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Title: How might climate change affect the comprehensive maritime security interests of Asia-pacific states?
Introduction
Today, the effects of climate change are everywhere for all to see. These effects manifest themselves through an increase in floods, droughts, storms, heat waves, and tsunamis. Indeed, the magnitude of events relating to climate change is so high that many states across the world consider it one of the newest security concerns. One of the states where climate change is considered a security concern is Australia. Here, the government has factored in the impact of climate change in its security strategy, alongside conventional security issues such as international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
Climate change is a key threat to food, water, and energy supply around the world. Undoubtedly, these effects end up having far-reaching implications that touch on marine environmental security, submergence of coastlines, and unlawful acts at sea. These negative effects tend to bring about changes in the way people appreciate the role of the sea as a medium of transport, a resource, as an area with territorial integrity, and as an environment.
Among the Asian-Pacific states, there are many comprehensive maritime security interests, including maritime boundaries, marine environmental security, and territorial disputes, which risk being threatened if the global climate change pattern continues to accelerate. This paper explores the various ways in which climate change might have an impact on the Asia-Pacific states’ comprehensive maritime security interests. An understanding of climate change is first offered, followed by the impact it has on Asia-Pacific countries. Finally, attention shifts to the ways in which this change may impact on the maritime security interests of Asia-Pacific states.
Overview of climate change
Climate change refers to a change in precipitation and global temperatures over a certain period because of either natural variability or human activity. Climate change is defined at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as any change of climate attributed to humanity directly or indirectly, which alters the global atmosphere’s composition, and which occurs in addition to the natural climate variability that is observed over comparable periods of time. Generally, the global climate system is a highly complex, interactive system that incorporates the land surface, atmosphere, oceans and other water bodies, living things, and snow and ice.
In simple terms, climate is sometimes defined as ‘average weather’. The period within which a description of climate is offered ranges from several months to millions of years, with the classical period being 30 years. To lay persons, climate is viewed as the average weather while climate forecast is viewed as long-range weather forecasts. Few people doubt that the climate is changing, and that the task of examining this change remains a challenging one.
In the past century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius. The rise in average temperatures that has been observed around the world is extensive, mostly in the form of rising trends across all continents and oceans. It is difficult as well as expensive to examine such change since this entails monitoring the earth’s climate system continuously and then accurately assessing the influence of greenhouse gases. This also requires hard work, passion, and expertise in efforts to save the planet from further environmental degradation.
Although the climatic conditions of states in the Asia-Pacific region slightly, there are some fundamental similarities, particularly when it comes to the impact of global climate change. In general terms, the effects of climate change are clearly visible in the form of an increase in the average air and ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, and widespread melting of ice and snow. Between 1870 and 2007, the global average sea level rose by about 20 centimeters. During the 20th century, it rose by 1.7 mm, while between 1993 and 2007 it rose at a rate of 3.4 mm every year. This alarming trend was caused by an increase in sea water volume as a result of thermal expansion at sea and the melting of various ice caps and glaciers in different parts of the world.
How Climate Change Impacts on in Asia-Pacific region
In the Asia-Pacific region, climate change is highly likely to affect different systems and sectors in the near future. To start with, it has a great potential of causing extensive damage to coastal, terrestrial, and marine ecosystems. It also has a great potential to reduce the availability of water resources in dry regions at mid-altitudes. The agriculture sector is expected to record a drastic reduction in output if climate change persists mainly because of water insufficiency (Acharya 2009, p. 5). Moreover, damage is already being experienced in low-lying coastal systems. As populations crowd in the few areas where there is self sufficiency in water resources, the level of human health is likely to drop significantly. Apart from the latter impact which relates directly to human wellbeing, all the other effects of climate change have direct implications for marine environmental security.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the impact of climate change is often discussed in the context of three different sub-regions: Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and small islands in the Pacific. In Asia, particularly the coastal areas in East, South, and South-East Asia, the highest risk is the one posed by increased flooding of sea water. In some mega-deltas, flooding is expected to come from rivers. A case in point is the projected rise in sea-level, which could end up flooding residences of millions of Asians who live in low-lying areas in countries such as India, Vietnam, China, and Bangladesh.
