Smith 22 Elements of A Planetary Emergency Environment of Peace (Part 1)

ELEMENTS OF
A PLANETARY
EMERGENCY
Environment of Peace
Part 1
SECURITY IN A NEW ERA OF RISK 1
Lead author
Dan Smith
Contributing authors
Noah Bell, Jakob Faller, Victor Galaz, Albert Norström,
Corey Pattison and Cibele Queiroz
Project led by
Claire McAllister
Secretariat
Noah Bell, Karolina Eklöw, Andrea Gadnert,
Jannis Ruoff, Jürg Staudenmann and Caspar Trimmer
This project was funded by the Norwegian

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish Ministry
for Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Federal
Department of Foreign Affairs.
DOI: 10.55163/MDEB4357
Suggested citation
Smith, D., Bell, N., Faller, J., Galaz, V., Norström, A.,
Pattison, C., Queiroz, C., Elements of a Planetary
Emergency: Environment of Peace (Part 1)
(SIPRI: Stockholm, 2022),
<https://doi.org/10.55163/MDEB4357>.
2 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE
CONTENTS
About the Environment of Peace research report ii
1.1. Planetary emergency 1
1.2. The environmental crisis and beyond 5

1.2.1. The biosphere 5
1.2.2. Biosphere degradation and human health 8
1.2.3. Climate change 11
1.2.4. Resources, resources 14
1.2.5. Tipping into the Anthropocene epoch 16
1.3. Peace, security and international politics 18

1.3.1. Casualties of violent conflict 20
1.3.2. The environmental impact of violent conflict 21
1.3.3. Types of violent conflict 23
1.3.4. Military spending and the arms trade 24
1.3.5. Weapons of mass destruction 26
1.3.6. Global geopolitics 30
1.3.7. Drivers of insecurity 33
1.3.8. The idea of security 40
1.4. People and governance 41

1.4.1. Deficiencies of global governance 42
1.4.2. Improving governance 43
Figure 1.1. Global population and global gross domestic product before and 6
after 1950, the year demarcating the ‘Great Acceleration’
Figure 1.2. Planetary boundaries 18
Figure 1.3. Number of state-based armed conflicts between 1989 and 2020 20
Figure 1.4. Total population forcibly displaced, worldwide 21
Figure 1.5. World military expenditure, by region, 1988–2021 25
Figure 1.6. The trend in international transfers of major arms, 1982–2021 26
Figure 1.7. Estimated global nuclear warhead inventories, 1945–2022 27
Endnotes 49
About the Environment of Peace research
report
This research report is a product of the Environment of Peace initiative
launched by SIPRI in May 2020. It sets out the evidence base that provided
the foundation for Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk, a
policy report published in May 2022. The report is published in four parts—
Elements of a Planetary Emergency (part 1); Security Risks of Environmental
Crises (part 2); Navigating a Just and Peaceful Transition (part 3); and
Enabling an Environment of Peace (part 4)—as outlined below.
Elements of a Planetary Emergency

This part, part 1, lays out the conceptual and evidential landscape for
Environment of Peace. Led by Dan Smith, SIPRI Director, it brings together data
on a wide range of indicators, showing that both security and environmental
stresses are increasing. These include markers of decline in the natural
environment: pollution, climate change, species loss and associated issues.
On the security side, this part of the report provides data on ‘hard’ security
questions such as militarization, the collapse of international arms controls
and military spending, and on ‘human’ security concerns such as hunger
and development. It considers the failures of governance to address these
pressing crises and argues that the health of the global biosphere should be
recognized as a core national security interest.
Security Risks of Environmental Crises

Part 2 shows how combinations of environmental and security phenomena are
generating complex risks and discusses options for responding to them.
Navigating a Just and Peaceful Transition

Part 3 focuses on needed transitions towards sustainability and climate
resilience, with special attention given to areas such as land use, energy and
climate response.
Enabling an Environment of Peace

Part 4 examines the legal and institutional landscape within which the twin
crises—and humanity’s responses to them—play out.
Other related materials

Separate annexes assemble a number of in-depth case studies and other
input papers that were commissioned to inform the research and analysis of
the report. An annex corresponding to each part can be downloaded from the
SIPRI website. A comprehensive overview of the report’s four parts and the
Environment of Peace initiative is also available at the SIPRI website.
1. ELEMENTS OF
A PLANETARY
EMERGENCY
1.1. Planetary emergency
We face a planetary emergency made up of a compound environmental crisis,
in which climate change is prominent but by no means the only element, and a
darkening security horizon. Behind them, linking to both, lies a chronic problem
in deficient mechanisms and instruments for addressing these environmental
and security challenges.
The planetary emergency is deepening as each year goes by, without
any decisive action being taken to mitigate it. Communities across the world
are already suffering the consequences of climate change and other forms of
environmental deterioration, as well as of worsening insecurity, both separately
and in combination. Thus, while this report spotlights a present danger, the
problems of today may simply be the early stages of a growing global malady.
The twin crises of the environment and security are linked in multiple
ways. This has long been understood. There were even passing references
to peace and security at the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human
Environment—one in the declaration and a handful in debate.1 In 1977, a
Worldwatch Institute paper systematically linked the issues, including the
challenge to peace and stability of a changing climate.2 Among other efforts
to move this discussion forward, a major article in 1989 concluded that
environmental change was like the discovery of nuclear fission in that it would
be a key determinant of security and policy in the decades ahead, and—as
Einstein had said about nuclear weapons—necessitated ‘a substantially
new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive’.3 In 1990 the journal of the
traditionalist Royal United Services Institute in London carried an article
exploring the conflict and security implications and consequences of climate
change.4
This report explores those linkages, some of which are subtle while
others could hardly be clearer. An example of clear linkage is that 6 of the
10 largest United Nations peace operations and more than 80 per cent of
UN peace operations personnel are deployed in countries recognized as
being highly vulnerable to climate change.5 If they do not take the impact
of climate change into account, their work will be hampered and less likely
to be effective. More subtly and sometimes elusively, both in global forums
and at more local scales, confrontational politics and a context of conflict
and insecurity make it even harder than it already was—because of vested
interests and competing policy priorities—to agree and cooperate on measures
to slow down climate change and protect the environment.6
Understanding these linked risks constitutes the first step towards
actions both to address the underlying causes at source and ameliorate the
short-to-medium-term impact. In addition, identifying and understanding the
risks may make it possible to reduce the chances that corrective action has
unexpected, unwanted and negative side-effects.
Part 1 of the report outlines today’s landscape of unfolding
environmental crisis and security challenges. Seen through an environmental
lens, this is the world the 1972 Stockholm Conference was convened in order
to avoid; the conference’s stated aim was ‘to limit and, where possible, to
eliminate the impairment of the human environment’.7 Through a peace and
security lens, as explained below, the past decade has been marked by rising
dangers. And seen through the lens of human experience, the world is in the
midst of a global pandemic that has touched us all in one way or another,
exposing both our vulnerability and the inter-connectedness of all countries
and societies.8
This report explores the problems and how they interact with each other,
and sets out to answer the question of how to generate effective action
to address the challenges discussed. Looked at the other way round, the
question is also: Why has it been so hard to get that action going? As we shall
see, the evidence of profound and wide-ranging harm to people due to the
damage that human activity has inflicted on the natural environment is clear.
The risks and consequences of armed conflict are likewise clear. And, as
this report goes through the material, the linkages between these issues will
become manifest.
One aspect of the problem is the way many people think, both reflecting
and reflected in the model of economic development since the industrial
revolution began. In just over two centuries, economic growth has drained
natural resources and produced increasingly destructive consequences in the
natural environment. While the exploitative and extractive human relationship
with nature has generated enormous profits for some and economic
opportunity and improvement for many, it imposes an unsustainable burden
on nature and, in turn, upon us. Thinking about the human interaction with
nature needs to recognize that, as humans, whatever our many differences, we
are all also a part of nature. We are part of the biosphere. That is an old insight
that modernity has obscured—we need to get back to it.
Similarly, there is a need to think differently about security and
international relations compared to the norm prevalent in much of the
world for at least two centuries and, in some accounts, for more than two
millennia. State and national self-interest, understood in terms of power, form
too shallow and narrow a foundation on which to base international policy
2 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

