The Rising Tide of the Climate-Security Nexus
Author: Kathleen Schwind, Stanford Graduate School of Business, MBA ’23
The natural environment has gained more attention and become a frequent topic of conversation over the past few decades. Landmark multinational agreements in the 1990s and 2000s, and most recently the Paris Agreement of 2015, have elevated the environment to a level of international importance. Because the environment touches, and impacts, every life of every person on the planet, we cannot ignore it. The environment has been cited as a bright spot of international cooperation, with climate partnerships formed even between countries that otherwise did not have the warmest relationships. Today, given limited resources, and massive shifts in how humans live because of environmental changes (droughts, sea level rise, melting permafrost, etc.), the environment is being seen as a security issue, even a security threat, to be addressed immediately. Will the area for cooperation expand as climate issues are increasingly branded as security issues, or will the window for cooperation close as competition grows? Is it already too late?
The “climate-security nexus” is a phrase that will be heard more frequently, both in terms of competition and cooperation. Some have tried to define this nexus, but it is referred to in this piece in broad terms — the potential impact, and the impact the environment has already had, on national security (security of individual countries, territories and geographic regions). This piece focuses on three topics that are part of this nexus: scarcity of freshwater, the strategic capabilities and supply chain for rare earth elements, the opening of new routes in the Arctic — not because they are exhaustive, but because of their geographic and topical scope. This scope illustrates the many dimensions of climate and environmental security, and how many intersections the environment has with our global systems. Geopolitical tension will increase as the changes in resources lead to changes in economic opportunity, as limited resources become more valuable, and as physical landscapes around the world change. The ramifications of the security elements attached to each of the cases presented, and how each case is currently being approached, can fundamentally change the world order as we know it today while demonstrating to future leaders the power of the environment in geopolitics and policy.
Freshwater as Power and Politics
By 2040, it is projected that freshwater availability worldwide will not be able to keep up with demand. Because freshwater is one of the most valuable natural resources on the planet, water in the 21st century is a source of power, a trigger for political conflict, and ultimately, deeply personal to each of us. Drought and a lack of water can be a “threat multiplier”, making already existing problems worse. Water scarcity in Iran provokes regular revolts and in July 2021 massive revolts that started in the drought-stricken Khuzestan region spread across the country. Nigeria and Syria experienced severe drought just prior to terrorist groups rising up and civil wars breaking out, respectively. The political unrest and economic instability boiled over, and while not the primary reason, the lack of freshwater made a bad situation worse in both of these cases. The unresolved Blue Nile dispute over Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is having regional impact, with Egypt claiming the GERD is a security dispute while new alliances are being formed on either side in anticipation of a new round of negotiations.
“Hydropolitics” refers to politics affected by water availability, and the politics surrounding water. Water has been used as a weapon of war as far back as 2450 BC[1] and has exacerbated numbers of conflicts in the past few decades. Yet, interestingly, water also has the potential to be a greater pathway to peace than conflict, offering “an avenue for peaceful dialogue between nations, even when combatants are fighting over other issues.”[2] This is especially true for countries that share water bodies or resources — such countries cannot be truly secure without being water secure, and this requires cooperating with their water neighbors.
Water was a bridge, a stepping stone to peace, that helped lead to the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace agreement for example. A creative water storage and sharing plan was being developed, in secret, even while the two countries publicly were at odds. Water was important enough to both sides that it was worth continuing the conversation. It still is — at the end of 2021, Israel, Jordan and the UAE signed the first “green-blue deal” in which water was a key component. As the Middle East continues to be one of the most water stressed regions of the world, and desalination is changing the nature of the water landscape, freshwater can be an area for cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including Palestine. By working together to secure mutual water security, trust can be built while demonstrating to both sides that cooperation is possible in order to provide their people with the water they need.[3] Freshwater as a security element, not only in the Middle East, will need to continue growing as a studied area in security as policymakers look for room to collaborate to avoid economic and physical harm.
Rare Earth Elements: “Inputs of Future Economic Growth”[4]
As governments and companies invest in clean-energy technologies to address the climate challenge, there is a greater need for minerals (“minerals” being defined by the International Energy Agency as the entire mineral and metal value chain). These include rare earth elements (REEs) needed to feed the growing appetite and production of clean-energy tech, more technologically advanced semiconductors, electronics and military hardware, to name a few. And while the 17 rare earth elements used extensively in consumer electronics and national defense equipment[5] are not actually rare, the small, mixed deposits are difficult to extract[6]. In the frame of security, these natural resources are vital for necessary industries including defense, medical and information technology. A single F-35 fighter jet requires 920 pounds of rare earth elements alone[7]. Meanwhile, a single country, China, has dominance over critical mineral supply chains globally, claiming first-mover advantage in supply chain capabilities including extraction, production and refinement[8]. In 2019, China accounted for 78 percent of the total volume of US imports of REEs[9]. Globally, it accounts for at least 63 percent of global production[10]. Thirty-seven percent of the REEs reserves are in China alone, compared to 1 percent in the United States[11]. Given the growing influence of China globally, and in particular the United States’ ongoing “strategic competition” with China, the issue of REEs becomes a national security issue in terms of supply chain dominance. REEs have been used as a foreign policy tool already — in September 2010, Japanese authorities arrested a Chinese fishing boat between China and Japan, in disputed waters[12] and the response of the Chinese government was to halt raw rare earth exports from China to Japan, causing global prices, particularly in the automotive industry, to spike[13].
