Abstract
Conceptually, conflict is the actual or perceived opposition of interests, understandings and values. It explains various aspects of social life such as social disagreement, conflicts of interests and fights between individuals, groups and organisations (Druckman and Diehl 2006). Historically, competition for getting a larger pie of natural resources has never been the sole cause of conflicts but it had been one of the main reasons (rich coal mines of Alssaice–Lorraine between Germany and France, or water between Israel and Syria or Jordan). But, history may add a new chapter, if things remain ‘business as usual’. Taking stock of the emerging water problem, arising due to the galloping increase in population and the phenomenon of climate change, Ismail Seragladin, former vice-President of the World Bank, has repeatedly asserted ‘wars of next century will be over water’ (Wolf 1998).
Conflict, due to climate change or global warming, which has been focused upon by Jeffry Mazo, in this book, is a very serious issue indeed, and has been dealt by a few social scientists. Jeffry Mazo has accentuated conflicts due to climate change from a strategic and security perspective.
In Chapter 1 of his book, titled ‘Global Warming and Climate Change’, the author touches complex and interrelated topics such as the historical interaction between human society and climate, the dynamics of state stability and state failure, and the nexus between conflict and resource scarcity (p. 15). Like many other climatologists and environmental commentators, he too blames human activities like burning of fossil fuels, land-use patterns, farming and other such practices for increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Using a ‘Hockey stick’ graph of reconstructed mean northern hemisphere temperatures over the past millennium, Jeffrey shows that global temperature was relatively constant until the twentieth century with an abrupt, steep rise thereafter (p. 17). Through examples like the disappearance of Lake Agassiz (p. 29), he has shown how climate change has negatively impacted the global environment. He further talks about changes in climate—long-term wind and rainfall patterns, daily and seasonal temperature variations, and so on—that will produce physical effects such as droughts, floods and increasing severity of typhoons and hurricanes, and ecological effects such as changes in the geographical range of species (including disease-causing organisms, domesticated crops and crop pests) (p. 29).
Environmental issues started getting their due focus since the Stockholm summit of 1972, followed by various earth summits and Conference of Parties (CoP) meets. But never have the international diplomats considered the ensuing threats due to climate change as an issue of security. So when the UN Security Council debated climate change and security in April 2007 under the aegis of the United Kingdom’s presidency, many nations (including China, Russia and Pakistan, the latter representing a large group of developing countries) objected that climate change was an environmental and developmental issue, not a security issue, and that the council was not the appropriate place to debate it—in fact, that such a debate was an encroachment on the prerogatives of other UN organs (p. 31). But things have changed now, mainly after publications of Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) fourth assessment report. Today various foreign policy and security study think-tanks carry out projects on security in time of global warming and climate change. Even regional organisations and individual states have started chalking out plans to meet the future security threats due to climate change.
The title of the second chapter is ‘Climate and History’. Here, the author looks into the issue of climate change from a historical perspective. The divisions in the geological timescale are defined by discontinuities in the fossil record—that is, by major changes in the environment and ecosystem—which often reflect major climate shifts (p. 43). These climate shifts were reasons for the origin of the human species and later on the emergence of civilisations, when settled life began. The earliest evidence for agriculture comes from the Middle East, and indicates that around 11000 BC an abrupt change to a drier, colder and more variable climate led to a steep fall in the availability of the wild cereal crops that had long served as staples for hunter–gatherer communities (p. 45). Around 5000 BC, global climate and sea levels had mostly stabilised. Different cultures responded differently to the climate change. During the mid-Holocene climate change, the Polynesian Islands of Rapa Nui (Easter Islands) and the Pitcairn group some 2,100 km to its west, collapsed due to climate change. In both cases, then, a combination of marginal environmental conditions, population exceeding resources and inadequate adaptation to change all contributed to social collapse (p. 50). Even in Greenland, the Norse settlements first and then the Inuit settlements, became extinct. The apparent causes for it were deforestation causing soil erosion and shortage of fuel for smelting iron; over-exploitation of pasture land; hostile relations with the Inuit; the Black Death; and a decline in European demand for Greenlandic exports caused by that same plague, changing fashions and political conditions and access to new sources of supply (p. 51).
Mazo has also shown how the ancient civilisations like Indus, etc., came to an end due to this phenomenon. In modern times, the US has experienced significant climate-induced social disruption during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. A series of annual droughts (1930–1931, 1934, 1936 and 1939–1940) in the American West, particularly the Great Plains, combined to create the worst sustained period of drought in the region for over 200 years. It contributed significantly to the depth and prolongation of the Great Depression, led to the migration of over 2 million people and cost perhaps as much as $1bn in federal relief payments (p. 64). Even to some extent, the former Soviet Union’s collapse can be blamed on weather: an inefficient agricultural system made the country particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events. Even ethnic strife and genocide in Rwanda in the mid-1990s was not simply motivated by historical tensions or cynical politicians, but was a Malthusian worst-case scenario, where population growth simply outstripped resources (p. 64).
