SASSI is an independent think tank dedicated to promoting peace and stability in South Asia.
We are headquartered in Islamabad, Pakistan and we aim to make a leading contribution to regional and international academic and policy-orientated research discourses about South Asian security.
Human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems . The assessment of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability in the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5) evaluates how patterns of risks and potential benefits are shifting due to climate change. It considers how impacts and risks related to climate change can be reduced and managed through adaptation and mitigation. The report assesses needs, options, opportunities, constraints, resilience, limits, and other aspects associated with adaptation.
Climate change involves complex interactions and changing likelihoods of diverse impacts. A focus on risk, which is new in this report, supports decision-making in the context of climate change, and complements other elements of the report. People and societies may perceive or rank risks and potential benefits differently, given diverse values and goals.
Compared to past WGII reports, the WGII AR5 assesses a substantially larger knowledge base of relevant scientific, technical, and socioeconomic literature. Increased literature has facilitated comprehensive assessment across a broader set of topics and sectors, with expanded coverage of human systems, adaptation, and the ocean. More
Since the events of February and March this year, in particular the annexation of Crimea, there have been pundits suggesting that perhaps Ukraine should have held onto Soviet nuclear weapons back in the early 1990s and thus deterred Russia’s intervention.
Patricia Lewis
In addition to the inaccuracy of such assertions – Ukraine did not have the command and control of the nuclear weapons on its territory – they are highly irresponsible in that they are likely to stimulate nuclear proliferation policies in other countries and stem from fantasy not reality.
Back in the early 1990s, at the point when the USSR fell apart, three newly independent states found themselves with a tricky nuclear weapons problem: Moscow had stationed these weapons on the territories of other members of the Soviet Union namely Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine as part of its nuclear doctrine. The world feared that the USSR, a single nuclear weapons state would spawn four. Not quite the outcome hoped by the people of Europe and the US. Nor was it a comfortable position for Russia, unsure where the loyalties of the former USSR countries would lie. It was already clear that Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland and Hungary were distancing themselves from Russia as fast as they could, with the view to join NATO and the EU. Russia was not keen to be surrounded by three nuclear-armed states in addition to the US, UK, France and China.
For its part, the US and its allies were keen to move ahead on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation efforts. The bilateral nuclear reduction negotiations had been going well, the problem of short-range tactical nuclear weapons in Europe was being addressed, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty negotiations had transformed the management of those forces, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva was negotiating the Chemical Weapons Convention and there was great hope that a new relationship could be forged between West and East putting nuclear weapons firmly in the past.
Although Ukraine was never a fully-fledged nuclear weapon state, large numbers of strategic (approximately 1,900) and tactical (approximately 2,500) nuclear weapons were in place on its territory. Ukraine’s national capabilities at that time included a full civil fuel cycle expertise, and a missile and space-rocket design and manufacturing capability (the Southern Machine-building Factory ‘Yuzhmash’ was in the closed city of Dnipropetrovsk). The nuclear warheads however were not manufactured or tested in Ukraine and so, at that time, the country did not have the full complement of expertise it would have needed to become a true nuclear weapons possessor able to threaten to launch and detonate a nuclear warhead.
Ukraine could have developed such a capability and learned how to maintain nuclear warheads, found a way to change and adapt the launch codes, alter targeting programmes and guidance systems, and establish command and control procedures over the next 5-10 years. However, in 1990, Ukraine’s parliament adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in which Ukraine committed not to use, produce or stockpile nuclear weapons. So once Ukraine became an independent state in 1991, negotiations to relinquish the remaining stockpile to Russia began (along with similar efforts in Belarus and Kazakhstan).
In 1991, as part of the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States, Ukraine pledged to join the NPT under the Alma-Ata Declaration on unified control of nuclear weapons and agreed to the withdrawal and dismantling of tactical nuclear weapons. Then Ukraine signed the Lisbon Protocol of the START I treaty in May 1992 and the Minsk Agreement on Strategic Forces at the end of the same year, committing to the full dismantlement of the nuclear forces by the end of 1994.
What followed next was hardly plain sailing however. Some in Ukraine’s political system wanted to hang on to the nuclear weapons, believing that they could be useful in providing a long-term counter to any future Russian aggression. Others wanted to hold on to them to secure a better bargain with Russia and the US, particularly in exchange for security, energy, financial and trade deals. The debates and negotiations stretched out for years with President Leonid Kravchuk promising one thing and the Rada demanding another. Numerous delays followed and the debates also signified a tussle for the centre of democratic power in Ukraine between the executive and legislative branches of governance.
Finally in 1994, a trilateral agreement between Ukraine, Russia and the US was agreed that enabled Ukraine’s accession as a non-nuclear weapons state to the NPT on 5 December 1994. The same day, the Budapest Memorandum was adopted by the United States, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom – the three depositaries of the NPT – that agreed to, among other things, respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine, to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, to refrain from economic coercion of Ukraine and to seek immediate UN Security Council action to provide assistance if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression.
