Climate change is not only impacting weather events, but also affecting the global geopolitical landscape, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where it could aggravate existing security issues and, at worst, give rise to new and unpredictable threats.
This was one of the conclusions reached by a group of panelists discussing climate security at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference last weekend in Singapore. The panelists, including the defense ministers of New Zealand and the Maldives, the United Kingdom’s chief of naval staff, and a minister of state at Germany’s Foreign Office, warned that the effects of global warming are set to have not only economic but also security implications for the region.
As sea levels continue to rise, small islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans as well as coastal megacities in China and South and Southeast Asia are already at risk. Some could even see much of their territory become uninhabitable over the coming decades.