in a world challenged by far-reaching environmental crisis. Sustainability
and cooperation have to move to the forefront. This could be seen as the
fundamental insight that this report offers. The challenges to wellbeing, peace
and security that come from political rivalries are real and profound, yet they
are ultimately less significant than the challenges to wellbeing, peace and
security that come from the environmental crisis our predominant model of
economic development has produced.
Different realms of knowledge need to link up. Since the start of the
Age of Enlightenment some three centuries ago, divisions between different
branches of knowledge have widened and deepened to become self-isolating
scholarly disciplines not only in Europe but throughout the world. This is no
longer fit for purpose in a world of inter-connecting problems. The integrated
solutions that are required are possible only if they have a multi-disciplinary
foundation. That requires cooperation between exponents of different
disciplines and a connective way of thinking.
Accordingly, different communities of thought and practice have to
rethink and think together. They need to develop a shared vocabulary and set
of basic concepts. Treating the environmental crisis and security as separate
arenas, insulated against each other, is inaccurate, and policies based on that
false assumption will be self-defeating. Likewise, it is no longer acceptable
to pit environmental and economic benefit against each other. If a course
of action is environmentally damaging, it will eventually be economically
damaging too. The question is not whether we can afford environmental
sustainability, but how anybody thinks we can do without it.
Although we face a planetary emergency and although corrective action
is urgent, another necessary cognitive adjustment is to get beyond crisis
thinking. In a crisis, temporary measures are required to fix the immediate
problem—to staunch the flow of blood, plug the leak in the dyke, defuse the
bomb. Facing up to the planetary emergency means acknowledging the need,
beyond quick fixes, for action to be not only urgent but also persistent.
Within today’s environmental crisis, climate change rightly garners a
great deal of concern and attention. The crisis has built slowly. The increase
in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has continued for two centuries. The
identifiable rise in average global temperatures has continued for more than
half a century. Changing economic, industrial, agricultural, construction and
transport activities so that GHG emissions decline will take decades before a
slowdown in global warming is clearly seen. And it will be decades more before
the consequences that are stacked up in the natural environment have played
out. This is part of the reason why measures to address climate change have
been so hard to sell politically: the impact is slow and the results of any action
taken are not immediate. However, on the one hand, it is also why action
to reduce GHG emissions is acutely urgent and, on the other hand, why the
impact of climate change on human security will remain a priority issue for
many years to come.
ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 3

Environmental and security challenges are in part a reflection and
consequence of how key institutions—governments, not least—and actions
relate to each other and to nature. Easing out of the current crisis means
finding a different way for that multiplicity of relationships to be conducted—a
different way of governing them, in short. Thus, cognitive shifts are a starting
point for action and for transforming governance at multiple levels.
The next section of part 1 looks at how human interactions with the
natural environment have damaged it and thereby ourselves. The section that
follows then reports on the security dimensions of the planetary emergency,
before the concluding section turns to matters of governance. Each of these
is a complex issue, and so can only be summarized here—parts 2, 3 and 4 of
the Environment of Peace report are tasked with picking up the connections
between them and exploring them more deeply. In light of the recognition
that different communities of thought and practice need to understand each
other’s issues and focus, it may be that a degree of patience is required on the
part of the reader. Hopefully, those who focus on security issues will recognize
the enormity of the environmental crisis depicted below, while those who focus
on environmental questions will be willing to engage with the discussion of
conflict, peace and security dilemmas.
The broad narrative here is a story of connectedness in the sense that:
• The biosphere is a network of interdependent fauna and
flora of which we humans are a part and on which we fully
depend;
• The inter-connectedness of the biosphere means that, where
human activity has been damaging, negative consequences
may cascade together;
• Similarly, the security space is characterized by inter-
connected elements that link human security and wellbeing
with political stability within and between states;
• Limiting and reversing the damage done to the biosphere
so that people may thrive will require cooperative action
between groups and between states that are currently
adversaries; and
• Thus, two spaces—security and the biosphere—that are
each characterized by complex inter-connections are also
connected to each other.
The task of part 1 is to lay out this landscape, illustrating the connectedness
of the issues but not saying much about the details of the linkages. That is
the business of part 2. Part 3 builds on that to explore how the much needed
economic transition to environmental sustainability carries risks that need to
be anticipated and managed. Part 4 offers our answer to the question of what
kind of governance is required in order to facilitate an environment of peace.

1.2. The environmental crisis and beyond
The dominant mode of thinking worldwide about the natural environment
draws on the European Enlightenment tradition that tends to break problems
down into component parts. Though more holistic views are found both in
traditional societies and in environmental sciences—and were to be found,
indeed, among some Enlightenment thinkers9—there is today a widespread
tendency to think not of nature (except, perhaps, metaphorically) but of the
oceans, the forests, the deserts, the different zones—polar, tropical, sub-
tropical, temperate—and so on. Likewise, when thinking about the degradation
that human activity causes in the natural environment, it is often convenient
to compartmentalize issues (pollution, plastic bags, climate change, loss of
wildlife). These are not, however, separate problems. They are closely related,
inter-acting, causing and exacerbating each other. That is because the natural
environment itself is a set of systems whose various components support each
other. To think about the environmental aspect of the planetary emergency, we
need to start by looking at the whole. This section, therefore, does not begin
with climate change but gets to it in due course.
1.2.1. The biosphere

The Earth’s biosphere encompasses all ecosystems (terrestrial, freshwater
and marine) and their plant, animal and microbial life.10 This resource base
supports human wellbeing in all its dimensions. Accordingly, changes in the
biosphere—for example, in the abundance, distribution or diversity of species—
have profound implications for humankind. Too often, this relationship is
depicted as if humanity and the biosphere are exterior to each other. In
fact, humanity is one of the species in the biosphere. People, communities,
economies, societies, cultures are embedded in the biosphere and part of
what shapes it. At the same time, people, communities, economies, societies
and their cultures are shaped by, depend on and evolve with the biosphere.
Both sides of the relationship are visible in the climate, in agriculture, in
health and in general wellbeing. Just as there is no economy without a
society in which it is embedded, there is no society that is not embedded in
the biosphere. For example, food, timber, fibre, clean air, drinking water and
medicines can only be available given a functioning biosphere.11 Regardless of
human ingenuity and technology, human development cannot be decoupled
from the biosphere.
The biosphere plays a key role in the rest of the Earth system, including
stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and thereby the global
climate system. In 2021 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reported the estimate that some 56 per cent of carbon emissions
since 1850 have been safely locked away in the land and the oceans.12 Put
another way, half our ‘climate debt’ is removed, for free, by the biosphere every
year.13 Accordingly, action to mitigate climate change must be integrated with
protection of these ‘carbon sinks’ provided by the biosphere.14 There are other