Chapter 3, titled ‘Darfur: The First Modern Climate-Change Conflict’, focuses on the violence in the western-most Sudanese province of Darfur, since the 1980s, which originated due to tribal competition over access to grazing land and water (p. 73). In June 2007, UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki-Moon ignited a debate when he declared that human-induced climate change was an important contributing factor to the Darfur conflict—a point previously argued, but not taken up seriously by a number of commentators including Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 (p. 73). The UNEP reported in 2007 that 29 of the 40 violent local conflicts in Darfur since independence in 1956 involved grazing and water rights (p. 77). Famines and droughts in Darfur are normal things to occur. It does not mean that every famine or drought leads to violent conflicts, rather it does not. It depends on the nature of the government and its social institutions. In democracies, liberal institutions and governmental action during disasters help the people to overcome their agony and losses (Sen, 1982). In1984–1985 in spite of famine, in Darfur, no conflict occurred because the population was less and also the government was not anti-citizens; but in 2003, the population had increased and mainly due to the government’s instigation, violent conflict began. A UN-brokered peace agreement in 2006 was accepted by some, but not all of the rebel groups. By the beginning of 2010, full-scale fighting seemed to have dampened down into a low-intensity conflict. In January 2011, the southern part of Sudan, in a UN-held referendum, voted for status of a separate independent state. Sudanese President Omair-al-Bashir has been accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide and ethnic cleansing of three tribes, namely, Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. His arrest warrant is supported by NATO, the Genocide Intervention Network and Amnesty International.
In Chapter 4, titled ‘Conflict, Instability and State Failure:The Climate Factor’, Jeffrey Mazo discusses factors which contribute to instability and failure of states. The examples of pre-industrial human civilisation and the modern conflict in Darfur show that societies and polities fail, disintegrate or collapse due to a complex interaction of environmental, political and economic circumstances and trends. Of these, unfavourable environmental conditions, and particularly climate, are perhaps the most basic and direct, but are not necessary companions to failure (p. 90). Global warming will indirectly affect all other things like migration, water shortage, spread of disease, agricultural production, etc. The worst climate-change impacts on countries such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states may not be water or food shortages, but relative reductions in revenues if the consumption of oil declines in response to emission-reduction efforts (p. 103). The complex interactions between climate change, economic, social and political variables, and conflict and instability create feedbacks that amplify climate impacts. Conflicts and state failure make adaptation to and mitigation of climate change more difficult, as state institutions become less able to implement adaptation measures and international organisations are unable to operate safely as in Darfur (pp. 103–104). Climate change has contributed to the issue of water security in Columbia and food security in Indonesia.
Chapter 5, titled ‘Climate Change and Security’, discusses the issue of adaptation and mitigation factors to face the challenge of climate change. The IPCC, in its report, favoured containing global temperature up to 2-degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels—a ‘guardrail’ beyond which ‘the possibilities for adaptation of society and ecosystems rapidly decline, with an increasing risk of social disruption through health impacts, water shortages and food insecurity’ (p. 119). Globally various meetings, summits and conferences have taken place to address the issue of climate change. The Kyoto Protocol (KP) of 1997, the CoP summit in Bali, Copenhagen and the last one in Cancun were important meetings of global leaders to discuss the climate change and taking steps to fight against it. But in these meetings, the deadlock is being maintained because of the adamant nature of developed countries who want to impose their conditions on the developing and underdeveloped countries. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, at the African Union summit in January 2007, called global warming a ‘sin act of aggression by the rich against the poor’ (p. 129). He talks about the ineffectiveness of the Adaptation fund, Clean Development Mechanism, etc., which were set up according to provisions of KP. The last meeting of CoP at Cancun was a disaster and according to commentators like Martin Khor et al., it was the last nail in KP’s coffin.
In ‘Conclusion’, the author feels that without sharp and early reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, the world will face profound disruption, human tragedy and unforeseeable political, social and cultural consequences beginning in the second half of the twenty-first century, posing a threat to the liberal order and industrial civilisation (p. 137). Over the long-term, changes in water and food availability will be major drivers of insecurity, but in the medium-term, the trends will be as much a matter of incremental, quantitative change as of a qualitative step change (p. 140). He stresses on a successful adaptation across a range of sectors to avoid the potentially destabilising impacts of climate change, which requires a minimum level of governance, accountability, civil-society, public health and education (pp. 140–141). The adaptive capacity of developed and more advanced emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa will be more than sufficient to cope with medium-term climate change. But all such states, sooner or later, will reach a threshold, where they too will face their own crises. So, it is better to take precautionary measures from now itself, rather than waiting for an insinuated disaster.
This is really a well-researched book and a must-read for all, who are working in the field of climate change or conflicts and security studies.