The Budapest Memorandum has clearly been breached in the letter and spirit by one of its own members. Far from respecting the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine and refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine, Russia has demonstrated that such assurances count for little in the real world. These assurances were part of the package that enabled Ukraine to join the NPT and Russia’s actions will send shivers down the spines of all 180+ non-nuclear weapons states that rely on such assurances. Russia’s actions could lead to a severe loss of trust in security assurances. At least the UK and US have fulfilled their commitments under the Budapest Memorandum and have taken the matter to the UN Security Council and continue to try to resolve the situation with Russia as promised. They at least have demonstrated their trustworthiness in terms of the assurances they have given. More
by Patricia Lewis, Research Director, International Security
GENEVA: The United Nations called on all states on Friday to ensure that the use of armed drones complies with international law, backing a proposal from Pakistan seen as taking aim at the United States.
A resolution presented by Pakistan on behalf of co-sponsors including Yemen and Switzerland did not single out any state. The United States is the biggest drone user in conflicts including those in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia.
“The purpose of this resolution is not to shame or name anyone, as we are against this approach,” Pakistan's ambassador Zamir Akram told the UN Human Rights Council.
“It is about supporting a principle.”
The United States prizes drones for their accuracy against al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Pakistan says they kill civilians and infringe its sovereignty.
“The United States is committed to ensuring that our actions, including those involving remotely piloted aircraft, are undertaken in accordance with all applicable domestic and international laws and with the greatest possible transparency, consistent with our national security needs,” Paula Schriefer, US deputy assistant secretary of state, told the talks.
The resolution was adopted by a vote of 27 states in favour to six against, with 14 abstentions at the 47-member Geneva forum. The United States, Britain and France voted against.
The Council “urges all states to ensure that any measures employed to counter terrorism, including the use of remotely piloted aircraft or armed drones, comply with their obligations under international law ... in particular the principles of precaution, distinction and proportionality.”
The text voiced concern at civilian casualties resulting from the use of remotely-piloted aircraft or armed drones, as highlighted by the UN special investigator on counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson in a recent report.
It called on UN human rights boss Navi Pillay to organise expert discussions on armed drones and report back in September.
The United States, Britain and France said it was not appropriate for the forum to put weapons systems on its agenda.
The Obama administration preferred to discuss drones under an initiative of Switzerland and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which it hoped would provide a “non-politicised forum” where military experts can discuss law of war issues, Schriefer said.
Akram, speaking before the vote, said opposition “can only lead to the conclusion that these states are guilty of violating applicable international law and demonstrate that they are afraid of being exposed in the expert panel.”
A separate UN human rights watchdog called on the Obama administration on Thursday to limit its use of drones and to curb US surveillance activities.
Here’s something to add to your doomsday list of natural resources that people need to survive but are threatened by climate change: snow.
It’s a key source of freshwater for more than 1 billion people across the globe, slaking thirst, irrigating croplands, and driving turbines that generate electricity. Conveniently, in much of the world, snow also acts as a natural reservoir, storing water during wet seasons, then rationing it out slowly during drier summer months. But today, growing populations, warming temperatures, and changing weather patterns are straining that supply like never before. “June is the new July,” says Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company in Colorado. “Snowmelt comes earlier than it used to, and it all happens in one big flood.”
Which means that knowing exactly how much snow is in the highlands—and when it’s coming down to lower elevations to feed rivers, aqueducts, and irrigation channels—is ever more important. But how do you measure something that’s spread over thousands of miles of steep, rugged, alpine terrain?
Tom Painter, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has an answer: by measuring snow from thousands of feet in the air. Using sophisticated, aircraft-borne sensors that gauge snow’s depth and the amount of light it reflects, Painter and his team are assembling the most accurate measurement ever made of just how much water the mountains hold.
This is welcome news in California, where the water content of accumulated snow is at historically low levels. Runoff from the Sierra Nevada mountains provides about a third of the entire state’s water, and up to 80 percent in some areas, supplying tens of millions of people and almost 1 million acres of farmland.
Painter can’t make it snow, but he can provide more and better data to water managers, who need to plan how to most efficiently fill their reservoirs; farmers deciding which crops to plant and when; and cities trying to figure out if they’ll have enough water to supply their residents—or will need to start rationing. “The demand for knowledge about water resources is at an all-time high,” says Painter, a gregarious, athletically built 46-year-old.
For decades, state water officials have estimated the snowpack’s water content by a straightforward method that will appeal to steampunk aficionados: They clamber into the mountains on snowshoes and stick aluminum tubes into the snow. The tubes indicate depth while collecting a sample revealing water volume. More recently, California has added a network of tabletop-size scales scattered through the mountains that electronically transmit the weight of snow that has fallen on them.
Both systems yield reliable measurements but only of the snow where the measurement is taken; extrapolating out from that to a whole basin, or a whole mountain range, is better than guesswork but less than precise. What’s more, both the scales and the human surveyors are concentrated at lower elevations, leaving scientists to wonder what lies farther uphill. “The old system worked OK historically because there was always enough water,” says Painter. “But now it’s all been allocated out, and demand is starting to exceed supply.” More
I have been struck by the unhelpfulness of ideology to my own efforts to think through the complexities of recommended or preferred policy in relation to Syria, and more recently, the Ukraine. There is no obvious posture to be struck by referencing a ‘left’ or ‘right’ identity. A convincing policy proposal depends on sensitivity to context and the particulars of the conflict.