8 120
Gross domestic product (trillions 2011$)

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Figure 1.1. Global population and global gross domestic product before and
after 1950, the year demarcating the ‘Great Acceleration’
Sources: For global population 1750–1940: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, ‘Great acceleration’, Global Change, 2015;
and 1940–2015: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World population prospects 2019. For GDP 1750–2015: Bolt, J. and
van Zanden, J. L., ‘Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: A new 2020 update’, Oct 2020.
important elements of the dynamic interplay between the biosphere and the
atmosphere, the water cycle and biogeochemical cycles. For instance, the
biosphere drives global biogeochemistry (e.g. carbon, nitrogen or phosphorus
cycling between air, water and land), which affects global climate, soil fertility
and ocean productivity.15 The biosphere also moderates the water cycle,
affecting where it rains, how heavily, how rainwater flows across the land and
where it ends up, as well as influencing the rate at which it evaporates and
returns to the atmosphere.16
The biosphere is thus a network of interactions, many of them as strange
at first sight and as hard to grasp—yet surprisingly, even astonishingly, real—
as the connections to be found between trees and the Earth’s rotation, or
between wolves’ behaviour and the course of a river.17 In this complex, delicate
system, humanity is one species among 1.2 million that have been identified
and an estimated further 7.5 million that are hitherto unidentified.18 As a
species, however, humanity is a big beast with an out-sized impact on the
natural environment. Humans have altered 75 per cent of the world’s land
surface and had a major impact on 66 per cent of its oceans.19 Since 1990
some 420 million hectares of forest have been lost (around 10 per cent of the
total), primarily so that the land can be used for agriculture (though the rate of
deforestation has decreased significantly in recent years, down to 10 million
hectares annually compared to 16 million each year in the 1990s).20 As a
result, the 20th and 21st centuries have seen large declines in animal life—
terrestrial, avian and aquatic, big and small, everything from large primates to
insects. Reasons range from over-hunting and over-fishing, to loss of habitat as
land is cleared for timber, settlement or agriculture, to chemical pollution. As a
result, there has been a decline in what are often called ‘ecosystem services’,

meaning, roughly, the benefits people get from the natural environment, such
as clean air, food and water.
The unfolding impact of human activity on the natural environment has
not proceeded at an even pace. Globally aggregated datasets combining
indicators of human activity and variables critical to the Earth system reveal
a sharp increase in biosphere deterioration after approximately 1950.21 This
step-change, often known as the ‘Great Acceleration’, has been driven by
economic growth over the 70-year period. The 2021 Dasgupta report on the
economics of biodiversity summarizes what has happened:22
• World population in 1950 was around 2.5 billion and global
gross domestic product (GDP) at 2011 prices was around
$9 trillion; by 2019, global GDP was just over $120 trillion
in 2011 prices and the human population was 7.7 billion
people (see figure 1.1).
• The proportion of the world’s population living in extreme
poverty was nearly 60 per cent in 1950; today it is less than
10 per cent (though it increased in 2020 and 2021 as a
direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic).
• The global average for life expectancy in 1950 was 46 years;
today it is around 73.
To sum up this extraordinary story, over seven decades—a drop in the ocean
of human time, let alone planetary time—population has trebled, economic
output has risen 13-fold and average life expectancy has increased by 50 per
cent. Thanks to the most successful period in economic history if measured by
output, more people live longer and better than ever before.
The statistics above are, of course, averages that mask wide variations.
The Central African Republic (CAR) has the lowest average life expectancy of
any country; at 54 years, it is some 31 years lower than Japan’s, which is the
highest.23 Yet CAR has a higher average life expectancy than any country had in
1800, at the start of the industrial revolution.24
We look at the impact of social inequality on security and peace below
(see section 1.3.6). The process of poverty reduction has produced uneven
results and has been neither smooth nor steady. In 1820 some 75 per cent
of the world population lived in extreme poverty—an estimated total of 756
million people. The proportion dropped to about 60 per cent by the end of
the 19th century and was not much lower till the mid-1950s; although the
proportion then started to fall more quickly, the numbers of extremely poor
people increased, reaching 2 billion by 1995.25 Thereafter, the fall in both the
proportion and number of extremely poor people accelerated. By a statistical
quirk, although the proportion of extremely poor was down to 10 per cent
by 2018, the number was 764 million—barely different from the figure two
centuries earlier.26
However we assess the social balance sheet of progress and injustice,
the further problem is that the cost for nature has been spectacularly high.

Success in the economic sphere is destroying the biosphere, on which we all
depend. The sixth mass extinction in the planet’s history is well under way.27
The 2019 global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services
showed that an average of around 25 per cent of species in assessed animal
and plant groups are threatened; the rate of extinction is between tens and
hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.28
The focus on the loss of biodiversity (how many different species there
are), which is reasonably well covered in popular news media, may to some
degree distract attention from the loss of biomass (how much animal and
plant life there is). The latter is not so well covered but is at least equally
important. It has been estimated that 83 per cent of wild mammal biomass
has been lost since the dawn of human civilization.29 More recently, the
abundance of wild vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds)
fell by 60 per cent between 1970 and 2014.30
Concern about animal life understandably focuses on large mammals
and birds but the bulk of animal life consists of invertebrates like insects. They
are vital for ecosystem function and indispensable parts of the networks and
interactions through which our food is generated—they control pests, pollinate
plants and recycle nutrients.31 Detailed local observations over almost three
decades reveal local declines in flying insect biomass of over 75 per cent.32
Decline in the biomass of insects and spiders in rain forests from the mid-
1970s to the early 2010s has been estimated at between 75 and 88 per
cent depending on the time of year.33 In sum, research has identified a multi-
continental crisis of insect biomass and diversity,34 which some researchers
refer to as an ‘insect apocalypse’, though there remain many gaps in
knowledge about it.35 Indeed, knowledge about current and historical biomass
of all kinds is strikingly incomplete.36 Among the things that we do know, about
75 per cent of crop types grown by humans require pollination by insects.
The annual economic value of this service is variously estimated at between
$235 and 577 billion.37 Its full human value may be incalculable, but a fact
of which we can be sure is that humans are being systematically careless
about it.
1.2.2. Biosphere degradation and human health

