does not have an Arctic strategy”, the country does appear to have a clear agenda. Hu made his statement while attending an Arctic forum organised by the Norwegian Government on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard in June 2009. His speech at the forum, along with his comments to Chinese journalists afterwards, forms the most up-to-date and comprehensive official articulation of China`s thinking on the geopolitics of the Arctic and resulting sovereignty issues.

In line with the country`s oft-stated governing principles in international affairs, Hu emphasised China`s wish to see disputes related to sovereignty resolved peacefully through dialogue. He expressed China`s support for Arctic countries` sovereign and judicial rights, endowed by international legislation, but said these laws should to be refined and developed due to new circumstances arising from the melting of the ice.

Hu has also stressed the need for cooperation between Arctic and non-Arctic states. In his speech at Svalbard, he acknowledged that the Arctic is primarily a regional issue but said concerns over climate change and international shipping gave it inter-regional dimensions. He did not mention energy and other natural resources.

Unsurprisingly, China would like to see the Arctic states recognise the interests of non-Arctic states. In Hu`s words: “When determining the delimitation of outer-continental shelves, the Arctic states not only need to handle relationships between themselves properly, but must also consider the relationship between the outer-continental shelf and the international submarine area that is the common human heritage, to ensure a balance of coastal countries` interests and the common interests of the international community.”

After the publication of the original SIPRI report, admiral Yin Zhuo of the People`s Liberation Army Navy made a stronger assertion of Chinese rights in the region in comments carried by official media on March 5. Yin is reported to have stated that, “Under the provisions of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Arctic does not belong to any particular nation and is rather the property of all the world`s people” and that “China must play an indispensable role in Arctic exploration as it has one-fifth of the world`s population.”

Associate professor Guo Peiqing of the Ocean University of China has said: “Circumpolar nations have to understand that Arctic affairs are not only regional issues but also international ones.” Guo has estimated that about 88% of the Arctic seabed would be under the control of the Arctic littoral states if the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf were to approve all the existing or expected claims to the Arctic Ocean continental shelf. However, when considering the concerns of China and other non-Arctic states, it is worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of known but untapped energy resources lie in undisputed areas, that is within the legitimate exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of the Arctic littoral states.

Canada and Norway are the only countries to have thus far engaged with China in a formal bilateral dialogue on Arctic issues. At the first China-Norway dialogue meeting in June 2009, climate change and polar research were identified as the issues of strongest common interest, although the two sides also exchanged views on Arctic policies, energy issues and sea routes. The two countries have agreed to hold follow-up talks in 2010.

It is unclear if and when China will issue a more formal Arctic strategy. The precise targets for polar expeditions and polar research projects of the 12th Five-Year Plan, which will cover the period from 2011 to 2015, were set to be finalised following the China`s 26th Antarctic expedition, which completed in March. In October 2009, on the eve of the expedition, Chen Lianzeng, deputy director of the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), shed some light on the next Five-Year Plan`s general targets. These will be: to deepen China`s knowledge of the impact of climate change on the two polar regions, expand China`s scientific exploration activities and “take an active part in polar affairs and establish China`s strategic position”. To accomplish these goals, the SOA intends to build both “soft power and hard power”.

Several Chinese academics are encouraging their government to “Grasp this historical opportunity and recognise the political, economic and military value of the Arctic and then re-evaluate China`s rights in the Arctic region and adjust its strategic plan.” Chinese decision makers, on the other hand, advocate cautious Arctic policies for fear of causing alarm and provoking countermeasures among the Arctic states. Professor Guo Peiqing has even raised the alarmist possibility of an alliance of Arctic states.

China is aware that its size and rise to major-power status evoke jitters but at the same time it is striving to position itself so that it will not be excluded from access to the Arctic. China appears to be particularly wary of Russia`s intentions in the Arctic. Chinese observers made note of Russia`s decision in August 2007 to resume long-distance bomber flights over the Arctic and the planting of a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed that same month.

China and the rest of the world would be at a disadvantage if Russia`s claims over the underwater terrain between the Lomonosov and Mendeleev ridges were legitimised, giving Russia alone rights to the resources in that area. It is important to note, however, that Arctic issues have thus far been approached in a “spirit of cooperation, with outstanding disputes managed peacefully”. Media reports of competition in an ice-free Arctic that emphasise potential disputes and a scramble for the Arctic`s resources give rise to scenarios of armed conflict breaking out in the region, especially a conflict involving Russia. However, there is no evidence that Russia is failing to play by the rules or that it would not want to find multilateral solutions to disputes regarding sovereignty.

While the melting of the Arctic ice could create tension in China-Russia relations, the new opportunities that will arise from an ice-free Arctic could deepen cooperation between east Asian states. As non-Arctic states, China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea are all in the same boat. Each of them stands to benefit enormously from shorter commercial shipping routes and possible access to new fishing grounds and other natural resources. A unified Arctic strategy would be in their mutual interest. Finding ways to use an ice-free Arctic jointly has the potential to create a genuine win-win situation for both China and Japan, the two east Asian powers that, in so many other areas, find it difficult to find common ground.

From China`s viewpoint, an ice-free Arctic will increase the value of strong ties with the Nordic countries that otherwise struggle to be noticed by the rising power. China already has the largest foreign embassy in Reykjavik, in anticipation of Iceland becoming a major shipping hub. By actively engaging Chinese officials and academics on Arctic issues – ranging from climate change and polar research to commercial shipping routes and maritime rescue operations – Nordic countries can start laying the foundations for a special Arctic-orientated relationship with China.

Norway, with its deep-sea drilling expertise, has an advantage in this regard. Finding ways for Chinese and Norwegian companies to cooperate in Arctic energy resource extraction – in, for example, the ongoing project in the Shtokman field – would be of great interest to Chinese companies and would undoubtedly strengthen China-Norway relations. The notion that China has rights in the Arctic can be expected to be repeated in articles by Chinese academics and in comments by Chinese officials until it gradually begins to be perceived as an accepted state of affairs.

However, under international law, China`s rights in the Arctic are limited. Moreover, China`s insistence that respect for state sovereignty be a guiding principle of international relations makes it difficult for the country to question the Arctic states` sovereignty rights. There is some irony in the statements by Chinese officials calling on the Arctic states to consider the interests of man-kind so that all states can share the Arctic. These statements appear to be contrary to China`s long-standing principles of respect for sovereignty and the internal affairs of other states. Based on official statements by the Chinese government and the open-source literature written by Chinese Arctic scholars, China can be expected to continue to persistently, yet quietly and unobtrusively, push for the Arctic, in spirit, being accessible to all.

Linda Jakobson is the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) China and Global Security Programme.

An earlier version of this article was published as “China prepares for an ice-free Arctic”, SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, No. 2010/2, March 2010. It is used here with permission.

Homepage image from NASA

Part one: China’s growing interest in the thawing north

Part two: The commercial lure of melting ice

As China`s economy is reliant on foreign trade, there are substantial commercial implications if shipping routes are to shorten during the summer months each year. Nearly half of China`s gross domestic product (GDP) is thought to depend on shipping. The trip from Shanghai to Hamburg via the Northeast Passage – which runs along the north coast of Russia from the Bering Strait in the east to Novaya Zemlya in the west – is 6,400 kilometres shorter than the route via the Strait of Malacca, a strip of water between Malaysia and Sumatra, and the Egypt`s Suez Canal.

