Climate Change Is a Security Threat to the Asia-Pacific

Aug 10, 2020 | Shiloh Fetzek and Dennis McGinn
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This week the ASEAN Joint Task Force on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) will meet via video conference, with the COVID-19 pandemic escalating just as some countries in the disaster-prone Indo-Asia Pacific enter their cyclone, drought, heatwave, or monsoon seasons. The overlaying of the pandemic with existing complex challenges is a timely reminder that planning for HADR capacities – and regional security – needs to be attuned to the increasing likelihood of multiple, overlapping hazards and converging security risks, especially in a future where climate change alters the context in which other disasters and crises take place. Developing a clearer recognition of how climate change can reshape the strategic environment will be essential for preserving regional security, stability, and prosperity in the face of complicated and interlocking challenges.

The Indo-Asia Pacific is highly exposed to climate change impacts. Climate change is likely to alter the local physical and strategic environment profoundly, and potentially catastrophically. More frequent or intense extreme weather, sea level rise, and ocean acidification (among other climate impacts) will create a range of threats to the well-being and security of countries in the region, many of which are already threatened by disaster vulnerability and increasingly complex security tensions.

As well as the immediate physical impacts, climate change will increase food and water insecurity, contribute to forced migration and displacement, and challenge disaster response and recovery capabilities. The unprecedented hazards it creates will compound a broad spectrum of conventional, unconventional, and hybrid security risks and challenges. These include increasing geostrategic competition, maritime boundary disputes, the expanding military capabilities of many countries in the region (three of which are seeking to develop nuclear triads), WMD threats from North Korea, ongoing conflicts linked to separatist movements and transnational violent extremist organizations, and piracy and serious organized crime. The interaction between climate change impacts and this complex and evolving regional security landscape is likely to give rise to new and potentially catastrophic risks, which will emerge in ways that are perhaps foreseeable, but difficult to predict.