Richard Falk
To insist that the left/right distinction obscures more than it reveals is not the end of the story. To contend that ideology is unhelpful as a guide for action is not the same as saying that it is irrelevant to the public debate. In the American context, to be on the left generally implies an anti-interventionist stance, while being on the right is usually associated with being pro-interventionist. Yet, these first approximations can be misleading, even ideologically. Liberals, who are deliberately and consigned to the left by the mainstream media, often favor intervention if the rationale for military force is primarily humanitarian.
Likewise, the neocon right is often opposed to intervention if it is not persuasively justified on the basis of strategic interests, which could include promoting ideological affinities. The neocon leitmotif is global leadership via military strength, force projection, friends and enemies, and the assertion and enforcement of red lines. When Obama failed to bomb Syria in 2013 after earlier declaring that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime was for him a red line this supposedly undermined the credibility of American power. My point is that ideology remains a helpful predictor of how people line up with respect to controversial uses of force, although relying on ideology is a lazy way to think if the purpose is to decide on the best course of action to take, which requires a sensitivity to the concrete realities of a particular situation. Such an analysis depends on context, and may include acknowledging the difficulties of intervention, and the moral unacceptability of nonintervention.
On a high level of abstraction, it is true that the hard right tends to find a justification for military action as the preferred solvent for any challenge to American foreign policy and the hard left is equally disposed to dismiss all calls for humanitarian intervention as sly anti-imperialist maneuvers, recalling Noam Chomsky’s dismissal of the Kosovo War in 1999 as ‘miltary humanism.’ In this sense it seems easier to proceed by dogma than to engage seriously with the existential complexities and uncertainties of the specifics pertaining to a conflict setting, and thus be willing to conclude either that ‘the situation is horrible, and something must be done’ and yet still believe that ‘the situation is horrible, but military intervention will only make it worse.’ This is the kind of conundrum that has perplexed and troubled me ever since the Syrian uprising in 2011 turned violent, unleashing the criminal fury of the Damascus regime, and attracting a variety of predatory outside forces on both sides. Often those on one side or the other of the debate fail to recognize the consequences of either a failed intervention or a refusal to intervene.
There are at least two problems that bedevil interpretation in these setting. To assess particularities of context requires a genuine familiarity with the specifics and changing dynamics of a conflict if persuasive policy recommendations are to be grounded in relevant knowledge rather than on knee jerk reactions. And secondly, no matter how expert, core uncertainties will persist, and the difficulties of making choices that involve killing and dying of others is a huge weight of responsibility if the policy risks and alternatives are carefully weighed.
I would add a third caveat—in the last fifty years military intervention has rarely worked out well for the target society or for the intervener; that is, historical experience would seem to call for what lawyers call ‘a presumption against intervention.’ This presumption is not intended as an absolute prohibition, but it does impose a burden of persuasion on the advocates of intervention. Often, also, the evidence pro and con intervention is doctored and manipulated one way or another to reflect the views of the government or of special interests. This was spectacularly illustrated by the lead up to the U.S. led attack on Iraq in 2003 where governmental efforts to strengthen the public case for intervention produced notorious fabrications. Rwanda in 1994, did present an exceptionally strong humanitarian case supportive of a limited military intervention with operational responsibility entrusted to the United Nations, but the bad experience of the Clinton presidency with the Somalia intervention during the prior year led the United States to oppose effectively a UN effort to prevent, or at least mitigate, a genocidal onslaught.
It would seem against such a background that the best solution in such situations might be procedural, that is, leaving the final policy decision in each instance up to a determination by the UN Security Council. If the Bush Administration had accepted the outcome of the Security Council vote that withheld approval for intervening in Iraq it would have been spared a humiliating strategic defeat that damaged America’s status as world leader. Allowing the Security Council to decide whether or not international force is required and justified also is consistent with the presumption against intervention due to the possibility that any of the five permanent members casting a negative vote counts as a veto.
The Obama approach has not fared much better than that of Bush. It induced members of the Security Council opposed to military intervention to accept the plea of NATO countries in 2011 to engage in a humanitarian operation to save the besieged civilian population of the Libyan city of Benghazi by way of establishing a No Fly Zone. Once the operation got underway, it completely ignored these UN guidelines, and used its air dominance to widen the scope of violence and carry out an unauthorized mission of regime-change. The aftermath in Libya casts further doubt on the overall wisdom of authorizing intervention in such a circumstance of internal strife. As well, the spillover from the refusal of the interveners to adhere to the limited UN mandate has been to undermine trust in such a way as to weaken any prospect for the UN to play a more robust role in resolving the Syrian conflict where the case for interference has become stronger than it ever was in Libya.
Beyond this issue of trust are questions of geopolitical alignment, especially encounters that align the U.S. and NATO on one side and Russia and/or China on the other. As yet, fortunately, there is no second cold war, although the neocons, and some in Europe, are beating the war drums in relation to the Ukraine in such a way as to point in that most unwelcome and totally unjustified direction. Russia’s sensitivity to hostile developments on its borders, previously expressed a few years ago in the 2008 crisis over Georgia, is now more potently evident in relation to the Ukraine and breakaway Crimea, which contains a strategic Russian naval base at Sevastopol that is the only Russian warm water port, as well as home to their Black Sea naval fleet. More
Heat waves could significantly reduce crop yields and threaten global food supply if climate change is not tackled and reversed.
