Center for a New American Security

“With more than 140 years of service in the Arctic and 11 statutory responsibilities there, the U.S. Coast Guard is at the center of efforts to adapt to [climate] change in the Arctic,” writes Christine Parthemore in her working paper, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Maritime Services. “Its missions in the Arctic include protecting indigenous populations and marine life as well as law enforcement and interdiction. These missions give the Coast Guard unique responsibilities for managing the effects of environmental change on human populations in the Arctic.”

In Promoting the Dialogue, Parthemore explores the impact of climate change on the maritime services (specifically the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard) and synthesizes how these services are integrating climate change into their strategic and operational planning. “With access to the global commons and stability abroad potentially at stake, analyzing and addressing the effects of climate change will remain important to the ability of the Navy and the Coast Guard to successfully fulfill their missions,” Parthemore writes.

Photo: A U.S. Coast Guard cutter prepares to transport a science team to a remote ice floe to analyze Arctic sea ice. Courtesy of Aerographer’s Mate 1st Class Gene Swope and the U.S. Coast Guard.

With Friday's forecast calling for twenty inches of the white stuff, to be followed shortly thereafter by a chance of Four Horsemen, there was only one thing I could think of that would compliment DC's Snopocalyptic impending doom: attend a presentation on the U.S. Navy's strategic interests and game plan—not being a sports fan myself, that's pretty much the only Superbowl reference you'll get—for the Arctic. The Arctic Roadmap event was hosted by fellow D.C. think tank, the Stimson Center.

Beginning with a short talk by Director of Task Force Climate Change, Rear Admiral David Titley, the event then followed with a panel discussion with Caitlyn Antrim of the Rule of Law Committee for the Oceans (a joint host of the event), John Bellinger, former State Department  Legal Adviser, Major General Richard  Engel, USAF (ret.), Director, Climate Change and State Stability Program in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Amit Pandya from the Stimson Center.

Here are my main takeaways from Real Admiral Titley's talk:

• The Arctic contains up to 25% of undiscovered petroleum resources, in addition to immense     caches of minerals including copper, cobalt, gold and zinc.
• The Arctic Roadmap is available online for all to read.
• “Roadmap” is just an en-vogue term for “strategy.”
• In 30 years, the Arctic may experience its first fully ice-free summer.
• The officers that will have to navigate the turmoil of an ice-free Arctic are already enlisted (in other words, that’s how short the timeframe is we’re dealing with).
• Shippers need at least eight weeks of no ice to navigate the Northwest Passage, which won’t be seen for another 40 years. Even then shippers might not use it, as they are more concerned with reliability than speed. The Arctic is anything but reliable.

The Navy announced plans to launch the “Great Green Fleet” – a carrier strike group with ships and fighter jets fueled by biofuels and nuclear energy – yesterday, DOD Buzz reports.

Meanwhile, Green Inc. a New York Times blog reports that Tanzania has suspended production of all biofuels due to concerns about the country’s food security.

In response to the droughts California has faced, Reuters reports that California’s passage of SB 790 or the “Stormwater Resource Planning Act” will help treat and reuse rainwater rather than dumping it in the Pacific. Greenspace, a blog from the Los Angeles Times, reviews water security initiatives in California.

BBC reports that the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer of 2020.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told a Senate energy panel Wednesday that while their assessment showed that a cap-and-trade system would slow the U.S. economy, it "[did] not include any benefits from averting climate change," The Washington Post reports.

With the help of Spencer Ackerman giving a nod to our use of music video to add a small glimmer of personality to the Natural Security Blog on what could have been a rather run-of-the-mill post about lithium (partially in homage to the master of that art form himself), the we saw some traffic from a few new sources last week. We like this. However, I’d like to clarify a few of the interpretations of what we’re saying about minerals and security: first, the description on the blog Manifest Destiny that we provided a “wishy-washy buy-in of the peak lithium frame,” the point that the author then goes on to argue against; and second, Matthew Yglesias’s description of us as advocating “‘war for lithium’ thinking,” and “an example of…the American foreign policy establishment’s ability to gin up ‘threats’ to our national security.” Both bloggers made several good points (and one good correction on batteries, h/t), but both writers read into our original post concepts that represent major departures from what I think on the minerals issue, and from what we’ve written on this blog in the past.

