Why climate change is a threat to national security
Climate change is an enabler of multifaceted crises and a threat to national security. The analysis of Francesco D'Arrigo, director of the Italian Institute of Strategic Studies "Niccolò Machiavelli".
Extreme weather events and their accompanying natural disasters, such as floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, are becoming more frequent as the effects of climate change tighten their grip on the planet. The advent of terms such as “water bombs” “megafires” and “superstorms” coupled with seemingly daily news coverage of “record-breaking” weather events are the public implication of an expected consequence: climate change increases the frequency and the intensity of extreme weather events.
More and more frequent catastrophic events
According to the first analyzes conducted by the CNR on the data measured by the meteorological stations, in recent days in Emilia Romagna there have been daily rainfalls to be considered "extreme, that is very rare due to the climatology that characterizes that area". In any case, despite the rarity of the phenomenon of these torrential rains which caused all the rivers to overflow at the same time, devastating territories, homes and forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes, these are rains very similar to the floods which in 2021 affected Germany and Belgium, where nearly 200 people died, with enormous damage to infrastructure and homes.
Catastrophic weather events characterizing climate change as an activator and propelling of multifaceted crises that pose a serious threat to national security.
National security understood as "the citizen's confidence that the risks of everyday life, both man-made threats and impersonal dangers, are adequately addressed so that one can lead a normal life" (cited by David Omand , former Director of the Intelligence Agency GCHQ).
National security can be jeopardized not only by intentional human actions, such as wars and a high degree of systematic uncertainty caused by the variability of the decisions that will be taken to mitigate the effects of global warming (security), but also by key emerging dynamics (emerging dynamic factors) which increase the devastating effects of natural and/or random events (safety).
Pnrr funds not used
In Italy for too many years we have been witnessing the liturgy of the strategies necessary to mitigate the challenges of climatic and hydrogeological risks. These calls underline the need for national authorities and bodies capable of working together in close cooperation, taking courageous, coordinated and far-reaching corrective decisions, to build resilience and strengthen inclusive, democratic and secure land governance. But despite the availability of resources and technologies to achieve such levels of cooperation and security, we have not yet been able to use monitoring, risk assessment and risk management systems capable of guaranteeing the control of risk factors, in order to identify promptly and promptly any negative or unforeseen impacts and, consequently, take the right corrective measures.
On 29 September 2021, the Minister of ecological transition of the Draghi Government, Roberto Cingolani, issued a Decree for the establishment of the "Operational plan for the implementation of the integrated monitoring system" whose "preliminary planning" was to be carried out by MITE, with the support of the Civil Protection Department and in coordination with other Ministries, as reported in the Italian PNRR document. The Decree provides for a precise timing and temporal milestones that should lead to the start of the operational phase of use of the integrated monitoring system by mid-2024. A platform that provides for the creation and integration of various components identified on the basis of what reported in the EU annex and in the text of the national PNRR, which should be the subject of separate tenders and which include: aerospace remote sensing and sensors, telecommunications system, analysis and control centres, IT security systems and services.
Environmental monitoring is a complex activity, which includes the constant observation, measurement and collection of data relating to a specific environment/territory to detect changes and mitigate the risks (IT, legal and organizational related to safety, understood as safety and security).
The platforms present on the market and already used by other countries are scalable and can include the use of satellite technologies and the involvement of various application sectors, such as: monitoring of hydrogeological instability, pollution (land and sea), prevention and fight against fires, precision agriculture, energy efficiency systems, road systems, logistics, protection of the environmental, cultural and archaeological heritage, identification of environmental offenses and above all support for emergencies and natural disasters. The areas in which these technologies can operate are of the dual use type since, although mainly designed for civil purposes, they can be used in the implementation and development of autonomous innovative systems for monitoring critical infrastructures, property and the environment, intelligence, and above all to save lives as well as for security and defense.
The failure to acquire these innovative monitoring systems, the catastrophic events caused by climate change together with an invasive overbuilding that does not take into account the scientific prevention criteria for soil defense against hydrogeological catastrophes, endanger a large part of our territory and millions of citizens.
Furthermore, for those who still persist in not including climate change among the key factors of the economy, the implementation of new monitoring technologies, in addition to protecting the environment, would ensure greater public safety by generating economic development and new jobs in the industrial chains innovative.
But until today, everything has remained on paper.
Climate change is a threat to national security
In one of the most relevant studies on global strategic trends, Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World – among the five scenarios proposed, the fifth – "tragedy and mobilization" – postulates how global warming and the repercussions on the environment could devastate global food supplies, causing riots, mass migrations and thousands of casualties.
Of all the common problems we face together with our EU and NATO partners, climate change is among the most serious and most threatening to all nations.
The effects of the climate and the humanitarian emergencies, which we are also facing in the Mediterranean, will only get worse in the years to come: from fires to floods in Europe, from the rise in sea levels, to water scarcity, drought and temperatures extremes will intensify tensions and migration, further increasing humanitarian needs, food insecurity and health threats, as well as the potential for instability, conflict and mass migration. The need to secure land, redirect financial flows, and create an energy revolution to avert the climate crisis is reinforced by the geopolitical imperative to reduce our collective dependence on states like Russia that seek to use energy as a weapon of coercion.
For all these reasons, Italy too should consider climate change a threat to national security. This would mean giving it vital importance for the state, such as to authorize the use of exceptional processes, instruments and decisions.
Processes and decisions that are intrinsically multi-disciplinary and that should be attributed to a governmental structure capable of permanently mobilizing all the powers of the State, to define and implement in "real time" the national security policies, globally and as a whole considered.
Italy lacks a government body of a political-strategic level in matters of national security
National security policies must be conceived and planned by the Government as a whole rather than by individual ministries and cannot be invalidated by regional or even municipal decisions.
The integration and centralization of national security policies are two fundamental principles of the security of the Republic. In particular in the context of the political-strategic decision-making process.
The current geopolitical and geostrategic context is making the need to adapt our institutional structure to the need to guarantee national security more and more evident. There are various inter-ministerial coordination structures that are activated for contingent reasons or only when a crisis occurs, but there is no permanent body, an Italian "National Security Council" that assists the Government in taking decisions that have an impact on security of the Republic.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-il-cambiamento-climatico-e-una-minaccia-alla-sicurezza-nazionale/ on Sun, 21 May 2023 09:09:43 +0000.