This is according to a new study led by researchers at the University of East Anglia and published today, 20 March, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, which has, for the first time, estimated the global effects of extreme temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the production of maize, wheat and soybean.
Earlier studies have found that climate change is projected to reduce maize yields globally by the end of the century under a "business as usual" scenario for future emissions of greenhouse gases; however, this new study shows that the inclusion of the effects of heat waves, which have not been accounted for in previous modelling calculations, could double the losses of the crop.
Lead author of the study Delphine Deryng, from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, said: "Instances of extreme temperatures, brought about by a large increase in global mean temperature, can be detrimental to crops at any stage of their development, but in particular around anthesis—the flowering period of the plant.
"At this stage, extreme temperatures can lead to reduced pollen sterility and reduced seed set, greatly reducing the crop yield."
The impacts on wheat and soybean are likely to be less profound, primarily because of the fertilisation effects that elevated levels of CO2 can have on these crops.
In plants, CO2 is central to the process of photosynthesis—the mechanism by which they create food from sunlight, CO2 and water. When there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the leaves of plants can capture more of it, resulting in an overall increase in the biomass of the plant.
In addition, plants are able to manage their water use much more efficiently in these conditions, resulting in better tolerance to drought episodes. However, it is not clear whether these CO2 fertilisation effects will actually occur in the field owing to interactions with other factors.
If the CO2 fertilisation effects do occur, the researchers found that the yields of wheat and soybean are expected to increase throughout the 21st century under a "business-as-usual" scenario; however, the increases are projected to be significantly offset by the effects of heat waves, as these plants are still vulnerable to the effects of extreme temperatures.
The positive impacts on soybean yield will be offset by 25 per cent and the positive impacts on wheat will be offset by 52 per cent.
The researchers, from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (University of East Anglia, Norwich), Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (London School of Economics and Political Science, London), and Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre (McGill University, Montreal), arrived at their results using the global crop model PEGASUS to simulate crop yield responses to 72 climate change scenarios spanning the 21st century.
The study also identified particular areas where heat waves are expected to have the largest negative effects on crop yields. Some of the largest affected areas are key for crop production, for example the North American corn belt for maize. When the CO2 fertilisation effects are not taken into account, the researchers found a net decrease in yields in all three crops, intensified by extreme heat stress, for the top-five producing countries of each crop.
"Our results show that maize yields are expected to be negatively affected by climate change, while the impacts on wheat and soybean are generally positive, unless CO2 fertilisation effects have been overestimated," continued Deryng.
"However, extreme heat stress reinforced by 'business-as-usual' reduces the beneficial effects considerably in these two crops. Climate mitigation policy would help reduce risks of serious negative impacts on maize worldwide and reduce risks of extreme heat stress that threaten global crop production."
Figure 1: Comparing finite and renewable planetary energy reserves (Terawatt-years). Total recoverable reserves are shown for the finite resources. Yearly potential is shown the environmental for the renewables (source: Perez & Perez, 2009a)
We have, on this planet, vast renewable energy potential: First and foremost, the solar energy resource is very large (Perez et al., 2009a). Figure 1 compares the current annual energy consumption of the world to (1) the known planetary reserves of the finite fossil and nuclear resources, and (2) to the yearly potential of the renewable alternatives. The volume of each sphere represents the total amount of energy recoverable from the finite reserves and the annual potential of renewable sources.
While finite fossil and nuclear resources are very large, particularly coal, they are not infinite and would last at most a few generations. More
From the darkness of a box in the Nevada desert, he watched as three men trudged down a dirt road in Afghanistan.
The box was kept cold—precisely sixty-eight degrees—and the only light inside came from the glow of monitors. The air smelled spectrally of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. On his console, the image showed the midwinter landscape of eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar Province—a palette of browns and grays, fields cut to stubble, dark forests climbing the rocky foothills of the Hindu Kush. He zoomed the camera in on the suspected insurgents, each dressed in traditional shalwar kameez, long shirts and baggy pants. He knew nothing else about them: not their names, not their thoughts, not the thousand mundane and profound details of their lives.
He was told that they were carrying rifles on their shoulders, but for all he knew, they were shepherd’s staffs. Still, the directive from somewhere above, a mysterious chain of command that led straight to his headset, was clear: confirmed weapons. He switched from the visible spectrum—the muted grays and browns of “day-TV”—to the sharp contrast of infrared, and the insurgents’ heat signatures stood out ghostly white against the cool black earth. A safety observer loomed behind him to make sure the “weapon release” was by the book. A long verbal checklist, his targeting laser locked on the two men walking in front. A countdown—three…two…one…—then the flat delivery of the phrase “missile off the rail.” Seventy-five hundred miles away, a Hellfire flared to life, detached from its mount, and reached supersonic speed in seconds.
It was quiet in the dark, cold box in the desert, except for the low hum of machines.
