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Climate change will affect national security |
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Thursday, 03 July 2008 |
 Climate change is likely to have a broad impact on the national security of the USA by 2030, thus exacerbating poverty in the world and destabilizing number of countries already fragile, according to a report of the intelligence services unveiled yesterday.
"We believe that climate change will have implications terrestrial widespread for national security interests of the USA during the next 20 years," said Thomas Finger, deputy director of service analysis of the National Intelligence House of Representatives.
He also stressed that "the most significant impact to the USA and will result in indirect effects of climate change on many other countries," he added in introducing the report to the intelligence committees met and the 'energy independence and global warming.
The assessment, requested by Congress, summarized the consensus of the best analysts of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies on this subject. These agencies are under the Director for National Intelligence.
The American intelligence, which bases these projections on climate change as described in the report of the intergovernmental experts of the United Nations, provides an especially aggravating existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, low political institutions and an increase in economic emigration.
These effects could threaten the stability of some countries because of the possibility of regional conflicts caused by including access to water, which may become scarce in some areas.
Africa is one of the most vulnerable areas while some crops could be halved by 2020 due to a decrease in rainfall resulting from climate change. In parts of Asia whose crops are susceptible to drought and floods, crops of rice and cereals could fall by 10%, provided the report. A total of up to 50 million more people could be at risk of famine in the next 12 years.
The most abundant rains in some parts of Asia and the melting of mountain glaciers due to rising temperatures could provide more water, but the increase of consumption and population growth could also continue to create shortages affecting up to 1.2 billion people. Latin America could see more rainfall by 2030, but by 7 to 77 million people could still lack water, according to the report.
As the Middle East, climate projections are difficult to predict because of insufficient research, notes the document, which also indicates that Europe should be warmer. In contrast, North America will probably be less affected by climate change at mid-latitudes and is expected to increase by 5 to 20% of cereal crops.
The U.S. intelligence report does not mention the terrorist threat increased as a consequence of possible disruption caused by climate change. In 2007, a document on the same subject at the Center for Naval Analyses, written by retired generals, in turn established a close relationship between risk and the destabilization of certain countries. |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 17 February 2009 )
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