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

46 4 Rising conflict risks due to state fragility
Number of entries
in criticality indices
2 3 4
Figure 4.2-1
Weak and fragile states: A global overview. The colours reflect the number of times the individual countries are mentioned in
various crisis and governance indices (see text).
Source: WBGU
development of the world economy are more difficult
to predict reliably, however. Nonetheless, empirical
trends can be identified both in the world economy
and international politics as a basis on which to
extrapolate and predict probable future trends with
some degree of plausibility. For example, it is becoming
increasingly apparent that the world’s two most
populous countries, the People’s Republic of China
and India, will in future play a far more important
role than in previous decades (Worldwatch Institute,
2006). This is likely to have far-reaching and unprecedented
effects on the world economy and global political
order.
WBGU assumes that China and India in particular,
due to their population size and newly acquired
economic dynamism, will substantially influence the
world economy and therefore also gain in global political
significance and capacity in the near future.
Besides the two Asian giants (Winters and Yusuf,
2007a), countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Russia
could also become relevant actors in some areas
of global governance. The United States of America
– since the end of the East-West conflict, the world’s
only superpower – is likely to experience a relative
loss of power at the same time. The rise of China
and India therefore marks a major shift in world
order, which will move from a unipolar to a multipolar
system. The ensuing political, institutional and
socio-economic adaptation requirements may trigger
numerous conflicts of interest within the international
community, potentially increasing coun-
tries’ vulnerability to violent conflict and thus making
classic power struggles – rather than the task of
mastering the impending global climate crisis – the
focus of international attention. However, in an ideal
scenario, climate change could also become a catalyst
which unites the international community, provided
that the key political actors recognize climate change
as a threat to humankind and take resolute counteraction
by adopting a globally coordinated approach.
Unless this happens, however, climate change will in
future draw ever-deeper lines of division and conflict
between the Western industrialized countries and the
rising Asian nations.
4.3.1
Conflict or cooperation through the
transformation of the world order?
This does not mean that the anticipated global adaptation
processes will necessarily be conflictive. Unlike
the major international conflicts of the 19th and 20th
century, no serious territorial conflicts can be identified
aside from the permanently contentious issues
of the status of Taiwan and the Palestinian territories
and the continued division of Korea. Notwithstanding
the stylized discord between the West and
Islam, there are no fundamental ideological conflicts
between the existing and the rising major powers
that could be compared with those during the Cold
War. Rather, as a result of the highly visible economic