KEY POINTS:
As the reality of climate change becomes more evident, its impact is being factored into national security, defence force planning and international relations in the world's main regions, including Asia and the Pacific.
For the first time, the Australian military has identified global warming and the changes it is inducing as a national security threat.
Launching the military's report last week on joint operations for the 21st century, the chief of Australia's Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said the military faced security challenges it had not envisaged before, specifically "climate change and the impacts of global demography".
As a result, Australian forces would become more involved in stabilising failing states than fighting conventional wars.
The UN Security Council last month held its first debate on climate change and conflict. And a bipartisan bill before Congress in the United States calls on all federal intelligence agencies to provide an assessment of the security threats that may be caused or accentuated in a world that is getting steadily hotter.
A recent US study described climate change as "a threat multiplier for instability" in some of the most volatile regions of the world. It was overseen by a group of retired US admirals and generals and published by the Centre for Naval Analyses, a research organisation funded by the US Government.
The study warns that the warmer world forecast by the United Nations and endorsed by many scientists will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states.
As a consequence, there could be increasing conflicts over dwindling supplies of food and fresh water, the spread of malaria and other diseases, large-scale migration of people within countries and across national borders, and rising tension between states.
Asia is seen as particularly vulnerable to climate change, with China and India - the world's two most populous nations - likely to be among the hardest hit by drought, flooding and other extreme weather, sea level rise and rapidly retreating glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and in the Himalayan mountains that provide water for hundreds of millions of people in China and South Asia.
Almost 40 per cent of Asia's population of nearly four billion lives within 45 miles of its nearly 209,215km-long coastline. As the sea level rises, low-lying coastal areas, croplands and cities will face inundation, forcing millions to move.
The study says failing governments with an already thin margin for survival foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism, and movement towards increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies.
One of the retired senior officers who supervised the study, Admiral Joseph Prueher, a former head of the US Pacific Command and US ambassador to China, says many Asian governments are likely to react to climate change by tightening their grip to avoid instability and chaos.
"In Asia, one sees a whole line of countries with governments exercising very firm control," he wrote in the report. "But when you look to the future to consider the kinds of impacts ... you also have to consider some steps that we in the US would think offensive."
The report says that despite concerns about supporting undemocratic regimes, the US military may be drawn more frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to help provide stability before conditions worsen.
The US may also be called on to undertake relief and reconstruction work once a conflict has begun, to avert further disaster.
But climate change and the extreme weather it is forecast to bring will make ship and aircraft operations by the US and its military partners more difficult. Whether hotter, drier or wetter, it will add stress to weapon systems and equipment.
Some US bases on islands close to Asia may have to be abandoned or modified. For example, the highest point of Diego Garcia, an atoll in the southern Indian Ocean that serves as a major supply hub for US and British forces in Asia and the Middle East, is only a few feet above sea level. Facilities there will be lost or have to be relocated as the sea level rises.
This will increase operating costs, and require longer range airlift and strike capabilities.
* Michael Richardson is a security specialist at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
