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For the first time in history, all the intelligence services of the United States warned in a joint report of the multiple threats that climate change poses to global security and, consequently, to the nation. Droughts, access to water, migration and lack of cooperation are among the main challenges of the next decades.
It is in the face of a crucial event, COP 26 – a world climate conference led by the United Nations to be held later this month and early November in Glasgow (United Kingdom) – that the United States intelligence services have put on the table an unprecedented warning.
The report brings together the opinions of 18 national intelligence agencies and was presented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. All agencies concluded that climate change is causing more tension and that part of it is due to how countries respond to demands for climate action, while trying to “secure their own economic interests”, the report says.
Regarding the situation of the United States in this scenario, the report said that climate change “will increasingly exacerbate a series of risks to national security interests,” which include “physical impacts that could become security challenges,” it said. the White House in a summary of the joint intelligence report.
“With more than 85% of global emissions coming from beyond the borders of the United States, we alone cannot solve this challenge. We need the rest of the world to accelerate its progress,” said a senior US official quoted by AFP. , who asked not to be named, in statements that show the growing tension over climate action.
“A Risk to America’s Financial Stability” and a threat to brace against
After the report was revealed, the White House announced that it will integrate these climate risks into its planning, an announcement that does not go unnoticed, since it is accompanied by another from the Pentagon, which affirmed that it will consider climate change “at all levels” and that this “It will be essential to train, fight and win in an increasingly complex environment.”
For her part, the Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, assured that the document places climate change “directly at the forefront of the agenda” and, in a separate report, the country’s Financial Stability Supervisory Council defined climate risk. as “an emerging threat to the financial stability of the United States.”
And it is that in the midst of the climate crisis, there are increasing concerns about the tensions that may be created in other nations, such as China, the main competitor of the United States and which currently faces great climatic risks such as desertification, major floods, rising sea levels. or migration of species that constitute the food base of the population. With a competitor like China in an increasingly complex situation, the geostrategic plane could become increasingly tense.
Eleven countries especially affected by climate change
The report highlights the situation of eleven nations where the populations run a serious risk due to their exposure to lack of water, food and energy in the coming years and especially because of their limited capacity to face these risks.
It is a shortage that could cause outbreaks of violence in these territories and their lack of financial capacity to respond to this situation could create or accentuate internal conflicts and generate waves of irregular migration to other territories, an issue that is of particular concern to the United States.
These countries include several from Latin America, four of them from Central America –Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua–, but also Colombia, in South America.
In Asia, Afghanistan, India, Myanmar, Pakistan and North Korea are also threatened, and Iraq and other African nations are included among the main affected by climate changes on the planet, generated by the excessive warming of global temperature due to, mainly, to the use of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial era.
In the midst of this situation, the report also warns of the threat that could pose that some countries begin to make use of artificial technologies, such as particles in the atmosphere that produce cooling effects or the use of chemicals to cool parts of the ocean.
Countries such as the United States, China, Russia or India are already exploring these alternatives, which could bring not only deeper alterations to the climate, but also greater geostrategic tension.
Faced with such a global challenge, the report, which now stands at the center of the United States’ national security, indicates that greater cooperation between countries is necessary to address a problem that will affect future generations from all corners of the world. planet, as well as the rest of the living beings that inhabit it.
With AFP
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