Moreover, in some developing countries in Asia, the effects of climate are expected to drastically increase the risk of starvation. The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) predicts that by 2020, some 49 million more people will be at risk of starvation across Asia (Harris 2002, p. 136). Sustainable development will be adversely affected in these developing countries, as more pressure will be exerted on natural resources as well as the environment in the quest for industrialization, urbanization, and economic growth and development.
In Australia and New Zealand, the effects of climate manifest themselves mainly through a rapid loss of biodiversity, particularly in Queensland Wet Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef. Already, water security problems are being experienced in Eastern and Southern Australia as well as eastern and northern New Zealand. In the South-east Queensland and Cairns regions of Australia, risks associated with a rise in the sea level, coastal flooding, and storms are already being experienced. Such risks are also being felt in Bay of Plenty and Northland in New Zealand.
In the small islands in the Pacific, the level of vulnerability to the impact of climate change is very high (Podesta 2007, p. 118). These islands are highly vulnerable to sea-level rise and related extreme events. A significant rise in the sea-level may lead to near-submergence of entire islands. In Vanuatu Island, for example, a sea-level rise by just one meter would lead to a 75%-loss of the island’s land mass. Such an occurrence would have serious implications on the sovereignty of the affected islands.
Effects on Asia Pacific States’ Maritime Security Interests
The Asia Pacific region is fast becoming the centre of global attention, particularly with the rise of China and India. Moreover, the ASEAN economies exert a formidable weight on the global economy. Additionally, economies of countries such as Indonesia and Singapore are known to have a great potential. On the other hand, the economies of South Korea and Japan are reputed for being able to endure major economic setbacks, including those with global repercussions. All these factors make the region a centre of attraction for the rest of the world, thereby necessitating the need to guard the region’s maritime security interests selfishly.
For the Asia Pacific region, maritime security interests have direct implications on the way seaborne trade is carried out, how the sea is used as a crucial food source, and the extent to which coastal communities rely on the sea for their economic wellbeing. These interests also have a bearing on the environmental fragility of marine ecosystems and the emergence of sea-related political disputes. Far-reaching interests among states in this region are caused by several factors, one of them being the complexity of the Asia-Pacific maritime geography (Chaturvedi 2010, p. 102). The complexity is caused by such elements as archipelagos, semi-enclosed seas, territorial disputes, chokepoints, poorly demarcated maritime boundaries, and overlapping maritime zones.
The effects of climate change threaten to pose new threats to the region’s maritime security interests, both directly and indirectly. These effects may touch on marine environmental security, submergence of coastlines, and unlawful acts at sea. When damage is caused to the marine environment, this exerts a direct affect on the structure and function of the marine ecosystem structure, ecological interactions among species, and the geographical ranges of these marine species. This causes negative consequences for biodiversity. It affects the availability of economic goods that are derived from the marine ecosystem.
One of the areas where climate change will have a direct impact is the Great Barrier Reef. The direct effects might most likely take the form of a rise in sea-level and water temperature, changed rainfall and runoff patterns, changes in the El Nino Southern Oscillation, and increased severity of ocean acidification, storms, and cyclones (Bradford 2005, p. 11). These effects threaten to pose a further impact on the Asia-Pacific marine ecosystem if authorities fail to make the appropriate responses.
The impact of climate change also reflects greatly on the ability by human beings to continue acquiring basic needs such as water, food, and energy sources. Climate change creates the need for people to undergo the difficult process of adapting to new ways of carrying out their daily economic activities. In the long run, this tends to have far-reaching security consequences. These effects manifest themselves most clearly when coastlines of low-lying islands and coastal states start to disappear. Apart from the obvious dire economic consequences of such an occurrence, it also raises some potentially critical questions on the sovereignty rights of these coastal states and islands, mainly with regard to their maritime jurisdiction zones.
The disappearance of coastlines of small islands developing states (SIDS) within the Asia-Pacific regions means that their baselines that have always been used to determine claims on maritime zones will also be disappearing. This creates very salient problems when it comes to carrying out law enforcement activities in such areas. An excellent example of such jurisdictional problems is the case of Okinotorishima Island, which is a subject of a bitter dispute between China and Japan (Hsiung 2004, p. 32). The Japanese government continues to put in place mechanisms of keeping the island above sea-level, including through the construction of circular steel and concrete blocks around it. However, China refuses to consider it an island as provided for in the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC), claiming that it is an artificial island.