What makes these REE supply chains a particular security risk is that there are no efficient substitutes yet, and the process of regaining supply chain capabilities is time, cost and technology intensive. The rest of the world is playing catch up. The upfront investments in machinery and hardware can take years to get up to scale, requires a skilled workforce and financial resources. New innovations, like asteroid mining, are in their early stages and also incredibly capital intensive. Global pricing, heavily influenced by China[14], is opaque and impacted by Chinese domestic politics. And yet, the mining process does not come without its own environmental impact. In the pursuit of clean-energy technologies, military technologies and other technological advances comes a greater need for REEs, which in turn brings the question of supply chain security and environmental impacts of mining REEs to the forefront. How will evolving competition or cooperation with REE rich countries impact supply chain decisions? Where will the mining be done and which specific countries will partner with each other as they come to rely on new REE sources?
The Arctic: New Pathways and Opportunities
Natural resources like freshwater and REEs have clear security implications globally. But changing geographies also have security implications. The Arctic is one of the most important strategic areas on the planet, and its geography is changing significantly (Arctic sea ice is decreasing, on average, by about 13.1% every decade)[15]. The disappearing permafrost and the melting of the polar caps opens up new opportunities, including sea lanes, which provide opportunities for trade and exploitation of resources in the region (including oil, natural gas and minerals). Where economic opportunities are, military activities tend to follow to protect a country’s rights[16].
And yet, Arctic governance is fragile. Confidence building and consensus in the decision-making process is needed alongside collaboration, given the huge potential of the region (trade routes and natural resources, for example). Currently, meetings of the Arctic Council and its subsidiary bodies have been temporarily suspended because of the war in Ukraine — Russia is one of the Arctic Council members and the current chair[17]. Meanwhile, Arctic security issues are unresolved. New and old partnerships (i.e. Russia and China) may continue to emerge as the wealth of opportunities and literal pathways become accessible and available. At the same time, existing relationships may be strained as near-Arctic countries attempt to take advantage of these new opportunities[18].
The Arctic is increasingly becoming the epicenter for the “intersection of climate security, energy security, and great power competition”[19]. Collaboration through the Arctic Council on these issues has, in the past, led to cooperation and security arrangements[20]. But how will the Council weather this most recent storm, and what does it mean for Arctic security? Russia is a major Arctic player, with a majority of Arctic industry[21], over half of the Arctic coastline[22] and almost half of the Arctic’s population[23]. Will the Council’s legitimacy and goodwill remain, and will the recent Russia fallout quicken the Arctic’s securitization? Meanwhile, the region is ripe for navigation-related infrastructure and resource extraction projects. Its mineral wealth is huge — up to 90 billion barrels of oil, 47 trillion cubic meters of natural gas,[24] some $1 trillion USD worth of rare earth elements, [25] and other valuable minerals. How will partnerships form going forward to both address the environmental transformation in the Arctic while managing a possible increased securitization of the region?
Analysis
These examples illustrate that environmental risks to security are intertwined with politics. While in some cases, a given individual country could solve its water, or REE, problems by itself, those cases are not the norm. Even if a country could improve its security posture by securing — within its borders — freshwater supplies and stores of REEs, obtaining those surpluses can and probably would be leveraged politically for other uses. However plausible these scenarios may or may not be, it is still clear that a main road to managing security issues impacted by the environment goes straight through political channels, often international ones. For a period of time, the matter of the Arctic most easily demonstrated what is nonetheless true of the other two climate-security cases presented in this paper: risks can be mitigated and solutions are achievable through agreements and cooperation between countries.
But whether enhancing security from within or through international political channels, the accelerating nature of the threats (in terms of scope, severity, and proximity) demands the solution be based on a new paradigm. Governments must adopt more nimble methods of addressing them. Current systems of issue assessment, impact quantification, solution consideration and prioritization, policy development and progress monitoring/oversight were largely developed at a time and in a cultural environment that moved much more slowly than today’s events. This allowed these systems to be based on a basic construct that placed heavy emphasis pre-project on avoiding risk. From complex problem-solving to the simple hiring of staff, much of current practice involves avoiding a bad choice — at the expense of a timely choice.