Moreover, due to piracy, the cost of insurance for ships travelling via the Gulf of Aden, in the Arabian Sea, towards the Suez Canal increased more than tenfold between September 2008 and March 2009, according to a new report, to be published by Martinus Nijhoff later this year.

Chinese research remains primarily focused on how the melting Arctic will affect China`s continental and oceanic environment and how, in turn, such changes could affect domestic agricultural and economic development. However, a small number of Chinese researchers are publicly encouraging the government to prepare for the commercial and strategic opportunities that a melting Arctic presents.

Li Zhenfu, associate professor at Dalian Maritime University, together with a team of specialists, has assessed China`s advantages and disadvantages when the Arctic-sea routes open up. “Whoever has control over the Arctic route will control the new passage of world economics and international strategies,” writes Li, referring both to the shortened shipping routes between East Asia and Europe or North America and to the abundant oil, gas, mineral and fishery resources presumed to be in the Arctic.

Commenting on the successful test voyages from South Korea to the Netherlands via the Northeast Passage by two German commercial vessels in the summer of 2009, Chen Xulong of the China Institute of International Studies writes that “the opening of the Arctic route will advance the development of China`s north-east region and eastern coastal area . . . It is of importance to East Asian cooperation as well.” Chen also says that China should have a long-term vision regarding Arctic shipping.

Li Zhenfu has criticised the fact that Chinese research on the Arctic-shipping route has not been planned and conducted in a comprehensive manner to enable China to protect its interests. According to Li, China`s research “fails to provide fundamental information and scientific references for China to map out its Arctic strategy” and, therefore, limits China`s power to speak out and protect its rights in the international arena.

Li`s article, which was published in a national journal administered by the prestigious China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), points out that the Arctic also “has significant military value, a fact recognised by other countries”. And, in a rare open-source article about the Arctic by an officer of the People`s Liberation Army, senior colonel Han Xudong warns that the possibility of military force cannot be ruled out in the Arctic due to complex sovereignty disputes.

The increasing military importance of an ice-free Arctic is, indeed, reflected in recent decisions by all five littoral states to strengthen their military capabilities in the Arctic. In August 2007, Canada announced that it was setting up an Arctic military-training centre in Resolute Bay; in March, 2009, Russia announced that it would establish a military force to protect its interests in the region; and, in July 2009, the Danish parliament approved a plan to set up an Arctic military command and task force by 2014, to take just three examples.

Another Chinese researcher on Arctic politics, Guo Peiqing of the Ocean University of China, has also voiced disapproval of China`s natural sciences-oriented Arctic research and said it is not in China`s interests to remain neutral. Guo has said that China, which is transitioning from a regional to a global power, should be more active in international Arctic affairs. He notes that “any country that lacks comprehensive research on polar politics will be excluded from being a decisive power in the management of the Arctic and, therefore, be forced into a passive position.”

Chinese Arctic specialists acknowledge the same uncertainties as many of their western counterparts when contemplating how lucrative the Arctic routes would ultimately be in comparison to the current routes through the Suez and Panama canals. Although passing along the Northeast Passage from eastern China to western Europe would substantially shorten the journey, high insurance premiums, lack of infrastructure and harsh conditions may make the Arctic routes commercially unviable, at least in the short term.

Drift ice will continue to be a problem for ships, even when the Arctic passages are officially deemed ice-free. As Greenland`s ice cap melts, the number of icebergs is also expected to increase, forcing ships to proceed slowly and make detours. Furthermore, the shallow depth of some of the passages along the shipping routes (in particular the Bering Strait) makes the Arctic unsuitable for big cargo ships.

The opening up of the Arctic will also provide access to new reserves of energy and other natural resources on which China`s economic growth increasingly relies. The US Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic contains up to 30% of the world`s undiscovered gas and 13% of the world`s undiscovered oil. Additionally, the region contains vast amounts of coal, nickel, copper, tungsten, lead, zinc, gold, silver, diamonds, manganese, chromium and titanium.

The technological challenges associated with extracting energy and mineral deposits in the Arctic have been noted by both Chinese and Western observers and China will need to partner with foreign companies in order to exploit the Arctic`s resources. As one Chinese scholar notes, “There is a rather large gap between Chinese and advanced foreign deep-sea oil extracting technology.” Russia, which controls many of the resources in Arctic waters, lacks both the technology and the capital needed to extract them – opening the way for tri-lateral joint ventures in Russian waters using Chinese capital and western or Brazilian technology. For example, when in late 2009 Russia`s state-owned oil company Rosneft announced plans to apply for the operating licences to develop 30 offshore sites on Russia`s Arctic continental shelf, industry experts predicted that it would not be able to develop these deposits on its own.

Another potential multilateral joint venture in which China`s capital could be used in exchange for the opportunity to gain the experience it seeks in deep-water drilling is the ongoing cooperation between Statoil, Total and Gazprom to develop the first phase of the Shtokman gas fields in the Barents Sea, a section of the Arctic Ocean north of Norway and Russia. This is regarded not only as a huge commercial opportunity but also a formidable technological challenge.

Linda Jakobson is the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) China and Global Security Programme.

An earlier version of this article was published as “China prepares for an ice-free Arctic”, SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, No. 2010/2, March 2010. It is used here with permission.

NEXT: Charting political waters

Part one: China’s growing interest in the thawing north

Homepage image from Combat Camera shows a Canadian military training exercise in Resolute Bay.

China is paying increasing attention to the melting of the ice in the Arctic Ocean as a result of climate change. The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months, leading to both shorter shipping routes and access to untapped energy resources, has impelled the government to allocate more resources to Arctic research. Chinese officials have also started to think about what kind of policies would help the country to benefit from an ice-free Arctic environment.

China is at a disadvantage because it is neither an Arctic littoral state – it has no Arctic coast and so no sovereign rights to underwater continental shelves – nor an Arctic Council member state with the right to participate in the discussion of regional policies. Despite its seemingly weak position, China can be expected to seek a role in determining the political framework and legal foundation for future Arctic activities.

The formerly ice-covered Arctic is undergoing an extraordinary transformation as a result of the unprecedented rate at which the ice is diminishing. According to one report, the annual average extent of Arctic Ocean ice has shrunk by 2.7% per decade, with a decrease of 7.4% per decade during the summer months since 1979. Estimates about when the Arctic Ocean could be consistently ice-free during the summer season vary greatly, ranging from 2013 to 2060.

The melting of the Arctic ice poses economic, military and environmental challenges to the governance of the region. In 2008 the five littoral states, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States, committed themselves to the existing legal framework of the Arctic and the “orderly settlement of possible overlapping claims”. Despite these assurances, the evolving situation in the Arctic could potentially lead to new geopolitical disputes, also involving non-littoral states, especially regarding issues related to free passage and resource-extraction rights. Consequently, policymakers – not only in China but across Asia, Europe and North America – are turning their attention to the region in order to assess this transformation and its economic, territorial and geopolitical implications.

