Back
About RSIS
Introduction
Building the Foundations
Welcome Message
Board of Governors
Staff Profiles
Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
Dean’s Office
Management
Distinguished Fellows
Faculty and Research
Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
Visiting Fellows
Adjunct Fellows
Administrative Staff
Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
RSIS Endowment Fund
Endowed Professorships
Career Opportunities
Getting to RSIS
Research
Research Centres
Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
Centre of Excellence for National Security
Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
Research Programmes
National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)
Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
Other Research
Future Issues and Technology Cluster
Research@RSIS
Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
Graduate Education
Graduate Programmes Office
Exchange Partners and Programmes
How to Apply
Financial Assistance
Meet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other events
RSIS Alumni
Outreach
Global Networks
About Global Networks
RSIS Alumni
Executive Education
About Executive Education
SRP Executive Programme
Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
International Programmes
About International Programmes
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)
International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
Publications
RSIS Publications
Annual Reviews
Books
Bulletins and Newsletters
RSIS Commentary Series
Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
Commemorative / Event Reports
Future Issues
IDSS Papers
Interreligious Relations
Monographs
NTS Insight
Policy Reports
Working Papers
External Publications
Authored Books
Journal Articles
Edited Books
Chapters in Edited Books
Policy Reports
Working Papers
Op-Eds
Glossary of Abbreviations
Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
RSIS Publications for the Year
External Publications for the Year
Media
Cohesive Societies
Sustainable Security
Other Resource Pages
News Releases
Speeches
Video/Audio Channel
External Podcasts
Events
Contact Us
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Think Tank and Graduate School Ponder The Improbable Since 1966
Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University
  • About RSIS
      IntroductionBuilding the FoundationsWelcome MessageBoard of GovernorsHonours and Awards for RSIS Staff and StudentsRSIS Endowment FundEndowed ProfessorshipsCareer OpportunitiesGetting to RSIS
      Staff ProfilesExecutive Deputy Chairman’s OfficeDean’s OfficeManagementDistinguished FellowsFaculty and ResearchAssociate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research AnalystsVisiting FellowsAdjunct FellowsAdministrative Staff
  • Research
      Research CentresCentre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)Centre of Excellence for National SecurityInstitute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
      Research ProgrammesNational Security Studies Programme (NSSP)Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
      Other ResearchFuture Issues and Technology ClusterResearch@RSISScience and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
  • Graduate Education
      Graduate Programmes OfficeExchange Partners and ProgrammesHow to ApplyFinancial AssistanceMeet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other eventsRSIS Alumni
  • Outreach
      Global NetworksAbout Global NetworksRSIS Alumni
      Executive EducationAbout Executive EducationSRP Executive ProgrammeTerrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
      International ProgrammesAbout International ProgrammesAsia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
  • Publications
      RSIS PublicationsAnnual ReviewsBooksBulletins and NewslettersRSIS Commentary SeriesCounter Terrorist Trends and AnalysesCommemorative / Event ReportsFuture IssuesIDSS PapersInterreligious RelationsMonographsNTS InsightPolicy ReportsWorking Papers
      External PublicationsAuthored BooksJournal ArticlesEdited BooksChapters in Edited BooksPolicy ReportsWorking PapersOp-Eds
      Glossary of AbbreviationsPolicy-relevant Articles Given RSIS AwardRSIS Publications for the YearExternal Publications for the Year
  • Media
      Cohesive SocietiesSustainable SecurityOther Resource PagesNews ReleasesSpeechesVideo/Audio ChannelExternal Podcasts
  • Events
  • Contact Us
    • Connect with Us

      rsis.ntu
      rsis_ntu
      rsisntu
      rsisvideocast
      school/rsis-ntu
      rsis.sg
      rsissg
      RSIS
      RSS
      Subscribe to RSIS Publications
      Subscribe to RSIS Events

      Getting to RSIS

      Nanyang Technological University
      Block S4, Level B3,
      50 Nanyang Avenue,
      Singapore 639798

