Climate and Security in the Indo-Asia Pacific

This report is part of a “Briefer Series” derived from the World Climate and Security Report 2020. Specifically, it is an expanded edition of the “Indo-Asia Pacific” section of the World Climate and Security Report 2020, published on February 13, 2020. As an expanded edition, it includes new data and information, significantly updated sections, brand new sections (such as one on Japan, and another on cities), as well as some text that appears exactly as it did in the previous report. It presents an overview of climate change-related threats to security in the Indo-Asia Pacific region. The report also provides ideas on how increased security community engagement, alongside development and diplomatic actors, can help minimize and manage these threats. While no single volume can comprehensively evaluate climate security dynamics in this vast and diverse region, this report provides a detailed snapshot of several key issues at the climate change and security nexus (hereafter labeled “climate security”). It also illustrates how incorporating climate change into security and defense policy and planning, incorporating climate security issues into development policy and planning, and engaging with security professionals working in this region, can support regional stability in a changing world. Finally, the report makes the security case for major civilian investments in climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The Indo-Asia Pacific region is highly exposed to climate change-driven hazards, including extreme hydrometeorological and heat events, sea level rise and acidifying oceans. These unprecedented hazards arrive in a region that already faces a broad spectrum of conventional, unconventional and hybrid security risks and challenges. This includes growing geostrategic competition such as maritime boundary disputes and military buildup in contested zones of the South China Sea, expanding military capabilities across many countries (three of which are seeking to develop nuclear triads), weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threats from North Korea, ongoing conflicts related to separatist movements and transnational violent extremist organizations, as well as piracy and serious organized crime. Climate change-exacerbated impacts such as increasing food and water insecurity, forced migration and displacement, disaster response and recovery that does not meet expectations, and broader economic impacts, can seriously complicate these existing security vulnerabilities – eroding coping capacities, increasing grievances and worsening underlying tensions and fragilities. Climate change impacts will interact with an evolving regional security landscape and likely give rise to new and potentially catastrophic risks, which could emerge in ways that are foreseeable but difficult to predict…

A product of the Expert Group of the International military council on climate and security (IMCCS – The Center for Climate and Security, IRIS, Council on Strategic Risks, Clingendael, Planetary Summit Initiative, The Hague Center for Strategic Studies)