Center for a New American Security

As Navy servicemen pack vital water supplies after Typhoon Fengshen, we’re reminded of the wide range of strategic and operational functions of the U.S. armed services.  Past decades have seen the U.S. military as an increasingly important provider of disaster relief, and if global climate change produces the more frequent and higher-intensity storms that are projected, the humanitarian response efforts of the United States will be in even greater demand.  U.S. security planners need to consider this increased demand to adequately prepare for likely future burdens.

Photo: U.S. Navy and Philippine servicemen loading water bottles for delivery in the relief effort after Typhoon Fengshen. Courtesy of Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist (SW/NAC) Spike Call and the U.S. Navy.

“Surely it has to frustrate you coming from where you come from that this country is not embarking on a massive project and working with China and India to do the same – nuclear countries already – to build many, many nuclear facilities to combat this [climate change] issue that you’re so concerned about,” said Senator Bob Corker at the July 20, 2009, hearing "Climate Change and Global Security: Challenges, Threats and Diplomatic Opportunities," before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. From my vantage point within the security community, it is not terribly frustrating. Because for all the benefits that come with diversifying the energy portfolio by increasing nuclear power, the inextricable security challenges too often get missed or ignored.

What was missing from Senator Corker’s remarks was an indication of the potential security concerns with nuclear power projects popping up all over the world. Nuclear non-proliferation has been an intractable issue for more than a half century, an issue we’re reminded of day in and day out by Iran and North Korea. But with nuclear energy reentering the global debate as a pseudo-panacea for the world’s energy woes, the threat of proliferation may become more urgent.

Yesterday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on “Climate Change and Global Security: Challenges, Threats, and Diplomatic Opportunities.” (CNAS Veep and Natural Security Blogger Sharon Burke testified, and may share her insights here later.) I thought one of the most important comments of the day came from Senator John Kerry in his opening remarks:

…climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile world. It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale. Places only too familiar with the instability, conflict, and resource competition that often create refugees and IDPs, will now confront these same challenges with an ever growing population of EDPs—environmentally displaced people. We risk fanning the flames of failed-statism, and offering glaring opportunities to the worst actors in our international system. In an interconnected world, that endangers all of us.

This is an important point, often the focus for our program and others like it, quite different from the academic argument concerning

• In an effort to ease chronic water shortages due to numerous droughts in recent years, the Spanish government has opened a new desalinization plant near Barcelona. In other water-related news, the Financial Times examines how demand in India has pushed water shortages to a “crisis level.” Similarly, the Colorado River system is at serious risk due to climate change, with a new study indicating that in certain scenarios there is a 50 percent chance the river system will be depleted by 2057.
• China has launched a project aimed at bolstering its solar power industry through a series of subsidies.
• Reuters examines the next round of climate talks – an informal meeting of negotiators in Bonn – in the run-up to the Copenhagen negotiations.
• In Iraq, Anbar and Diyala provinces are attempting to gain greater control over their ability to enter into contracts with foreign energy companies due to growing frustration with Baghdad’s lack of progress in the bidding process.

• The New York Times examines the Department of Defense’s efforts to curb its energy use, evaluate its carbon “bootprint,” and examine the implications of climate change, all while fighting two wars.
• The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 assessment will examine the effects of climate change on developing nations, reports The Guardian.
• With combat missions increasing in Afghanistan, so too are the number of convoys needed to deliver goods such as fuel and food to forward operating bases.
• High temperatures in southern California will cause a significant increase in demand for energy over the next few days, seriously testing southern California’s electrical grid. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that new analysis indicates that the 2006 heat wave in California was significantly more deadly than previously thought, with up to three times as many heat-related deaths as previously counted.
• BP has stated that oil and gas production in the North Sea will fall about 9% this year.

• Norway’s foreign minister has predicted that melting Arctic sea ice will create a new international shipping route that is both faster and safer than current options; he has also stated that the melting of the Arctic will have a significant effect on world energy markets.
• The New York Times reports that India is rejecting appeals to lower its carbon dioxide emissions.
• The Army Corps of Engineers is involved in a number of projects aimed at promoting environmental sustainability in Iraq, including improving access to potable water and utilizing renewable energy in communities.
• Europe’s largest insurer, Allianz SE, has warned that insurers need to be ready for an increase in wind-related claims as climate change creates an increased number of wind storms in Europe.
• The Guardian profiles Turkmenistan’s attempts to create a manmade lake in the middle of a desert.