      Click here for direction to RSIS

      Get in Touch

    Connect
    Search
    • RSIS
    • Publication
    • RSIS Publications
    • CO09099 | Human Security: A Response to the Climate Security Debates
    • Annual Reviews
    • Books
    • Bulletins and Newsletters
    • RSIS Commentary Series
    • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
    • Commemorative / Event Reports
    • Future Issues
    • IDSS Papers
    • Interreligious Relations
    • Monographs
    • NTS Insight
    • Policy Reports
    • Working Papers

    CO09099 | Human Security: A Response to the Climate Security Debates
    Lorraine Elliott

    08 October 2009

    download pdf

    Commentary

    Debates about climate change as a threat to international peace have focused on conflict, civil unrest, and the consequences for states. Human security offers an alternative, people-centred approach to understanding the security implications of climate change.

    IN JUNE this year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Resolution sponsored by the Pacific Island states on climate change and its possible security implications. In early August, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke at a Global Environment Forum in South Korea, at about the same time that governments were meeting in Bonn for five days of informal climate negotiations. He warned that failure to act quickly on climate change could lead to a worsening of tensions, social unrest and even violence.

    Threat Multplier?

    While the Secretary-General also recognised that climate change could bring catastrophe for humankind, this concern for human security has not been especially prominent in the raft of recent reports on the apparent links between climate change and national and international security. The focus in most of those reports has been on climate change as a threat multiplier, even though the empirical grounds for making such claims remain largely untested.

    Resource scarcity (particularly water and energy), food insecurity, contraction of livelihood opportunities, pressures from growing numbers of climate refugees, and a politics of resentment within and between countries are often linked with national security concerns. The argument is that these pressures will overstretch societies’ adaptive capacities or create or exacerbate political instability through civil unrest, intercommunal violence, political radicalisation and possibly even state failure.

    A Human Security Approach

    In contrast to this focus on security of and for the state, a human security approach to climate change offers non-traditional answers to the traditional questions — security for whom and from what. A human security model which takes people (or peoples) as the security referent questions the ‘taken for granted’ assumptions and analyses in the policy community about climate change, threat and (in)security.

    It takes, as its starting point, the potentially devastating impact of climate change on people and their communities. It demands that we worry about the way that climate-related food insecurity, malnutrition and an increased disease burden destroys lives and livelihoods, and exacerbates poverty and misery for the millions of people who are affected, rather than worrying about this only as a trigger for civil unrest and potential extremism.

    Under a human security model, vulnerability to the kinds of disasters of nature and humanitarian crises that accompany severe climate change become a matter for concern. This is because it undermines the security and resilience of people and their communities — not just because it demands financial and physical intervention and stretching of peacetime military deployment by countries with the capacity to do so. From a human security perspective, forced migration from unsustainable or uninhabitable lands is a source of insecurity for those whose lands and homes can no longer sustain them. This challenges the representation of ‘climate refugees’ or climate migrants as a potential source of pressure on or threat to states.

    Climate Insecurities in the Asia Pacific

    These are very real issues for the people – and for countries – in the Asia Pacific. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported a worrying litany of climate change impacts for the region: a decline in crop yield; an increase in climate-induced diseases; an increased risk of hunger and water resource scarcity; an increase in the number and severity of glacier melt- related floods; significant loss of coastal ecosystems; many millions of people in coastal communities at high risk from flooding; and an increased risk of extinction for many species of fauna and flora.

    Of the ten countries in the world most imperilled by climate change in terms of the number of people likely to be affected, six are in the Asia Pacific region: China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. The unpredictability of wet and dry seasons is already having an impact on agriculture, with harvests being disrupted, rural incomes dropping, and hunger and malnutrition increasing, especially among children. Up to an extra 130 million people in Asia are anticipated to be at risk of hunger as a result of climate change and shortfalls in food production. The disease and health burden is likely to be exacerbated, not only by the impact of food insecurity but by an increase in diarrhoeal and other infectious diseases.