Human mistreatment of the biosphere has implications for our health,
through direct and indirect consequences alike. Changes in land use interact
with climate change and loss of biodiversity to increase our exposure to
infectious disease, including through water-borne diseases, scarcity of food
and water, and natural disasters.38 There is also a serious impact on human
health through non-infectious diseases.39 Much of the ill-health impact
of environmental deterioration is due to pollution and loss of ecosystem
services.40 The quality of health service provision varies widely between and
within countries, especially on the basis of wealth and social class and the
impact is greatest where health services are weak.41

Chemicals and plastic can be grouped together under the heading
of ‘novel entities’ in the natural environment, meaning new materials not
previously known in nature, as well as some naturally occurring elements that
have been displaced by human activity such as mining. The production and
presence of novel entities has exceeded the limits estimated as the planetary
boundaries needed for safe operation and sustainability.42 We can begin
unpacking the issue by looking at waste nominally defined as non-hazardous.
Worldwide, about 2 billion tonnes of non-hazardous waste is produced
annually; the figure is forecast to increase to almost 3.5 billion tonnes by
2050.43 Currently, the world recycles or composts about 19 per cent of that
waste and half of the rest (about 740 million tonnes annually) is put in
landfills.44 The biggest problem with non-hazardous waste is plastics—indeed,
it is questionable whether the term ‘non-hazardous’ is appropriate in this
context. Since the Great Acceleration began in 1950, the world has produced
an estimated 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic.45 Depending on its type, size and
the features of the environment where it is stored or abandoned, plastic may
take anything from a couple of years to several centuries to perhaps millennia
to degrade.46 Microplastics—tiny plastic particles—are everywhere. They invade
the bodies of fish, birds and terrestrial animals, including humans, who have
been estimated to consume in the vicinity of 50 000 microplastic particles
each year;47 they have been found in the placenta of pregnant women and in
breast milk.48 Studies agree that there are serious grounds for concern about
the toxic effects of microplastics but there is a lack of precise knowledge
about their effects.49 Ocean currents pull microplastics into enormous areas of
soupy pollution; the extent of the soup in the North Pacific, often known as the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch, was estimated in 2018 to be 1.6 million square
kilometres,50 which is about three times the size of France or twice the size of
Texas in the United States.
Chemical pollution has widespread effects on air quality, water and soil,
yet it is under-researched. Humans encounter thousands of pollutants in our
food and water intake; through workplace exposure to toxic chemicals; as
by-products of industry, transport and energy production; through agriculture;
and from ingredients and materials used in detergents, textiles, cosmetics,
construction materials and furniture.51 According to a 2017 UN report,
only a few of the tens of thousands of chemicals on the market have been
thoroughly analysed for their effects when released into the environment.52
The same publication reports that, among the effects we are aware of, more
than 100 000 people die annually from exposure to asbestos, while lead in
paint is known to affect the IQ of children. Further effects from pollutants
include neurological damage and cell mutation, weakened immune systems,
digestive disorders and pulmonary disorders. Another growing concern is the
use of antibiotics in farming, which is thought to be driving the emergence of
bacteria resistant to anti-biotic medication. This has serious implications for
human health, though some research finds it hard to identify negative clinical
outcomes.53

The 2017 UN report rated poor air quality as the greatest global
environmental risk to health.54 Some 90–95 per cent of the world’s population
breathe outdoor air that is polluted beyond the acceptable standards set by
the World Health Organization (WHO).55 Some air pollutants, including black
carbon and ground-level ozone, contribute to climate change and affect
ecosystems. Climate change exacerbates air pollution by creating conditions
in which pollution disperses slowly. The main sources of air pollution are fossil
fuel emissions, transport, industrial furnaces, brick kilns, agriculture, domestic
solid fuel heating, burning waste materials and wildfires. Indoor air pollution
is also a lethal health issue, though death rates are declining as more
households get access to non-toxic energy sources such as gas and electricity
for cooking.56 By contrast, deaths from outdoor air pollution have increased
by some 57 per cent this century; the death toll in 2019 was 4.5 million
people.57 Air pollution can affect every organ in the body.58 It causes mental ill
health and disorders including depression;59 increases the risk of premature
birth;60 and is associated with reduced fertility.61 Moreover, there is clear if not
yet conclusive evidence that it increases the risk and incidence of dementia
among those aged 50–79.62
Soil pollution is particularly important because an estimated 95 per
cent of food is directly or indirectly produced on our soils.63 It is defined as the
presence in the soil of chemicals and other substances that are out of place
or in abnormally high concentrations.64 It happens both accidentally (e.g. toxic
leakages and oil spills) and deliberately (e.g. pesticides used to increase
farm output). With a growing global population, agricultural production needs
to increase by as much as 70 per cent globally by 2050 to meet needs and
demand, but 33 per cent of the Earth’s soils are already degraded by erosion,
salinization, acidification and chemical pollution.65 By 2050, over 90 per cent
of the planet’s land surface could be degraded.66 A 2016 UN report cited a
death toll of 3.3 million in 2013, especially among impoverished rural workers,
due to excessive exposure to and inappropriate use of pesticides.67
The health risks produced by damage to the biosphere go beyond the
effects of pollutants. An estimated 4 billion people rely primarily on natural
medicines for healthcare, while about 70 per cent of the drugs used to
treat cancer are either natural products or, if synthetic, were first identified
because of the effects of natural products and inspired by them.68 The loss of
biodiversity and biomass is a clear, direct health hazard.
Worse, infectious disease risks are dynamic and subject to multiple and
complex drivers. Deforestation, urbanization and construction of new water
infrastructure are continuing features of contemporary economic life; they
spawn zoonotic pathogens, which are a significant cause of emerging and
re-emerging infectious diseases, such as coronaviruses, avian influenzas and
the West Nile virus.69 The risks of vector-borne infectious disease (meaning,
essentially, diseases spread by the bite of small, invertebrate animals such
as insects) are affected by changing temperatures and sea-level rise. The
geographical distribution of African trypanosomiasis disease is predicted to

shift due to temperature changes induced by climate change. Biodiversity loss
may lead to an increase in the transmission of infectious diseases such as
Lyme disease, schistosomiasis, Hantavirus and West Nile virus.70 Estimates
indicate that increasing temperatures could expose more than 1.3 billion new
people to the risk of Zika virus by 2050.71
1.2.3. Climate change

