Security Issues In Australia

Security issues in the subfield of international relations are no longer limited to traditional security threats such as military challenges but are now including non-traditional security, including climate change. The international community should do more to tackle the issue of climate change because the long-term effects will not only directly or indirectly threaten national and international security but human security.

If climate change is neglected and not properly dealt with by effective policy actions, then there will be long-term security challenges that will cause significant widespread security implications nationally and internationally. As an Australian, climate change is a worry because there are evidences to suggest that Australia
and the Pacific are intensely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. It is also evident that climate change is affecting the neighbouring countries around Australia. The rise in sea level is affecting the small Pacific islands causing territorial loss and food and water shortages. Countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu whose territories consist entirely of atolls will become inhabitable due to territory loss under the ocean floor. Furthermore, some countries such as Bangladesh are already experiencing loss of habitable territory due to sea-level rising. The consequences of land loss will mean that the world will see an increase in mass climate refugee movements that can put pressure on neighbouring countries to accommodate the mass migration. Thus, climate change can have a domino effect that will threaten not only national and international security but also human security and has the potential to trigger food and water scarcity.

Climate change can either directly or indirectly affect human security by undermining a state’s agricultural production, which can trigger conditions that can lead to food insecurity. For instance, climate change can lead to uneven distribution of rainfall and disrupt crops and livestock production. Furthermore, this can impact human security because it can trigger shock-prices in food and availability of food, which can damage trade and domestic consumption. Moreover, this illustration can undermine the socio-political stability of a state and can undermine the trading of agricultural commodities. Moreover, climate change is important because it will certainly cause suffering not only to states but to the most vulnerable people in regions such as Africa and Asia. For this reason the international community should adopt a liberal stance on climate change to cooperate together to reduce the effects of climate change and divert the human security risk conduced by the effects of climate change.

Climate change has the potential to create conditions for conflict by generating failed states and resource competition.
The long-term effects of climate change can destabilize and put pressure on already weak states. The scholarly literature on security and climate change argue that climate change can be a factor that will exacerbate existing social, economic, environmental and weak governmental institution problems, which can cause states to become destabilize. Furthermore, failed states tend to have no law, which means that it can be a breeding ground for criminal activities, creating conditions for conflict. Moreover, climate change can be a factor in future conflict because climate change can disrupt agricultural production and can trigger potential conflicts over scarce resources. Looking through a realist lens, states are always on the quest for power maximisation, which creates a tendency for them to increase their incentives to compete directly over scarce resources, meaning that there is a high chance of a conflict occurring.

It is clear that the direct or indirect affects security threats resulting from climate change not only effects national and international security, but also can affect the most vulnerable people and undermine their human security. Thus the international community should be doing more to combat the issue of climate change, because failure to act now will exacerbate risks in the
future.