This article is taken from Paul Rogers’ Monthly Global Security Briefings and was originally posted by Oxford Research Group on 12 March, 2014.

Recent examples of short-term climate disruption have done much to bring the overall issue of climate change up the political agenda. In responding to what will be one of the key challenges of the next decades – well beyond the 15-year lifetime of the post-2015 global development goals currently under discussion – much of the attention has been focused on the need to adapt to those elements of climate change that are already irreversible and also to the need to decarbonise existing high carbon-emitting economies. What needs much greater attention is the fundamental need to ensure that low-carbon emitters in the Global South are enabled to combine effective human development with responding to the challenges of climate change.

Asymmetric Impacts

Floodwaters surround houses in Dhaka, Bangladesh, one of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries. Source: CAPRA Initiative (Flickr)

The scientific evidence that climate change is happening is now overwhelming and only a tiny handful of scientists question its anthropogenic causes. The most recent decadal report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO), for 2001-2010, confirms that climate change already involves disruption, with the decade seeing a clear increase in impact across the world. Events since 2010, including excessive heat waves, floods, droughts and the strongest land-fall cyclone (Typhoon Haiyan) ever recorded all point to accelerated disruption.

In recent years there has been a relative pause in the rate of atmospheric warming but research points to aspects of the Southern Oscillation being responsible, temporarily slowing the overall rate of warming of the atmosphere, but not of the oceans. This is expected to change in the second half of the current decade and the effect of this will be that anthropogenic-induced warming and natural cycles will be in synchrony, leading to rapid change and greater climatic disruption.

Climate change is thus expected to accelerate but there is, in addition, abundant evidence that it is already a markedly asymmetric process. There are many indications that substantial areas of the tropics and sub-tropics will heat up and dry out faster than temperate latitudes. This is significant for four reasons:

• These regions support the majority of the world’s people and produce the majority of the world’s food, much of it being locally produced in subsistence farming systems.
• Most of the poorer and more marginalised people live there, with least resilience to climate disruption.
• These regions also include most of the rapidly growing megacities where infrastructure is not keeping pace with growth, resulting in low urban resilience.
• They include the vast “carbon sinks” of the Amazonian, African and Southeast Asian rain forests, the diminution of which will accelerate atmospheric carbonisation.

The other element of asymmetry – relatively faster warming of the near-Arctic – is directly advantageous to some countries, most notably Russia and Canada, both of whom stand to benefit in the short term in three ways:

• Sea ice will diminish, opening up new commercial sea routes.
• Arctic fossil and other mineral resources will be easier to exploit.
• Agriculture will “move North”, opening up new regions for development.

These two countries are also major fossil fuel producers so they benefit through these revenues, including easier exploitation of Arctic reserves, as well as from the impact of their use since this is likely to enhance Arctic warming. It is hardly surprising that neither government has much interest in controlling carbon emissions. As a Permanent Observer at the Arctic Council, the UK could do much to work with the five Nordic countries, all Main Council Members, on this issue, also involving new observer states, such as China, India, Japan and South Korea that have an interest in new sea routes, but are increasingly aware of the potential direct negative impacts on their own economies of climate change.

The Changing Political Environment

The direct denial of climate change as a phenomenon affecting human society still persists and is most clearly seen in two powerful interest groups. One is the fossil fuel industry, especially oil companies and producer countries that have a clear interest in protecting their revenues. There are also major interest groups clustered around those who genuinely believe that the unrestricted free market form of capitalism is the only appropriate system for the global economy. As such they are deeply suspicious of governmental interference in the economy and therefore highly suspicious of a world-wide challenge that demands strong intergovernmental coordination and government action.

Both groups have been powerful and effective supporters of the denial community and though they are helped by the governmental attitudes of countries such as Russia and Canada, their greatest support came from the Bush administration in the United States in 2001-2009. Their influence is now declining for three broad reasons.