The facts are simple and brutal. By 2021, taking the average global
temperatures over the course of a year,
• 19 of the 20 hottest years on record had occurred since
2000;
1990;
1980.72
In short, each of the last four decades has been hotter than the previous one.
Global warming and climate change are at the forefront of many—perhaps
most—people’s thinking about environmental deterioration. To date, the
deepest damage inflicted on the biosphere probably arises from changes
in land use due to agriculture and the felling of forests for timber and land
clearance, and from over-fishing. Looking ahead, however, climate change
poses the biggest risk to the biosphere, and therefore to humanity, and its
impact is already being felt in a variety of ways. As already discussed, the
climate is a critical influence on the biosphere, defining how long the air holds
pollutants, for example, and influencing the availability of water in any area,
thus determining the habitat that the locality offers to flora and fauna. As the
climate changes, areas become less habitable to some species and more
so to others, possibly interrupting food chains by introducing or removing
predators. Insects such as mosquitoes and other small creatures that are
vectors for disease may migrate to new areas where people are less prepared
for the infections they carry.
The first instalment of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the IPCC
was published in 2021.73 It reflects, as its five predecessors did, the latest
state of scientific knowledge and thought on what is happening in climates
around the world. From one Assessment Report to the next, the science that
each one collates has developed. More is known, more is understood and,
with the passage of time, the scientific models of how climate change would
unfold have been tested in practice. Based on the latest climate science and
evidence, AR6 concluded that climate change is now an unequivocal fact and
that the measurable global heating is human-made (anthropogenic), causing
widespread, rapid changes to the Earth’s oceans, ice and land surface, and
the biosphere. Advances in knowledge mean that, for the first time, the IPCC

states unequivocally that human activity is influencing the climate system.74
There is, in short, no room for doubt or scepticism.
The IPCC finds that global concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane
and nitrous oxide—the main GHGs—have increased to levels unprecedented
in at least 800 000 years. It also expresses ‘high confidence’ that, within that
picture, current levels of carbon dioxide have not been experienced for at
least 2 million years.75 As a result of these GHG emissions, the global average
surface temperature in 2010–19 was 1.1°C higher than the average for
1850–1900 (often referred to as the pre-industrial level).76 This is the highest
global average temperature since the human species first emerged. It is
important to note that the 1.1°C average is made up of 0.9°C warming on the
ocean surface, while the global land surface—where people live—has heated
up on average by 1.6°C.
Climate change is now occurring rapidly, with global mean surface
temperatures warming at a rate of 0.1–0.3°C per decade.77 Sea-levels are
rising more quickly and extreme storms are occurring more frequently than
models anticipated even a few years ago.78 In the Southern Hemisphere, the
intensification of winter storms has already reached levels that were projected
to occur in 2080.79 New records and unprecedented events have become
frequent, such as the first ever recorded rainfall on Greenland’s highest peak
in 2021 and the melting of enough ice in Greenland in one day to cover the US
state of Florida (70 000 square kilometres) in 5 centimetres of water.80 Based
on current trends, by the early 2030s the global average temperature will
have increased by more than 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial times, the limit
aimed for in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.81
Human-induced climate change now affects weather in every region
across the globe. Everywhere, the current climate ‘is already distinct from the
climate of the early or mid-20th century’.82 Recent advances in climate science
have made it possible to start answering the tricky question of attribution;
that is, knowing whether a specific event—such as a hurricane, drought or
heatwave—is in a knowable sense caused by or attributable to climate change.
Attribution is especially clear for heatwaves, heavy rainfall, droughts and
tropical cyclones. The severe heatwaves in Siberia (2020) and in western
Canada and the USA (2021) would have been nearly impossible without the
climate crisis.83
Extreme weather, made more frequent by climate change, is having
devastating impacts in both industrialized and developing countries. Areas
where drought has always been a major concern, such as the Horn of Africa,
are experiencing even longer dry periods. While attributing the cause of
individual droughts to climate change has been contentious, the rate of drying
in the Horn of Africa is unusual in the context of the last two millennia and,
if nothing more, coincides with recent global and regional warming.84 As time
goes by, the climate change signal is getting clearer.85
Rainfall volatility confounds farmers’ expectations about seasonal rains,
with wet seasons starting earlier or later and often being shorter and more

intense. This has effects on food security (on which, see more in section
1.3.6). Climate change is increasing the proportion of the growing world
population exposed to flood risk,86 with, for example, millions dislocated in
different parts of Asia due to major floods. In 2022 Pakistan faced floods
that displaced 33 million people and killed more than 1200.87 In July 2020
seasonal flooding in China led to the temporary displacement of more than
40 million people,88 and in June and July the following year flooding was almost
as severe.89
In 2022 China experienced a record heatwave and consequent drought,
while Europe’s heatwave and drought led to the European Commission
warning that ‘the current drought still appears to be the worst since at least
500 years’.90 Since 2017 wildfires have hit western USA, Australia, Bolivia,
Brazil, southern Europe and Russia. Wildfires are made more intense and
frequent by climate change, although continued land clearance for agriculture
means the total area of land hit by wildfires is actually falling as available
burnable land diminishes.91 Surges in local sea level when storms and
hurricanes occur are also on the increase due to climate change.92 A 2019
report by the IPCC concluded that historically rare (once a century) extreme
sea-level events are likely to occur at least once a year in many places by
2050.93
Research studies in recent years have consistently reported that climate
change is a health hazard.94 Rising temperatures are themselves a cause of
ill health, regardless of storms, wildfires, floods or droughts. The heatwave
in Europe in 2003 killed more than 70 000 people,95 while the heatwave in
India and Pakistan in 2015 killed at least 3500.96 Of particular concern in the
latter case was the observed wet bulb temperature (TW), which measures
the combination of heat and humidity. It has generally been estimated that
the maximum habitable TW level is 35°C, though some recent experiments
suggest the limit of human adaptability may be significantly lower than that.97
Until recently, climate modelling forecast that a TW of 35°C would start to
occur in currently inhabited regions around 2050. However, some coastal
regions have already experienced TW above that level. More generally, the
frequency of extremes of heat and humidity has more than doubled compared
to 40 years ago.98
Further direct health effects of climate change include the increasing
incidence of noncommunicable maladies such as respiratory and
cardiovascular disease,99 and the impact of extreme heat on the risk of
premature births and birth defects.100 Climate change also alters the spread
of climate-sensitive infectious diseases, increasing the infectious capacity of
some disease vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks and parasites.101 In addition,
climate change affects water and sanitation, leading to malnutrition and food
insecurity.102 Climate variation and extreme weather are among the leading
causes of severe food crises, second only to violent conflict; the cumulative
effect undermines all dimensions of food security, including availability,
access, utilization and stability.103

These consequences of climate change for human wellbeing have
developed and deepened because earlier opportunities to address them have
not been taken.104 The basic science and data showing that global warming
was occurring and would result in climate change were essentially in place by
1979,105 well before the IPCC was set up in 1988. Although the most recent
overall report by the IPCC, AR6 in 2021, is particularly dramatic in its findings
as well as unequivocal about the core science, previous Assessment Reports
have drawn essentially the same picture. There have been some areas of
doubt about details and, as it turns out, some of the estimates of how fast
climate change would unfold have been understatements. The conclusions
of the successive Assessment Reports have, however, repeatedly offered a
scientific basis for action. However, even when the world has agreed on the
need for action, as it did in the Paris Climate Agreement in December 2015, it
has found it extraordinarily difficult to follow through.
These decades of inaction have had two further consequences. First,
many changes due to GHG emissions can be expected to be irreversible for
centuries or even millennia, especially in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea
level. In short, global warming and climate change are creating a new world.
Even if global GHG emissions are reduced, global warming and its climate
impact will continue for decades. Even if global temperature rise is not just
stopped but put into reverse, so the average temperature returns to 1850–
1900 levels, the natural world may not return to its 19th century condition.106
Second, while there is still a chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C
above the pre-industrial level, and thus well below the 2°C mark, the action
required to achieve this becomes more radical and transformational with each
year of delay. For the world to stay below 2°C warming, with the long-term
aim of gradually decreasing global average GHG concentration starting in the
late 21st century, GHG emissions must halve by 2030 and be at net zero by
2050. To do this, there is no alternative but to completely phase out fossil
fuel emissions—given the technologies for carbon capture are limited, this
essentially means abandoning fossil fuels.107
The scale of the task is daunting, not least because of the enormous
economic interests invested in fossil fuel production and use around the world.
The social and economic dimensions of the task, and therefore its political
ramifications, are profound. This only goes to underline the importance of
understanding the links between these elements (see part 2 of this report),
and appreciating that the scale of the necessary transformation will generate
risks that will need to be anticipated and managed (see part 3).
1.2.4. Resources, resources