To date, China has adopted a wait-and-see approach to Arctic developments, wary that active overtures would cause alarm in other countries due to its size and status as a rising global power. Chinese officials and researchers have told me privately that they are very cautious when formulating their views on the country`s interests in the Arctic. They stress that China`s Arctic research activities remain primarily focused on the climatic and environmental consequences of the ice melting. However, in recent years, the academic and policymaking communities have also started to assess the commercial, political and security implications of a seasonally ice-free Arctic region.

China has one of the world`s strongest polar research capabilities. Since 1984, the country has organised 26 expeditions and established three research stations in the Antarctic. The Arctic became a focus from 1995, when a group of Chinese scientists and journalists travelled to the North Pole on foot and conducted research on the Arctic Ocean`s ice cover, climate and environment. China`s first Arctic research expedition by sea took place in 1999 and, since then, it has carried out two more expeditions, in 2003 and 2008, with a fourth planned for the summer of 2010.

China`s first Arctic research station, Huanghe (Yellow River), was founded at Ny-%26Aring;lesund in Norway`s Svalbard archipelago in July, 2004. Since 1994, China has conducted polar exploration onboard the research vessel Xue Long (Snow Dragon), which was purchased from Ukraine in 1993.

The 163-metre-long vessel, with a displacement of 21,000 tonnes, is the world`s largest, non-nuclear icebreaker. However, in October 2009, the State Council (the Chinese cabinet) decided that Xue Long alone no longer met the demand of the country`s expanding polar research activities and needed “brothers and sisters”. After months of deliberating between purchasing a second-hand foreign vessel and building a Chinese one, the government approved the building of a new high-tech ice-breaker. Preliminary plans to order a Chinese-built ice-breaker at a cost of 2 billion yuan (US$300 million) had been under way within the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA) since at least early 2009. The new vessel, expected to become operational in 2013, will be co-designed by Chinese and foreign partners and built in China. It will be smaller than Xue Long, with a displacement of only 8000 tonnes.

Besides its own scientific expeditions, China has collaborated with international partners to monitor the Arctic`s environmental changes. In 1997, China joined the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), a nongovernmental organisation that aims to facilitate multidisciplinary research on the Arctic region and its role in the earth system. At the 2005 Arctic Science Summit Week, held at Kunming, in China`s south-western Yunnan Province, China was also invited to join the Ny-%26Aring;lesund Science Managers Committee, which was established in 1994 to enhance cooperation among the research centres at Ny-%26Aring;lesund.

China has several Arctic-focused research institutions of its own. The primary ones are: the Shanghai-based Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), which is in charge of polar expeditions on Xue Long and conducts comprehensive studies of the polar regions; the China Institute for Marine Affairs, the research department within the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) in Beijing, which concentrates on international maritime law and China`s ocean-development strategy; and the Institute of Oceanology, a multidisciplinary marine science research and development institute within the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Other organisations conducting Arctic-related research include: the Ocean University of China, Dalian Maritime University, Xiamen University, Tongji University, the Chinese Antarctic Centre of Surveying and Mapping and the Research Centre for Marine Developments of China.

Although there is no Chinese institution devoted specifically to research on Arctic politics, there are a handful of individuals who have published articles and book chapters that focus on Arctic strategies and geopolitics. Since the mid-2000s, Chinese researchers and officials have expanded their participation in international seminars focusing on commercial, legal and geopolitical Arctic issues.

In a major step to enhance China`s understanding of the political, legal and military dimensions of the Arctic, in September 2007 the Chinese government launched a project entitled Arctic Issues Research, which involved scholars and officials from around China and included such research topics as “Arctic resources and their exploitation”, “Arctic scientific research”, “Arctic transportation”, “Arctic law” and “military factors in the Arctic”. The research project, organised by the CAA, was completed by 2009, but the reports were not made public.

Linda Jakobson is the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) China and Global Security Programme.

An earlier version of this article was published as “China prepares for an ice-free Arctic”, SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, No. 2010/2, March 2010. It is used here with permission.

NEXT: The commercial lure of melting ice

Part 3: Charting political waters

Homepage image from Xilin Gol Meteorological Bureau

In our hearts, many Americans know that addiction to oil is responsible for the war in Iraq. But while oil addiction is the nexus between the causes of global warming and the threats to US national security, global warming itself is a much bigger threat to security than oil addiction alone would be.

There is global concern over the security implications of high, and rising, food prices. Most of the concern revolves around social unrest, but another factor to consider is the differing national responses to securing food and other increasingly scarce resources. Some countries may decide to let the market set the prices, while others are more active in ensuring stable prices over the long term. China, for example, needs affordable food for its population for the sake of domestic stability. That means the government cannot simply allow the market to dictate access. As a result, the way countries like China secure their supplies in the future may change the way the global economy functions.

If high food prices were a blip, China could probably ride it out, but a quick survey of the factors that have gone into the price increases show that this will likely be a protracted crisis. (These factors include: speculation in the marketplace; the large-scale switch to fuel crops; currently productive soils degrading, flooding or drying out; crop pests and diseases moving into new areas or becoming more virulent in old areas; global population increases; the spread of urban and industrial development into farmlands; the rising cost of fuel, transport and fertilizers; and increasing extreme weather events, such as the floods the UK saw this past summer and the 2008 winter snow storm that lashed China).

The end result is that between March 2007 and March 2008, the price of rice has risen 74%, soya (a primary protein for many) has increased 87%, and wheat has climbed 130%. There have been deadly riots in Haiti, protests in Mexico, demonstrations in Italy, unrest in Indonesia over biofuel crops displacing other land use, and difficult times for consumers in China. The Chinese government, worried that rising food costs could add to civil unrest, have already increased food subsidies to the traditionally most “active” group, the students. Other nations have put in place food export restrictions and price controls.

Conventional wisdom states that as crops stagnate or decline and populations increase, those in the developing world will be hardest hit. While this may be true to some degree, China, for one, is working towards creating a major geo-economic shift that will help it secure supply of various strategic essentials, including food.

Typically, countries have two parallel economic policies, a domestic one and an international one. For example, when it comes to its domestic market, the US may tend towards subsidies, especially in areas like agriculture, but internationally it pushes for free markets and open access.

Conversely, domestically China is a bit of an economic “Wild West”, but internationally most major Chinese companies work with the Chinese government (sometimes at a loss) in order to advance national strategic interests. When it comes to international deals, China practices capitalism, but it is nationalistic capitalism.

Globally, this move towards nationalistic capitalism is increasingly on show in the energy sector. Outside the west there is a growing movement toward effectively nationalising fossil-fuel resources in countries like Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia and elsewhere. Oil and gas supplies are tremendously potent political tools. Countries that practice this sort of nationalistic capitalism are much more influential on the world stage than they might be otherwise.

Countries practicing nationalistic capitalism can sign nation-to-nation package deals that cut out the open market completely and overtly link much-needed resources to wide-ranging deals, including military equipment. This is what China has done in Sudan, where it has traded weaponry, training and infrastructure aid for fossil fuel. As a result, China secures oil before it reaches the market.

In an era of food-supply scarcity, it is only logical that crops are included in nation-to-nation deals. For example, one would expect China to add food crops, or farm land, into its growing number of arrangements with African nations, which could explain part of China`s support for Robert Mugabe in that potential breadbasket, Zimbabwe (one report states that China has already received rights to farm 250,000 acres, or 1,000 square kilometres, of corn in southern Zimbabwe). Already in countries such as Laos, Congo, Indonesia and Cambodia, Chinese companies are farming products that will go straight to the home market (sometimes using Chinese labour), and the Chinese government is exploring making the purchase of farmland in foreign countries central government policy. What that means globally is that large quantities of wheat, corn, rice and other crops will never make it to the open market.

