US Pacific Command, Climate Change and Collaborative Security
Publisher: The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Author(s): Andrew DeWit
Date: 2014
Topics: Climate Change
Countries: United States
The US military is already a leader on climate-change mitigation through renewable energy and energy efficiency. The military’s adaptation efforts are also instructive for civil society and may help curb climate-related geopolitical instability. In the Pacific, centring on the vast region of Oceania, 12,000 kilometers east to west and 6000 kilometers north to south, PACOM is increasingly focused onbuilding resilience against climate change and creative networks of cooperation on humanitarian assistance and disaster response, or HADR.
The Stars and Stripes article points out that – Washington’s gridlock notwithstanding - the best evidence indicates that climate change’s threat to human security is already dire and rapidly worsening and thus “U.S. Pacific Command is forging strategies with partner nations in the region to mitigate the security effects of global warming.