The era of the Great Acceleration since 1950 is characterized, as discussed
above, by an extraordinary increase in economic output and, by many
indicators, improvements in human wellbeing. While the human population
has trebled during this period, the annual global extraction of raw materials
has increased at twice the speed—sixfold.108 Despite a distinct increase in

the use of raw materials from the 1850s onwards, for about a century it was
broadly in line with population growth. Since around 1950, though, increasing
use of raw materials has been driven primarily by rising incomes and
consumption in the industrial world.109
Along with population growth, a key demographic trend of the current
era is urbanization. Until the industrial revolution, the global population was
overwhelmingly rural—according to various estimates relying on different
definitions of ‘urban’, towns and cities were home to just 3–7 per cent of
humanity when the world population passed the one billion mark in about
1810.110 As the Great Acceleration started, the world’s urban population was
about 750 million people, some 30 per cent of the total.111 Around 2007 the
urban population surpassed 50 per cent of the world total—about 3.4 billion
people out of 6.7 billion112—and on current projections this percentage will grow
to about 70 per cent by 2050.113 Much of the urban infrastructure required
to accommodate this demographic trend has not yet been built, and if it is
constructed using today’s technologies, the consumption of raw materials by
cities is expected to more than double by 2050.114
The relentlessness of this consumption of resources is unsustainable.
One basic resource is water. Enormous amounts are needed to build cities,
though agriculture continues to account for the majority of freshwater use
(about 70 per cent of the total).115 Over the past century, global water use has
increased, according to various estimates, six-to-eight-fold.116 Its use continues
to grow by about one per cent a year and, without changes in current practices,
will keep on growing due to population growth and urbanization as well as
increased economic output and consumption. At the same time, the pesticides
and chemical fertilizers that make increased food production possible are
affecting both the soil and the water table.117 The dangers lurking in the water
are multiplied because most municipal wastewater in developing world cities
goes untreated, creating significant public health risks.118
Combining this with the effects of climate change means that security
of supply of water is increasingly aspirational for much of the world’s
population. The UN’s definition of water security is cumbersome but
instructive, emphasizing access to adequate quantities of water that is of
acceptable quality for supporting human health and wellbeing, and preserving
ecosystems.119 Defined thus, every aspect of water security is endangered:
• About 4 billion people—representing just over half of the
global population—experience severe water scarcity during at
least one month of the year.120
• Just over 3 billion people—about 40 per cent of humanity—
live in agricultural areas with high to very high levels of water
shortages or scarcity.121
• About 2.3 billion people—just under 30 per cent of all of
us—live in water-stressed countries, and 733 million live in
countries where water stress is already critical.122

• There are 1.2 billion people—roughly one-sixth of the world
population—who live in agricultural areas characterized by
water scarcity.123
• In 2020, 771 million people lacked access to basic drinking
water services.124
1.2.5. Tipping into the Anthropocene epoch

For more than a decade now, researchers have noted that the human impact
on the biosphere is increasing the occurrence of ‘tipping points’125—large,
abrupt and persistent critical changes in ecosystems. These can be seen in
diverse locations and at scales ranging from the local to the global, resulting
in the loss of ecosystem services that have hitherto underpinned livelihoods,
commerce and development.126
Exactly when future tipping points might be encountered is hard to
predict. While climate science has made advances is this area, reflected in
the IPCC’s AR6, no clear dates or deadlines have yet emerged. The timing
is obscure—not only as to when tipping points will be reached, but how long
they will take, so to speak, to tip—because what is involved are the combined
consequences of shifts in different ecosystems.127 The idea of tipping points
thus reflects the inter-connectedness that is a fundamental characteristic
of the Earth system. Everything links to something else and, as a result,
the system as a whole is relatively robust. Once damaged, however, the
consequences unfold in cascades. Nature has proven to be a lot more durable
than a house of cards but, if and when parts of it are fatally damaged, that
may well be how collapses happen. Further, when tipping points are crossed,
the change is likely to be irreversible.128
This directs attention towards ‘tipping elements’—those parts of the Earth
system that are particularly susceptible to tipping, such as melting sea ice and
the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets; changes in ocean and atmospheric
circulation; and loss or alteration of critical flora, such as the large forests in
the Amazon region and boreal forests in Russia and Canada.129 Deforestation is
closely linked to climate change, a significant consequence of which is melting
ice. This gives weight to the warning from some research that if the global
average temperature reaches 2°C above the pre-industrial level, that might in
the worst case be enough to cross a point of no return.130
Recognition of the breadth and depth of human influence on the
biosphere, its aspects of irreversibility and relative newness in the history
of humanity, let alone the planet, has led some scientists to regard it as the
defining characteristic of a new epoch—the Anthropocene.131 This succeeds
the Holocene, the label given to the epoch of the past 12 millennia. The idea
that the Anthropocene label is appropriate for this epoch was first proposed
in a brief academic newsletter article in 2000,132 and was eventually adopted
by the International Union of Geological Sciences in 2016.133 While there
are multiple nuances in how the term is used, the common core meaning is

simply that human activity has become the major influence on the natural
environment.134
The dating of the Anthropocene’s onset continues to be discussed, along
with the trigger event that brought it about. One line of thought favours the
start of the industrial revolution—around 1800—while others opt for around
1945.135 Though assigning a precise date may be a fruitless exercise, it seems
logical to identify the approximate start date of the new epoch as sometime
about 1945–1950—the dawn of the nuclear age, the plastic age and the Great
Acceleration.
Many of the environmental events that lie ahead will be unprecedented.136
This is a new world, or at least a new age, and as such is not yet fully
understood. There is a possibility, even likelihood, that local events will have
a widely dispersed and even global impact. For example, deforestation in
the Brazilian Amazon region, by triggering changes in rainfall patterns, could
affect maize yields in much of Latin America, with severe implications for food
security.137 Similarly, altering hydrological systems for agricultural purposes
can have large, lasting and negative effects on the ecosystems necessary
for agricultural productivity.138 These knock-on effects are often thought of as
reflecting systemic risk.139 A combination of changes in the natural environment
and human activity—agriculture, fishing, urbanization, industry—can have
unexpected, interlocking effects that link geographically distant regions to
each other.140
Abrupt and irreversible changes are, however, not limited to biophysical
and ecological systems—social systems are also implicated.141 Looking ahead,
climate feedbacks of the kind that may be experienced after the 2°C level
of additional warming is passed could lead to heavy social stresses on, for
example, people living in coastal and tropical regions.142
The Stockholm Resilience Centre has promoted the idea of ‘planetary
boundaries’ to depict the scale of the risks being taken with the natural
environment (see figure 1.2).143 The nine boundaries are the limits on
stratospheric ozone depletion; loss of biodiversity and biomass; the polluting
effect of novel entities (e.g. chemicals, plastics); climate change; ocean
acidification; freshwater use and changes in the global hydrological cycle;
changes in land use; disruption to the cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus; and
air pollution. Within these boundaries there is a ‘safe operating space’; outside
them are dangers we can glimpse but, because they are unprecedented, not
fully grasp. In other words, the areas outside the boundaries of safety are
where the Anthropocene’s risks emerge and grow. As of 2021, five boundaries
have been breached, three remain within the safe zone, and one has not
yet been calculated.144 Discussion continues about the concept of planetary
boundaries, which may lead to the definitions and list of boundaries being
refined. As an idea still in development, it has two significant benefits. First,
it makes clear what we do not know—that is, what happens beyond the
boundaries and, once they have been breached, how the different areas
of damage will interact. Second, it offers a way of measuring the overall

