An April 2021 analysis by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) released this week claims that the “unavoidable impacts” of climate change will threaten the “security and prosperity” of Canadians.
Also according to CSIS, climate change is becoming a strategic, intergenerational and multidimensional issue of global security. While relevant, the document should have been written in the present: the impact is already being felt (think summer 2021 devastation from extreme heat, wildfires and back-to-back flooding in British Columbia) and global warming is a current strategic issue ( think of China’s announcement of its ambitious climate targets at the UN General Assembly in September 2021 or the current energy crisis in Europe).
Climate change, which is affecting every sphere of human activity—transport, energy, food production and distribution, water supply, health, infrastructure, and more—is changing several parameters of foreign policy.
Already today and for years to come, climate policy must be more than just environmental policy, and Canada is compelled to place it at the heart of its foreign policy.
For what ? First, take the example of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to implement economic and social transformation to limit global warming. Indeed, the Paris Agreement requires a radical and global energy transition from fossil fuels (which produce the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change) to alternative, renewable energies that do not emit greenhouse gases.
About 75% of oil reserves are controlled by the states. The private oil companies could quickly be nationalized and, in theory, are not the biggest problem. The biggest difficulty concerns the changes required from the oil states – the same ones who negotiated the Paris Agreement and are fighting to implement it – whose fossil fuel exports average about 50 percent % of their government revenue.
The challenge of the energy transition cannot therefore be reduced to the greed of certain companies, despite their leading role in disinformation about climate change for 40 years. There is no question that fossil fuels must be phased out, but this will not be without consequences and risks. Producing and exporting countries – including China, Russia, India, USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Indonesia – will see the foundations of their wealth and international influence destroyed, with the result that increases the risk of a political or economic crisis.
These geopolitical issues are linked to emerging debates about climate security. At first glance, climate change is not a core responsibility of security or defense actors. However, the biophysical (e.g. extreme weather events) and geopolitical consequences of global warming carry the potential for destabilization or conflict (not to mention the impact on military operations, equipment and infrastructure).
Beyond strategic and geopolitical issues, the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report points to mounting evidence linking rising temperatures to the risk of violent conflict in vulnerable countries, particularly in Africa.
The effects of warming on ecosystems have implications for food prices, water quality and distribution, land availability, and farmer-herder relationships during droughts. These countries, which suffer and will suffer the worst from global warming, do not all have the necessary resources to adapt or prevent these conflicts under such conditions.
Therefore, it is necessary to give more importance to climate change in strategic and diplomatic thinking, in the design and implementation of conflict prevention and resolution measures, in peacekeeping or peacekeeping operations, in the planning of development aid or humanitarian intervention programs. Canada’s international action needs to be reviewed and adapted to the new conditions of climate change, as all areas of human activity are affected and transformed by global warming.
* Bruno Charbonneau is also founding President of the Canadian Association for Climate Security
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