As Christine promised in yesterday’s post on the new Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force – which recommends that the United States ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – this week’s Reading Old Magazines feature is about some of the original security thinking behind its negotiation. The UNCLOS was concluded in 1982, but two years earlier, Elliot L. Richardson, the President’s Special Representative to the Law of the Sea Conference, published an article in Foreign Affairs called “Power, Mobility, and the Law of the Sea” (subscription required). In this piece, Richardson explained some of the history of UNCLOS negotiations, but he also laid out exactly what the United States was hoping to achieve in the end. It’s a fascinating read, because it offers a view of a complex, ongoing U.S. diplomatic initiative, presented by the man responsible for negotiating the U.S. position.

In June of this year, President Obama launched an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, a group of 24 federal agency representatives led by the Council on Environmental Quality tasked with charting a new path forward on coordinating U.S. government policies and actions related to oceans and coastal areas. After several trips, meetings, and town halls around the country, the Task Force issued an interim report last week, which Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen tweeted, and of which he blogged, “This is an issue of critical strategic importance to our service and our vital public responsibilities as we carry out our maritime safety, security, and stewardship roles.”

The report sets the goals of ensuring that the country protects its marine ecosystems better, integrates science into management decisions, prepares to adapt to the effects of climate change, and balances these with security interests. It notes of our oceans that “their bounty contributes to our national well-being and security,” and that our “coastal regions and waters account for the great majority of the national economy” by supplying “food, fresh water, minerals, energy, and other natural resources and ecological benefits.”

• Confronted by a weak national energy grid, soldiers in Iraq are turning to alternative energy sources to power medical clinics in an effort to greatly increase their hours of operation.  
• Following the death of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Sunday New York Times profiles food security and points to drought as one of the primary causes of global food scarcity.
• Stars and Stripes reports increased pressure on the new Japanese government to enforce better environmental stewardship from the U.S. military by cleaning up environmental damage at its bases on Okinawa before the property is returned in the future.
• After receiving criticism for purchasing cassiterite from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Amalgamated Metal Corporation, a British-based company, halted all purchases, Business Report explains.
• The Kurdish Globe reports concerns about Kurdistan’s water security and the political influence it gives Iran.
• Finally, The Onion discovered that hundreds of oceanic lairs in the arctic are being revealed as the ice melts.

• Arctic resources and shipping lanes could become a major security issue of the coming years, and The New York Times is reporting on the first commercial voyages through the Arctic's newly-opened sea passages.
• Although several sources have reported on China's growing interest in alternative sources of electricity, Scientific American points out that China's wind power industry has serious infrastructure problems to overcome before it can make a real impact on the nation's energy profile.
• The New York Times reports on Mexico's “worst drought in six decades.”
• Forbes features a story on Japan, which may have trouble fulfilling its own promises to cut carbon emissions with the new prime minister-elect's plan to abolish highway tolls.
• The Times Online reports that some British politicians are getting serious about how the water used for commonly consumed items affects its availability for food production in developing countries.

• The New York Times reported today on Kenya's increasing drought and decreasing confidence in its government, which are reigniting ethnic tensions in some areas.
• Stars and Stripes ran an AP story exploring how climate change is affecting one Arctic town.
• A business-intelligence firm has ranked nations by the security of their food supplies, as reported in AFP. Some of the most vulnerable nations have been “ravaged by conflict” or “buffeted by weather-related natural disasters.”
• Matthew R. Simmons weighs into the recent discussion on (and in) Foreign Policy on the future of oil. 
• Several sources noted Japan's plan to cut greenhouse emissions by 25% by 2020, and Agence France-Presse helpfully points out that this announcement could solve the “who-jumps-first” problem among reluctant nations.

The following is a live blog feed of the “DoDLive Bloggers Roundtable” with Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen. Admiral Allen – who blogs and tweets himself – will discuss the recent Interagency Arctic Awareness Trip with the interagency Ocean Policy Task Force and his conclusions on how the opening Arctic will affect U.S. policy.

3:01 p.m. ADM Allen: The Coast Guard just concluded an Ocean Policy Task Force (OPTF) trip to the Arctic. The Interagency Arctic Awareness Trip included Nancy Sutley, director of White House Council on Environmental Quality, Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator and Heath Zichal, deputy assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. OPTF was sent to assess the impacts of climate change on the Arctic and the implications for local communities and the operating environment.

3:03 p.m. There was no Navy representative with the Ocean Policy Task Force. Why not?