    Most parts of the Asia Pacific are projected to experience increased water stress. Climate-related disruptions of human populations are thought likely within states and across national borders with sudden sharp spikes in rural to urban migration. Many of the largest cities in the Asia Pacific are highly vulnerable to rising sea-levels, including Shanghai, Tianjin, Jakarta, Tokyo, Osaka-Kobe, and Bangkok, with increased vulnerability for urban populations. Climate change will create further economic uncertainties, and not just for the region’s poorest countries although they are likely to be the economies that are least resilient, at least in the short-term.

    Advancing Adaptation Strategies

    Non-traditional security challenges such as climate change require non-traditional security responses. From a policy perspective, however, understanding how to achieve human security (rather than just how to define it) is a complex challenge. We know that in the Asia Pacific, as elsewhere, it is too late to rely only on strategies to reduce or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. A human security approach to the regional impacts of climate change points to the importance of strategies and policies for adaptation. The imperative is to reduce vulnerability and build social resilience by strengthening the ability of communities to cope with and adapt to significant social disruption or external stresses and disturbances such as those associated with climate change. This must involve ‘bottom-up’ policy- making that engages with and listens to the voices of those who are most at risk and most disadvantaged by climate change.

    We know that adaptive capacity is low in many parts of the region. The barriers to and the limits and costs of adaptation are less well known. There is, therefore, an important role for governments, civil society, the private sector and research institutions in furthering our understanding of what kinds of resilience and adaptation strategies will work most effectively within and across the region if both devastating human insecurities and the potential for climate-related conflict are to be avoided.

    About the Author

    Lorraine Elliott is Senior Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. She is due to join the Centre for Non-Traditional Security at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University Singapore as a Visiting Senior Fellow and co-lead researcher for the Asia Security Initiative programme on climate change, environmental security and natural disaster. 

    Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / Non-Traditional Security / Global

    Commentary

    Debates about climate change as a threat to international peace have focused on conflict, civil unrest, and the consequences for states. Human security offers an alternative, people-centred approach to understanding the security implications of climate change.

    IN JUNE this year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Resolution sponsored by the Pacific Island states on climate change and its possible security implications. In early August, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke at a Global Environment Forum in South Korea, at about the same time that governments were meeting in Bonn for five days of informal climate negotiations. He warned that failure to act quickly on climate change could lead to a worsening of tensions, social unrest and even violence.

    Threat Multplier?

    While the Secretary-General also recognised that climate change could bring catastrophe for humankind, this concern for human security has not been especially prominent in the raft of recent reports on the apparent links between climate change and national and international security. The focus in most of those reports has been on climate change as a threat multiplier, even though the empirical grounds for making such claims remain largely untested.

    Resource scarcity (particularly water and energy), food insecurity, contraction of livelihood opportunities, pressures from growing numbers of climate refugees, and a politics of resentment within and between countries are often linked with national security concerns. The argument is that these pressures will overstretch societies’ adaptive capacities or create or exacerbate political instability through civil unrest, intercommunal violence, political radicalisation and possibly even state failure.

    A Human Security Approach

    In contrast to this focus on security of and for the state, a human security approach to climate change offers non-traditional answers to the traditional questions — security for whom and from what. A human security model which takes people (or peoples) as the security referent questions the ‘taken for granted’ assumptions and analyses in the policy community about climate change, threat and (in)security.

    It takes, as its starting point, the potentially devastating impact of climate change on people and their communities. It demands that we worry about the way that climate-related food insecurity, malnutrition and an increased disease burden destroys lives and livelihoods, and exacerbates poverty and misery for the millions of people who are affected, rather than worrying about this only as a trigger for civil unrest and potential extremism.

    Under a human security model, vulnerability to the kinds of disasters of nature and humanitarian crises that accompany severe climate change become a matter for concern. This is because it undermines the security and resilience of people and their communities — not just because it demands financial and physical intervention and stretching of peacetime military deployment by countries with the capacity to do so. From a human security perspective, forced migration from unsustainable or uninhabitable lands is a source of insecurity for those whose lands and homes can no longer sustain them. This challenges the representation of ‘climate refugees’ or climate migrants as a potential source of pressure on or threat to states.

