Can enemies become allies in the fight against climate change?

In the course of worsening climate change, there are many incentives for cross-border military cooperation - also between opponents.

• In the fight against climate change, cooperation between different countries offers great opportunities - also between opponents.

• The instability caused by the climate crisis and natural disasters is an immense challenge for many countries.

• Alliances between competing nations or states with different ideological views facing a common enemy are not uncommon.

• This article is available in German for the first time - it was first published on July 28, 2021 by the magazine "Foreign Policy".

Two of the main topics discussed during the G-7 meeting in June were collective security and action against climate change.

However, by separating the two topics, an opportunity was wasted.

Recently, the US and UK governments have begun to see climate change as a security threat and a cause of instability, and even to mention it in their defense strategies.

One of the main concerns of both US and UK defense officials is that climate change can create conditions that intensify hostilities between or within nations.

These conditions include droughts, floods, forest fires, storms, and other natural disasters that can lead to food and water scarcity, mass migration, and disease outbreaks - and thus potentially violent conflicts over land or resources, or civil unrest that could destabilize governments. With climate change, military forces have to be deployed more and more often in aid measures or fight under increasingly extreme weather conditions. The latter requires new training methods and new equipment that can be adapted to extreme environmental conditions such as prolonged heat waves and storms.

As climate change affects everyone and natural disasters strike indiscriminately, nations can overlook ideological, ethnic, religious, and other differences - and even past conflicts - to unite in a common struggle against something that threatens them all.

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Can enemies become allies in the fight against climate change?

However, climate change should not be seen as just a threat. It can also be an opportunity for cross-border cooperation. Transnational regional military and civil cooperation could indeed do what trade once did in promoting peaceful relations between nations. As climate change affects everyone and natural disasters strike indiscriminately, nations can overlook ideological, ethnic, religious, and other differences - and even past conflicts - to unite in a common struggle against something that threatens them all.

Joint training, information and technology sharing could strengthen existing alliances and help better manage conflict if trust is built over time. Such a partnership could also help better prepare governments to deal with climate-related crises.

Military cooperation in peacetime would be an essential part of such a partnership.

The armed forces are trained for use in emergencies.

They have skills that many nonprofits do not, such as:

B. machines, equipment and numerous well-trained and organized emergency services, including paramedics who are quickly ready for action.

They can be an effective resource for responding to climate-related emergencies.

Transnational cooperation in the fight against the climate crisis: improving relationships

Such cooperation offers real opportunities to improve intergovernmental relations around the world - particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where tensions between countries are high and climate change has the potential to have profound effects. Many cities on the Mediterranean coast, such as Alexandria in Egypt and cities in Tunisia and Libya, are at risk of flooding from rising sea levels. Water resources like the Dead Sea, which lies between Jordan and Israel, are shrinking due to rising temperatures and decreasing rainfall.

Periods of drought in Syria have led to mass migration from the countryside to the cities. Climate change also has a significant negative impact on the agricultural capacities of countries in the region. Violent storms have caused flooding in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Extreme and prolonged heat waves of nearly 50 degrees Celsius have put the lives of millions of people in Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere at risk. Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian Territories, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Oman all suffer from limited water supplies.

These conditions have had a destabilizing effect on countries, both internally by generating demonstrations and economic instability, and by increasing tensions between countries. Disputes over water resources, for example, exacerbate tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, where there is severe water shortage. More than 90 percent of the water in Gaza is not safe to drink due to high salinity and sewage pollution, and most of the drinking water comes to Gaza from Israel. Tensions over water resources in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, shared by Iraq, Turkey and Syria, have exacerbated friction between the three countries.

Climate change instability is a major concern for many countries - and an incentive to work together

Many Middle Eastern countries lack the knowledge and technology to grow food in increasingly arid conditions, leaving them increasingly reliant on imports. This causes food prices to rise, which can lead to unrest, as happened in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia before the 2011 Arab Spring. There is also a lack of knowledge about flood-free and energy-efficient construction. Many countries also lack the means to single-handedly get their people to safety and to provide aid in disaster-hit areas. Governments are therefore concerned about the instability climate change has caused and is likely to continue to cause. All of these are incentives to work together, even with opponents.

There is already cooperation between countries in the Middle East; Israel and the UAE have been working together on environmental issues since they signed a normalization agreement in 2020. This includes sharing advanced Israeli technologies in the fields of renewable energy and agriculture, such as: B. drip irrigation, which optimizes water consumption and increases productivity. This is mutually beneficial and has the potential to strengthen economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Israel and Jordan have long been working together to build a pipeline to bring water from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea to prevent it from shrinking further due to desertification.

Cooperation between the neighbors began after the signing of a peace treaty in 1994. Before that, disputes over the Jordan and unilateral water development projects were a major reason for the conflict between the two states.

Israel's former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Gadi Eizenkot, recently called for closer coordination between Israel and its neighbors in dealing with environmental disasters in order to improve relations and increase Israel's security.

Climate Crisis: Multiple Incentives for Cooperation - Even Between Adversaries

While these partnerships are welcomed, they are usually bilateral or affect only a handful of countries that have established diplomatic ties.

And they usually do not include plans for joint military efforts in the event of natural disasters or humanitarian crises.

Some collaborations are more likely than others.

For example, Israel will work with countries with which it has diplomatic relations, but reluctantly with its enemies such as Iran and Syria.

