It is always interesting to learn about the connection between natural sciences and social sciences. And for me, it is even more exciting to learn the impact of the greatest challenge of human kind 'Climate Change' with historic political movement the 'Arab Spring' happened in the Arab world. In this connection, I found one report which tries to establish a link between the Arab Spring and
Climate Change.
In 2012, Troy Sternberg, a scholar of Oxford University,
published an article in Applied Geography Volume 34 (519-524) entitled “Chinese drought, bread and
the Arab Spring” in which he argues that the Arab spring was a result of
increased wheat price in the international market due to winter drought in
eastern china which might be caused by climate change.
Another report published
in February 2013 by Centre for American Progress and Centre for Climate and
Security entitled “The Arab Spring and Climate Change: A Climate and Security Correlations Series” is a collection of five different articles in climate
change, conflict, and economy that are edited by Caitlin E. Werrell and
Francesco Femia. The report highlights Climate Change as a stressor and indirectly argue that the Arab Spring was caused by Climate Change. In addition, the
essays compiled in this report give a clear sense of relation between climate
change in terms of record winter drought in China and its subsequent global wheat shortages, and civil unrest in Egypt stimulated by increased price of
wheat in the market.
The whole repot can be
downloaded from here. The preface of the report is as follows:
Crime-show devotees
will be familiar with the idea of a “stressor”—a sudden change in circumstances
or environment that interacts with a complicated psychological profile in a way
that leads a previously quiescent person to become violent. The stressor is by
no means the only cause of the crimes that ensue, but it is an important factor
in a complex set of variables that ultimately lead to disaster.
“The Arab Spring and
Climate Change” does not argue that climate change caused the revolutions that
have shaken the Arab world over the past two years. But the essays collected in
this slim volume make a compelling case that the consequences of climate change
are stressors that can ignite a volatile mix of underlying causes that erupt
into revolution.
This volume of essays
includes the following contributions:
- Troy Sternberg of Oxford University begins by investigating the connections between climate events in other parts of the world and social unrest in the Arab world. More specifically, he looks at drought conditions in China, subsequent global wheat shortages, and how those shortages may have influenced the Egyptian uprisings. In his own words, he paints a picture of “how a localized hazard became globalized.”
- Sarah Johnstone and Jeffrey Mazo of the International Institute for Strategic Studies investigate the vulnerability of the Middle East and North Africa region to fluctuations of food supply and prices both globally and locally, and how current and projected climatic changes interact with those phenomena. They conclude that, “The Arab Spring would likely have come one way or another, but the context in which it did is not inconsequential. Global warming may not have caused the Arab Spring, but it may have made it come earlier.”
- Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell of the Center for Climate and Security address the influence of climate change before social and political unrest developed into large-scale conflict in Syria—a country many analysts initially deemed impervious to the Arab Spring, also known as the Arab Awakening—the projected influence of climate change after the Arab Awakening in Libya, and possible water-security solutions for building climate resilience that may simultaneously enhance cooperation and aid in resolving conflict.
- Michael Werz and Max Hoffman of the Center for American Progress investigate how “security in one place is irrevocably linked to stability in distant regions.” Werz and Hoffman use the Arab Awakening as a backdrop to explore how a 21st-century security strategy must account for “transcendent challenges,” including the nexus between climate change, human rights, and migration.
- David Michel and Mona Yacoubian of the Stimson Center explore how the Arab world could transform the risks posed by climate-change factors into sustainable economic growth and job-creating opportunities. Michel and Yacoubian look specifically at how “greening” Arab economies by adopting innovative technologies and forward-leaning government policies can simultaneously bolster employment and mitigate environmental risks, “turning two of the region’s pre-eminent challenges into a significant opportunity.”
All of these authors
are admirably cautious in acknowledging the complexity of the events they are
analyzing and the difficulty of drawing precise causal arrows. But consider the
following statements:
- “A once-in-a-century winter drought in China contributed to global wheat shortages and skyrocketing bread prices in Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer.” (Sternberg, p. 7)
- “Of the world’s major wheat-importing companies per capita, “the top nine importers are all in the Middle East; seven had political protests resulting in civilian deaths in 2011.” (Sternberg, p. 12)
- “The world is entering a period of ‘agflation,’ or inflation driven by rising prices for agricultural commodities.” (Johnstone and Mazo, p. 21)
- “Drought and desertification across much of the Sahel—northern Nigeria, for example, is losing 1,350 square miles a year to desertification—have undermined agricultural and pastoral livelihoods,” contributing to urbanization and massive flows of migrants. (Werz and Hoffman, p. 37)
- “As the region’s population continues to climb, water availability per capita is projected to plummet. … Rapid urban expansion across the Arab world increasingly risks overburdening existing infrastructure and outpacing local capacities to expand service.” (Michel and Yacoubian, p. 45)
- “We have reached the point where a regional climate event can have a global extent.” (Sternberg, p. 10)
These assertions are
all essentially factual. None of them individually might be cause for alarm.
Taken together, however, the phenomena they describe weave a complex web of
conditions and interactions that help us understand the larger context for the
Arab Awakening. Indeed, as Johnstone and Mazo argued as early as April–May
2011, in an article written just at the outset of the Tunisian and Egyptian
revolutions, it was already possible to see that climate change played a role
in the complex causality of the revolts spreading across the region. They
called it a “threat multiplier.” It significantly increased the interactive
effects—and hence the overall impact—of political, economic, religious,
demographic, and ethnic forces.