He kept the targeting laser trained on the two lead men and stared so intently that each individual pixel stood out, a glowing pointillist dot abstracted from the image it was meant to form. Time became almost ductile, the seconds stretched and slowed in a strange electronic limbo. As he watched the men walk, the one who had fallen behind seemed to hear something and broke into a run to catch up with the other two. Then, bright and silent as a camera flash, the screen lit up with white flame.
Airman First Class Brandon Bryant stared at the scene, unblinking in the white-hot clarity of infrared. He recalls it even now, years later, burned into his memory like a photo negative: “The smoke clears, and there’s pieces of the two guys around the crater. And there’s this guy over here, and he’s missing his right leg above his knee. He’s holding it, and he’s rolling around, and the blood is squirting out of his leg, and it’s hitting the ground, and it’s hot. His blood is hot. But when it hits the ground, it starts to cool off; the pool cools fast. It took him a long time to die. I just watched him. I watched him become the same color as the ground he was lying on.”
That was Brandon Bryant’s first shot. It was early 2007, a few weeks after his twenty-first birthday, and Bryant was a remotely-piloted-aircraft sensor operator—a “sensor” for short—part of a U.S. Air Force squadron that flew Predator drones in the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan. Beginning in 2006, he worked in the windowless metal box of a Ground Control Station (GCS) at Nellis Air Force Base, a vast sprawl of tarmac and maintenance hangars at the edge of Las Vegas.
The airmen kept the control station dark so they could focus on controlling their MQ-1B Predators circling two miles above the Afghan countryside. Bryant sat in a padded cockpit chair. He had a wrestler’s compact build, a smooth-shaved head, and a piercing ice blue gaze frequently offset by a dimpled grin. As a sensor, his job was to work in tandem with the drone’s pilot, who sat in the chair next to him. While the pilot controlled the drone’s flight maneuvers, Bryant acted as the Predator’s eyes, focusing its array of cameras and aiming its targeting laser. When a Hellfire was launched, it was a joint operation: the pilot pulled a trigger, and Bryant was responsible for the missile’s “terminal guidance,” directing the high-explosive warhead by laser to its desired objective. Both men wore regulation green flight suits, an unironic Air Force nod to the continuity of military decorum in the age of drone warfare.
Since its inception, the drone program has been largely hidden, its operational details gathered piecemeal from heavily redacted classified reports or stage-managed media tours by military public-affairs flacks. Bryant is one of very few people with firsthand experience as an operator who has been willing to talk openly, to describe his experience from the inside. While Bryant considers leakers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden heroes willing to sacrifice themselves for their principles, he’s cautious about discussing some of the details to which his top-secret clearance gave him access. Still, he is a curtain drawn back on the program that has killed thousands on our behalf.
Despite President Obama’s avowal earlier this year that he will curtail their use, drone strikes have continued apace in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. With enormous potential growth and expenditures, drones will be a center of our policy for the foreseeable future. (By 2025, drones will be an $82 billion business, employing an additional 100,000 workers.) Most Americans—61 percent in the latest Pew survey—support the idea of military drones, a projection of American power that won’t risk American lives. More
Climate change will displace hundreds of millions of people by the end of this century, increasing the risk of violent conflict and wiping trillions of dollars off the global economy, a forthcoming UN report will warn.
The second of three publications by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due to be made public at the end of this month, is the most comprehensive investigation into the impact of climate change ever undertaken. A draft of the final version seen by The Independent says the warming climate will place the world under enormous strain, forcing mass migration, especially in Asia, and increasing the risk of violent conflict.
Based on thousands of peer-reviewed studies and put together by hundreds of respected scientists, the report predicts that climate change will reduce median crop yields by 2 per cent per decade for the rest of the century – at a time of rapidly growing demand for food. This will in turn push up malnutrition in children by about a fifth, it predicts.
The report also forecasts that the warming climate will take its toll on human health, pushing up the number of intense heatwaves and fires and increasing the risk from food and water-borne diseases.
While the impact on the UK will be relatively small, global issues such as rising food prices will pose serious problems. Britain’s health and environmental “cultural heritage” is also likely to be hurt, the report warns.
According to the draft report, a rare grassy coastal habitat unique to Scotland and Ireland is set to suffer, as are grouse moors in the UK and peatlands in Ireland. The UK’s already elevated air pollution is likely to worsen as burning fossil fuels increase ozone levels, while warmer weather will increase the incidence of asthma and hay fever.
Coastal systems and low-lying areas
The report predicts that by the end of the century “hundreds of millions of people will be affected by coastal flooding and displaced due to land loss”. The majority affected will be in East Asia, South-east Asia and South Asia. Rising sea levels mean coastal systems and low-lying areas will increasingly experience submergence, coastal flooding and coastal erosion.
Food security
Relatively low local temperature increases of 1C or more above pre-industralised levels are projected to “negatively impact” yields of major crops such as wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions. The report forecasts that climate change will reduce median yields by up to 2 per cent per decade for the rest of the century – against a backdrop of rising demand that is set to increase by 14 per cent per decade until 2050.
The global economy
A global mean temperature increase of 2.5C above pre-industrial levels may lead to global aggregate economic losses of between 0.2 and 2.0 per cent, the report warns. Global GDP was $71.8trn (£43.1trn) in 2012, meaning a 2 per cent reduction would wipe $1.4trn off the world’s economic output that year.