• One is that the frequency of severe and even extreme weather events is changing public opinion in many countries. The UK is a good example where serious winter flooding was enough to ensure that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, agreed that climate change was of huge concern, even though many in his own party remain doubters. At a global level, the WMO report adds credibility to the view that extreme weather events, like the canary in the coal mine, are harbingers of what is to come.
• A second element is that the most powerful state, under Barack Obama, acknowledges that climate change is happening, even though powerful denier elements remain resolute in their resistance.
• Finally, a number of major industrial groups, especially those in the engineering industry, are embracing the prospects for new market opportunities as renewable energy technologies and techniques of storage and conservation come into their own

Current Responses to Climate Change

The two main responses to climate change currently envisaged are the progressive decarbonisation of carbon-intensive societies and the adaptation of high- and low- carbon societies to the impacts of climate change that are inevitable given the existing increases in atmospheric carbon. Both of these remain likely to gain in importance given the recognition of the huge challenges ahead. While the action so far is inadequate, it at least now shows signs of some prioritising. Whether the 80% carbon emission requirements of industrial societies can be achieved within twenty years is, at most, questionable, but it is now at least recognised as a worthy aim.

There is also recognition that adaptation is addressing symptoms rather than responding to causes – improved flood defences in a country such as Britain may well be necessary but unless climate change is halted they are just short-term responses that will progressively be overwhelmed. Similarly, there is already good work going on in aiding the adaptation of less developed economies through, for example, the breeding of robust food grain varieties more able to withstand low rainfall. Such work needs considerable expansion but this, and the progressive decarbonisation of high emitters still misses out a crucial element in responding to climate change.

The Missing Element

In relative terms, the missing element is the low level of investment in the evolution of low-carbon economies of societies that have not substantially industrialised, mainly those in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the Global South. Such countries include most of the most marginalised and poorest people on Earth where there is a deep-rooted desire for far greater life chances, yet these cannot be met through the modes of economic organisation of the industrialised North. If the marginalised majority is to see its development prospects enhanced then this has to be achieved through new forms of low-carbon economic development. Countries have to succeed without following the path taken by industrialised states over the past two hundred years.

It follows that there is a very strong case for a state such as the UK prioritising any form of development assistance which aids this process. Much of this will centre on any form of low carbon energy use, including a wide range of renewable technologies, with major improvements in energy conservation and storage. Much work is already going on in this area, not least in relation to renewable energy technologies readily available to non-networked societies. It is also notable that when technologies emerge which demonstrate obvious utility, the speed of take-up can be remarkable. The cell-phone revolution in sub-Saharan Africa is just one example.

Regrettably, UK Department for International Development (DFID) operational plans for 2013-14 indicate that low carbon development (LCD) targets from the Department’s 2011-15 strategy have been reduced or abandoned. The 2015 target for installed clean energy capacity has been reduced by almost 97%, from 3GW to 100MW. The original target to raise $610 million in private finance for LCD has disappeared, having raised $15 million by 2013.

If the UK development programme was to commit just 20% of its budget to this area of work, the results could be extremely valuable, especially if part of that was to encourage North-South research and development partnerships. Furthermore, while the British development programme has many faults, it has grown to be the world’s second largest and there is sufficient cross-party support for this to be sustained against opposition. Because of the size of this programme, the UK has a more powerful voice than most in intergovernmental fora relating to development. It can use this voice to help ensure that the commitment promoted here is shared by other national and intergovernmental development programmes.

Conclusion

Climate disruption is one of the greatest challenges facing humankind, a challenge that is at last becoming recognised as such because of the extreme nature of many recent weather events. Decarbonising major industrial economies and funding adaptation to the already inevitable impact of climate change are essential responses but they must be accompanied by major programmes to ensure that human development in the poorer economies can be fully accomplished through processes of low carbon economic development. This is a critically important task over the coming decades, is insufficiently recognised as such, and should be a priority for any serious political party committed to the world-wide development of human well-being.

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group, for which he writes monthly security briefings.  He is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and author of numerous books including ‘Beyond Terror’. Paul writes a weekly column for openDemocracy  and tweets regularly at @ProfPRogers.

by Marianne Hanson and Jenny Nielsen

Deep tensions and frustrations are rising to the fore as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York gets underway. All parties must act bravely to bridge these deep divides if they are to make progress towards a nuclear-free world.

