This week, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear II, the head of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, told The Boston Globe that climate change was the gravest threat in the region. While such an assessment may be surprising, given North Korea's recent nuclear tests, the U.S. military has long viewed climate change as a massive destabilizing force on global security.
"You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level," Locklear said. "Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17."
Locklear pointed to plans for Tarawa Island in Kiribati to possibly move the entire population as rising sea levels continues to swamp the low-lying island.
Already some people have been relocated from the Carteret Islands due to rising sea levels, and a larger relocation effort is planned.
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Initiated in 2015, the French Ministry for the Armed Forces organized the first international conference “Defence and climate: what are the stakes?”. Since then, the Ministry has been constantly adapting and developing its capacity of anticipation.
On 25 January 2019, the UN Security Council held an open debate to discuss the security implications of climate-related disaster events. The meeting, initiated by the Dominican Republic, underscored the global nature of climate-related disasters. Most speakers highlighted the need for better climate risk management as an important contribution to safeguarding international peace and security. The debate marks the beginning of a year in which climate security ranks high on the UN’s agenda.
Today, Friday 25th January 2019, the UN Security Council will hold an open debate addressing the impacts of climate-related disasters on international peace and security (at 4pm CET and 10am EST). President Danilo Medina of the Dominican Republic will chair the meeting, which will also include the participation of several member states at ministerial level.
The unabated growth of natural resource consumption raises risks that we will outstrip the capacities of ecosystems and governance institutions. At the same time, to achieve important global goals related to poverty alleviation, public health, equity and economic development such as those embodied in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we will simultaneously need more resources and better management of natural resources everywhere.