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Pages 1-14

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From page 1...
... national security concerns and to identify ways to increase the ability of the intelligence community to take climate change into account in assessing political and social stresses with implications for U.S. national security." The study committee was tasked to "focus on several broad questions, such as: What are the major social and political factors affect 1
From page 2...
... They could also interact with the connections that are our main focus; for example, an action such as buying foreign agricultural land might go almost unnoticed at first, only creating a crisis when the country where the land is located experiences a crop failure it cannot manage with imports. Third, we concentrated on the relatively near term by emphasizing climate-driven security risks that call for action by the intelligence community within the coming decade either to respond to security threats or to anticipate them.
From page 3...
... The conjunctions of events will likely include clusters of apparently unrelated climate events occurring closely in time, although perhaps widely separated geographically, which actually do have common causes; sequences or cascades of events in which a climate event precipitates a series of other physical or biological consequences in unexpected ways; and disruptions of globally connected systems, such as food markets, supply chains for strategic commodities, or global public health systems. The surprises are likely to appear first as unusually severe extensions of familiar experience.
From page 4...
... The other side of this coin is that unprecedentedly large climate events do not necessarily lead to security threats if actions have been taken to reduce exposure or susceptibility or increase coping capacity and if authorities are seen to be actively responding to events. Conclusion 4.2: To understand how climate change may create social and political stresses with implications for U.S.
From page 5...
... Available knowledge of climate–security connections that feature societal vulnerabilities indicates that security analysis needs to develop more nuanced understanding of the conditions -- largely, social, political, and economic conditions -- under which particular climate events are and are not likely to lead to particular kinds of social and political stresses and under which such events and responses to them are and are not likely to lead to significant security threats. The empirical knowledge base on the connections between extreme events and political instability or violence also suggests some hypotheses that are worthy of further examination.
From page 6...
... Such improved understanding is among the objectives of the many federal scientific agencies concerned with climate change and will be valuable to the various federal, state, local, private-sector, and international organizations concerned with improving adaptation to climate change, reducing potential damage from climate events, and exploiting potential opportunities related to climate change. These shared needs for knowledge suggest that knowledge development is best pursued as a cooperative activity involving many organizations.
From page 7...
... Building Fundamental Understanding Recommendations 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, and 6.1: The intelligence community should participate in a whole-of-government effort to inform choices about adapting to and reducing vulnerability to climate change. Recommendation 3.1: It should, along with appropriate federal science agencies, support research to improve the ability to quantify the likelihoods of potentially disruptive climate events, that is, single extreme climate events, event clusters, and event sequences.
From page 8...
... The disaster research community, which has been the locus of research on the political effects of climate events, has not been well connected to the climate research community. To build the needed fundamental understanding will require the integration of knowledge of political and socioeconomic conditions in countries of interest; knowledge from climate science about the potential exposure of these countries to climate events; and knowledge from social science about the susceptibility of these countries to being harmed by those events and the likelihood of effective coping, response, and recovery at local to national levels.
From page 9...
... It will also require improved techniques for inte grating quantitative and qualitative information. We emphasize that improved understanding and monitoring of the various elements of climate vulnerability -- a key link between climate events and security concerns -- is an objective that the intelligence community shares with the USGCRP and many other institutions at federal, state, local, and international levels.
From page 10...
... Analysis will require the integration of quantitative indicators with traditional security and intelligence analytic methods. The value of monitoring efforts is likely to increase over time because of improvements in monitoring systems and because potentially disruptive climate events are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in the future.
From page 11...
... Improving the Capacity to Anticipate Security Threats Recommendation 6.3: The intelligence community should establish a system of periodic "stress testing" for countries, regions, and critical global systems regarding their ability to manage potentially disruptive climate events of concern. Stress tests would focus on potentially dis ruptive conjunctions of climate events and socioeconomic and political conditions.
From page 12...
... Stress tests should assess the potential consequences for security of climate events under either of two conditions: when climate scientists can say with some confidence that the events will be increasingly likely to occur or become more severe, or when the events seem increasingly likely to occur based on a fundamental understanding of climate dynamics but available evidence is not yet sufficient for climate scientists to attach confidence to such projections. Stress tests might also be triggered by assessments indicating that event likelihood, exposure, or susceptibility is increasing or that the capacity to respond adequately to certain kinds of climate events is declining in a region or country of concern.
From page 13...
... Decision science techniques should be used and further developed to ensure that the stress tests make the best use of the available information. Stress testing might draw on various methods, including the qualitative interpretation of available knowledge, formal modeling, and interactive gaming approaches.


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