In addition, some governments, especially non-democratic regimes, may prefer not to work together because they really want climate-related disasters and the resulting political upheavals to bring instability to their opponents.

However, there are several incentives for collaboration, even between adversaries.

This includes being able to counter a mutual threat more effectively and to improve national security by developing relationships with countries with which one does not have diplomatic relations.

This is particularly important for countries that have a common border and therefore could be affected by common climate disasters such as forest fires or floods.

A financial incentive to work together can be to share resources rather than shoulder the financial burden of re-equipping, training and mobilizing the armed forces alone.

There is unrest in Iran because of water scarcity, Syria is suffering from drought - cooperation with other nations could help

The Iranian government is currently experiencing significant unrest over water scarcity. Severe droughts intensified the war in Syria. However, working with other nations and regional environmental agreements can improve the ability of governments to help their populations in crises caused by climate change, potentially minimizing political instability and thus serving as an incentive to overcome political disputes.

The United Nations has set up six Regional Collaboration Centers (RCC), with the Middle East center located in Dubai since 2019. Several problems prevent this center from having a great impact in the region. It is not comprehensive as it only covers Arab countries. Its potential for cooperation is limited as the countries are not active actors in the RCC Dubai and there are no mechanisms that encourage cooperation and engagement. (The RCC provides advice and workshops, but does not promote military relationships in support of relief efforts.

The establishment of a multilateral regional council or alliance can be beneficial for all concerned. Areas of collaboration include sharing and developing technologies for irrigation, clean and renewable energies, and sustainable development initiatives. Binding agreements on the prevention of environmental damage, such as Air and water pollution, for example, are important not only to protect the environment, but also to avoid annoying neighboring countries.

Coordination is vital to ensure that countries do not embark on unilateral projects that may affect other countries' water quality or supply, flood potential and other concerns, in order to avoid risk to populations and to reduce tension and conflict.

A first example of this is the Ethiopian Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam project, which has exacerbated tensions with Egypt and Sudan over access to the waters of the Nile.

Central to cooperation between countries: establishment of military cooperation

A central element will be the development of military cooperation in order to provide coordinated emergency aid in the event of natural disasters, humanitarian crises and other emergencies caused by climate change that are too large for individual countries to cope with on their own. Cooperation between the armed forces will have several advantages. Self-employment is one thing: the region will develop expertise to respond to climate emergencies and will be able to respond without outside help. Aid will arrive quickly and it will be an effective, coordinated effort by forces equipped, trained together, in most cases speaking the local language and familiar with the area.

The effects of climate change pose regional threats that go beyond religious, ethnic and geographic differences and tensions. Therefore, cooperation should also take place between countries that do not have peace normalization agreements or formal diplomatic relations. This can help reduce tension and build trust, even between countries currently involved in conflict - without undermining political autonomy. Such regional military cooperation will strengthen both state authority and legitimacy and civil society as the population becomes safer and supraregional security becomes the norm.

In view of the numerous tensions and conflicts between the countries of the Middle East, it can be helpful to involve third countries in the negotiations and in the coordination and formation of regional alliances. The United States can be a major player here. In a partnership that includes military forces, US Central Command (or Centcom), which oversees the Middle East-North Africa region and now includes Israel, can help coordinate joint training exercises.

This means that Israeli, Saudi, Egyptian and Iraqi armed forces, for example, train specifically for joint relief operations and can be supported by the United States with equipment and special training without exchanging knowledge and technology, revealing secrets and endangering the security of individual countries.

Third countries such as the USA and the United Kingdom can exercise a supervisory function

A balance between cooperation and limited skill disclosure is key to ensuring that countries do not compromise their security. Joint efforts can be more about coordination, especially when it comes to countries with no peace or normalization agreements, than collaboration that requires the disclosure of information or the disclosure of technology to foreign forces that should be kept secret . Participating countries can consider their willingness to share information and technology when working together to respond to environmental disasters.

However, alliances between nations with different ideological views or competing interests facing a common enemy - such as the United States and the Soviet Union fighting Nazi Germany - are not uncommon.

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Third countries such as the United States * and the United Kingdom can exercise a supervisory function to prevent corruption, ensure transparency and help with coordination and conflict resolution within the alliance. They can also help with training and impart specialist knowledge. A UK Department of Defense document published in March entitled "Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach" expressed a desire for the UK to become involved in such endeavors by, albeit briefly, it mentions that "an attempt should be made to build a coalition of armed forces working to achieve adaptation, resilience and defuse".

This is not an easy task. Some countries will oppose this, either because they refuse to cooperate with enemies or because they see the ongoing instability in the region as a benefit to their own interests. The lack of common values ​​can also be an obstacle. However, alliances between nations with different ideological views or competing interests facing a common enemy - such as the United States and the Soviet Union fighting Nazi Germany - are not uncommon.

As disasters become more frequent and harsher, nations may be willing to overcome their differences to work together on this very specific issue.

Establishing military and economic cooperation in a narrow thematic area could have far-reaching positive effects on collective and national security and stability in this war-torn region.

by Limor Simhony

Limor Simhony

is a policy advisor and researcher based in London.

Previously, she was director of counter-extremism at the policy consultancy TRD Policy and a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.

She received her PhD from the Department of War Studies at King's College London.Twitter: @limorsimhony

This article was first published in English on July 23, 2021 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” - as part of a cooperation, a translation is now also available to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.

* Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.

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