How climate change is our military’s most threatening enemy
EXTREME weather patterns are forcing Australian Defence Forces to rethink their tactics as another enemy emerges that they cannot control.
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AS Cyclone Gita moved into the South Western Pacific corridor two weeks ago, on Russell Hill in Canberra Defence Department officials began reviewing contingency plans for worst case scenarios.
By the time the category 5 struck the region, RAAF humanitarian relief plans were well advanced and led to six flights to Tonga by a giant C-17A Globemaster carrying 140,000kg of humanitarian aid and the deployment of 30 ADF and civilian disaster response personnel.
In the historic capital Nuku’alofa, century-old churches, shops, homes and the parliament building were flattened forcing 3000 people into temporary shelter.
At the request of the Fijian Government, overflight missions were also made by the RAAF’s AP-3C Orion spy plane to assess damage to outlying islands in the southern Lau group.
New Zealand’s military also swung into action with 12 tonnes of aid for the region while in the United States, President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in American Samoa allowing his Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide equipment and resources to help the 50,000 residents there recover.
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It is exactly this type of widespread devastation scenario that has prompted a parliamentary inquiry which will later this month report on the implications of climate change for Australia’s national security.
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Senate committee probe, which began last June, has painted a fairly bleak picture where category 5 cyclone responses are the norm rather than the exception.
Indeed such is the ever-increasing regularity of such storms in New Zealand, scientists are looking at creating a sixth cyclone category to capture new weather pattern ferocities.
This is not a debate about climate change and its predicted future apocalyptic consequences as described in some quarters, but rather about what is happening right now and its worse-case scenario knock-on effect of mass migration of displaced persons, rising seas already threatening coastlines and conflict over resources namely water.
The impetus for Australia’s inquiry stemmed from a 2015 report by the US Department of Defense which concluded the impact of climate change from increased natural disasters, refugee flow and conflict was already occurring and further instability was likely.
“I think we’ll been using the ‘once-in-a-100-year storm’ phrase for such weather events more often than every 100 years,” former Australian Defence Force chief and retired Royal Australian Navy admiral Chris Barrie told News Corp Australia, referring to a descriptor used for the storm that this week hammered Canberra.
The now honorary professor of strategic defence studies said storms and events like Cyclone Gita will happen more often and questioned the attitude by some in government and the public that whatever happened the ADF would just clean it up.
He said with just 58,500 personnel the resources and capacity to respond were finite and greater action should have been done years ago, most recently in 2014 when any mention of climate effects on national security had to be omitted from the Defence White Paper because of the very public denials of then Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
He said thankfully those attitude’s within whole of government were now changing and in Australia planning was underway to deal with climate-security from heatwaves, shifting rainfall patterns and flooding, rising sea levels, bushfire extremes and property and infrastructure.
“Military forces around the globe perceive climate change as a threat multiplier because its impacts can seriously undermine individual and societal wellbeing,” he said.
“The anticipated impacts will affect the availability of food, water and energy creating basic insecurities, as well as fostering migratory movements forced on people by sea level rises and the greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as storms, floods, and heatwaves. These pressures have the potential to lead to conflict.”
In May 2016, the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change, a network of serving and retired military personnel formed in 2009 to look at the climate security implications, cited the disappearance of glaciers on the Tibetan plateau which fed freshwater into China, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan among others as a typical potential flashpoint.
India has since built a fence and has armed patrols on the Bangladeshi border. But worse-case scenario would be mass migration of tens of millions of people trying to get to Australia and New Zealand from this Pacific Rim.
Department of Home Affairs deputy secretary Linda Geddes, who has worked in the ADF, Defence Intelligence and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, also recognises the threat in what she describes as complex and unpredictable possible mass migration.
“While the department’s critical functions have business continuity plans that are activated when there is significant disruption to normal business, climate change effects could permanently alter normal business including the accessibility of assets and capability and the nature of challenges to our management of the border and migration,” she has concluded in her submission to the parliamentary inquiry.
The Hawaii-headquartered US Pacific Command (USPACOM), to which Australia has an unspecified number of ADF seconded staff, has now integrated Australia, Canada and New Zealand into its climate-security emergency mobilisation plans including allowing US troops based in Australia to assist in an emergency here.
It concluded: “The Department of Defense sees climate change as a present security threat, not strictly a long-term risk. We are already observing the impacts of climate change in shocks and stressors to vulnerable nations and communities, including in the United States, and in the Arctic, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America.”
Australia’s Defence Department has equally painted a bleak picture from a “threat multiplier” climate change as it now rushed to “embed” the forecast into all future military planning.
“However, the current most likely forecast climate changes may require higher levels of commitment that may create concurrency pressures for Defence from as early as the middle of the next decade or earlier if climate change related impacts on security threats accelerate,” Defence concluded.
Originally published as How climate change is our military’s most threatening enemy