[Pil-pc-oceania] Military envisions role in gobal warming

[pacific-edge]

Sydney Morning Herald

Climate threat in military's sights

Tom Allard
May 17, 2007

THE Australian Defence Force has identified climate change as a national
security threat for the first time, as it predicted the military would
become more involved in stabilising failing states than fighting
conventional wars...

Launching the document - Joint Operations for the 21st Century - the Chief
of Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said the military faced
security challenges it had not envisaged before, specifically "climate
change and the impacts of global demography".

It is the first time a publicly released document from Australia's security
and intelligence apparatus has acknowledged the threat.

Analysts such as Professor Alan Dupont from the University of Sydney have
argued that climate change has the potential to devastate the productive
land and water supply in struggling nations across the region.

It risks overwhelming fragile governments, producing massive movements of
refugees while unleashing civil strife and violence.

The defence force must adapt and jettison some of its orthodoxies to tackle
the threat posed by terrorism, as well as the risk of pandemics and natural
disasters, the document says.

"The ADF should expect to be involved in a larger number of low intensity
operations, particularly stabilisation operations."

Such stabilisation operations take time and will require close co-operation
across government departments and agencies.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/pipermail/pil-pc-oceania/attachments/20070517/ae5cc882/attachment.html