Remains of a medical center after heavy fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. March 7, 2013. MONUSCO Photos – Creative Commons.
Things really are getting worse. In September 2023, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned against a surge in global conflict. This surge has been marked by a 28-year high in conflict-related casualties from regional conflicts including Ethiopia’s Tigray War and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There were over 55 state-based conflicts and 82 non-state conflicts across the world in 2022. Many of these conflicts occurred in Africa, where a significant number of U.S. troops continue to operate in areas of ongoing crises. Alongside the American flags, the effects of the climate crisis fuels the bloodshed.
With stagnating global efforts to mitigate or reverse it, the climate crisis blossoms into critical domain for international security and ironically snowballs into a larger disaster through the enduring presence of CO2 emissions during military operations.
The effects of these emissions on the climate have led to rising temperatures that disrupt water cycles and produce reduced access to clean and drinkable water. As this water continues to be a difficult commodity for populations to access, conflicts will become further intractable and harder to resolve.
One example of this would be in Sub-Saharan Africa, where conflict continues to loom around the Lake Chad Basin due to the decline in water access there since the 1960s. The resulting decline has produced a rise in terrorism in the region by both al-Qa’ida and Islamic State-linked militants.
These Islamic State militants have restricted water access as a means to recruit vulnerable populations to their cause in exchange for water. Other Islamic State affiliates employ similar tactics in Iraq and Syria to exert their control over populations and geographic areas from where they could launch attacks against U.S. troops and partner forces. The climate crisis ultimately benefits America’s enemies.
“A Hungry Man is Not A Free Man…”
According to the United Nations World Food Programme, 70% of the world’s starving population live in conflict zones and other areas impacted by climate change. With harmful changes in climate, there are erosions of soil and depletion of soil nutrients. The soil erosion destroys food crops and endangers the economic development of rural communities in the Global South, which the rest of the world including the United States benefits from.
This cycle encourages conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where over 26 million people are food insecure with another 2.8 million children estimated to be facing malnourishment by June 2024. Starvation is exacerbated by the presence of militants who steal from farmers and force them to transition to less edible crops. As militants continue to seize control of the food supply and restrict access, local populations are displaced to other parts of the country or the continent.
Though the United States has taken steps to address climate security, they do not go far enough to meaningfully combat the issue beyond analyses and assessments of its impact. As the top polluter, the United States still has yet to provide a fully transparent accounting of its impact on the climate.
The U.S. military impacts the environment through energy consumption, fuel usage, and waste produced by its 800 foreign installations and 740 domestic military bases. The Department of Defense’s efforts to balance this are minimal. Efforts to reduce climate change by experimenting with the roll-out of new electric vehicles, including electric tanks continue to hit developmental walls.
If the United States wants to respond to the ongoing surge in conflicts, it must address these gaps in its defense policy as well as shutter bases that the Defense Department has said it has no need for. To do so would be a sign of America’s pragmatic leadership in addressing international security threats and the climate crisis which drives them.
Simeone Miller is a contributing writer for the Realist Review. He is a graduate student in the Social Sciences and Globalization M.A. program at California State University, San Bernardino. He previously served as an undergraduate researcher with the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, a Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society, and a Policy and Advocacy intern with the Crane Center for Mass Atrocity Prevention. Views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not reflect any official position by California State University, San Bernardino or the California State University system.
Leave a Reply