China, Climate and Conflict in the Indo-Pacific
Publisher: Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Author(s): Anastasia Kapetas
Date: 2023
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Governance, Land, Renewable Resources
Countries: China, India, United States
As we enter 2023, there’s a much more urgent awareness among national security policymakers that climate change is a critical national and global security issue, and one that will reshape geopolitics. But, at the same time, when political leaders, researchers and media commentators talk about the future trajectory of geopolitical hotspots in the Indo-Pacific, such as the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea (SCS), climate change is almost always absent as a consideration.
In the US and the EU, climate change is now at the apex of security discourse if not yet in security practice. One of the first acts of the Biden administration was to release a memo outlining the centrality of climate change to US national security, mandating the preparation of climate risk assessments from all cabinet agencies to inform the future work of the administration.