THE DESERT AND arid terrain of the African Sahel and the parched ground of Sudan and northern Kenya are far from the air conditioned halls of international diplomacy.
But UN statistics state that an estimated 12% of all new population displacements worldwide occurred in the East and Horn of Africa region.
These figures from 2021 show that more than 1.2 million new disaster-related displacements of people and almost 500,000 new conflict-related displacements. Floods and storms contributed the most to internal disaster-related displacement, followed by droughts.
The Irish Government has pumped €81m in aid into the Horn of Africa and it is part of a broad strategy by the Irish Government to proactively intervene in what is fast becoming a major famine event.
Irish diplomats and soldiers as well as politician Colm Brophy, in his previous role of Minister for State for Development Aid, returned with stories of causal links between those droughts and the ever present scourge of tribal and Islamic insurgencies in the worst hit regions of the Horn of Africa and the sub Saharan region.
It is not the first mention of the gathering climate change threat from the Irish defence sector. In July 2021 then Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces, Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, declared it as the biggest threat to Ireland.
Speak to any diplomat and military officer, regardless of their nationality, and they will talk about the challenges of protecting undersea critical infrastructure, air domain security and cyber defences.
But there is another creeping threat that fills those discussions and one that is looming with ever increasing pace and that is the threat of climate change provoked conflict.
On The Journal’s recent reporting trip to Brussels to discuss defence topics and in the Consultative Forum on International Security it was a constant theme throughout the conversations.
While the immediate threats from Russian and Chinese sabre rattling fills the concerns of frontline soldiers it is the potential impact of climate change that concerns the military planners and strategic thinkers.
A European Commission report last week said: “Of the 20 countries that are the most vulnerable and least prepared for climate change, 12 were in conflict in 2020″.
The policy document from the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy went further and declared the risk to security from climate change as a real danger.
“Climate change and environmental degradation pose increasing risks to international peace and security,” the document said.
The report found that the risk to security by climate change was already having an impact on food security for example and driving people into desperate efforts to find resources.
It said that by 2050, it is estimated that more than one billion people will have insufficient access to water, that soil degradation could rise to 90%, while demand for food could increase by 60%.
This, the European Commission said, would cause bad actors across the globe to use the unrest caused to further destabilise to benefit their own positions.
“Climate and environmentally induced instability and resource scarcity can be actively instrumentalised by armed groups and organised crime networks, corrupt or authoritarian regimes, and by other parties, including through environmental crime.
“The latter has already become the fourth largest and growing global crime sector further accelerating the environmental crisis including through the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources,” the document read.
The European Union has already set in train key policy considerations as it published its Strategic Compass in March 2022 – this develops strategies to confront current and developing security risks.
The document is part of a broader wish to identify threats to the EU and also to make the union a “more assertive, credible and decisive security provider”.
Sources within the European Commission’s common defence and security policy community said that key to that strategy is documenting and putting in place responses to threats to security, like climate change.
This week’s European Commission Foreign Affairs communiqué added that all states would face the challenges of global warming – no location would be immune to the threat.
“Member States’ security and defence forces are confronted with a changing and
increasingly challenging security environment in Europe and beyond, including more severe climatic operational conditions.
“At the same time, they need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel dependency, without affecting their operational effectiveness,” the document added.
At the recent Consultative Forum, across a number of panels, it was mentioned repeatedly that Ireland is not immune in facing these threats.
Conor Kirwan, a former Irish Naval Service officer, who is now working with the Capability Directorate at the European Defence Agency, laid out his views on the climate risk to national security and defence.
He said key lessons are being learned from the war in Ukraine and how that conflict is being prosecuted.
But he also warned that climate change was developing to the point where military personnel would have to develop and adapt to operating as the world’s environment changes.
“At an individual level we need to look at climate change, we need to look at soldiers operating in Africa or elsewhere we need to look at what effect it will have on new equipment. That is going to be at an individual soldier level and that is very much in focus,” Kirwan warned.
Dr Rory Finegan, Assistant Professor in the Military History & Strategic Studies, Maynooth University also spoke at the Consultative Forum about the threat to security of the changing environment.
He said it was critical to take into account that this changing environment would need to be considered when deploying the Irish military at home and abroad to deal with what he termed the “disaster security paradigm”.
“Climate change is with us and all would agree that it is an existential threat to Ireland and humanity, the issues of warming oceans and all that goes with it.
“Increasingly for militaries in Europe, and elsewhere, it is going to be an issue to deal with and they need to understand how to deal with it.
“The other side of that coin is that militaries, in some instances, contribute to climate change and I know, in that regard, that a lot of work is being done in the Defence Forces to reduce their carbon footprint,” he said.
Finegan believes that Ireland’s international deployments were in areas already suffering the consequences of the environmental disaster – such as the Sahel in Africa.
He also believes that the potential risks to security in the future may already be with us given the desperate migration of displaced people from north Africa and other regions.
“If we take the climate change issue into our peacekeeping operations, a lot of the developments and footprints that Oglaigh na hÉireann will be doing, both now and into the future, will be predicated on issues around climate change.
“For example if you look at the Sahel region, where we had troops in Chad and more recently in Mali, a lot of that conflict is being driven by climate change and resource depletion brought about by climate change.
“Equally the unfolding tragedy off the coast of Greece recently, in which 600 migrants were killed, a lot of that migration is being brought about by climate change and resource scarcity.
“So for modern militaries in the modern era, this whole idea of the disaster/security paradigm is going to have to come into defence planning and ergo, logically, into the issue of capability development as well,” he added.
Finegan believes that it is not just away from home – he referenced flooding in Athlone and how the Irish military rapidly adapted to deal with that crisis as they provided aid to the civil power operations.
Speaking to The Journal at the end of the event Louise Richardson, the Chairperson of the Consultative Forum, said that she was glad that the theme of climate change had emerged during discussions at the event.
At present, inside official Ireland, a strategic plan for the defence of the State is being drawn up – a key chapter in that document will likely look at the impact of climate on Irish security. It is understood that policy report will be released in November.
Already military planners and the civil servants in the Government departments managing their resources are being confronted with making the urgent case to confront the impending crisis.
It is inevitable that swathes of the arid landscape of Sudan and northern Kenya will transition from brittle scrubland to dust and desert, the Sahara marching south into the Sahel.
The reports warning that this is the harbinger for more environmental impacts to come.
And on the lips of all those experts, the warning that Ireland will need to be ready to react to the human catastrophe as residents flee the scorched earth of the climate crisis.
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