In this new reality, countries in which policymakers don`t have control over strategic assets (oil, gas, uranium, shipping lanes and, increasingly, water and crops) are potentially at a geopolitical disadvantage when it comes to trying to out-negotiate countries practising nationalistic capitalism. This is not a statement on the relative morality of varied economic approaches. It is just a statement of the obvious. A Russian government that has the ability to cut off energy supplies to Europe must be taken much more seriously than one that simply gets a drilling fee from transiting multinationals. In an increasingly shifting geopolitical world, it`s a very big negotiating advantage indeed.

Countries that believe the market is always right are stymied by this turn of events. Just before the 2006 G8 summit, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper spoke for his side when he said, “we believe in the free exchange of energy products based on competitive market principles, not self-serving monopolistic political strategies.” The problem is, an increasing number of national governments don`t see what`s wrong with being self-serving — and that includes securing food supplies.

Saudi Arabia has no permanent rivers or lakes. Rainfall is low and unreliable. Cereals can be cultivated only through expensive projects that deplete underground reservoirs. Dairy cattle must be cooled with fans and machines that spray them with water mists. This is not, in short, a nation that would normally be associated with large-scale agriculture.

But that could be about to change. Boosted by revenues from the oil boom and concerned about food security, the kingdom is scouring the globe for fertile lands in a search that has taken Saudi officials to Sudan, Ukraine, Pakistan and Thailand.

Their plan is to set up large-scale projects overseas that will later involve the private sector in growing crops such as corn, wheat and rice. Once a country has been selected, each project could be in excess of 100,000 hectares – about 10 times the size of New York City`s Manhattan island – and the majority of the crop would be exported back, officials say.

While Saudi Arabia`s plans are among the grandest, they reflect growing interest in such projects among capital-rich countries that import most of their food. The United Arab Emirates is looking into Kazakhstan and Sudan, Libya is hoping to lease farms in Ukraine and South Korea has hinted at plans in Mongolia. Even China – with plenty of cultivable land but not a lot of water – is exploring investments in south-east Asia.

“This is a new trend within the global food crisis,” says Joachim von Braun, director of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). “The dominant force today is security of food supplies.”

Alarmed by exporting countries` trade restrictions – such as India`s curbs on exports of rice, Ukraine`s halt to wheat shipments and Argentina`s imposition of heavy taxes on overseas sales of soya – importing countries have realised that their dependence on the international food market makes them vulnerable not only to an abrupt surge in prices but, more crucially, to an interruption in supplies.

As a result, food security is at the top of the political agenda for the first time since the 1970s. “The food crisis gave alarms for all countries to look for places to secure supplies of agricultural goods,” says Abdullah al-Obaid, the deputy minister of agriculture in Saudi Arabia.

Von Braun, echoing the opinion of dozens of other officials interviewed by the Financial Times, says that faith in the international food market is waning. For the first time since the early 1990s, when trade in farm products rose sharply, many are starting to doubt the wisdom of depending on agricultural imports. “The importers are nervous and they have realised that they [had] better have a stake in countries with potential for agriculture exports,” he says.

With global food consumption rising, largely due to demand for a meat-rich diet in emerging economies, the challenge of feeding booming populations in countries such as Saudi Arabia is growing by the year. Cereal prices have come off their highs of earlier this year but are still more than three times their average over the past decade.

Food security is firmly behind every plan to invest in agriculture overseas. During a recent tour of central Asia, Khalifa bin Zayed, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) president, pointed to the need to lock in supplies. “The UAE is looking at implementing some projects in Kazakhstan as part of its efforts to develop stable food sources for its needs,” he said.

For countries rich in cultivable land and water but short of capital, such plans could also make a lot of sense. Wheat fields in Ukraine, for example, yield less than 3,000 kilogrammes a hectare in spite of some of the world`s most fertile soils and abundant rain. That is well below the United States`s yield of about 6,500 kilogrammes a hectare, achieved in less optimal conditions. But more tractors, a lot more fertiliser, better techniques and higher-yielding seeds could change the situation.

Lennart B%26aring;ge, president of the United Nations` International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) in Rome, says that land was long thought less important than oil or mineral deposits. “But now fertile land with access to water has become a strategic asset,” he says.

Some countries have grasped the potential of this resource. Sudan, for example, is seeking to attract at least US$1 billion of capital for its agricultural sector from Arab and Asian investment groups. The investment ministry is marketing 17 large-scale projects that would cover an area of 880,000 hectares.

Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia, is also enthusiastic. After welcoming a Saudi agriculture delegation recently, he said: “We told them [the Saudis] that we would be very eager to provide hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land for investment.”

Yet such deals are likely to come at a heavy price for food-producing countries. Through secretive bilateral agreements, the investors hope to be able to bypass any potential trade restriction that the host country might impose during a crisis.

For some policymakers, this evokes the nightmare scenario of crops being transported out of fortified farms as hungry locals look on – although whether vast tracts could be defended in the manner of, say, oil installations, is open to question. Others point out that the scramble for land is taking place in countries with weak legal environments, where most farmers lack formal tenure rights or access to compensation mechanisms.

Supporters of free trade in agriculture are also worried by what they consider to be attempts to build ownership of food production rather than increase supply to the international market. Ed Schafer, the US agriculture secretary, says he would be concerned if the investments were simply a means to “bypass the international market and global trade agreements”.

European agriculture officials add that the poorest food-deficit countries, such as those in west Africa, would suffer most: unable to invest overseas, they would also be most vulnerable to rising prices in a diminished international market.

Multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which initially encouraged foreign investment in agriculture as a way to boost global output, are moderating their previous support.

The change is clearly seen in the posture of Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, who initially described state-led foreign investment as a “win-win venture” `. Now a spokesperson for the bank says: “This is a situation that could bring real benefits to people in some developing countries, but to be sustainable, land purchase or lease arrangements must benefit, and be seen to benefit, all parties including citizens of the host country, local communities and investors.”

A similar shift can be observed in Jacques Diouf, director-general at the FAO. He initially called for “joint-venture agreements between, on the one hand, those countries that have the financial resources and, on the other, those that possess land, water and human resources”.

But now he is warning of the risk of a “neo-colonial” agricultural system. “Some negotiations [between host countries and the investors] have led to unequal international relations and short-term mercantilist agriculture,” says Diouf.

B%26aring;ge also agrees there could be problems. “We are talking about some host countries where there is widespread poverty and hunger, and we must ensure that the local populations share fully in the benefits of these initiatives.”

For example, in Sudan – one country targeted by almost all Gulf investors – the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN agency that deals with food emergencies, is feeding 5.6 million people. If the investment plans go ahead, Sudan, perversely, could be exporting to rich nations while its own population suffers.

Chinese officials, who supported Beijing`s expansive policy to secure commodities such as oil and metals in Africa, seem aware of the potential dangers. Although Beijing has explored deals in the Philippines and Laos, and has also developed some small projects in Africa – mostly “demonstration” farms that educate locals in farming techniques – it appears to have little appetite for large-scale investment in agriculture overseas.