Human health
Until mid-century, climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating problems that already exist, the report says. Climate change will lead to increases in ill-health in many regions, with examples including a greater likelihood of injury, disease and death due to more intense heatwaves and fires; increased likelihood of under-nutrition; and increased risks from food and water-borne diseases. Without accelerated investment in planned adaptations, climate change by 2050 would increase the number of undernourished children under the age of five by 20-25 million globally, or by 17-22 per cent, it says.
Human security
Climate change over the 21st century will have a significant impact on forms of migration that compromise human security, the report states. For example, it indirectly increases the risks from violent conflict in the form of civil war, inter-group violence and violent protests by exacerbating well-established drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks.
Small-island states and other places highly vulnerable to sea-level rise face major challenges to their territorial integrity. Some “transboundary” impacts of climate change, such as changes in sea ice, shared water resources and migration of fish stocks have the potential to increase rivalry among states.
Freshwater resources
The draft of the report says “freshwater-related risks of climate change increase significantly with increasing greenhouse gas emissions”. It finds that climate change will “reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry subtropical regions”, exacerbating the competition for water. Terrestrial and freshwater species will also face an increased extinction risk under projected climate change during and beyond the 21st century.
Unique landscapes
Machair, a grassy coastal habitat found only in north-west Scotland and the west coast of Ireland, is one of the several elements of the UK’s “cultural heritage” that is at risk from climate change, the report says. Machair is found only on west-facing shores and is rich in calcium carbonate derived from crushed seashells. It is so rare and special, that a recent assessment by the European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism described it as an “unknown jewel”.
The IPCC also warns of climate threats to Irish peatlands and UK grousemoors and notes an increasing risk to health across Europe from rising air pollution – in which the polluted UK is already in serial breach of EU regulations. More
We stand at a fork in the road. Conventional oil and gas supplies are limited. We can move down the path of dirtier more carbon-intensive unconventional fossil-fuels, digging up the dirtiest tar sands and tar shales, hydrofracking for gas, continued mountain-top removal and mechanized destructive long-wall coal mining. Or we can choose the alternative path of clean energies and energy efficiency.
The climate science is crystal clear. We cannot go down the path of the dirty fuels without guaranteeing that the climate system passes tipping points, leaving our children and grandchildren a situation out of their control, a situation of our making. Unstable ice sheets will lead to continually rising seas and devastation of coastal cities worldwide. A large fraction of Earth's species will be driven to extinction by the combination of shifting climate zones and other stresses. Summer heat waves, scorching droughts, and intense wildfires will become more frequent and extreme. At other times and places, the warmer water bodies and increased evaporation will power stronger storms, heavier rains, greater floods.
The economics is crystal clear. We are all better off if fossil fuels are made to pay their honest costs to society. We must collect a gradually rising fee from fossil fuel companies at the source, the domestic mine or port of entry, distributing the funds to the public on a per capita basis. This approach will provide the business community and entrepreneurs the incentives to develop clean energy and energy-efficient products, and the public will have the resources to make changes.
This approach is transparent, built on conservative principles. Not one dime to the government.
The alternative is to slake fossil fuel addiction, forcing the public to continue to subsidize fossil fuels. And hammer the public with more pollution. The public must pay the medical costs for all pollution effects. The public will pay costs caused by climate change. Fossil fuel moguls get richer, we get poorer. Our children are screwed. Our well-oiled coal-fired government pretends to not understand.
Joe Nocera is polite, but he does not understand basic economics. If a rising price is placed on carbon, the tar sands will be left in the ground where they belong. And the remarkable life and landscape of the original North American people will be preserved.
Joe Nocera quoted a private comment from a note explaining that I could not promise I would be back in New York to meet him. But he did not mention the contents of the e-mail that I sent him with information about the subject we were to discuss. The entire e-mail is copied below.
Jim Hansen
_______
Joe,
Here are some relevant words from the draft of a paper that I am working on:
Transition to a post-fossil fuel world of clean energies will not occur as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. Fossil fuels are cheap only because they are subsidized and do not pay their costs to society. Air and water pollution from fossil fuel extraction and use have high costs in human health, food production, and natural ecosystems, with costs borne by the public. Costs of climate change and ocean acidification also are borne by the public, especially young people and future generations.
Thus the essential underlying policy, albeit not sufficient, is for emissions of CO2 to come with a price that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. Because so much energy is used through expensive capital stock, the price should rise in a predictable way to enable people and businesses to efficiently adjust lifestyles and investments to minimize costs.
An economic analysis indicates that a tax beginning at $15/tCO2 and rising $10/tCO2 each year would reduce emissions in the U.S. by 30% within 10 years. Such a reduction is more than 10 times as great as the carbon content of tar sands oil carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (830,000 barrels/day). Reduced oil demand would be nearly six times the pipeline capacity, thus rendering it superfluous
A rising carbon price is the sine qua non for fossil fuel phase out, but it is not sufficient. Investment is needed in energy RD&D (research, development and demonstration) in new technologies such as low-loss smart electric grids, electrical vehicles interacting effectively with the power grid, and energy storage for intermittent renewable energy. Nuclear power has made major contributions to climate change mitigation and mortality prevention, and advanced nuclear reactor designs can address safety, nuclear waste, and weapons proliferation issues that have limited prior use of nuclear power, but governments need to provide a regulatory environment that supports timely construction of approved designs to limit costs. etc.
