The developed countries must account for their narrow and short-term policies favouring their military-industrial complexes while ignoring the health and existence of present and future generations.
Can war ever be done away with?
Although a compelling concept, peace has always remained elusive and most likely will be a distant dream in the coming few years.
Currently, the world witnesses the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but exports of weapons, environmental degradation and climate change still stand ignored.
At an international level, a regular supply chain of weapons and ammunition ensures that a vicious cycle of conflicts and arms procurement is maintained. Further, this also leads to agenda-setting by the great powers leading to sanctions, weapons purchases, wars and reconstruction activities.
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At the domestic level of the war-based economies, a substantial amount of sales is reinvested into their defence R&D, thereby boosting job creation opportunities and technological progress. Thus, the military-industrial complexes’ contribution to the domestic economies is vast and needs to be researched in much greater depth, especially in India, as it will help to understand geopolitics much better.
If one takes the U.S. statistics, Neta Crawford, in her recent book, ‘The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions’ indicated that “end use aerospace and defense industry employment in 2019 was about seven per cent of total U.S. manufacturing employment”. Well, this is just one of the sectors; there might be other sectors, too, that have a positive correlation between military industries and CO2e.
At the core of this debate lies the most ignored factor of climate change and CO2 emissions (CO2e) as consequences of war.
Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, armies have been exempted from international accords mandating emissions disclosure on the pretext of safeguarding national security. But, various research institutes have tried to assess the environmental damage of military emissions. International research institutes such as Green Peace, Oil Change International, SIPRI etc. ascertain that CO2e of militaries worldwide include the direct impact of bombings, troop deployments, military exercises, support staff of the armies, vigil movements in the sea and post-war reconstruction activities.
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A study in the leading journal of environmental science- Nature, reported that in 2018, the U.S. and U.K. released 55.4 and 2.7 million metric tonnes of CO2eq, respectively. If we turn the pages of history, Brown University report estimates that in the U.S. War on Terror fought between 2001 and 2017, the U.S. military alone emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, out of which more than 400 million metric tons of greenhouse gases were directly related to fuel consumption, especially by the military jets.
Another critical aspect emerging from the military emissions is the shortages in food supplies.
In its ‘Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk’, the Report of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or SIPRI (2022) expressed its concern that, as food prices have reached their “highest level in at least 30 years,” “energy poverty” will now be a common occurrence in developing nations as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and disruptions in wheat supplies. The report estimates that at least one-third of the world’s soil is presently deteriorated, and that figure could rise to 90% by 2050. Hence, it will also lead to climate change-induced displacements and migrations, demographic changes in the host state, and violent conflicts.
The Small Island Developing States (SIDs) and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are at immediate risk. Military emissions are a threat multiplier that invariably changes the risk landscape but goes unnoticed.
Aside from geopolitics, there is a dearth of data and studies, which has made calculating carbon emissions difficult. Consequently, various agencies, scientists and research institutes take little or no interest in uncovering the strategic and economic linkages between military carbon emissions and the financial contributions of military-industrial complexes of the war-based economies.
The war supplies exporting countries might argue in favour of various initiatives to limit their carbon emissions, which they prefer to call ‘Greening Government Initiatives’, but it is mainly superficial in nature.
In the next climate conference, COP28 in the UAE, there exists an immense potential to initiate discussions on military emissions by the developed world.
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The new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) and climate financing should include the calculations of the military carbon emissions. The developed countries must account for their narrow and short-term policies favouring their military-industrial complexes while ignoring the health and existence of the present and future generations.
A possible unavoidable tragedy of climate change consequences can possibly be altered if these military carbon dioxide emissions are considered when calculating the effects of climate change. Hence, COP28 should act instead of having just customary sessions, which might not contribute substantially.
NOTE – This article was originally published in newindianexpress and can be viewed here
Tags: #carbon, #climate, #climatechange, #climatecrisis, #climaterisk, #CO2, #COP28, #environment, #getgreengetgrowing, #gngagritech, #greenstories, #war