“There are so many people starving in Africa,” says Xie Guoli, a trade official at the Chinese ministry of agriculture. “Can you ship the grain back to China? The cost will be very high, as well as the risk.”

Nevertheless, some Chinese private-sector companies are looking at investing in farmland, although officials say that they are focusing on central Asia rather than Africa. Beijing seems more relaxed about the potential for conflict in countries such as Kazakhstan, where the transportation costs would also be lower.

United Nations agriculture and food aid officials are also worried about the potential for corruption, given the weakness of governance in many African and central Asian countries.

They suggest the investments should be governed by a framework similar in scope to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a scheme that obliges resource-rich countries to publish company payments and government revenues from oil, gas and mining.

The EITI has helped to tackle corruption in the oil and minerals sector, officials say. But a similar scheme for agriculture could take months of negotiations – and food-deficit countries are in a hurry. As western officials discuss risks and safeguards, Saudi Arabia and others appear to want to lease land ahead of the next planting season.

Additional reporting by Barney Jopson in Addis Ababa

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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Homepage photo by *MarS

We found Fajila and Sirajul tending tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables, but they were in no ordinary garden. This one had no soil; their plants were growing out of what looked like balls of dung, and the bed they were growing them in was a 12-metre-long, 1.2-metre-wide plot of tangled water hyacinths floating on land that is flooded most of the year. Fajila and Sirajul were waist deep in water, practising hydroponic farming.

These weren`t ordinary people, either. Until a few months ago, they were landless peasants from Deara, a village in the coastal area of southern Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most vulnerable places on earth. People there face regular environmental hazards, including cyclones, floods, water-logged land, silting rivers, arsenic in the drinking water, river erosion and the intrusion of salt water. But now they have to cope with climate change, too. Their imaginative use of hyacinths as new “land” to grow crops is part of a concerted attempt by the governments of Bangladesh and the United Kingdom to prepare vulnerable communities for present and future disaster.

No one doubts that climate change is happening in Bangladesh. Government meteorologists report 10%-increased intensity and frequency in cyclones hitting the country, and in the last three years there have been two of the largest storms ever recorded. Peasant farmers report increased rainfall and chaotic seasons, and everyone says it is warmer.

“We are learning about climate change,” says Anawarul Islam, chair of the Deara district of about 2,500 people. “We are experiencing more rainfall every year. The water level in the sea is definitely rising. Every year, we have to increase the heights of the embankments, and the amount of water-logging is growing. It has led to more homeless people, more social conflict and more quarrels between neighbours. There is more poverty and less food security.”

“It`s far warmer now,” says Selina, from the fishing village of Jelepara. “We do not feel cold in the rainy season. We used to need blankets, but now we don`t. Last year, there were heavy rains even in summer. There is extreme uncertainty of weather. It makes it very hard to farm. We cannot plan. We have to be more reactive. The storms are increasing and the tides now come right up to our houses.”

About 160 kilometres away, Julian Francis, a UK development worker with communities living in the chars — the large islands that form in all of Bangladesh`s vast rivers — is seeing river erosion increasing, almost certainly because of greater flows of water. Recently, in torrential monsoon rains, he went out on the mighty Jamuna river. “I visited an area of Kulkandi where four villages with 571 families have been eroded,” he says. “People said the river had come about 1,200 feet [365 metres] inland last year and another 1,000 feet [about 300 metres] this year.”

“Last year,” he added, “528 grants were made to families in one district by the Chars Livelihood Project. But since April this year, 518 grants have been made, and there is now a waiting list of more than 300. I was told the river had not been seen in such a furious state since 1988. [It seems] a new island char had formed in the middle of the river and this has caused the river to change its course … and this is the cause of the increased river erosion.”

Climate change may not be directly responsible for Bangladesh`s water-logged land, the intrusion of salt water or its river erosion, but it is turning a bad situation into a potential catastrophe, driving people such as Fajila and Sirajul to absolute poverty. Cyclone Sidr, one of the most powerful storms ever to have hit Bangladesh, made three million people homeless last November. Meanwhile, food-price inflation has left four million extra people in absolute poverty this year, according to a World Bank official in August.

“There has to be preparation for climate change,” says Raja Debashish Roy, a government environment official. “We are experiencing many changes; some are coming very quickly and others will over years. There is a rise in salinity, more intense tidal waves, floods, droughts and cyclones. We are getting too much water in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. All this has implications for food security. We have to be coping with all these problems, some simultaneously.”

Roy was in London on September 10 for the UK-Bangladesh Climate Change Conference, at which Bangladesh made public its strategy to cope with climate change over the next 10 years. Britain will commit %26pound;75 million (US$135 million) to a new international fund for the country to adapt, and Bangladesh itself will contribute US$50 million a year. Other countries and global institutions, including Denmark and the World Bank, also are expected to chip in.

This is the first attempt by any major least developed country (LDC) to methodically address the threat of climate change, and is expected to become a model for others as more global money becomes available after a post-Kyoto agreement is in place.

“Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world in terms of the scale of the impacts expected,” says Islam Faisal, climate-change advisor in Bangladesh for the UK Department for International Development (DfID). “It is the first to develop a strategy and an action plan. The money is not enough in itself to cover the costs of adaptation, but it should kick-start the process and allow the [Bangladeshi] government to access global money.”

That is where Fajila and Sirajul come in. Their hydroponic garden, developed under a DfID-funded disaster-management plan, includes raising houses about one metre above the present high-water line, introducing salt-tolerant crops, encouraging crab and duck farming, and rainwater harvesting.

“More than 70 [adaptation] initiatives have been identified,” says Mamunur Rashid, director of the Bangladeshi government`s disaster management programme.

One of the most successful is an education programme. A local non-governmental organisation, Shushilan, employs a full-time theatre troupe to travel to festivals and villages, informing people about climate change and how to adapt to it. Another sends volunteers to communities, with educational “flip charts”.

The initiatives are popular. “Growing food like this is labour intensive, but we don`t need fertiliser or pesticides, and the food quality is better than food grown in soil,” says Fajila. “At the start, we were very unsure whether it would work, but now we think we can live on what we grow.”

Rashid says: “What was a scientific debate has become a practical one about development. Without actions like this, Bangladesh would be plunged deeper into extreme poverty. It`s about climate change, but also about poverty reduction. It doesn`t need new ideas to adapt to climate change so much as developing what is already there. Climate change comes on top of multiple hazards and difficulties. It could tip people over the edge or, if countries respond, it could help them.”

Roy is optimistic, too. He says: “Bangladesh has always had floods, cyclones and disasters. People are used to dealing with such changes. We have a history of dealing with challenges. We are mentally equipped for climate change, but we do need support to prepare for it.”

www.guardian.co.uk

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Ultimately, lack of water is seen as a threat to peace. From genocide in Darfur to disputes between states in India and the United States, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon is one of several global leaders who have warned of further legal and armed disputes over water. Intuitively, it is obvious people will fight over their most precious resource, but so far few conflicts have broken out.

The idea of “water wars” seized the public imagination in 2001 when Marq de Villiers’s book of that name was published in the United Kingdom, but the author disagreed with the publisher’s choice of title. De Villiers agrees that water is often an underlying cause of tension, but has only identified one water “war”, between Egypt and Sudan. “You cannot do without water, so when shortages pinch, states do co-operate and compromise,” he says.