The first Chatham House conference on autonomous military technologies in London on 24-25 February brought together individuals from different constituencies to contemplate autonomous weapons and the prospect of delegating human control over targeting and attack decisions to machines. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots was pleased to be able to attend this well-organized and timely conference held under the Chatham House rule, which permits participants to use information received but not to reveal the identity or affiliation of the speaker or participants. The conference was a useful opportunity to discuss our concerns with fully autonomous weapons, provide clarifications, and answer questions about our coalition’s focus and objectives.
Some participants have since publicly provided their views on the conference, including Charles Blanchard on Opinio Juris (4 March) and Paul Scharre on the Lawfare blog (3 March).
Several of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots representatives who attended the Chatham House conference have provided input for this web post, including on the reflections published by Blanchard and Scharre. The campaign’s principal spokespersons Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams, roboticist Professor Noel Sharkey, and Human Rights Watch arms director Steve Goose addressed the conference, while campaigners were present from the non-governmental organizations Action on Armed Violence,Amnesty International, Article 36, Human Rights Watch, International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and PAX (formerly IKV Pax Christi).
The perspective of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and its call for a ban on fully autonomous weapons were heard throughout the conference, but to ensure that key concerns are not downplayed and in the spirit of furthering common understanding on this emerging issue of international concern, we have the following comments on the reflections by Blanchard and Scharre.
Blanchard, a former US Air Force general counsel, gave a public talk on the topic “Autonomous Technologies: A Force for Good?” at Chatham House together with our campaign spokesperson Jody Williams, who received the 1997 Nobel Peace laureate together with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). He is now a partner at Arnold & Porter LLP, a Washington DC law firm that actively supported the negotiation of the 2006 Disability Rights Treaty as well as efforts to include victim assistance provisions in the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.
Blanchard considers “deep philosophical viewpoints” in his piece, which looks at some of the “disputes” at the Chatham House conference over the call for a ban on fully autonomous weapons to enshrine the principle that only humans should decide to kill other humans. Blanchard is concerned that “more death” may result from a ban because autonomous weapons might be “more capable than humans” of complying with the laws of war.
While we do not agree with Blanchard’s skeptical position as to the benefits that a ban on fully autonomous weapons could provide, we welcome his acknowledgement of the counter-argument that letting a machine decide whom to kill would violate notions of human dignity. Blanchard’s assessment of the viability of a ban illustrates how the debate has advanced far in recent months to the point that a ban is being seriously contemplated.
Paul Scharre heads the 20YY Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American Security in Washington DC and previously worked for the US Department of Defense, where he led a working group that drafted the 2012 policy directive 3000.09 on autonomy in weapon systems. His comprehensive presentations at the Chatham House conference were well-received, and his rational, measured and well-written reflections on the conference contain many useful observations.
Yet Scharre’s “key takeaways” oversimplify the “areas of agreement” and make it sound as if participants agreed more often than they actually did. His commentary attempts to reflect the conference speakers’ views and areas of convergence, but the same cannot be done for the audience—comprising approximately 150 participants from government, military, industry, think tanks, academia, civil society, and media.
With respect to the scope of what was discussed at the Chatham House, Scharre’s depiction of the conference being focused only on “anti-materiel” autonomous weapons systems is confusing as the conference addressed all types of autonomous weapons systems, including “anti-personnel.” The conference was also not specifically limited to “lethal” autonomous weapons as opposed to “non-lethal” or “less-than-lethal.” That said, we welcome the comments by Scharre indicating that he is not in favor fully autonomous anti-personnel weapon systems.
There was indeed convergence by the technologists who spoke to the capabilities of current autonomous technologies and the notion that precursors indicate something more dangerous to come.
Throughout the conference there did appear to be “universal agreement that humans should remain in control of decisions over the use of lethal force.” Consensus on this point was, however, qualified by a number of speakers who suggested that systems with no meaningful human control could be legal and have military utility. Such views illustrate why policy-level restraints will not suffice in addressing the challenges posed by fully autonomous weapons and should be supplemented with new law.
Indeed, this debate is happening because many are contemplating a future with no human control. Yet Scharre gave minimal consideration to proliferation concerns—development, production, transfer, stockpiling—in the “objections” section of his reflection. Concerns over an arms race were raised several times in the course of the Chatham House conference, which was sponsored by BAE Systems, manufacturer of the Taranis autonomous aircraft, the prime example of a UK precursor to autonomous weapons technology. As has been learned from experience with nuclear weapons, proliferation concerns cannot be addressed permanently through regulation and existing international humanitarian law.
Scharre claims that “a major factor in whether autonomous weapons are militarily attractive or even necessary may be simply whether other nations develop them,” but he seems to misunderstand the point of stigmatization in the “endgame” section of his reflections. By proposing that that the answer to concerns about “cheating” is an “even playing field” where everyone can have them (and presumably all can be “cheaters”), Scharre dismisses the power of an international, legally binding ban to stigmatize a weapon and ensure respect for the law. A global ban could succeed in stigmatizing autonomous weapons to the extent that no major military power uses them, as has been the case for the Mine Ban Treaty where major powers have not used antipersonnel landmines in years.
