THE cascading impact of wars affects people around the world. But, beyond the immediate impact, wars induce mounting challenges for climate initiatives. COP-28 was a fundamental test for international actors to assess whether they can cushion climate agenda from the impact of global geopolitical fragmentation. The Hamas-Israel war overshadowed COP-28 held from 30 November to 12 December. Apart from the absence of important global leaders, the climate agenda was undermined in several key areas. This affected not just the decision-makers but also individuals, as the attention shifted away from climate change.
Climate change increases the threat spectrum for states at all levels. However, states prefer those trade-offs that focus on short-term priorities at the cost of long-term vulnerabilities. The world’s richest nations spend 30 times more on defence budget than climate finance even in the presence of mounting scientific evidence confirming the speed and scope of climate change. This indicates that states’ trajectories are guided by principles that serve their national interests. However, such tendencies in states’ behaviours dent global goals regarding climate adaptation and mitigation.
The Russia-Ukraine War undermined and even reversed some of the gains made regarding climate issues. Conflicts, with their consequences, alter states’ schemes of prioritisation. One consequence of wars is that it leaves fewer resources available for climate action. For instance, the UK Government announced that it would use budget underspending from climate funding to partially fund a military aid package for Ukraine worth £1 billion ($1.2 billion). Secondly, research and development initiatives are redirected towards the war enterprise at the cost of the ability to deal with climate change innovatively. The US and China continue to set records for global military spending with their combined spending surpassing $2.3 trillion in 2022, despite their repeated inability to secure funding for emissions reduction and climate change adaptation.
Thirdly, wars and global military footprints are some of the biggest sources of carbon emissions. According to the report of Scientists for Global Responsibility, the global military carbon footprint of 5.5 percent of global emissions is more than Africa’s entire footprint. Apart from increasing global carbon emissions, wars deplete vast amounts of resources, cause devastation of infrastructure and interfere with green energy initiatives and regulations.
In a world where mistrust and resentment permeate everything, wars increase the tendency among states to keep climate concern secondary. This is primarily because the climate adaption and mitigation frameworks model a situation that induces a volunteer’s dilemma. Wherein the pay-off matrix forces countries that volunteered to pay a certain cost for their volunteered efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change while their rival states become free riders. Such a situation undermines the prospect for global cooperation which might not be a concern for developed countries but a serious problem for the under-developed world.
At the core, climate negotiations are shaped by the equity concerns. The least developed world, with the smallest footprints in the emitting greenhouse gases, is bearing the brunt of climate change. On the other hand, reports suggest that climate change does not negatively affect the developed world. A World Bank study estimated that the least developed nations are responsible for 1.1 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions that are mostly produced by industrial activities and the burning of fossil fuels. The disporpotiante effect of climate change raises violent conflict concerns among and within the states. The developed world’s propensity of doing nothing on climate adoption and mitigation raises the cost for the under-developed world. The broken promises of ‘climate justice’ need to be fulfilled by the developed world to avoid exposing globalization to regressive forces.
Urgent action on climate change is required as it is no longer a distant threat. The cost of climate change, in terms of economic and human lives, is much higher than the wars. According to the DARA report, climate change is causing 400,000 deaths per year. Regional and global networks working on climate change often get blown apart in the unfolding of such events. The myopic and reoccurring pattern of compromising climate initiatives for geopolitical imperatives necessitates that climate resilience to be entrenched in economic structures rather than be subject to changeable political winds.
—The writer, a PhD, is Associate Senior Researcher at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Lahore.
Email: casslahore@gmail.com
views expressed are writer’s own.