Asia-Pacific states have been endeavoring to come up with common solutions to common maritime security problems since the beginning of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Dokken 2001, p. 511). Indeed, security concerns seem to constitute the main force for continued regional integration in the region. With climate change taking a huge tall on the dynamics of the region’s comprehensive maritime security interests, environmental security is likely to play a similar role of bringing these states even closer to each other in efforts to come up with mutually beneficial solutions. When it comes to issues of the human environment, the states to the south of China are largely interdependent. It is just as good that this interdependence has been nurtured since failure to do so would have resulted in numerous violent conflicts against each other. Yet the environmental instability caused by climate change threatens to tilt the scales in the level of their interdependence, mainly by creating discomfiture among the states that bear the greatest blunt of tsunamis, receding coastlines, cyclones, and flooding.
The extent to which the effects of climate change lead to conflict among Asia-Pacific states is a question of how the situation will be perceived by decision-makers (Dokken 2001, p. 518). If all political actors in the region address all the environmental problems being experienced or anticipated here as security matters, this will lead to prioritization, meaning that the likelihood of dealing with them satisfactorily will be high.
According to Valencia (2000, p. 228), maritime issues are now at the forefront of Asia-Pacific security concerns. Many security-related dilemmas arise out of the need to share common resources, some of which are being depleted through the effects of climate change. Indeed, it seems that climate change is poised to create the next major shock or crisis that is necessary for regime formation or for an increase in the robustness of the existing regimes. The environmental changes that are being experienced today are creating anxiety among people in this region. These changes are triggering various spontaneous processes of imposition and negotiation in efforts to enhance the roles that states play as equal regional players in the pursuit of common maritime security interests.
Climate change impacts on all the integrative forces that support regime formation, key among them the formation of international security arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region. Most of these arrangements touch on cultural, social, economic and historical interstate relationships. With the uncertainty being caused by the catastrophic effects climate change, most states are unsure of whether to abandon their existing international arrangements and instead focus on new ones that reflect the changing realities of the region’s comprehensive maritime security interests.
Valencia (2000, p. 229) notes that in terms of regional cooperation on maritime matters, Northeast Asia clearly trails behind Southeast Asia. In the absence of any robust multilateral Asian maritime regimes, the perception created is that the costs of multilateral arrangements by far outweigh the benefits. Currently, these states have restricted themselves to addressing issues relating to climate change in an ad hoc manner (Acharya 2001, p. 20). Such an approach does not work in the best maritime security interests of all Asia-Pacific countries, notwithstanding the fact that all of them face the risk of climate-change-related social-economic disruptions[1].
Climate change and the diversity of threats to comprehensive maritime security
The diversity of threats to the Asia-Pacific ocean environment has continued to keep ocean management at the top of the agenda on environmental diplomacy. Johnston (1993, p. 64) addresses the question of developing a framework for permitting and even facilitating the zoning of vulnerable marine and coastal areas into eight different types of designated areas, an idea that was popularized in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Such an
Security assurance across all maritime trading systems remains a crucial factor in the evolution of international trade in general. The level of maritime vulnerability in the Asia-Pacific region keeps changing because of the presence of different factors, including environmental changes, maritime-vectored terrorism, and the changing dynamics on implementation of security programs (Barnes 2005, p. 521). Whenever environmental changes occur in different maritime zones, they affect all ongoing initiatives relating to security of ports and ships, customs inspections in various international ports, and partnerships against terrorism[2].
The complexity of interactions among ports, supply chains, and maritime operations creates peculiar vulnerabilities in the process of structurally analyzing various management challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region’s maritime security interests. Any comprehensive maritime security management undertaking should entail the introduction of a new classification scheme upon which all areas of vulnerability within various ports and across supply networks are mapped. However, the challenge of overhauling all the region’s security initiatives may manifest itself through persistent threats to continuity of security initiatives, business efficiency, and competitiveness. This calls for the introduction of crisis management capabilities that bring on board all the public and private sector entities involved in global trade, such that they participate in initiatives for dealing with the adverse effects of climate change[3].