Scharre views the commercial sector as driving the “underlying technology behind autonomy” but that ignores that fact that industry is regulated by the state. Governments won’t prevent industry from developing the underlying technology nor–as Blanchard notes–is the campaign seeking to do that because the same technology that will be used in autonomous robotics and AI systems has many non-weapons and non-military purposes. But research and development activities should be banned if they are directed at technology that can only be used for fully autonomous weapons or that is explicitly intended for use in such systems.
Scharre downplays legal concerns in several sections of his reflections. This is in part because the conference panel on international law was dominated by legal advocates of autonomous weapons. Several of the law panelists may have agreed with each other that autonomous weapons are “not illegal weapons prohibited under the laws of armed conflict” but this was not a view shared by all participants at the conference. In particular, serious concern was expressed about the nature of fully autonomous weapons and their likely inability, in making attack decisions, to distinguish noncombatants and judge the proportionality of expected civilian harms to expected military gains. Although no one can know for sure what future technology will look like, the possibility that fully autonomous weapons would be unable to comply with the laws of war cannot be dismissed at this point.
One speaker argued that if fully autonomous weapons could lawfully be used in any circumstance, they could not be considered per se unlawful. This point may be correct legally, but the case can be made that any weapon can be used legally in some carefully crafted scenario. The possibility of such limited use should not be used to legitimize fully autonomous weapons. History has well demonstrated that once a weapon is developed and fielded, it will not only be used in limited, pre-determined ways. The potential for harm is so great as to nullify the argument for legality.
Scharre claims agreement about “lawful limited uses,” citing three examples of his own. We certainly don’t agree.
Accountability is another area where there was less agreement than depicted in Scharre’s reflections. As he states, machines, as currently envisioned, can’t be held responsible under laws of war, and it makes sense that programmers or operators not be held liable for war crimes unless they intended the robot to commit one.
The notion of accountability for operators was touched on during the Chatham House conference, but it was not considered in depth and it is important to note the lingering concerns of some audience members. For example, the “fixes” that Scharre cites from the US Department of Defense directive fall far short. Under the directive, human decision makers are charged with responsibility for ensuring compliance with laws of war when the machines they set in motion are unable to ensure this. However, it is unlikely that commanders will be held liable for war crimes if unintended technical failures can be blamed, while programmers, engineers and manufacturers are unlikely to be held liable if they have acted in good faith.
Scharre’s apparent answer to the issue of accountability is a “completely predictable and reliable system,” but how is that possible? Even with rigorous test and evaluation procedures, autonomy will make it significantly harder to ensure predictability and reliability. In fact, one definition of autonomy is that the system, even when functioning correctly, is not fully predictable (due to its complexity and that of the environment with which it is interacting).
In addition, some question whether operators should be held directly responsible for the consequences of fully autonomous weapons’ actions. Can these operators be treated in the same way as operators of a “normal” weapon when fully autonomous weapons are able to make choices on their own?
Scharre seems to dismiss the Martens Clause as only an ethical issue, but it’s a legal one as well. Although its precise meaning is debated, the clause is a fixture of international humanitarian law that appears in several treaties. It implies that when there is no existing law specifically on point, weapons that “shock the human conscience” can be regarded as unlawful in anticipation of an explicit ban. It also supports adoption of an explicit ban of weapons that violate the “principles of humanity and dictates of public conscience.”
Scharre’s post raises a “practical” objection to fully autonomous weapons that was not considered by the conference: “A weapon that is uncontrollable or vulnerable to hacking is not very valuable to military commanders. In fact, such a weapon could be quite dangerous if it led to systemic fratricide.” This concern about “large-scale,” accidental killing is valid, but the same practical argument applies to civilian casualties and not just military ones.
As Scharre notes, there are many concerns with fully autonomous weapons that exist on several fundamentally different levels. We agree that discussions about where the technology is headed are critical, but finding a permanent solution is even more urgent.
The Chatham House event was the first of several important meetings due to be held on killer robots in2014. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will convene its first experts meeting on autonomous weapons systems on 26-28 March. The first Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems will be held at the UN in Geneva on 13-16 May. UN Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns is due to report on lethal autonomous robots and other matters to the Human Rights Council in Geneva during the week of 10 June.
The fact that conferences like the one held by Chatham House are happening shows how the challenge of killer robots has vaulted to the top rank of traditional multilateral arms control and humanitarian disarmament, validating the importance and urgency of the issue and undercutting arguments that fully autonomous weapons are “inevitable” and “nothing to worry about.” The strong and diverse turn-out means it is unlikely to be the last Chatham House conference on this topic.
Immediately after the Chatham House conference, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots held a strategy meeting that 50 NGO representatives attended. The meeting focused on planning the campaign’s strategy for year ahead at CCW and the Human Rights Council as well as how to initiate national campaigning to influence policy development and secure support for a ban.
Photo: Patricia Lewis, research director for international security at Chatham House (center) introduced the first panel of the Chatham House conference on autonomous military technologies. (c) Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, 24 February 2014
© 2014