Perennially ravaged by civil war and resource conflict, the DRC is in the midst of confronting yet another natural security challenge, adding trial to tribulation. The region’s historically rich ecosystem is currently threatened by deforestation, the result of increasing demand for land by farmers and herders. Alone, competition for land between the two groups is contributing to regional instability, but it’s also diminishing biodiversity, a necessary prerequisite to ecological (and economic and national) security.

Photo: Ground view of a logging operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Courtesy of Scott Thompson and the World Resources Institute on flickr.

• The Washington Post reports that several Asian nations could potentially outpace the United States in the development of clean energy technology.
• Energy Secretary Steven Chu has stated that the cost of implementing carbon capture and storage technology in China’s coal industry is worth paying compared to the potential damages caused by continuing to do “business as usual.”
• The Army Corps of Engineers has announced that surface coal mining will now face stricter regulations, specifically in regards to dumping rubble without undergoing normal review procedures.
• Vikas Bajaj, writing for The New York Times, looks at how the loss of mangrove trees has made Mumbai more vulnerable to flooding.
• The EU has launched a set of new energy security rules which will focus on mitigating the effects of natural gas shutoffs in the most affected countries.

“They are the backbone of the Information Age and, potentially, the clean energy  future. They are in iPods, Blackberrys, and plasma TVs. They are powerful and compact; they are exceedingly efficient. In many cases, there are no substitutes for them,” writes Kent Garber in a July 1, 2009, U.S News Weekly special report. “They” are rare earth elements. And they are “America’s new dependency.”  And much like oil and other resource dependencies, our reliance on rare earth minerals will play a significant role in U.S national security.

Today, an article on page A1 of New York Times reports on the shrinking Euphrates, civilization’s first most important river and now one that will be critical to reconstruction and further economic development in Iraq. Unfortunately, drought has stolen the precipitation necessary to recharge the river, and water levels now deviate 95 percent from the yearly average. The impact on the Iraqi people is indiscriminate; the Times reports that diplomats, herders, MPs, and farmers are all feeling the strain on water supply, though some, admittedly, more than others. Granted, Iraq is historically accustomed to the occasional drought, but the degree of recent water scarcity is unprecedented, at least according to the accounts of the locals.

The current dangerously low water levels in the Euphrates are the result of more than natural phenomena. Governmental water policies in Ankara and Damascus bear a heavy burden of blame.  Located downstream on the Euphrates, Iraq and its water supply are at the mercy of Turkish and Syrian dam regulation.  For now, Turkey has increased flow into the Euphrates, pushing water levels back up to vary only 60% below average.  So far, however, Ankara’s decision is one of largesse; no treaties or institutions currently govern regional rights to water.  Until the dams open or the drought subsides, thirsty Iraqis will be forced to find alternate sources for agriculture and consumption, which now sometimes include reservoirs already polluted with sewage.

After reading the article, be sure to glance at the accompanying multimedia slideshow, which depicts stunning black-and-white visuals of the drought’s devastating impact in Iraq.

• Four European nations and Turkey have signed an agreement to build the Nabucco pipeline, bringing natural gas from Central Asia to Europe while circumventing Russia, despite the fact that supplier nations have yet to sign on. Bulgaria – one of the four European signatories – has also signed a separate accord with Greece’s DEPA and Italy’s Edison to import Azeri gas in an effort to reduce its dependence on Russian gas.
• The New York Times examines the effects of droughts in Iraq, including the drying up of the Euphrates River.
• The New York Times profiles China’s investments, as well as protectionist moves, in the renewable energy industry.
• Bloomberg News and Reuters report that Exxon Mobil Corporation will invest at least $600 million in the development of biofuels from algae.
• Alaska Governor Sarah Palin takes on the proposed cap-and-trade legislation in the Washington Post.

Nearly 45 years ago, Time magazine reported on the growing global demand for the planet’s fixed quantity of freshwater in an article entitled “A Question of Birthright.” At the time, chronic droughts in traditionally arid environments like the Sahara and parts of the Middle East had begun to appear in unsuspecting countries like the Koreas and Bechuanaland (now Botswana).
 
Reporting from October 1965, the article projected that world demand for water would double in two decades, creating “an expanding challenge to scientific ingenuity.” Solutions had to be found. Tongue in cheek, the author claimed that “dowsers, who used to roam the land with their unreliable witch-hazel divining rods, are no longer adequate” as guarantors of water supply. No disagreement there.

One of the article’s central observations remains true today: simply, that throughout the vast span of geologic time, including all of human history, the amount of water on the planet has remained fixed.  The sixties, though, saw a broadening realization that a burgeoning world population and rising living standards placed increased demand on this finite resource than in decades and centuries past. Since then, population levels and relative consumption have risen even higher and will continue to do so, making the issue of water security that existed in 1965 even more pressing for countries today.