POLITICS OF THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

Critically Examine the Extent to Which Climate Change Is Contributing To Violent Conflict

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Climate change and human security5

The state and human security16

Towards an advanced understanding19

Conclusions23

References25

Critically Examine the Extent to Which Climate Change Is Contributing To Violent Conflict

Introduction

This paper focuses on the climate change contribution to violent conflict. For this purpose this paper critically examines the extent to which climate change is contributing to violent conflict. There is now a important body of study that illustrates that weather change is and will progressively have spectacular influences on environmental and communal schemes (summarised in [IPCC, 2001] and [IPCC, 2007]). The dangers are such that the aim of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is to bypass 'dangerous' interference in the weather scheme, and such influences have been characterised as a risk to 'security' ([Barnett, 2003], [Barnett and Adger, 2003], [Brown, 1989], [Edwards, 1999] and [Swart, 1996]). There has been some conjecture about the ways that weather change may boost the risk of brutal confrontation ([Brauch, 2002], [Gleick, 1992], [Homer-Dixon, 1991] and [van Ireland et al., 1996]). There are two very broad ways in which confrontation might be stimulated by weather change. First, confrontation could arrive about through alterations in the political finances of power assets due to mitigative activity to decrease emissions from fossil fuels (Rifkin, 2002). The second topic is the outlook of confrontation stimulated by alterations in communal schemes propelled by genuine or seen weather impacts. This paper is worried with the second of these likely connections. It boasts new insights into the connections between weather change, human security, and brutal confrontation by integrating three disparate but well-founded bodies of study - on the vulnerability of localized locations and communal assemblies to weather change, on livelihoods and brutal confrontation, and the function of the state in development and peacemaking. Human security is taken here to signify the status where persons and groups have the capability to organise tensions to their desires, privileges, and standards (after Alkire, 2003).

This paper has four primary sections. First, it interprets that weather change may destabilise human security by decreasing get access to, and the value of, natural assets that are significant to maintain livelihoods. Second, it proposes that the types of human insecurity that weather change may sway can in turn boost the risk of brutal conflict. Third, it contends that weather change may destabilise the capability of states to proceed in ways that encourage human security and peace. In addition, we propose that, through direct consequences on livelihoods and digressive consequences on state purposes, weather change may in certain attenuating components boost the risk of brutal conflict. Yet these attachments between weather change, human security, the state and brutal confrontation are not empirically proven. Hence, we eventually summarize a study agenda to direct empirical enquiries into the dangers weather change impersonates to human security and peace.

Climate change and human security

There is now prevalent affirmation that the alterations now progressing in the earth's weather scheme have no precedent in the annals ...