This year marks several important events in the international nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime, including the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT RevCon) being held in New York currently, the hoped-for finalization of the Iran deal with the P5 +1 states, and the 70th commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. It also marks five years since international humanitarian law was first mentioned explicitly in the NPT process, prompting some states to pursue a ‘humanitarian initiative’, a framing of the discourse on nuclear weapons away from a purely strategic context and towards an emphasis on the catastrophic human, health, resource and environmental consequences which would result from any use of nuclear weapons.

Opening meeting of the 2010 NPT RevCon in New York. Source: Flickr | IAEA

The RevCon, held every five years, is an important diplomatic process for international security. It takes stock of what has been done in the preceding period to curb nuclear proliferation and to implement measures for disarmament, but also looks forward and sets goals for driving these processes further. Since the ending of the Cold War, the divide between those NPT member-states which do not have nuclear weapons and the ones which do possess them (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France) has grown, with many in the former camp deeply disillusioned about the prospects for getting the latter group to disarm. The Conference aims to reach consensus in its final outcome document on what actions should be taken, but it is far from assured that such consensus will be possible this month.

The US administration continues to stress that ‘as long as nuclear weapons exist, the US will maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal’, and this sentiment is echoed by other nuclear weapon states. It is important to note, however, that while we have been lucky in avoiding a nuclear conflict since 1945, given the evidence and research on the risks associated with nuclear arsenals, as long as nuclear weapons exist, there is no guarantee that our luck will hold. As politicians, strategists, diplomats, and civil society groups convene at the UN, they may wish to reflect on what type of brave new nuclear world they want to create.

Divisive issues

The 2015 RevCon  takes place  20 years after  the NPT—widely regarded as the cornerstone of the nuclear non-proliferation regime—was indefinitely extended  through a compromise package deal (of three decisions and a Resolution on the Middle East). The Middle East resolution specifically called for efforts towards the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear and all other WMD and their delivery systems. With the elusive Helsinki conference mandated by the 2010 NPT Action Plan yet to be held, due to diverging postures by the regional parties, this issue remains a challenge for states at the New York meeting.

Not surprisingly, there exists a divergence of views on the pathway and measures needed to work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, including on which proposals are feasible in today’s strategic and political environment. The nuclear weapon states continue to insist that only an incremental, step-by-step approach, with slow reductions, is realistic, given the security tensions present in many parts of the world today. It seems to many non-nuclear weapon states and civil society groups however that this approach has not produced results, and they fear that disarmament will always be postponed and held hostage to such claims. These advocates of disarmament stress the dangers of continuing to rely on nuclear weapons; for a growing number of them, creating a legal ban against nuclear weapons is seen as desirable and feasible, even if the nuclear states do not sign  up to such an agreement at the outset.

Any serious efforts to address these divides will require engagement and informed dialogue between the various constituencies involved in the nuclear weapons policy debate. These constituencies include:

• Strategic nuclear communities of nuclear weapon states who devise, implement and sustain nuclear deterrence policy, and who inevitably argue for continuation of the status quo;
• Non-nuclear weapon states and civil society groups driving and advocating nuclear disarmament (including those driving the humanitarian initiative);
• Non-nuclear weapon states – including those in NATO, East Asia and Australia – relying on extended nuclear deterrence.

It appears very difficult to bridge the diverging views held by these constituencies. A nuclear ban and the stigmatization of nuclear weapons will surely not be acceptable to those individuals and states who still promote nuclear deterrence as a core component of defence doctrines. Some in these strategic communities may perceive the NPT RevCons as merely high-level diplomatic theatrics that take place every five years and which have no direct relevance to infrastructure and ‘real’ policy on nuclear deterrence. Efforts to consolidate a stigmatization of nuclear weapons through a legal framework, such as a proposed nuclear weapons ban treaty—without the engagement of the nuclear weapon possessors and their respective strategic communities will not garner internalized changes. At the 2015 NPT RevCon, the nuclear weapons states will argue that proposals for a nuclear ban at this time will divert focus away from the agreed 2010 Action Plan and the P5 ‘step-by-step’ process.

