Climate change and geopolitics

Source: Joy of Cartoon Pictures

Just wanted to express how astonished I was when I looked out of the window and realised it was raining cats and dogs, on a normally cool and dry December day in Hong Kong. While heavy rains are normally recorded during the monsoon season, some districts received over 40mm rainfall in an hour this afternoon. The Amber rainstorm signal (rainfall > 30mm in an hour) was held for 45 minutes, the first time for the Hong Kong Observatory to flag such a signal in January since 1998. 

Hong Kong hourly isohyet map on 5 Jan 2016. 

Source: The Hong Kong Observatory

Hong Kong rainfall and temperature average in December. According to past rainfall records, the monthly mean rainfall for December is 26.8mm.  

Source: The Hong Kong Observatory

But I guess I’m not the only one who is surprised by last month’s weather, as part of the world has experienced a much wetter and warmer December, thanks to El Nino, or in fact, climate change?

Of course, this December had been extraordinary to most of the world. It does not only arouse our attention, again, to the possible devastating impacts of climate change including droughts, floods and other potential natural hazards, but also bringing up the unaware socioeconomics issues such as food and water scarcity intensified by reduced resource availability caused by climate change. It’s not hard to realise climate change is in fact a cross-disciplinary problem and would have knock-on effects on social lives and public health, the economies, and even geopolitics. 

Devin C Bowles et al. have elaborated well in the review on Climate change, conflict and health on how climate change is recognised as a fundamental source of conflict and health risk. Climate change alters global temperature and precipitation and thus has the effect on reducing natural resource availability (food crops and water in particular), which ultimately increases the probability of conflicts. Take Syria as an example, where the persisted half-decade drought is proved to be worsened by climate change, which led to food insecurity and rupture of social fabric and resilience. Effects of the drought were amplified by long existed government corruption, inappropriate government policies such as poor natural resource management, over-reliant on agriculture (including unsustainable extraction of groundwater) and high demographic growth. Food insecurity and government incompetence to alleviate poverty and increase social resilience forced its citizens to emigrate to nearby countries and thus, created a ground for discontent and rebel, which strived to become the ‘guarantors of security’. 

 I am sharing this from a different perspective suggested by the Chinese Geographer, but we are down to the same conclusion that climate change will cause knock-on effects on poverty, resource insecurities and health issues, which impacts will resonate across over the world politics and economy. 

Source: 8Fact twitter

Although the review possesses an environmentalist preference, conflicts are often a result of a mix of complex issues varying from economics, geopolitics, state capacity and government policy, and other social elements. However, all conflicts are fundamentally fuelled by poverty or the fear of falling into poverty, including reduced availability of natural resources or other resource insecurities. This makes climate change the most plausible explanation for tipping the world’s political and economic instability. 

Despite scholars have insisted that the wet and warm December (for some regions) won’t be the norm for decades, we shall expect more extreme weather next year when El Nino is predicted to be at its strongest. Mitigating climate change is imminent, yet it would be more effective if the problem is known to have greater impacts to the economies, security and health. Governments would only know how to prioritise when their national interests is loss.