This concept of a
“threat multiplier” is a helpful way to think about climate change and security
more broadly. In Syria, for instance, as Femia and Werrell tell us, a
combination of “social, economic, environmental and climatic changes … eroded
the social contract between citizen and government in the country, strengthened
the case for the opposition movement, and irreparably damaged the legitimacy of
the Assad regime.” In Libya, according to the same authors, Qaddafi used oil
revenues to finance the “Great Man-Made River Project,” one of the largest
water engineering projects in the world—and quite unsustainable. Libya is 93
percent arid, and the aquifers it is draining for the project are shared by
Egypt, Chad, and Sudan. Moreover, climate projections estimate that Libya’s
“drought days” per annum will rise from more than 100 to more than 200—an
enormous and potentially devastating increase. It is not difficult to see how
these conditions multiply the threats already facing Libya’s fragile new
government. On the other hand, Femia and Werrell outline a much more positive
vision of how water-management projects could help bring otherwise-divided
parts of Libyan society together.
Beyond individual
countries, if we accept the conclusions of the authors collected here, then we
must expect a continuing and increasing interplay between climate, land, water,
food, migration, urbanization, and economic, social, and political stress. Yet
almost none of those issues shows up in a traditional course on international
relations, which focuses far more on the traditional geopolitics of interstate
relations, particularly the distribution of military and economic power among a
handful of the most important states.
Insecurity in this world is defined largely in terms of military threats posed
by rising or declining powers; security dilemmas between rival states, which
must assume worst-case motivations on one another’s part; physical and virtual
terrorist attacks; and denial of access to any of the world’s common
spaces—ocean, air, outer space, and, increasingly, cyberspace.
Yet intrastate
violence, instability, and revolution all create their own turmoil. The
geopolitical results of the Arab Awakening are felt in the political
realignment of states such as Egypt following the political victory of the
Muslim Brotherhood in recent elections, and the determination of states such as
Saudi Arabia and Qatar to arm specific factions in the civil war in Syria as
part of a proxy war with Iran. Moreover, violence and pervasive political
uncertainty across the Middle East inflicts its own economic costs: unstable
oil prices, streams of refugees and migrants to more developed countries, and
the opportunity costs of investment forgone across a region that has served as
a global crossroads since the beginning of human civilization.
It follows, as Werz
and Hoffman conclude, that, “The United States, its allies, and the global
community must de-emphasize traditional notions of hard security more suited to
the Cold War and focus on more appropriate concepts such as human security,
livelihood protection, and sustainable development.” Foreign policy initiatives
focused on human-security issues offer
ways to:
- Diminish distrust of the United States
- Bring together a wide range of civic and corporate partners, both in country and from abroad
- Transcend conflicts over resources such as water and grazing land among rival groups by creating avenues for constructive cooperation on issues including water management and crop adaptation
- Engage specific groups of a population such as women, youth, entrepreneurs, or religious communities
In response to this
new emphasis on human security, Michel and Yacoubian detail a number of
encouraging international initiatives to “establish networks of renewable
energy projects linking Arab countries to each other and to export markets in
Europe and Africa” and laying the
foundations for green growth.
Former U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton understood the value of this type of engagement from
the very outset of her tenure. The first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development
Review in 2010 sought to develop and institutionalize new organizational
structures and policy tools specifically designed to engage societies, as well
as governments. Consider the creation of an undersecretary for civilian
security, democracy, and human rights replacing the under secretary for
democracy and global affairs in the State Department. The new under secretary
oversees five important bureaus, two of which—the Bureau of Counterterrorism
and the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations—are newly created. The
other three are the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and
Migration. Each of these bureaus focuses on a different dimension of human
security:
- Protection from violence in conflict-torn states and the rebuilding of state institutions
- Protection from the violence and corruption inflicted by global criminal networks in drugs, arms, money, people, and violent extremism
- Protection of basic human rights
- The meeting of basic human needs in times of migration and displacement
Within these bureaus
and in offices reporting directly to the secretary of state can be found a host
of new ambassadors and senior representatives for issues such as:
- Global empowerment of women
- Creation and maintenance of public-private partnerships
- Global youth issues
- Establishment of regional and global networks of entrepreneurs
- Outreach to Muslim communities around the world
- Support of civil society
The new Bureau of
Energy Resources also focuses on energy security for the United States and its
allies—a task that requires close coordination with the special representative
for climate change.
These initiatives are
far more than one secretary of state’s whim. They build on a growing
recognition beginning at the end of the Cold War that global problems, crises,
and conflicts were resulting from a more complex and intertwined set of causes.
Over the past two decades, the role of planetary changes—the human impact on
climate, biodiversity, and natural resources, from water to fish to
forests—have exacerbated the perils of the human condition even as
technological advances have created whole new worlds. Foreign policy, which has
always been about advancing one nation’s interests and values with respect to
those of other nations, is now increasingly about solving national, regional,
and global problems that affect us all in myriad and often unpredictable ways.
“The Arab Spring and
Climate Change” is a title that will still strike many readers as a very
strange juxtaposition. But as the contents of this volume make clear, it
describes the interplay of factors that will demand an increasing amount of our
attention going forward.
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