Human-induced climate change is proceeding apace, with continued global warming expected for decades to come under even the most ambitious mitigation scenarios. The upshot is that impacts and risks for natural systems and human security can only increase in the foreseeable future, and adaptation is urgently needed to ameliorate these risks. Here I sketch a few examples of how climate change is posing risks to aspects of human security of relevance to Finland and describe attempts by European Union and Finnish policy makers to design measures that can help build a secure and climate-resilient future.
Global climate is changing rapidly
The most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 makes sober reading. It states that the Earth’s climate is warming rapidly due to human activities (primarily greenhouse gas emissions) and this is resulting in impacts on natural and human systems worldwide that are increasingly adverse and require urgent actions to avoid greater and possibly irreversible damage in the future. The Paris Agreement of 2015 was an attempt to strengthen the global response to this threat by limiting global warming to well below 2 °C and, if possible, to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels2. The IPCC reported that warming by 2020 had already reached 1.1 °C, and since then the level has been creeping upwards, with the current year (2023) already set to become the warmest on record3.
The prospects for the future are for continued warming. Even the deepest cuts in emissions are unlikely to keep warming levels below 1.5 °C in the near-term, though they may fall just below by the end of the century. On the other hand, with very high rates of emissions the global temperature could increase by 4.4 °C over the same period1. With every increment of warming, the risks and projected adverse impacts escalate and become more complex and difficult to manage.
Photo: Jean Landry / Shutterstock
How might climate change affect security?
Climate change can impact different aspects of human security, sometimes in regions that are remote from the initial climate impacts4. Some examples include:
- effects on food security, such as through weather-related harvest failures of staple crops in key producer regions, subsequent global price rises and possible food scarcity in importing regions;
- sea-level rise impacts on displacement and migration of people in many coastal and island locations as well as on the location of maritime boundaries in disputed regions;
- threats to water security, due to increased drought frequency or the shrinking of mountain glaciers;
- increased human migration, such as through forced displacement by weather-related events like floods or droughts, which is estimated to affect an average of 21.5 million people each year, many of them highly vulnerable, with numbers expected to rise in the future5;
- health effects (physical and mental), such as through flood damage to homes and livelihoods, heat stress working outdoors or damage to health and social welfare infrastructure;
- the Arctic, where warming of up to four times the global average during the past four decades6 has led to dramatic changes, including sea ice retreat, melting of glaciers and ice sheets and thawing of permafrost. These present economic opportunities for some actors (both within and outside the region), such as Arctic shipping connections for trade, tourism or the military, and possibilities to exploit newly accessible minerals. However, this scramble for resources can raise security tensions in the region as well as increasing risks for local environments, indigenous livelihoods and cultural heritage.
Adapting to the unavoidable
The fact remains, that regardless of the effectiveness of mitigation efforts, they will be incapable of preventing continued warming of the climate in the coming decades, and societies will need to adapt. The IPCC defines adaptation in human systems as ”the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects, in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities”7. This is recognised in the Paris Agreement, which stresses the need for ”increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience”2. Mitigation has dominated climate policy agendas for decades, and for good reason, but as climate-related risks become more severe, adaptation is at last being taken seriously as the essential and urgent counterpart to mitigation. The recent EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change8 notes that even under a best-case mitigation scenario of ”climate neutrality”, where greenhouse gas emissions are balanced by removals, there will still be a need for substantial adaptation efforts. It then sets out a vision that by 2050 ”the EU will be a climate-resilient society, fully adapted to the unavoidable impacts of climate change” (Table 1). Moreover, for benefits of climate adaptation to be widely and equitably shared, the strategy emphasises justice and fairness in the transition to climate resilience.
Table 1: Vision and main elements of the 2021 EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change: Forging a climate-resilient Europe8
The EU’s vision of a climate-resilient Europe
The IPCC defines resilience as: ”The capacity of interconnected social, economic and ecological systems to cope with a hazardous event, trend or disturbance, responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure. Resilience is a positive attribute when it maintains capacity for adaptation, learning and/or transformation”7. Table 1 illustrates some of the main elements identified in the EU Adaptation Strategy for adapting and building resilience in Europe.
