Climate and Social Stress Implications for Security Analysis (2013) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Appendix E: Foundations for Monitoring ClimateSecurity Connections
Appendix E: Foundations for Monitoring ClimateSecurity Connections
Pages 203-238
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 203... ...
The exposures of human populations and the systems that provide food, water, health, and other essentials for life and well-being; 3. The susceptibilities of people, assets, and resources to harm from climate events; 4.
|
From page 204... ...
Those requirements included supporting research to understand more fully the causes of climate change, to predict future global climate change, and to characterize extreme events important to impact assessments, adaptation, risks, and vulnerability. In 2003 the Second Adequacy Report on the Global Observing System (Global Climate Observing System, 2003)
|
From page 205... ...
Most terrestrial observations focus on ground water, water use, snow cover, land cover, and soil moisture. The ECVs represent a consensus on a broad and comprehensive set of parameters to document Earth's climate system.
|
From page 206... ...
The white paper found that such data, as well as detailed hourly information on variables such as precipitation intensity, distribution, frequency, and amount of precipitation, are necessary for predicting extreme events on regional scales. Because there are not yet adequate data in these areas, it may be necessary to develop global indicators in an incremental fashion -- for instance, by adding one or two parameters at a time or by beginning with specific regions that allow early development, such as Europe or Australia.
|
From page 207... ...
The national and international efforts noted above have focused mainly on understanding and anticipating climate changes, climate events, and some of their direct consequences. The field has made progress in setting priorities, but its emphasis has not been on security issues.
|
From page 208... ...
are not presently well monitored. The following are, in our judgment, some of the monitoring requirements that are most important for estimating exposures to potentially disruptive climate events.
|
From page 209... ...
It is important that, in addition to monitoring, there should be an ongoing assessment of the adequacy of this infrastructure and of whether plans are in place for backup procedures if the adequacy standards are not yet met. Publicly available global databases on such infrastructure are not considered adequate.
|
From page 210... ...
Indicators that characterize different types of agricultural activity and different levels of urbanization would be particularly useful. A number of global databases measure land use and land cover, with satellite imagery providing the most important input, along with significant validation from ground-based observations.
|
From page 211... ...
Moreover, the databases tend to disagree widely in delineating urban extents. Data on land use and land cover are most useful when used for risk assessment and planning in the early stages of the life cycle of potentially disruptive events.
|
From page 212... ...
Regions or populations that depend on a single agricultural commodity for their livelihoods and where alternative livelihood options are limited also tend to be more susceptible to harm from all types of climatic shocks and stresses, particularly those affecting their main source of livelihood. Potential indicators of economic well-being and economic diversity include per capita income, poverty rates, levels of inequality, unemployment rates (overall and by age cohort)
|
From page 213... ...
Subnational data are also available in datasets of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University; these datasets contain subnational estimates of indicators of economic well-being, including poverty, inequality, unmet basic needs, and food security, for a large number of countries.8 One important limitation of using existing data from many publicly available secondary sources is that the underlying source data, such as national population censuses, are updated relatively infrequently. These datasets provide reasonable estimates of baseline conditions, but they would need to be supplemented with primary data collected for specific regions of interest in order to gauge current conditions or to assess changes over shorter periods of time.
|
From page 214... ...
The characteristics of a city or urban region's physical infrastructure, particularly the maintenance of piped water supplies, transportation networks, and electricity grids, all influence the susceptibility of the region's population to harm from extreme climate events affecting that infrastructure. Poorly maintained water supply systems are more likely to be contaminated during flood events; improperly maintained bridges are more likely to collapse or experience significant damage when exposed to extreme weather; and inadequate or poorly maintained electrical and communication grids may be down for longer-than-normal periods following exposure to extreme events.
|
From page 215... ...
Possible variables to monitor and data sources are described in the section below on the stability and fragility of social and political systems. Monitoring Water Security The section on exposure earlier in this chapter addressed the monitoring of some of the climate-related variables that affect water supply along with other aspects of physical geography.
|
From page 216... ...
. Complementing these variables with others that capture how water supply and demand are managed would provide the capacity to monitor water security.
|
From page 217... ...
As with the political dimensions of internal water management, it could be helpful to understand how elites frame water issues and to determine the nature and level of politicization. There are several sources of information that can be used in the monitoring of some of the management issues.
|
From page 218... ...
national security posed by emerging freshwa ter security issues, an early warning capability called Environmental Indications and Warnings (EIW) has been developed to monitor a wide range of climate and water security indicators in order to identify troublesome patterns and vulnerable regions.
|
From page 219... ...
government. grain storage levels, susceptibility to large price increases in food or energy prices, global prices of major food commodities, local food prices, the incidence of new strains of crop and livestock diseases, and the nutritional status of populations.
|
From page 220... ...
