World in Transition: Climate Change as a Security Risk - WBGU

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8 Climate change as a driver of social destabilization and threat to international security
'Food'
conflict constellation
'Freshwater'
conflict constellation
Climate change
Destabilization
of societies
Instability and insecurity
in the international system
erty reduction. 70 per cent of freshwater is used for
farming. Unfavourable climate-related changes in
water availability, for instance as a result of glacier
melt or greater variability of precipitation, can have
severe impacts upon the conditions for agricultural
production and thus upon the livelihoods of rural
populations. Such trends are amplified by competition
with other forms of resource use, e.g. hydropower
and bioenergy, and by pre-existing environmental
problems such as soil degradation. Where the
key political and institutional preconditions for functioning
water resources management are absent and
water crises emerge, food crises can be triggered or
worsened. Conversely, non-sustainable agricultural
practices can play a part in causing water stress and
conflict by overexploiting water resources, or contaminating
them with fertilizers and pesticides and
thus rendering them unusable. Pre-existing soil degradation,
water scarcity, non-sustainable utilization
methods (e.g. expansion of unsustainable irrigation
farming) and resource competition (e.g. due to the
construction of dams) in combination with poverty,
weak institutions and political instability can thus
concentrate and amplify impacts regionally, thereby
overwhelming institutions and causing crises to escalate.
Finally, in extreme cases, drought or water stress
will force people to leave their homelands because
they can no longer cultivate the land and have no
alternative way of making a living. They might also
flee war and violence once ecological problems have
induced a social crisis. Migration can then, in turn,
become the cause of various types of conflicts in the
transit and destination regions. A growth in population
and thus in demand could, for instance, over-
'Storm and flood'
conflict constellation
'Migration'
conflict constellation
Figure 8.1-1
Conflict constellations as
drivers of international
destabilization.
Source: WBGU
whelm local water management or lead to further
demographic pressure, e.g. in coastal conurbations
at risk of storm surges. Through these mechanisms,
poor or absent migration management can adversely
affect water availability and food production as well
as disaster risk management structures in the transit
and destination regions.
It can be expected that climate change impacts
will lead to a considerable increase in the number
of migrants. These migration movements will occur
mainly between developing countries, but the developed
world will also be a target destination of environmental
migrants. An increase of the associated
conflicts is therefore likely. Here, too, there are signs
of self-reinforcing feedback among the conflict constellations,
and their concentration in the developing
world.
The interactions described here can already be
observed today. In future they will occur more frequently
and in new regions. For instance, the population
of the Sahel zone already suffers drought and
hunger today. Further contraction of farmland due to
drought and water shortage and an expansion of the
drought zones towards the North into the Mediterranean
region and towards East and West Africa will
amplify the potential for crisis and the probability of
migration (Fig. 8.1-2). North-western Brazil is also
at risk of becoming a new drought-prone area. The
Andes and Himalayan regions will be particularly
exposed to the problem of glacier melt and resultant
water shortage in the dry months (IPCC, 2007b).