What adaptation measures promote climate-resilient security?
Climate-resilience is also a focus of another EU initiative on security that appeared in 20235. This refers to impacts on peace, security and defence of both climate change and environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss and pollution. It defines five concrete measures that the EU could consider for addressing this ”nexus” (arrows in Figure 1).
Coincidentally, a separate report focused on climate-related security challenges, this time for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), appeared at about the same time9. This noted the need to strengthen NATO’s abilities to cope with climate-driven shocks, recognising that climate change will affect all aspects of its future operating environment.
Doing justice to adaptation
Finland too, as part of the EU, is pursuing similar targets for adaptation and resilience. The goal of the 2022 Climate Act10 and the corresponding climate policy planning system is to ensure that national measures adapt to climate change by promoting climate risk management and climate resilience. Special attention is also being paid to the social justice aspects of adaptation11,12, distinguishing three types: distributive justice (how risks and benefits or harm arising from adaptation measures are distributed among social groups and different regions); recognition justice (accounting for socio-cultural differences and special needs and vulnerabilities resulting from diversity) and procedural justice (accounting fairly for the needs of different groups in the decision-making process). Climate adaptation policy cannot be expected to eliminate all existing inequalities, but in planning adaptation actions it is essential to aim neither to increase existing inequalities nor to create new ones without reasonable compensation. Though late on the policy scene the time is ripe not only to do justice to adaptation, but also to pursue this in the fairest way possible.
Conclusion
Human-induced climate change is proceeding rapidly and presents multiple and growing risks to the natural world and for human security. I have illustrated some of the ongoing efforts to implement fair and effective adaptation policies that may help to contribute to a more secure and resilient future for us all.
Writer
Timothy R. Carter is a Research Professor at the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke). He has researched climate change impacts and adaptation for over 40 years in the UK, Austria and, since 1990, in Finland. He has also contributed, in various capacities since 1991, to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
References
1 IPCC. Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. A Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.), 2023).
2 United Nations. Paris Agreement. (Text of the agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 25 pp. http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php, 2015).
3 Copernicus Climate Change Service. Copernicus: September 2023 – unprecedented temperature anomalies; 2023 on track to be the warmest year on record doi:https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-september-2023-unprecedented-temperature-anomalies (2023).
4 Hildén, M. et al. Cascading climate impacts: a new factor in European policy-making. 4 (https://www.cascades.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/CASCADES_Policy_Brief_1_0-4.pdf, 2020).
5 European Commission. A new outlook on the climate and security nexus: Addressing the impact of climate change and environmental degradation on peace, security and defence. 24 (Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council, European Commission, Brussels, 2023).
6 Rantanen, M. et al. The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979. Communications Earth & Environment 3, 168, doi:10.1038/s43247-022-00498-3 (2022).
7 IPCC. Annex II: Glossary [Möller, V. et al. (eds.)]. 2897-2930 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 2022).
8 European Commission. Forging a climate-resilient Europe – the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change. 22 (Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, European Commission, Brussels, 2021).
9 Farhan, S., Kossmann, S. & van Rij, A. Preparing NATO for climate-related security challenges. 44 (The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, 2023).
10 Ministry of Justice. Ilmastolaki (Climate Act). 10.6.2022/423, doi:https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2022/20220423 (2022).
11 VNS. Valtioneuvoston selonteko kansallisesta ilmastonmuutokseen sopeutumissuunnitelmasta vuoteen 2030. Hyvinvointia ja turvallisuutta muuttuvassa ilmastossa (Government report on the national climate change adaptation plan until 2030. Well-being and safety in a changing climate). VNS 15/2022 vp, 126, doi:https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/vaski/JulkaisuMetatieto/Documents/VNS_15+2022.pdf (2022).
12 Kivimaa, P. et al. Evaluation of justice in climate policy. 41 (The Finnish Climate Change Panel, Report 3/2023, Helsinki, 2023).