Today’s phenomenal systems of data gathering and evaluation permit the basing of future problem-solving mechanisms on timely solutions that are vigorously sampled, tested and adjusted immediately and throughout project life. In other words, the emphasis is placed not on seeking the perfect lowest risk solution before implementation, but instead on managing a more timely choice, aggressively, once implemented. There will not be one, perfect solution to solve the growing amount of climate-security issues. Increased resource competition, a heightened risk of instability and conflict, and threatened livelihoods[26] are all on the line as policies addressing the climate-security nexus are created. The world is more interconnected than ever, meaning that an environmental shock in one area of the world can ripple across the globe. Current environmental problem-solvers and government leaders must adopt a model that accepts risk as part of the evolution of success.
In Conclusion
The three different regions and natural resources outlined, and the unique security challenges facing each, serve not as a comprehensive list but as a window into the varied and complex role that the changing natural environment can have on both how countries interact with each other and how countries craft their national security strategies for the future. This “climate-security nexus” is one that impacts everything from food supply to trade partnerships, civil unrest on the local scale to the ever important “strategic competition” between the United States and China. Governments need to be ready to address everything from complex mineral extraction to crop failures, water shortages and migration, that stem from a changing environment. Recognizing that the natural world can be a source of competition or cooperation, understanding the breadth in which the environment will fundamentally change the nature of our national security strategies, and deciding how and what actions should be taken in the policy realm to strengthen a country’s security and partnerships all need to increasingly be a focus of the policy and security discourse and dialogue.
Kathleen Schwind holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in International Relations and Politics and a master’s from MIT in City Planning (focused on Environmental Policy and Dispute Resolution). Her thesis and dissertation research focused on transboundary freshwater disputes and the role of freshwater in the MENA region’s geopolitics. Prior to Stanford, Kathleen worked with a variety of U.S. government departments, academic institutions, special interest groups and local governments around the world on various aspects of entrepreneurship in diplomacy and defense, and the role of the environment in development. She is an instructor at MIT (for the course Middle East Cross-border Development and Leadership), an investor on the GSB Impact Fund’s Energy and Environment deal team and a member of the GSB View From the Top leadership team.
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[1] “The Past, Present, and Future of Water Conflict and International Security.” David K. Kreamer, 2013, The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering.
[2] Water Can Be a Pathway to Peace, Not War. Aaron T. Wolf, 2006, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
[3] A first step would be reestablishing and restructuring the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee (originally created in the Oslo Accords) to make it a body that is able to evolve over time, adequately put in place joint-fact finding structures, champion technical decision-making, engage stakeholders, seek international support to help financially implement joint-projects, and reframe water in terms of “water security” not “national security.”
[5] https://www.fpri.org/article/2020/10/chinas-monopoly-on-rare-earth-elements-and-why-we-should-care/
[6] https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/ebot_rare_earths_part_1.pdf.
[7] “China’s Global Monopoly on Rare-Earth Elements.” Gustavo Ferreira and Jamie Critelli, 2022, The US Army War College.
[8] https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/06/americas-critical-strategic-vulnerability-rare-earth-elements/
[9] https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/ebot_rare_earths_part_1.pdf.
[10] Ibid.
[11] “China’s Global Monopoly on Rare-Earth Elements.” Gustavo Ferreira and Jamie Critelli, 2022, The US Army War College.
[13] “China’s Global Monopoly on Rare-Earth Elements.” Gustavo Ferreira and Jamie Critelli, 2022, The US Army War College.
[14] The Chinese government has undercut REE prices on the world market to drive competitors out of business. It has the power to do so because it is the dominant supplier of REEs. Export restrictions raise world prices and threaten stable supply, while stockpiling and increased consolidation of the industry further impacts world markets. Mechanisms to influence prices in the past have included quotas on production, export and mining restrictions. “Effect of Chinese Policies on Rare Earth Supply Chain Resilience.” Nabeel A. Mancheri, et al., 2014, Elsevier.
[15] https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/six-ways-loss-of-arctic-ice-impacts-everyone
[16] https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/11/249393.htm
[18] https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/could-the-arctic-be-a-wedge-between-russia-and-china/
[20] https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-russia-ukraine-war-challenges-arctic-governance
[21] https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/29/russia-in-arctic-critical-examination-pub-84181
[22]https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/countries/russia/#:~:text=Russia's%20coastline%20accounts%20for%2053,Sea%2C%20and%20East%20Siberian%20Sea.
[23] https://www.arctic-council.org/about/states/russian-federation/
[25] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R41153.pdf
[26] https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/11/249393.htm