But if half the world’s population lives in water-stressed countries, how do so many — from the breadbaskets of Asia to the sprawling cities in the arid American west — keep watering fields and running taps?

One reason is that water flows uphill to money, as the saying goes. Thus people in oil-rich Kuwait enjoy expensive desalination, while Palestinians suffer daily hardship; tourists in Amman can turn on the tap at any time, while those in the poorest areas of the city have access to water for a few hours each week. As King’s College London`s Tony Allan says: “Water shortages don`t pose serious problems to gardeners in Hampshire [an English county] or California homeowners with pools to fill.”

Another answer to the conundrum was identified by Allan, who in the 1960s became curious about why Middle Eastern countries without abundant water supplies were not suffering from a more obvious water crisis. The answer, he realised, was trade: by buying food, water-poor societies were “buying” what he dubbed “virtual water”. They were helped by farmers dumping grain into the world market once subsidies created massive over-supply. “This potential tragedy was motoring on and hit the calm waters of the Americans and Europeans providing food [for the world market] at half cost, and the water contained in that food [was water] they didn’t have to find.”

The other answer is that communities around the world have been forced to tap rivers and lakes and aquifers, sometimes millions of years old, far beyond the limit at which they can replenish themselves. Above ground, lakes are shrinking and rivers are being reduced to pathetic flows, or drying up altogether. Below ground, a largely invisible crisis is unfolding as millions of wells have been sunk into aquifers – four million in Bangladesh alone. Many aquifers are replenishable, but not all, and many that can be recharged don’t get enough rain to match demand. Sometimes the empty cavities simply collapse, putting them beyond use forever.

In his recent book, Plan B 3.0, Lester Brown catalogues the results. In the breadbaskets of China, India, the United States, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel and Mexico, water tables are falling, sometimes by many metres a year. Pumps are being drilled a kilometre or more to find water, thousands more wells have dried up altogether and agricultural yields are shrinking. These countries contain more than half the world’s people and produce most of its grain, warns Brown. Meanwhile, almost forgotten amid the human suffering, are the terrible consequences for the natural world: freshwater fish populations fell by half between 1970 and 2000, says the United Nations.

All these dams and irrigation channels and pumps and pipes allow billions of people to run up a gigantic global water overdraft. What worries experts is that there is no sign of humans withdrawing less water.

Two years ago, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) published a report by 700 experts warning that one in three people were “enduring one form or another of water scarcity”. “Scarcity for me is when women work hard to get water, [or] you want to allocate more but can’t,” says David Molden, deputy director of the Sri Lanka-based organisation.

Molden warns that the situation is becoming “a little bit more critical”, because of continuing rising demand for food, the recent boom in biofuels and climate change. To that also can be added another, poignant “demand”: the long-overdue realisation that nature also needs water, which in European and other countries has led to laws to ensure “minimum environmental flows” remain in place.

For food alone, the World Bank estimates that demand for water will rise 50% by 2030, and the IWMI fears it could nearly double by 2050. Whether these crops require rain or irrigation depends on where they are grown, and how much rain there is.

Like a great river fed by many tributaries, water is a conduit for the various effects of global warming: more variable rainfall, more floods, more droughts, the melting of glaciers on which one billion people depend for summer river flows, and rising sea levels that threaten to inundate not just coastal communities but also their freshwater aquifers, river deltas and wetlands.

From the headline figures, climate change should be good news. Crudely, scientists estimate for every 1%26ordm; Celsius rise in the average global temperature, precipitation will increase 1%, as warmer air absorbs more moisture. The world’s total volume would not change, but it would be recycled more quickly, affecting the majority of the world’s agriculture, which depends on the volume and timing of rainfall.

Balancing all these impacts, Nigel Arnell, director of Reading University’s Walker Institute for Climate Change, calculates that the number of people living in water basins exposed to water stress will rise from 1.4 billion to as much as 2.9 billion to 3.3 billion by 2025, and to perhaps 3.4 billion to 5.6 billion by 2055. In fact, the greatest impact in Arnell’s modelling is from rising populations, particularly in China and India, and, globally, climate change actually is reducing exposure to shortages. This may be good news for some, but it masks huge disruption, as some regions fear too much water, while hundreds of millions of people start to run out of water.

It is impossible to attribute one farm’s difficulties or one year’s rainfall to climate change. But if climate is the statistics of weather, then the rain gauge this year on the farm of Sameeh al-Nuimat, north-west of Amman, is typical of what the experts forecast. Al-Nuimat had noticed a gradual decline in rainfall for years, but this year it dropped off steeply and there was no rain at all in March, a critical time for summer crops. “My father told me he’d never seen such a year,” he says.

Such dramatic events have injected urgency into discussions about Jordan’s precarious water supplies, says al-Nuimat, who is also an irrigation engineer at the ministry of agriculture. “Before, when water was available, no one worried about it,” he says. “But now there’s interest — every night people speaking, every night debating, at every level, from the farmer to the planner to the politician. As a farmer, I’d like to see drought-resistant crops; from a civil-engineering point of view we should look for mega-projects; and, if you’re thinking about global planning, there should be acceptance of people moving from water-scarce regions to where water is available.”

Around the world, the same debates are under way. Rich countries can make significant gains from domestic efficiency, but most of the world’s population does not have power showers and swimming pools, or waste great quantities of food. Instead the main focus is on reducing water in agriculture, through more efficient irrigation, by engineering seeds to grow in more arid and salty conditions, and even shifting crops. “If the world were my farm, I’d grow things in different places,” says IWMI`s Molden.

But even benign-sounding conservation is often unpopular. There is widespread resistance to raising prices for water (or energy for pumping) to increase efficiency, suspicion of genetic modification, and reluctance among farmers to abandon water-hungry but lucrative crops when they are struggling to feed their family. “It’s a socioeconomic dilemma,” says al-Nuimat. “You can’t stop now: it’s the source of their life.”

Faced with public apathy and even resistance, responses have tended to focus on increasing supply. For decades the scale of ambition has been like a game of global engineering one-upmanship: rivers have been diverted across countries, pumps sunk kilometres into fossil aquifers, and bigger plants commissioned to recycle or desalinate water. And there is no sign of a let-up. As shortages become more desperate and costs and energy use fall, Global Water Intelligence forecasts that desalination capacity will more than double by 2015, and the potential to increase wastewater recycling is enormous, being only 2% of volume.

But huge costs, environmental concerns and public distaste for drinking their “waste” has forced many communities to reconsider simpler, traditional methods, too. Some of the ideas the earliest farmers would have recognised: tree replanting, ripping out thirsty non-native plants, stone walls to hold back erosion, and rain harvesting with simple ponds and tanks. Some have even urged a return to more vegetarian diets, which at their extreme demand only half the water of a typical American meat-eater’s. This is, according to Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Britain’s Northern Foods group and a government adviser, “the most virtuous and responsible step of all”.

And when all options are exhausted at home, countries have another option: to import water in food and even industrial goods. Political meddling with subsidies makes trade a controversial “solution”, but by favouring regions with a “competitive advantage” in water it can work. Globally the IWMI estimates irrigation demand would be 11% higher without trade, and quotes a projection that imports can cut future irrigation by another 19 to 38% by 2025. Saudi Arabia has gone further than most, announcing in February that it would stop all wheat production in a few years, though other countries might now be deterred by higher food prices.