Interesting developments have occurred in areas of cooperation and confidence building among various Asia-Pacific states, particularly the South China region (Hearns 1996, p. 179). In these discussions, a lot of attention has been on the creation of a free trade zone in the post-Cold War era. It has also involved facilitation of transparency in the face of a tremendous increase in armaments in the region. The South China Sea has been identified as a potential hot spot for disagreement among states, particularly in matters of divergent maritime security interests. Since the 1980s, the MPC (Managing Potential Conflicts) project has made various stakeholders put much focus on the potential conflicts in the future as a result of climate change[4]. During the early 1990s, this project continued being used as a source of avenues for many cooperative activities of fostering dialogue among all littoral states within the South China Sea region[5].
One of the most notable positive outcomes of dialoguing is China’s announcement of her willingness to settle its disputes in the South China Sea using accepted provisions of international law as well as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. This move has been widely applauded by Southeast Asia’s leaders. However, these leaders acknowledge that in the face of severe effects of climate change and the subsequent ad hoc responses to disasters, it is easy for one state’s actions to be misinterpreted by another state, leading to a conflict (Betts 1993, p. 48)[6]. A case in point is the recent increase in the volume of naval traffic around Spratly Islands, which led to a misinterpretation of the actions of various states. This necessitated the signing of ‘code of conduct’ agreements among all the claimants, with the Philippines and China agreeing to cooperate with regard to the terms of the ‘code of conduct’[7].
Conclusion
In summary, climate change remains a major factor in determining the nature of comprehensive maritime security interests among various Asia-Pacific states. The many far-reaching effects of climate change continue to raise many maritime security concerns across this region, mainly because of the subsequent economic, environmental, political and cultural effects of such events as receding coastlines, rising sea temperatures, a rapid loss of biodiversity, and reduction in water, food, and energy resources.
The effects of climate change in the Asia-Pacific region come at a time when the region is realigning its political outlook through various international discussions and agreements. However, the lack of a coherent multilateral entity exposes the region to meddling by outsiders, thereby threatening both collective and state-specific comprehensive maritime security interests. The complexity of the region’s maritime geography makes it difficult for the ad hoc approaches being used to address climatic challenges to work. Meanwhile, climate change continues to cause more damage to the region’s marine environment and ecosystem. Moreover, the continued loss of baselines as a result of submergence of coastlines creates new challenges in efforts by states to claim maritime jurisdiction zones without provoking new maritime boundaries disputes.
References
Acharya, A, (2009) ‘Multilateralism: Is there an Asia-pacific way?’ NBR Analysis, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 1-18.
Acharya, A, 2001, Constructing a security community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the problem of regional order, Routledge, London.
Barnes, P, 2005, ‘Assurance of security in maritime supply chains: Conceptual issues of vulnerability and crisis management’, Journal of International Management, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 519-540.
Betts, R, 1993, ‘Wealth, Power, and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War’ International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 34-77.
Bradford, J. 2005, Southeast Asian maritime security in the age of terror: threats, opportunity, and charting the course forward, RSIS Working Papers; 75/05.
Chaturvedi, S, 2010, ‘Geopolitics of Climate Change and Australia’s ‘Re-engagement’ with Asia: Discourses of Fear and Cartographic Anxieties’, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 95 – 115.
Dokken, K, 2001, ‘Environment, security and regionalism in the Asia-Pacific: is environmental security a useful concept?’ The Pacific Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, 509 – 530.
Harris, P, 2002, ‘Global Warming in Asia-Pacific: Environmental Change vs. International Justice’, Asia-Pacific Review, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 130 – 149.
Hearns, G, 1996, ‘Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea’, Marine Policy, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 177-181.
Hsiung, J, 2004, Comprehensive Security: Challenge for Pacific Asia, London, Routledge.
Johnston, D, 1993, ‘Vulnerable coastal and marine areas: A framework for the planning of environmental security zones in the ocean’, Ocean Development & International Law, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 63 – 79.
Podesta, J, 2007, ‘The Security Implications of Climate Change’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 115-138.
Valencia, M, 2000, ‘Regional Maritime Regime Building: Prospects in Northeast and Southeast Asia’, Ocean Development & International Law, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 223 – 247.
[1] Ibid.
[2] Ibid. p. 524.
[3] Ibid. p. 532.
[4] Ibid. p. 180.
[5] Ibid. p. 181.
[6] Betts (1993, p. 48) adds that although the Asia-Pacific region is becoming an area of increased international importance, particularly to the US, it is also becoming an unstable arena for interaction for great powers.
[7] Ibid.
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