But many non-nuclear states and civil society groups argue that the lack of implementation of the 2010 Action Plan is undermining the credibility of the regime and the entire NPT review process. They suggest that a nuclear weapon ban treaty ought to be considered. Their argument is that while this will certainly not create a risk-free world in international security, neither will continuation of the status quo provide us with long-term security and stability. Indeed they argue that the status quo carries with it far higher levels of risk to human security and will inevitably lead to discord in international cooperation on non-proliferation priorities.

Opportunities

States parties to the NPT, the nuclear armed states outside the NPT and civil society groups should act bravely to bridge the deep divides on preferred and promoted pathways towards implementing nuclear disarmament, in order to move towards a frank dialogue and progress. This will require balanced assessment by all constituencies of perspectives and priorities. A continuation of the status quo vis-à-vis implementation of Article VI commitments to disarm will not be acceptable to many non-nuclear weapon states whose frustration has been simmering for decades over perceived unfulfilled ‘empty promises’ made in 1995, 2000, and 2010.

At present, the discourse on nuclear weapons policy remains engaged only in ‘enclave deliberation’, perpetuating the views within and excluding external or opposing views and arguments. Palpable frustration and miscommunication abounds within and between these various constituencies, making it imperative to engage and stimulate meaningful dialogue between them. There is a real need to promote informed, respectful, and frank engagement and dialogue between these camps.

Perhaps a way to inch closer to establishing such a dialogue would be to convene key stakeholders in a non-binding, Track II forum, with informed individuals from these separate constituencies, and with a progressive yet balanced agenda which addresses the underlying social constructs, assumptions and rationales of the role of nuclear weapons in security strategies and defence doctrines. An informed forum across the spectrum of diverging perspectives could help to bridge these deep divides.

If the important discussions on framing a humanitarian narrative regarding nuclear weapons which are taking place in New York (as well as in Geneva, and recently in Oslo, Nayarit and Vienna) are to have an actual impact on nuclear deterrence policy, efforts need to be focused on promoting these ideas to the stakeholders within the defence and strategic communities of the nuclear weapon states (as well as to those four nuclear weapon states who remain outside the NPT framework).

The evidence highlighted so far by the humanitarian initiative describes catastrophic scenarios of devastation and nuclear winter. Such dystopias are not inevitable; we have the means to avert them. A nuclear-free world is surely a worthy goal to aim for, but moving these efforts forward will require an understanding of and engagement with alternatives to nuclear deterrence as well as the courage from all constituencies to engage with one another.

Marianne Hanson is Associate Professor of International Relations at the School of Political Science and International Studies, University Of Queensland. She has published widely in the field of international security, with a focus on weapons control, and is currently engaged in a book project examining the emergence of the humanitarian initiative in nuclear weapons debates. 

Jenny Nielsen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies. Previously, she was a Research Analyst with the Non-proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a Programme Manager for the Defence & Security Programme at Wilton Park, and a Research Assistant for the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies (MCIS) at the University of Southampton. She holds a PhD from the University of Southampton which focused on U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy vis-à-vis Iran in the 1970s.

Featured image: US nuclear test detonation in 1952. Source: WikiMedia

President John F. Kennedy once said:

“You cannot negotiate with people who say what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.”

However a small group of states (including the state of which Kennedy was President) have done just this in relation to the possession of nuclear weapons for decades. Five of them (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) have held the position of being the privileged few allowed to possess nuclear weapons under the terms of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)  while all others agree to forego developing the ‘ultimate weapon’ in return for access to civilian nuclear technology. Three others have refused to sign the treaty (India, Israel and Pakistan) and instead developed their own nuclear weapons (overtly in the cases of India and Pakistan after 1998 and covertly in the case of Israel from the late 1960s) happy to free-ride on the lack of global proliferation ensured by the treaty. To paraphrase Kennedy, the decision of these eight states (nine if you include North Korea from 2003 onwards) to inflict mass destruction on an adversary is theirs, but everyone else’s decision to acquire the same capability can be negotiated away.