Ultimately governments are being forced down several paths at once: to raise prices to reflect the true value of water to humans and the environment, invest in technology to improve efficiency and supplies, engage in more trade, and make peace with neighbours that can hold up incoming water or food. These will only be possible, though, if people can be lifted out of poverty, to afford higher prices, capital spending and imports. “When you diversify your economy you solve your problems,” says Allan.

Looking back at the history of mankind’s struggle for enough water, experience suggests the initiative which enabled humans to settle, farm and dominate the planet will provide many solutions. But sometimes we might have to accept defeat.

“On the one hand, you can see this amazing technological ingenuity of humans, which throughout prehistory and history continually invented new ways to manage water supply,” says archaeologist Steven Mithen of the University of Reading. “On the other, the story of the past tells us that sometimes, however brilliant your technological inventions, they are just not good enough, and you get periods of abandonment of landscapes. We have got to be prepared to invest in technology, but also to recognise in some parts of the world there are going to be areas where we’re going to have to say %26lsquo;enough’s enough`.”

First part: Is water the new oil?

www.guardian.co.uk

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited, 2008

Homepage photo by suburbanbloke

Food price riots across the world, a new geopolitical “Great Game” in the Arctic, a global race to secure cropland and the official predictions of peak oil by 2012; the past year has seen the politics of resource scarcity rise to the top of the global security agenda. Though currently overshadowed by the impact of the global economic downturn, there has been a fundamental shift in perceptions away from the unrealistic assumption of never-ending future abundance towards a grudging recognition of the rapid approach of natural limits.

Above all, the full implications of climate change are beginning to enter into mainstream security analysis — from the abstraction of discussions in the United Nations Security Council in April 2007 to the brutal reality of drought-driven conflict in Africa. These are just the first signs of how climate change — and our responses to it — will fundamentally change the strategic-security context in the coming decades.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of this shift has come from the most unexpected source: the United States intelligence community. After eight years of ideologically driven climate-change denial by the administration of George W Bush, the final months of the Bush presidency saw the appearance of two different pieces of analysis by the National Intelligence Council. Both of these highlighted climate change and resource scarcity as critical strategic threats to American security and interests. Without the useful shield of US climate denial, many other countries will have no excuse not to take a more clear-headed look at the implications of climate change for their national security and future prosperity.

Conflict over natural resources, whether driven by need or greed, has always been a part of human society. The past shows us that social tensions driven by climatic change destroyed many advanced societies, such as the droughts which drove the collapse of early civilisations in Mesopotamia and Peru. The coming decades will see rising resource scarcity, greater environmental degradation and increasingly disruptive climatic change at levels never experienced before in human history. In an increasingly uncertain world, these trends are disturbingly predictable.

Climate change already is creating hard security threats, but it has no hard security solutions. Climate change is like a ticking clock: every increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere permanently alters the climate, and we can never move the clock`s hands back to reclaim the past. Even if we stopped emitting pollution tomorrow, the world already is committed to levels of climate change unseen for hundreds of thousands of years. If we fail to stop polluting, we will be committed to catastrophic and irreversible changes over the next century, which will directly displace hundreds of millions of people and critically undermine the livelihoods of billions.

There is some scientific uncertainty over these impacts; but the uncertainty is over when they will occur, not if they will occur, unless climate change is slowed. Preventing catastrophic and runaway climate change will require a global mobilisation of effort and co-operation seldom seen in peacetime.

In the next decades, climate change will drive as significant a change in the strategic security environment as the end of the cold war. If uncontrolled, climate change will have security implications of similar magnitude to the world wars, but which will last for centuries. The past will provide no guide to this coming future; a robust response will require clear assessments based on the best scientific projections.

Despite these threats, current responses to climate change are slow and inadequate. Even Europe, which leads global efforts to move to a low-carbon economy, is spending only the equivalent of around 0.5% of its combined defence budget on tackling climate change, though this does not count the action achieved through direct regulation. There is a need for more direct and interventionist action to prevent climate risks. One reason for this is that economic analysis has systematically undervalued the potential extreme impacts of climate change, underplaying to policy makers the implication of the most severe risks. But a failure to acknowledge and prepare for the worst-case scenario is as dangerous in the case of climate change as it is for managing the risks of terrorism or nuclear weapons proliferation.

Security-sector actors must not just prepare to respond to the security challenges of climate change; they also must be part of the solution. Partly, this means reducing the climate impact of their operations and activities. Much more importantly, it means communicating the security implications and costs of uncontrolled and extreme climate change to political leaders and the public. Unless achieving climate security is seen as a vital and existential national interest, it will be too easy to delay action on the basis of avoiding immediate costs and perceived threats to economic competitiveness.

But climate change is also a security opportunity. A low-carbon global economy will be a far more energy-secure economy. Trillions of dollars — otherwise would be invested in oil and gas production increasingly concentrated in unstable regions – instead will deliver new technology and local clean-energy sources. This will lower geopolitical tensions over fossil-fuel reserves and greatly reduce the security impact of “peak oil” when it arrives.

The security sector also has the vital — and expensively acquired — experience of how government can drive technological development and infrastructure deployment at a similar scale to that needed to respond to climate change. Security actors should promote dramatically increased investment in the development and deployment of technologies critical for energy and climate security. This will be expensive, but is achievable. Recent estimates suggest this would require technology investment commensurate with current spending on the “war on terror”, and if a crash response is needed in response to extreme climate-change scenarios, investment at levels similar to the Apollo moon-landing programme.

The reality of climate change will require fundamental changes in how international relations are conducted, and will alter much of the focus of international security policy. It will change strategic interests, alliances, borders, threats, economic relationships, comparative advantages and the nature of international co-operation, and will help determine the continued legitimacy of the United Nations in the eyes of much of the world. Climate change geopolitics will extend far outside the environmental sphere, and will link old problems in new ways.

Managing the complexity of our collective climate security will become an ever more important part of foreign policy. Climate change will require member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to revisit their international industrial policies by sharing advanced energy technologies and funding large-scale investment in economic competitors such as China and India. OECD countries must recognise that achieving climate security is a more vital national interest than the narrow maximisation of domestic company profits.

Energy security interests will be increasingly delivered through co-operation with energy consuming countries on technology development and diffusion, rather than through relationships with producing countries on fossil-fuel discoveries and delivery. Declining use of imported fossil fuels may cause tensions with many producer countries, and instability inside them. Countries will not be able to achieve national energy security through undermining other countries` climate security by using coal without capturing the carbon. There will be no agreement on climate security without guaranteeing all countries` energy security.

Nuclear proliferation mechanisms will need to be greatly strengthened if nuclear power is to be deployed at a scale which would make a real difference to climate change. Climate change will be used as a political mask for some states to acquire nuclear technology for military purposes, and development and sharing of more benign energy alternatives is the best protection against this. A major climate-change-driven disaster in the next decade would drive pressure for a “crash programme” of rapid deployment of nuclear power worldwide — at rates which would compromise the ability of the current nuclear industry supply chain to preserve safety or security.

