Indeed, national security and the organized armed
forces of states are premised on this cardinal orienta-
tion. A system that champions closed borders is not
well-suited or easily adapted to more fluid movement
of peoples.
Climate change, fast- and slow-moving, is under-
way in many regions, and is primed to accelerate.
The pace, scale, and uncertainty surrounding climate
change make the future look more variable, less pre-
dictable, more unstable, and less secure, and by those
measures—and others—increasingly unsustainable.
Nothing of this magnitude climatologically has oc-
curred during we humans’ relatively short time in be-
ing (National Science Foundation 2009).
Prognoses for climate change that were fanciful
in 2010 may be modest in 2050 and obsolete by 2100.
Climate change will bring us to new tipping points,
causing or contributing to resource shortages, and
sparking resource conflict, as 40 per cent of intrastate
armed conflict over the last 60 years has been (United
Nations Environment Programme 2011a). This would
place an ever increasing large number of persons at
risk and likely put many in motion, and on collision
course with others. Dispossession is only one aspect
of climate change, but may be the most significant.
High population density is a consistently strong
predictor of armed conflict, higher, in fact, than re-
source scarcity (Raleigh and Urdal 2008-2009). Low
Gross Domestic Product is the most reliable predic-
tor (Raleigh and Urdal 2008-2009). Factors that cause
population density to increase and wealth to decrease,
as environmental dispossession may do, must there-
fore be regarded very carefully, especially when an
ethnic majority’s demographic dominance is chal-
lenged (Leuprecht 2008-2009).
sharon
(sharon)
#1