For example, the monitoring of food prices is important for identifying and predicting near-term threats to food security, both in urban areas and also in rural areas where most of the poor are net food buyers. Global commodity prices are a specific class of relevant indicators that provide an easily accessible measure of global food availability.
|
From page 221... ...
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET; see Box E-2) currently monitors local food prices and other factors relevant to food security throughout many countries in Africa and a number elsewhere (Brown et al., 2012)
|
From page 222... ...
Monitoring Health Security Current and projected climate variability and climate change raise concerns about the population health burdens of a variety of climate-sensitive health outcomes. Those of potential interest to national security include malnutrition, which was mentioned above in discussing food security, and 20 GLEWS: see http://www.glews.net (accessed July 24, 2012)
|
From page 223... ...
has led to new ways of seeing the nature of socioeconomic threats to food security in some countries -- significantly different patterns of food pricing within countries; strikingly divergent global food price influences in different regions; and local prices that track closely with global prices in some places, but in others they do not. The goal of all this work is to pro vide humanitarian and developmental decision makers with credible, comparable, and spatially detailed information about current food security, the need for external food assistance, the nature of underlying vulnerabilities, and threats to food and water security along with the opportunities that exist to alleviate these conditions.
|
From page 224... ...
Department of Defense established the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System, with the mission of monitoring newly emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases among U.S. service members and dependent populations (Clinton, 1996)
|
From page 225... ...
Other organizations monitoring emerging infectious diseases include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the European Centre for Disease Control; the WHO Global Alert and Response (GAR)
|
From page 226... ...
Monitoring health outcomes during and following extreme weather and climate events, such as flooding and cyclones, could be useful for detecting the beginnings of epidemics of diseases such as cholera. COPING, RESPONSE, AND RECOVERY -- AND THEIR POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES Key Factors Given that disruptive natural events are never equal or equitable in their societal impacts and that governments are expected to provide emergency assistance and then to organize, if not lead, disaster recovery, social and political stresses are to be expected in the aftermath of such an event.
|
From page 227... ...
General Approaches to Monitoring One way to think about the monitoring needs for social and political stresses caused by climate-related events specifically is to imagine a nationstate affected by a major climate-related disaster situation in which social and political stresses would not become serious enough to undermine or topple the government, destabilize the regime, or threaten the stability of the state itself. A key to a government having this level of stability in the face of disaster is the extent to which there is both broad and deep legitimacy for the state, the regime, the government of the time, and the leadership group.
|
From page 228... ...
full civil liberties, a free media, and regular and fair elections with peaceful turnovers of post-election positions; and (6) effective governance capacities from the national to the local level, including for extreme event emergency response and recovery.23 23 An example of a regime's stability under disaster can be seen in the situation that arose in Germany in August 2002 when devastating floods affected large areas and many cities and towns in the eastern part of the country.
|
From page 229... ...
. Because capacity is meaningful only in relation to the costs of providing a ssistance -- some of which, such as food prices, can be volatile -- the costs of price-volatile supplies and equipment should also be monitored.
|
From page 230... ...
Expecta tions provide an important baseline indicator in advance of extreme events and can be measured by survey methods, perhaps as part of the more general efforts to survey public attitudes toward govern ment discussed below. We are unaware, however, of any efforts to do such measurement systematically across countries for disaster related issues.
|
From page 231... ...
Potential indica tors include • Pre-existing levels of internal violence and political instability in the country of interest.
|
From page 232... ...
is developing a database of national response capacity.25 Another UNISDR initiative is the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk's Forensic Investigations of Disasters,26 launched in partnership with the International Social Science Council and the International Council for Science. Its goals are (1)
|
From page 233... ...
The longstanding Polity project, now part of the Political Instability Task Force effort, provides data that support quantitative and comparative analysis of regime authority characteristics and transitions. The types of governing authority range from fully institutionalized autocracies through mixed, or incoherent, authority regimes (termed "anocracies")
|
From page 234... ...
The resources include the Uppsala Conflict Data Program,31 the Political Instability Task Force (Box 5-1) , and the Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger (Hewitt et al., 2012)
|
From page 235... ...
In 2010 the project included an assessment of vulnerability to climate change based on a statistical model that analyzes global weather data and projects them forward. This approach permits physical climate hazards and human vulnerability to conflict to be disaggregated from the effects of climate change (Hewitt, 2012)
|
From page 236... ...
2012. Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation.
|
From page 237... ...
2012. Global water security: Intelligence com munity assessment.
|
From page 238... ...
2012. Challenges of a sustained climate observing system.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.