Climate change and human security: Implications

Rajbir Saha

(rajbirsaha1995@gmail.com)

The focal point of contemporary global environmental politics is Climate Change. There appears to be a consensus among analysts that climate change is perhaps the most serious environmental problem that is confronting humanity as it is inextricably linked to the processes of economic growth and development. Any viable solution will have to revolve around the axis of 'environment and development' and also address the issue of 'sustainable development. A combination of several factors led to belated realization and acceptance that climate change is the biggest threat to humanity. The IPCC Science Report of 2013 gave explicit recognition to the fact that scientific evidence of the late 1980s about the increasing trend in global mean temperature is correct, and this global warming trend continues even today. The South/Third World countries account for about eighty per cent of the world's population and were latecomers to the process of industrialization. Importantly, they also increased awareness of the negative impact of environmental degradation, particularly climate change, on development efforts. The creation of environmental agencies in several developing countries also led to increased environmental awareness. In 1972, only 11 developing countries had an environmental agency, and by 180 102 developing countries had these agencies. The creation of these agencies was by itself a product of increasing environmental awareness, and these agencies in turn contributed to further environmental awareness within the Third World. Fourth, the epistemic community created environmental awareness by dissemination of scientific knowledge about climate change and its negative impact on development efforts, particularly alleviation of poverty. Fifth, media played an important role in creating awareness about environmental degradation in general, and in particular about climate change. In the new millennium, there has been an exponential increase in media coverage of the issue of climate change and its impact on humanity. Global climate change refers to the increasing temperature of the Earth primarily due to anthropogenic emissions or simply human activities. Anthropogenic emissions refer to greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are emitted into the atmosphere due to human activities and range from carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour. These greenhouse gases facilitate the retention of heat radiated by the Sun and consequently increase the surface temperature of the Earth. Amongst these greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is the most important one as it constitutes the dominant component of these gases and is the direct result of human activities. Carbon dioxide is generated by fossil fuels (which contain carbon) including coal, oil, gas and wood. There is robust evidence that CHGs have been rising since the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century. In the last hundred years, more carbon dioxide has been emitted into the air than the previous thousands of years. The scientific evidence has established that these recent changes in the concentrations of CHGs in the atmosphere have already led to a rise in global temperature. The emission of methane has also risen because of increased agricultural production. The average global temperature has already increased by 1 degree Celsius since 1880. This global warming has caused significant warming of the ocean, a rise in sea level by 20 cm, melting of the Arctic sea ice by 40 per cent, and a range of extreme weather conditions. The global mean temperature is expected to increase further between 2 and 4 degrees centigrade by 2100. The actual increase of the temperature would depend on the rate of increase of carbon dioxide emissions. If the rate of increase in carbon emissions is low, then the rise in global mean temperature can be limited to 2 degrees centigrade. However, if the increase in emissions is high, then the global mean temperature could increase by as much as 4 degrees centigrade. The long-term increase in global mean temperature has led to long-term changes in humidity, clouds and rainfall. The frequency of incidence of heavy rainfall has increased in most land areas of the world in the past fifty years; and is expected to increase with the increase in global mean temperature. Global warming has the potential of a negative impact on agriculture and food production, both globally and regionally. The important question that comes up in this context is whether we would be able to feed the extra two million people on the Earth by 2050 in a scenario of a rapidly changing climate. Similarly, global warming also has the potential of creating water stress across the world. The increasing population and the rising per capita consumption of water will impact the availability of water.

Human Security – The broad context for change in the conceptualization of security to include human security was provided by the ending of the cold war and the intensification of the contemporary phase of globalization. The ending of the cold war provided space and time for global issues of serious concern to be brought onto the international agenda. Globalization, particularly rapid advances in communication technology, increased awareness of the global issues such as poverty, inequalities of income and wealth between the North and the South as well as in the domestic societies, environmental degradation and its dire consequences for humanity, civil wars and armed conflicts, and diseases and pandemics. Traditionally, before and during the cold war era, the conceptualization of security was state-centric and meant military security. Security was perceived as a defence of national sovereignty and territorial integrity of states from external armed attack. Poverty, environmental degradation, food, energy stress, increasing volume of refugees, and human rights violations provoked analysts from the Third World to redefine and broaden the concept of security. The ideational origins of the concept of human security lie in Mehboob ul Haq and Amartya Sen's dissatisfaction with the traditional conceptualization of development as a derivative of economic growth. The concept of human security is people-centric rather than state-centric. The focus is on how to make human life better, more secure, safe, and meaningful. The first distinct articulation of human security appeared in the Human Development Report published by the United International Journal of Humanities in the 70 Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1994. The report identified seven areas that enfolded human security. First, it refers to economic security. Every human being should have assured basic income from productive and remunerative work, and if not so, then there should be a publicly financed safety net. Second, the focus is on food security. All the people should be ensured of basic food with physical and economic access at all times. Third, there should be a guarantee of minimum protection of all the people from disease and unhealthy lifestyle. Fourth, environmental security has to ensure. There should be the protection of people from the short-and-long-term effects of nature, man-made threats in nature, and deterioration of the natural environment. Fifth, the personal security of all individuals should be ensured from physical violence. This includes violence from the state, external states, violent individuals, domestic abuse, and predatory adults, sixth, community security is to be assured. People should be safeguarded from the loss of traditional relationships and values and sectarian and ethnic violence. Seventh, political security has to be ensured so that people live in a society that honours their basic human rights, and individuals and groups are free from government attempts to exercise control over ideas and information. The crux of human security was encapsulated by the United Nations Human Security Commission in 2003 as the 'objective of human security is to safeguard the vital core of all human values in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment. However, the policymakers have criticized the conceptualization of human security as too wide, fluid and imprecise. It poses problems for policy formulation and implementation; particularly about prioritization of one aspect over the other. Although the conceptualization of human security is wide, it does not include issues that have increased in salience and are vital to human life.