    Climate Insecurities in the Asia Pacific

    These are very real issues for the people – and for countries – in the Asia Pacific. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported a worrying litany of climate change impacts for the region: a decline in crop yield; an increase in climate-induced diseases; an increased risk of hunger and water resource scarcity; an increase in the number and severity of glacier melt- related floods; significant loss of coastal ecosystems; many millions of people in coastal communities at high risk from flooding; and an increased risk of extinction for many species of fauna and flora.

    Of the ten countries in the world most imperilled by climate change in terms of the number of people likely to be affected, six are in the Asia Pacific region: China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. The unpredictability of wet and dry seasons is already having an impact on agriculture, with harvests being disrupted, rural incomes dropping, and hunger and malnutrition increasing, especially among children. Up to an extra 130 million people in Asia are anticipated to be at risk of hunger as a result of climate change and shortfalls in food production. The disease and health burden is likely to be exacerbated, not only by the impact of food insecurity but by an increase in diarrhoeal and other infectious diseases.

    Most parts of the Asia Pacific are projected to experience increased water stress. Climate-related disruptions of human populations are thought likely within states and across national borders with sudden sharp spikes in rural to urban migration. Many of the largest cities in the Asia Pacific are highly vulnerable to rising sea-levels, including Shanghai, Tianjin, Jakarta, Tokyo, Osaka-Kobe, and Bangkok, with increased vulnerability for urban populations. Climate change will create further economic uncertainties, and not just for the region’s poorest countries although they are likely to be the economies that are least resilient, at least in the short-term.

    Advancing Adaptation Strategies

    Non-traditional security challenges such as climate change require non-traditional security responses. From a policy perspective, however, understanding how to achieve human security (rather than just how to define it) is a complex challenge. We know that in the Asia Pacific, as elsewhere, it is too late to rely only on strategies to reduce or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. A human security approach to the regional impacts of climate change points to the importance of strategies and policies for adaptation. The imperative is to reduce vulnerability and build social resilience by strengthening the ability of communities to cope with and adapt to significant social disruption or external stresses and disturbances such as those associated with climate change. This must involve ‘bottom-up’ policy- making that engages with and listens to the voices of those who are most at risk and most disadvantaged by climate change.

    We know that adaptive capacity is low in many parts of the region. The barriers to and the limits and costs of adaptation are less well known. There is, therefore, an important role for governments, civil society, the private sector and research institutions in furthering our understanding of what kinds of resilience and adaptation strategies will work most effectively within and across the region if both devastating human insecurities and the potential for climate-related conflict are to be avoided.

    About the Author

    Lorraine Elliott is Senior Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. She is due to join the Centre for Non-Traditional Security at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University Singapore as a Visiting Senior Fellow and co-lead researcher for the Asia Security Initiative programme on climate change, environmental security and natural disaster. 

    Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / Non-Traditional Security

    Popular Links

    About RSISResearch ProgrammesGraduate EducationPublicationsEventsAdmissionsCareersVideo/Audio ChannelRSIS Intranet

    Connect with Us

    rsis.ntu
    rsis_ntu
    rsisntu
    rsisvideocast
    school/rsis-ntu
    rsis.sg
    rsissg
    RSIS
    RSS
    Subscribe to RSIS Publications
    Subscribe to RSIS Events

    Getting to RSIS

    Nanyang Technological University
    Block S4, Level B3,
    50 Nanyang Avenue,
    Singapore 639798

    Click here for direction to RSIS

    Get in Touch

      Copyright © S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. All rights reserved.
      Privacy Statement / Terms of Use
      Help us improve

        Rate your experience with this website
        123456
        Not satisfiedVery satisfied
        What did you like?
        0/255 characters
        What can be improved?
        0/255 characters
        Your email
        Please enter a valid email.
        Thank you for your feedback.
        This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By continuing, you are agreeing to the use of cookies on your device as described in our privacy policy. Learn more
        OK
        Latest Book
        more info