“There will be significant environmental pressures arguing for an inland shift of economic activity. China might be better able than other societies to accomplish this kind of transition, but the western reaches of China are water and resource poor. China will also find itself in direct confrontation with Japan and even the United States over access to fish, at a time when all major fisheries will likely have crashed as the result of today’s unsustainable fishing practices, combined with the ongoing, worldwide decimation of wetlands. All this can place tremendous additional pressure on the national concept and on the Chinese political system. That system is already under stress; witness tens of thousands of clashes each year between the populace and local authorities. Political reform and liberalization of government control may be the necessary response to this kind of discontent, but severe climate change is much more likely to push China’s central government, as well as the provincial governments, in the opposite direction.”
—Leon Fuerth
Key selected environmental stresses based on scenario assumptions
- Water scarcity affects up to 2 billion people
- Increased burden from malnutrition, diarrheal, cardio-respiratory & infectious diseases
- Up to 15 million additional people at risk of flooding
- Changes in marine and ecosystems due to weakening of the meridional overturning circulation
Key selected national security implications based on scenario assumptions
- Wealthiest members of society pull away from the rest of the population, undermining morale and viability of democratic governance
- Global fish stocks may crash, enmeshing some nations in a struggle over dwindling supplies
- Governments, lacking necessary resources, may privatize water supply; past experience with this in poor societies suggests likelihood of violent protest and political upheaval
- Globalization may end and rapid economic decline may begin, owing to the collapse of financial and production systems that depend on integrated worldwide systems
- Corporations may become increasingly powerful relative to governments as the rich look to private services, engendering a new form of globalization in which transnational business becomes more powerful than states
- Alliance systems and multilateral institutions may collapse – among them, the UN, as the Security Council fractures beyond compromise or repair
