Climate Conflict: How global warming theatens security and what to do about it (Adelphi Book 409) by Mazo Jeffrey

Author:Mazo, Jeffrey [Mazo, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
Published: 2014-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

chapter four

Conflict, Instability and State Failure: The Climate Factor

Although state failure and collapse have been present through­out history, they became increasingly salient for the global order in the post-war era. Their importance has continued to increase with the end of the Cold War and the rise of global terrorist networks, as epitomised by Somalia and Afghanistan in the last two decades. The 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States noted for the first time that weak states posed as great a danger to the national interest as strong states, and the 2006 Strategy stressed the importance of prevention or resolution of regional conflicts – regardless of cause – that could lead to state failure, humanitarian crises and creation of safe havens for terrorists, and for intervention and post-conflict stabilisation and reconstruction to avoid such outcomes. 1 This was recognition that failed states pose sufficient direct and severe security threats to justify a significant commitment of resources toward preventing them. With climate change potentially contributing to regional conflict and state failure, understanding its role can help choose between policies intended to reduce or avoid such risks.

The failure of governance in Sudan long preceded the current Darfur conflict. It was one reason why the fighting broke out and was able to spread and continue for so long. Yet the violence in Darfur began just as the long civil war in the south came to a negotiated end, raising hopes for renewed nation-building and development. This raises the question: how representative is the Darfur conflict of how changing climate might interact with other factors affecting state stability over the next few decades?

Why states fail

With the proliferation of new states – the ‘Group of 77’ developing states now has 130 members – and an increasingly interconnected world, state failure has risen as an international concern. The world has more stable states than ever before, but also more weak or fragile states. Many of the new states created in the wave of decolonisation after the Second World War and after the end of the Cold War lack historical traditions, established institutions, developed economies and adequate resource bases. Failure threatens global stability because it can lead to increasing violence, both criminal and political; loss of control over borders and parts of national territory; increased ethnic hostility; and migration to neighbouring countries with their own stability issues or to developed countries.

As in the historical cases of social and cultural collapse discussed earlier, the causes of state failure can be geographical, physical, historical or political, and contingent and idiosyncratic human decisions can be as important as structural or institutional weaknesses. Signs of impending failure can include rapidly deteriorating living standards, shortages of foreign exchange, corruption, subversion of democratic norms, breakdown of civil-society and most state institutions and expansion of security institutions, and ethnic tensions. In a vicious cycle, the state begins to provide fewer and fewer services to its citizens until, ultimately, state legitimacy crumbles. The outcome is variously civil war, break-up, or total collapse, as in the case of Lebanon in the 1980s, Sierra Leone in the 1990s or Somalia in the last decade.

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