In Conversation: The Geopolitics of Climate Change
Read more from Perspectives in Climate Change.
Joshua Busby is a Featured Expert at JIPP. He is an Associate Professor of Public Affairs and Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at UT Austin. He has published extensively on climate change, U.S. foreign policy, and transnational advocacy movements, including two books, the latter of which won the 2014 Don K. Price Award (the American Political Science Association’s award for the best book on science, technology, and environmental politics).
Much of your work framed climate change as a security issue long before John Kerry was appointed as climate envoy in a national security capacity. What key concerns and lessons learned can you share with the new administration?
Climate change will have security consequences from its impacts — these include direct impacts on countries and indirect impacts on their overseas interests. For example, climate change impact can destabilize other countries around the world and those effects may constitute security concerns for others, given risks of spillover consequences from migration or conflict contagion. The rising salience of climate change as a top tier issue in geopolitics may make climate change a source of friction in great power politics, elevating the issue as part of the security discussion in its own right. How countries tackle climate change, from efforts to acquire land overseas to shore up access to foodstuffs or securing critical minerals for battery technology, can be as conflictual as the physical impacts of climate change. Most of the responses to diminish the security consequences of climate change do not involve military instruments but require diplomacy and development resources. Securitizing climate change shouldn’t reinforce the idea that this is primarily a military problem — because that it is not.
How effective is the Paris Agreement as one of these diplomatic responses?
The Paris Agreement was a down payment on what was needed to address global climate change, but the commitments to reduce emissions are not enough to avoid dangerous climate change even if fully implemented. This was known at the time. The hope was that countries would gain some positive experience reducing emissions and ratchet up their ambition over time. Indeed, the mechanism of the Paris Agreement has countries revisit their earlier targets (so-called Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs) and increase them every five years.
The first such occasion to increase them was this year, but the negotiations were delayed because of the coronavirus outbreak. So, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference at the end of this year will really be the time when we expect to see enhanced ambitions from states to reduce their emissions and align with the Paris Agreement’s goals of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Given that global temperatures are already more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels, it may be difficult to meet that the 2-degree target, especially since countries have largely not been on track even to meet the modest goals of the Paris Agreement. The coronavirus has temporarily contributed to a large decrease in emissions, perhaps as much as 7.5% in 2020, but at great cost to human welfare. The world will need to see such large decreases in emissions every year for a number of years but without the dislocation and suffering engendered by the COVID outbreak.
How could the U.S. government encourage such follow-on in foreign countries?
The administration will have to think carefully about what will induce laggard countries like Brazil and Australia to participate more fully in efforts to address climate change. When governments are hostile to climate action, subnational action by cities and private actors can partially compensate for the lack of national momentum, but national action and commitments are crucial. A country like Brazil has a strong regard for its sovereignty so efforts to pressure the country to play a more constructive role in climate change may be challenging, particularly under the current leadership of Jair Bolsonaro. Some measures like trade sanctions may be effective but could reinforce nationalist sentiment in a country like Brazil. The U.S. will have to figure out tailored strategies for key countries based on consultation with local actors who understand those countries well.
Climate Change has long been framed as a “threat multiplier” in the way that it compounds pre-existing tensions to make conflict more likely. What insight does your forthcoming book States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security offer on this relationship?
I argue that the worst security consequences of climate change are most likely in countries that have weak state capacity, exclusive political institutions that leave some groups unrepresented in government, and where foreign aid is lacking or delivered in a one-sided manner to some groups and not others.
In such countries, a government lacks the capacity to prepare for or respond to climate challenges, that any responses that are carried out will benefit the regime’s key supporters and not others. Foreign assistance can sometimes compensate for the lack of state capacity but if aid is not forthcoming or delivered to some groups and not others, then some segments of society are likely to suffer and ultimately will blame the state for lack of attention to their needs.
Governments should strive to build up their capacity to address major challenges, bring in all major groups into government to ensure inclusive representation, and leverage foreign assistance for both of those purposes. External actors need to appreciate the challenges and the limitations of externally sponsored efforts to build capacity and inclusive governance.