An April 2021 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analysis, released this week, claims that the “unavoidable effects” of climate change will jeopardize the “safety, security and prosperity” of Canadians.
Also according to CSIS, climate change will become a strategic, intergenerational and multidimensional issue of global security. Although relevant, the document should have been written in the present: the effects are already being felt (think of the ravages of extreme heat, forest fires and successive floods in the summer of 2021 in British Columbia) and global warming is a current strategic issue (think China’s announcement of its ambitious climate targets at the UN General Assembly in September 2021 or the current energy crisis in Europe).
Climate change, whose consequences on all sectors of human activity are visible – transport, energy, food production and distribution, water supply, health, infrastructure and more – modifies several parameters of foreign policy.
Already today, and for the years to come, climate policy must be more than just an environmental policy and Canada is forced to insert it at the heart of its foreign policy.
For what ? Let’s first take the example of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to implement an economic and social transformation to limit global warming. The Paris agreement requires, in fact, a radical and global energy transition from fossil fuels (producing the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change) to alternative, renewable energies that do not emit greenhouse gases. .
About 75% of oil reserves are controlled by the states. The private oil companies could be nationalized quickly and do not represent, in theory, the most important problem. The major difficulty concerns the changes demanded of the oil states – the same ones that negotiated the Paris agreement and are struggling to implement it – whose fossil fuel exports constitute, on average, around 50% of their government revenues.
The challenge of the energy transition cannot therefore be reduced to the greed of certain companies, despite their crucial role in disinformation on the subject of climate change for 40 years. There is no doubt that the phasing out of fossil fuels must take place, but it will not be without consequences or risks. Producing and exporting countries – among which we can include China, Russia, India, USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Indonesia – will see the foundations of their wealth and international influence disrupted, thus increasing the risk of political or economic crisis.
These geopolitical issues are linked to emerging debates on climate security. On the face of it, climate change is not a core responsibility of security or defense actors. However, the biophysical (such as extreme weather events) and geopolitical consequences of global warming carry with them the potential for destabilization or conflict (not to mention the effects on military operations, equipment and infrastructure).
Beyond strategic and geopolitical issues, the 2022 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points to growing evidence linking rising temperatures to the risk of climate change. violent conflicts in vulnerable countries, particularly in Africa.
The effects of warming on ecosystems have implications for food prices, water quality and distribution, land availability, and farmer-herder relations during droughts. These countries, which suffer and will suffer the worst of global warming, do not all have the resources necessary to adapt to it or to prevent these conflicts under such conditions.
It is therefore necessary to give greater importance to climate change in strategic and diplomatic thinking, in the conceptualization and implementation of actions to prevent and resolve conflicts, in operations to maintain or consolidate peace, in the planning of development aid or humanitarian intervention programmes. Canada’s international action must be reviewed and adapted to the new conditions imposed by climate change since all spheres of human activity will be affected and transformed by global warming.
* Bruno Charbonneau is also founding president of the Canadian Association for Climate Security