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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Tensions in the South China Sea increased last April when a Chinese coast guard ship sank a Vietnamese fishing boat near the Paracel Islands—a fiercely disputed territory in the South China Sea. Disputes over island territories in the region have endured for decades, with China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei all making overlapping territorial claims. The region is rich in natural resources and biodiversity, holding vast fish stocks and an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 cubic feet of natural gas.
Without a coordinated strategy to tackle flooding disasters beyond the traditional infrastructural measures and river water sharing agreements, South Asia’s woes will continue in the future.
As political and public narratives on COVID-19 shift towards the need to ‘build back better’, the pandemic continues to take a heavy toll for many. A new report by the Climate Security Expert Network (CSEN) shows how COVID-19 can exacerbate climate-related security risks.
With Argentina's ‘yes’, the Escazú Agreement is one step away from coming into force. What’s its status in each country?