What is perhaps most extraordinary about the NPT ‘grand bargain’, as it is often called (although given that the five nuclear weapon states have exactly the same access to civil nuclear technology as the rest of the signatories, ‘bargain’ here really is a polite term for ‘scam’), is that it has remained largely intact for so long. For something built on such a seemingly unsustainable basis as an institutionalised double standard (particularly one that relates to the ultimate survival of nation states), the fact that its indefinite extension was negotiated in 1995 and that the treaty is still with us defies most conventional wisdoms about the ‘dog-eat-dog’ nature of self-help politics in an anarchical international system. Yes, the treaty may have been abused by some states and used as a cover to develop covert weapons programmes (Iraq, Libya, North Korea and possibly Iran) and one state has even withdrawn from the treaty under Article X (North Korea in 2003), but these are four cases in a treaty that boasts 189 signatories.

Challenging sustainable security

In many ways the success of the treaty regime provides one of the most robust challenges to the whole concept of sustainable security. Why bother addressing the root causes and underlying drivers of nuclear proliferation if you can effectively stem the flow of nukes by maintaining a treaty which promotes a ‘norm’ of non-proliferation as good international behaviour, and allows you to deflect charges of hypocrisy as long as you make encouraging noises about ‘eventual’ nuclear disarmament at some unspecified point in the future?

However, like a building with rotten foundations, it may be that what has appeared to be a relatively sustainable global non-proliferation regime is far less stable than many believe it to be. Recently, Egyptian negotiators walked out of the UN talks that are held in the lead-up to each five yearly review conference of the NPT. This dramatic move from Egypt was a public expression of the long-held private frustrations of its diplomats who, after being effectively promised serious negotiations towards a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (WMDFZ), in return for their support for the indefinite extension of the Treaty in 1995 (and re-affirmed explicitly at the review conference in 2010), face the continued postponement of such talks. The problem is, Israel has no interest at all in such a zone – why would it? A combination of the NPT and Western action against would-be proliferators such as Iraq, Libya and Iran have meant that the construction of a WMDFZ in the Middle East would mean that Israel would either have to join and give up its position as the only state in the region with nuclear weapons, or be the one state in the region that refuses to join. Either way, it would also mean attracting global attention to its nuclear weapons arsenal, something Israel has managed to successfully avoid of late in all the focus on the weaponisation concerns over Iran’s civil programme.

Calling it like it is

Before leaving the NPT preparatory talks, Egypt’s Ambassador Hisham Badr explicitly referred to the resolution passed in 1995 that called for negotiations on a Middle Eastern WMDFZ, and called out those that thought they could get away with Egypt sticking to its side of the bargain and getting little in return. His comments challenged the idea that the double standard could be maintained indefinitely when he stated clearly that “we cannot wait forever for this resolution to be implemented.”

Perhaps the most worrying signs here are the responses to Egypt’s move. Israeli diplomats have effectively said that with the security situation in Syria, in Egypt itself and elsewhere in the region, a WMDFZ is the least of its concerns. The United States has referred to the episode as “theatrics” and in the meantime has pushed on with negotiating a nuclear trade pact with Saudi Arabia. These trade deal talks are taking place at a time when experts are tracking an increase in the acquisition of strategic ballistic and cruise missiles by the Kingdom. The other nuclear weapons states have been conspicuously quiet throughout.

So rather than seeing this as a sign of the potential unravelling of an unsustainable regime based on a double standard, those who have most to gain from the NPT arrangement (both inside and outside the regime), are betting on this being just another ‘NPT in crisis’ – a moment they assume will pass. Whether this storm will blow over (like a mushroom cloud over the Pacific Ocean…no, sorry that bad pun is stopping right there!) is now THE big question for those concerned about nuclear threats. If the regime falls apart and 189 states are no longer happy to give up nuclear weapons, the simple days of dealing with Iranian and North Korean nuclear ‘crises’ will be looked back upon with great fondness.

Time for regime change?

While the NPT regime story is one of a continuing death foretold, it is difficult to see how the all-important 2015 review conference can outrun the double standard that sits at the heart of the regime without all signatories applying some degree of what could be called a ‘sustainable security’ approach. As Egypt’s actions make clear, anything less than a regime specifically geared towards addressing the reasons why some states seek nuclear weapons  – including regional insecurity, conventional weapons imbalances and the prestige attached to nuclear arsenals by their possessors – is a regime existing on borrowed time.

Ben Zala is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester.

Image source: Wikimedia