“If you really think the environment is less important than the economy, try holding your breath while you count your money.” Says American scientist McPherson.
The catastrophic event of Hurricane Katrina 2005 may be marked as one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history, which had taken more than one thousand human lives. Term security is a relative concept and contested in nature. The foremost reason, to have no unanimously accepted definition of security is the difference among the interpretation of existing threats and referent objects. Therefore, the concept of security cannot be defined in absolute terms. Customarily, the concept of security was military-centric, spinning around subjects like territorial disputes, wars, conflicts, arms race, nuclear deterrence, proliferation, weapons of mass destruction, military intervention and many more. These subjects remain a weighty matter of concern for the state because these worries hold prominence and could be a direct threat to a state’s territorial integrity. Later on, the post-cold War phase gave space to the new emerging threats. The idea of “comprehensive security” was given by Barry Buzan and Ole Weaver. New sectors of security were identified, i.e. economic, societal, political, and environmental. New sectors of security were not just recognized, but the purpose was to build a linkage among the different sectors of security. The term Climate Change was used at an international forum by the former secretary general of the United Nations Kofi Anan, while addressing a climate change conference in Nairobi, stating that Climate Change was an “encompassing threat”. Article 01 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) defines climate change as a “change directly or indirectly linked with the activities of human beings which result in the alteration of natural atmospheric layers”. Traditional security threats hold bulbous importance in our discourses, but the nexus between climate and military security seems to be an unexplored area.
As per the report of the Global Risk Index, Pakistan ranks among the top ten countries at risk of climate change. Events of rising temperature, changes in the patterns of precipitation, melting of glaciers, coastal erosion, and rising sea levels are some of the manifestations and proof that climate change is a real phenomenon. Climate change and military security are intertwined in a manner that these extreme events have the potential to impact military assets, military infrastructure, and logistics. Events of extreme heat waves and cyclones could create hindrances in the movement of troops’ deployment. The rise in sea levels is likely to disturb the military installations near coastal areas. Military readiness is which tactics and techniques are enlisted and practised by military personnel to carry out operations in a timely manner, but in case of floods, hurricanes and cyclones, unfortunately; due to a lack of a state’s mitigation and capability for the rescue operation, the army has to be sent. An unfortunate incident happened in the Lasbela area of Balochistan that took the lives of six personnel in a helicopter crash. The helicopter was on flood relief operations in Lasbela. Heat waves consequential to the melting of glaciers are affecting troop deployment in sensitive areas like Siachen. In 2012, an ice avalanche hit a Pakistani base in the Gayari sector, resulting in the death of 140 people out of which 120 were armed forces personnel. Although no evidence of climate change was established to be linked with the breakdown of this ice avalanche. The rise in sea level plus coastal erosion is affecting the naval sector. Pakistan is a coastal state of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean; the patterns of temperature warming and melting of glaciers, and the rise in sea level could have extensively devastating impacts on Pakistan’s navy installations. Pakistan Meteorological Department’s report of 2009 indicates that there is a rise in the average temperature of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Punjab and Sindh, which are important coastal zones, for Pakistan’s Navy. Global warming has increased the severity of heat waves, which has stifled much of Pakistan in the areas of Punjab and Sindh and made it much hotter and much more likely to occur in the form of heat waves, which has the potential to impact the air force bases by affecting the performances of fighter jets, reducing payload capacities.
In order to ensure Pakistan’s security against natural and regional threats; first of all, it is imperative to acknowledge that events of climate change are real, and they do have the prospective to impact the military security sector. Secondly, securitization of climate change and military nexus should be done. Discourse creation through the usage of media channels, official websites, radios and every other mode of communication to generate awareness and educate people from both rural and urban sides. Coordination among think tanks at the national and international level, i.e. to promote research and development in the particular security sector, is also needed. The Emphasis should be on the development of climate resilience and environmentally friendly military technology.