NEXT: Geopolitics, justice and instability

Nick Mabey is a founding director and the chief executive of E3G, an independent not-for-profit organisation working in the public interest to accelerate the global transition to sustainable development. He is the author of Delivering Climate Security: International Security Responses to a Climate Changed World, a report published on behalf of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

Homepage photo by Alex Lichtenberger

Rising sea levels and melting ice caps in the Arctic already are leading to territorial disputes between major powers. The disappearance of small islands could release valuable marine resources into the already contested waters of the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the South China Sea. The rights of environmental refugees and migrants will become a source of national and international tensions, especially in delta regions such as Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt. Fisheries stocks will collapse or move, destroying millions of people`s livelihoods and undermining delicately negotiated international management regimes. The European Union`s Common Fisheries Policy will not survive in its present form.

Countries will respond to the forecasts of more erratic water flows in all major river basins by building new upstream dams and water storage. Such “climate change adaptation” will drive cross-border tensions in the next decade, including the potential for armed interstate conflict. Strengthened international rules and more activist preventative diplomacy from the international community will be needed to peacefully manage changes in shared water and fisheries resources, and to preserve the rights of displaced people and states.

Issues of justice and ethics lie at the heart of climate change; the rich have caused the problem but the poor are bearing the brunt of the impact. Global resentment against the current international order will rise if there is a failure to agree and deliver aggressive emission reduction goals, or adequately help the victims of climate change adapt and obtain compensation.

Radical protest movements are building around the globe, and direct action against new airports and power stations is growing. Violent extremists will use these tensions to fuel existing causes and Osama bin Laden already has spoken several times on the inequities of climate change and highlighted the lack of action by the United States. Muslim countries will be among the hardest hit by climate change. If frustrated by global inaction to slow climate change, radical environmental movements may spawn eco-terrorist groups in a way analogous to the violent evolution of extreme left-wing movements in the 1970s.

Failure to act effectively in concluding a post-Kyoto UN agreement to control climate change will undermine the legitimacy of the international system, reducing its effectiveness in tackling other security threats. This agreement must protect the interests and rights of the poorest who are least able to adapt to climate change — not just the interests of the more prosperous in all countries who generate the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions. This means preventing temperature increases beyond the 2-degrees Celsius threshold at which point levels of mortality from infectious diseases and water shortages rise dramatically.

In general, climate change could drive a more collaborative approach in inter-state relations or it could exacerbate tensions between and within countries, leading to a “politics of insecurity” as countries focus on protecting themselves against the impact. The pattern of cooperation which arises will depend on how effectively climate change is incorporated into mainstream foreign policy and is perceived as changing the balance of national interests in major countries across a wide range of security and geopolitical issues.

Climate change already is increasing conflict risks in unstable regions — especially Africa — as fragile governance systems are overwhelmed by the social stresses released by drought, famine, flood, migration, extreme weather events and rising sea levels. At moderate levels of change, conflict is preventable and conflict causality is complex as climate change acts as a stress multiplier of existing tensions. But this complexity should not be an excuse for inaction. The growing information on present and future climate security impacts is as good, if not better, than other information routinely used in security planning and assessment. If climate change is not slowed and critical environmental thresholds are exceeded, then it will become a primary driver of conflicts between and within states.

Over the next decades while climate change is still relatively moderate, the determinant of whether climate change drives serious conflict will lie in how political systems respond to the tensions it creates. Too often, analysis of climate-change impacts assumes that all governments will act to maximise the common good in response to change. But resource management regimes in much of the world already are built upon communal divisions and conflict, and are highly unlikely to respond in a predictable, rational and inclusive manner to climate stresses.

Experience of current instability in the Sahel — especially in Darfur — shows how quickly disputes over access to resources in times of environmental stress can become politicised and exacerbate existing communal conflicts based on ethnic, religious or other lines. These conflicts develop their own internal dynamics, but will see no sustainable solutions unless the root causes of resource grievances are addressed.

Achieving security in a climate-stressed world will require a more pro-active and intensive approach to tackling instability in strategically important regions with high climate vulnerability and weak governance. This will require changes across the security sector, with a stronger incorporation of long-term and structural risk factors into planning and a willingness to engage effectively with tough governance challenges — bringing diplomatic, development, intelligence and law enforcement capabilities to bear. This does not just require implementation of some general “conflict prevention” agenda, but direct focus on the strategic necessity of managing increased resource-use tensions.

This also should not be seen as just an adjunct to the development agenda, but as a critical part of achieving core security interest. There will be no long-term stability in Afghanistan unless rural livelihoods and water management are robust to climate change. Attempts to build a “hearts and minds” coalition against Islamist extremism will be crucially undermined when many of the main sources of job creation for young men in North Africa are being undermined by warmer temperatures and declining rainfall.

The impact of climate change on instability also will require changes to how climate adaptation is handled in the international climate-change regime. To date, climate adaptation has mainly been framed as a technical development activity, but in reality it will involve complex political and diplomatic interventions in difficult and highly charged internal resource-management issues. The political economy of resource management must lie at the heart of all adaptation measures as they deal with the resources delivering subsistence and identity: land, water and security. More controversially, access to international adaptation finance may need to be made conditional on countries implementing reforms to internal resource management policies to improve social resilience and prevent conflict and reduce marginalisation of vulnerable groups.

All these impacts already are occurring as the earth gradually warms in the early stages of climate change. If climate change is not controlled before we meet critical “tipping points” in natural systems, the impact will become catastrophic, with large parts of the world becoming uninhabitable for their current populations by the middle of the century. Such an outcome would overwhelm current security and humanitarian capacity to respond, and would make a mockery of the international community`s commitments to a “Responsibility to Protect” and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The security community must be honest with its political masters: that under these all-too-likely scenarios, no country would be able to provide the type of secure environment enjoyed today, no matter how much hard and soft security investment is allocated.

The world has the financial resources and technological potential to deliver a secure and low-carbon energy economy. The question is whether we are capable of making the political choices to mobilise these resources in pursuit of our collective climate security, especially in time of economic downturn. Security issues are fundamental for making the political case for urgent action. Security-sector reform will be central to managing the consequences of the changes we are undergoing already. Security actors should be a powerful voice in overcoming the current dangerous tendency to lower expectations and ambitions for the Copenhagen climate change negotiations (COP15) in December 2009.

Half-solving the climate problem (for example, by aiming to stabilise temperatures at 3 to 4 degrees Celsius rather than 2 degrees) may reduce short term political and financial costs, but it will produce no meaningful reduction in the risk of extreme and runaway climate change. Only a Copenhagen agreement which effectively puts the world on a pathway to climate security for all is worth agreeing.

Security actors have a strong additional interest in ensuring a bold and rapid transformation to a secure and low-carbon economy, as this also will reduce tensions over access to dwindling fossil-fuel reserves and the destabilising impact of high energy prices.

The changing security context driven by climate change requires an imaginative and forthright response from security actors if we are to preserve our vital interests and values in this century. The first signs of this response are emerging, but the necessary changes will need to happen much faster than in the past if they are to match the remorseless ecological timetable of a changing climate.

Nick Mabey is a founding director and the chief executive of E3G, an independent not-for-profit organisation working in the public interest to accelerate the global transition to sustainable development. He is the author of Delivering Climate Security: International Security Responses to a Climate Changed World, a report published on behalf of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

Homepage photo by Michael von Bergen