Climate change as national security threat: Zambian perspective

ROBBY KAPESA
WHEN Tropical Cyclone Freddy struck southern Africa between February and March 2023, Zambians witnessed, in their backyard, what before they had only considered an overseas humanitarian crisis.
In Malawi, Zambia’s neighbour to the east, Cyclone Freddy, one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the southern hemisphere, killed at least 500, injured over 1,300, sent missing almost 600 and displaced over 500,000 people.
Besides, it damaged power supply, water and sanitation, roads, and education and health infrastructure. The damage was so enormous that it created a dire humanitarian situation, leading to the deadliest cholera outbreak in Malawi’s history.
In Mozambique and Zimbabwe, other Zambia’s neighbours to the south-east and south, Freddy killed at least 200 people and displaced almost 200,000 families.
The total number of those affected in the entire region remains unclear, though women, children, the physically challenged and the aged, who must have been safeguarded, were the most affected.
Although climate change and Freddy cannot be neatly linked, it gave Zambians a visual image of what climate change, which scientists warn will exacerbate the severity and frequency of extreme weather events, might mean for the future.
The debate about climate change in Zambia has predominantly been on quantifying its economic effects vis-à-vis the required cost of action.
The conclusion from this has often been that “climate change is the developed nations’ problem”; it is neither a Zambian nor an African issue to waste time on.
Freddy has taught us that climate change is a Zambian business whose mitigation is worthy of our state resources. This calls for a broader debate that includes the security consequences of climate change.
This article examines the adverse effects of climate change on national security and recommends specific policy directions to address such effects. Its focus is on Zambia.
Fragile states like Zambia face challenges in responding to the effects of climate shocks and rising temperatures, which can lead to humanitarian crises and instability.
The impacts of climate change, such as erratic precipitation and escalating temperatures that Zambia is experiencing currently, affect people’s health and livelihoods.
Climate change in Zambia has also contributed to food insecurity, water scarcity, and competition for scarce resources, leading to tensions and conflicts over land and natural resources, exacerbating the country’s fragility and the risk of internal tensions and communal conflict.
The overt interplay between climate change and national security is evident in regions like the Sahel, Lake Chad and East Africa, where climate change causes fierce competition and conflict over scarce resources.
There is a need for a national policy to prevent Zambia from sliding into those extreme levels.
Over the last three rainy seasons, Zambia has experienced an increase in the intensity, frequency and geographic coverage of dry spells and floods.
The agriculture-based rural livelihoods have been the most severely affected (increased crop pests and diseases, reduced crop and forage productivity, decreased agricultural yields, and animal diseases – the current anthrax outbreak being the latest and most deadly).
The result has been a mass exodus of people from the most affected to the least affected areas in search of “greener pastures” for their animals, fertile soil and good rains for their agriculture, increasing competition for pasture and farmland in host communities.
To manage the security consequences of climate change, five policy directions are in order.
First, Zambia and indeed other African states must endeavour to enact the so-called “no-regrets” policies.
These are policies they would not regret pursuing even if the consequences of climate change prove less severe than feared.
Second, policies that would address climate security concerns and simultaneously help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, shore up energy security and provide economic benefits.
Third, policies that would create incentives for the private sector to participate in implementation of measures aimed at reducing risk and promoting resilience and adaptation among high-risk communities.
Fourth, policies that would stimulate research and innovation.
Real-time scientific data and information on changing climate conditions and possible adaptation and mitigation must be the only basis for policy.
Fifth, policies that would entrench adaptation, most notably risk-reduction and preparedness, and mitigation simultaneously.
The latter is almost universally accepted as an essential part of the response to climate change.
Partly, the above-proposed policy directions can be achieved through increasing budgetary allocation to climate change programmes, external funding and international cooperation.
For example, Zambia can learn and benefit from working with countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and
European Union with a long history of emergency management.
In sum, there is a need to treat adaptation and mitigation as complements rather than competing alternatives.
In conclusion, national security extends beyond protecting the nation against armed attacks by other states and threats from people who purposefully seek to damage or destroy the State.
Natural calamities such as floods, earthquakes and tropical cyclones can threaten national security, partly because they overwhelm state institutions, including the military.
As Freddy taught us, such disasters can strike a nation at short notice or none at all.
There is a need, thus, for Zambia to put its houses in order because climate change will likely yield more deadly climate episodes.
This may lead to severe local impacts and cascading human suffering and national security concerns that must be well managed.
This entails a robust national climate change policy.
The author is a research fellow at Dag Hammarskjold Institute for Peace and
Conflict Studies, Copperbelt University..https://enews.daily-mail.co.zm/welcome/home