Increasing risk
ge Novel
chan ent
limate ities
C
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tos
ity
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Y
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e
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ion
sh
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at
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ean
P N Oc
Biogeochemical flows
Figure 1.2. Planetary boundaries

BII = Biodiversity Intactness Index; E/MSY = extinctions per million species-years; P = phosphorous cycle; N = nitrogen cycle; Novel
entities = toxic and long-lived substances such as synthetic chemical pollutants, heavy metals, and radioactive materials.
Notes: The planetary boundaries concept looks at nine processes that are essential for environmental integrity. For each, it uses scientific
evidence to assess whether the trend has gone so far as to cross the boundary of a ‘safe operating space for humanity’. Crossing the
estimated boundaries increases the risk of triggering large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes.
Sources: This version is based on the original illustration designed by Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in
Persson, L. et al., ‘Outside the safe operating space of the planetary boundary for novel entities’, Environmental Science & Technology,
vol. 56, no. 3 (Feb. 2022); and Steffen, W. et al., ‘Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet’, Science,
vol. 347, no. 6223 (Feb. 2015).
deterioration in the biosphere, or conversely, if corrective action is taken, the

progress made in limiting or even restoring the damage that has been inflicted.
1.3. Peace, security and international politics

The international security horizon is every bit as concerning as the condition
of the natural environment. While the timescale for the development of
these two crises is different by an order of magnitude, their negative effects
are nonetheless coinciding in our time. As this section shows, after an

improvement in international security in the 1990s following the end of the
cold war, the years since 2010–11 have seen more armed conflicts, higher
military spending, an expanding volume of international arms transfers and
a crisis in nuclear arms control. There have been regional flashpoints and
confrontation in every region except the Americas, as well as an increasingly
sour tone in global geopolitics. These challenges are the standard concerns of
security policy and strategic studies, traditionally placed in different categories
of thought, official policy and action compared to the impact of environmental
change discussed above. That distinction, however, is increasingly
unsatisfactory in the light of today’s realities.
There has long been recognition that the traditional security concept
is too narrow. Even traditional security organizations have acknowledged
as much, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) did in 1991, for
example, with its ‘new strategic concept’, treating conflict prevention and
the political management of crises as the core business of the future.145 The
decisive broadening of the agenda came in 1994 when the UN’s Human
Development Report introduced the human security concept, centred on the
need to achieve ‘security in the daily lives of the people’.146 This has added
human security—sometimes known as soft security—to the vocabulary,
sometimes alongside and sometimes pitted against what is variously called
state, national or hard security.
The human security and traditional security concepts are often treated
as fundamentally different: one puts the people’s needs ahead of the state’s,
and the other puts the state at the centre. This dichotomy, however, is not
the whole story. Seen from one angle, the point of a state’s security policy
is to ensure the wellbeing of a country’s citizens, thus contributing to their
human security.147 This relationship also works the other way round—issues of
human security that do not feature in thinking about military preparations can
nonetheless have traditional security consequences. The weakening of local
ecosystems, which reduces food production and livelihood security, can lead to
increased conflict over basic resources. For instance, while far from the whole
explanation, pressures caused by drought and poor water management are an
important element in how the wars in Syria and Yemen came about.148
The overlap between human and hard security is visible in other ways.
Crime, for example, regularly accompanies civil armed conflict both as a
precursor and an aftermath, and everything in between, as disease also often
does. Moreover, as explored below, the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic has
implications for both human and hard security. This suggests that neither
the vocabulary of human security nor that of traditional security is telling the
whole story, though both concepts address important parts of the whole. In
war-torn, pandemic-ridden, cholera-attacked, water-insecure, poorly governed
Yemen, for instance, the full range of threats to people’s wellbeing and security
need to be addressed. In such cases, a crisp distinction between human and
traditional security acts as an obstacle to consistent and effective policy. It
could lead, in the name of security, to actions that shore up some aspects of

60
56
50
No. of state-based armed conflicts
40
30 31
20
10
0
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Figure 1.3. Number of state-based armed conflicts between 1989 and 2020
Sources: Uppsala Conflict Data Program; Pettersson, T. et al., ‘Organized violence 1989–2020, with a special emphasis on Syria’, Journal
of Peace Research (July 2021); and Gleditsch, N. P. et al., ‘Armed conflict 1946–2001: A new dataset’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39,
no. 5 (Sep. 2002).
governance while neglecting other critical areas, thereby weakening health

services and obstructing sustainable hydro-policy.
There is one security space in which a multiplicity of different kinds of
policies and actions contribute either to strengthening peaceful prospects
or weakening them. This section explores that space. It begins by looking at
the casualties of violent conflict including the natural environment, then the
types of conflict, before looking at armaments, and then geopolitics, drivers of
insecurity and the meaning of the concept of security in today’s world.
1.3.1. Casualties of violent conflict

During the first decade of the 21st century, there was a good news story that
mostly went untold: the world’s zone of peace expanded. According to the
Uppsala Conflict Data Program there were around 50 state-based armed
conflicts in 1990 (see figure 1.3). This number rose over the course of the
following half decade due to the wars of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, the Soviet
Union’s break-up and conflicts in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Following this,
the number of armed conflicts each year began to fall, to around 30 in 2010.149
This 40 per cent decrease in the incidence of armed conflict was,
however, barely reported at the time, the main exception being the 2005 and
2010 editions of the Human Security Report.150 The reports pointed out that
not only were there fewer armed conflicts in the years following 1995 but
they were on average shorter and less lethal than in previous decades. They
attributed this to the greater freedom of action enjoyed by the UN because

100
No. of people foricibly displaced, worldwide (millions) 80
60
40
20
0
1991 2001 2011 2021
Figure 1.4. Total population forcibly displaced, worldwide

Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), ‘UNHCR global trends 2020’, 18 June 2021.
action by the Security Council was no longer inhibited by cold war relations
between the USA and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, this positive trend
bottomed out around 2007 and since 2010 there has been a sharp annual
surge in both the lethality and the annual number of armed conflicts, which
was 56 in 2020—higher than the 1990 level.
Data on war deaths is full of uncertainties. As far as can be determined,
war deaths approximately doubled in the second decade of the 21st century
compared to the first, primarily due to warfare in Syria. Even so, the number is
much lower over the past 20 years than for much of the period since the end
of World War II.151 The declining number of deaths per war reflects the changing
motives and tactics of many fighting forces, which we return to below.
As figure 1.4 shows, the number of refugees and other people forcibly
displaced by conflict, violence and persecution has been climbing sharply over
the past decade. In 2021 there were 89.3 million forcibly displaced people—
more than 1 per cent of the world’s population152—compared to 41 million in
2010.153 In other words, the second decade of this century saw a doubling of
the number of people forced to flee their home and often their country for fear
of violence and repression.
1.3.2. The environmental impact of violent conflict

The environmental impact of violent conflict varies greatly, depending on
the scale, duration and form of combat (whether cities are attacked, for
example).154 When urban areas are bombed or hit by missile strikes or artillery,
buildings are pulverized and large volumes of dust—containing a variety of
materials such as cement, metals and industrial compounds—generated. This

dust is easily ingested and poses a severe health risk.155 Attacks on oil facilities
and chemical plants throw up lethal additions to air pollution and can also
pollute freshwater and marine resources.156
In the rural setting, deforestation is a frequent consequence of armed
conflict. Two common reasons for this are, first, communities need to use more
local wood than normal for fuel as other supply sources dry up, and, second,
fighting groups may contribute to over-logging for their own needs157 or to sell
for profit.158 However, one of the best-known and most striking examples of
deforestation in war is the use of Agent Orange by the USA to remove forest
cover during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.159 The use of chemical
herbicides in this way is now illegal under international humanitarian law,160
one of a range of rules limiting military impacts on the natural environment
during wartime that are part of customary international law.161
However, the regulation of actions that have a damaging effect on the
natural environment—environmental governance—is another casualty of
armed conflict. Implementation of the key agreements on limiting damage
to the environment depends on the ability of states to ensure it is effective.
Insecurity, instability and open armed conflict disrupt a state’s capacity
to respond to environmental challenges and the flouting of environmental
regulations, all too often tempting them to deploy environmental destruction
against their adversaries.162 The erosion of both the capacity and commitment
to protect the natural environment may linger even after the fighting is over.
Reconstruction and recovery after armed conflict has many priorities, with the
natural environment routinely placed low on the list.163
Weapons and other military equipment generate a war-legacy of
environmental damage.164 Landmines, cluster munitions and other explosive
remnants of war restrict access to agricultural land and continue to pollute
soil and groundwater even after they have been cleared. Naval wreckage,
meanwhile, causes marine pollution. Beyond direct military destruction,
there is the problem of the abandonment of military scrap. In addition, some
weapons have particularly toxic components, such as depleted uranium, used
in some shells and armour plating, with their effects persisting long after their
use in combat in countries such as Iraq and Kosovo.165
Routine, non-war military activities also have an environmental impact,
using large tracts of land for bases and for training purposes, as well as
consuming vast quantities of raw materials and energy. The fuel consumption
of the US military alone produces enough GHG emissions to mean that, were
it a country, it would rank as the 47th biggest emitter.166 Adding other major
powers such as China and Russia into the equation, as well as including all
GHG-emitting military activities, would produce a yet more striking statistic.
However, it should be added that the US military has been a leading investor
in clean energy since 2007.167 Its NATO allies are moving in the same direction
because renewable energy is cheaper, safer (since it reduces the need for
long, vulnerable supply lines) and, therefore, more effective.168

Nuclear weapons testing has had a lasting impact on health, with an
increase in the incidence and risk of many kinds of cancer, especially from
the 504 atmospheric (above ground) test explosions that took place from
1945 (the first test, by the USA) to 1980 (the last in the atmosphere, by
China).169 The damaging effects of nuclear testing on health are local, regional
and global, and have persisted for well over half a century. Recognition of
nuclear testing’s health hazards took it—literally—underground, in order that
radioactivity released in the explosion would not get into the atmosphere.
Leaks from underground tests have occurred, however, including two known
incidents in 1969 and 1987 at the Soviet Novaya Zemlya sites in the Arctic
Ocean and a US test in Nevada in 1970.170 Major environmental risk persists
in other forms. From 1948 to 1956 there were 67 atmospheric nuclear tests
over two atolls—Bikini and Eniwetok—in the US Marshall Islands.171 Radioactive
debris from these explosions, almost 85 000 cubic metres, has been
collected and stored in the Runit Dome. Although an official US assessment
in 2020 found no immediate likelihood that the dome would collapse, and
saw no measurable adverse effect on the environment from, for example,
contaminated groundwater,172 others are less sanguine.173 One major concern
is that sea-level surges or extreme weather, such as may ensue from climate
change, could damage the dome, with catastrophic effects.174
1.3.3. Types of violent conflict

In many places, human security is further diminished because conflicts are
fluid and chaotic. The number of armed groups active in some wars has
exploded: in Syria over 1000 separate militias have been identified, and in
Libya as many as 2000.175 One estimate suggests more such groups have
emerged since 2010 than in the previous eight decades combined.176
There are far more intra-state than inter-state wars, but there remains
plenty of external engagement in internal wars. Foreign forces are involved
in just over one-third of current armed conflicts, sometimes as direct
combatants.177 For example, four armed conflicts in the Middle East and
North Africa—Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen—are fundamentally shaped by the
involvement of foreign forces. Conflicts may also be internationalized through
political, financial and technical support for one or more of the combatants,
with examples including cases as different as Egypt, Iraq, the Israel–Palestine
conflict and Nigeria.178
Just as the nature of contemporary violent conflict often flouts neat
distinctions between the national and international, so it blurs the difference
between political and criminal violence. In many cases, the activities of militias
that started fighting for political reasons—to control government or territory—
are overlaid by criminal violence. This may begin as a way of financing an
insurgency but the means can take over the ends, with the consequence that
an armed conflict becomes the first phase of a prolonged period of violence
and chaos. The conflict and its aftermath create stakeholders with an interest
in perpetuating violence. Criminal and political organizations often occupy

the same strategic and geographic space, sometimes contesting control of it
and sometimes cooperating to exploit it through trafficking narcotics, people,
weapons and contraband.179 In these cases, the distinction between the
criminal and the political may simply be a matter of arbitrary labelling.
The lethal potential of criminal violence is as great as that of some intra-
state wars. In Mexico the number of killings linked to narcotics crime gangs
has exceeded 100 000 over the course of a single decade.180 This is not
typical, however—the declining number of deaths per armed conflict noted in
section 1.3.1 is probably due to the fact that it does not take much violence to
intimidate local communities or the political establishment of a town, city or
province. In many places, criminal gangs move on from intimidation to forming
networks with holders of political power and managers of state institutions.
This hollows out the state, leaving it incapable of defending the common good,
regardless of leaders’ intentions.181 In such cases, the system of corruption,
crime and violence is not a challenge to order—it is the order. Looting state
resources becomes both the purpose and means of holding onto power,
ultimately leading to a political culture that depends on, breeds and celebrates
violence.182 It is a pattern repeated in many parts of the world, taking over
parts of or sometimes even the entirety of a country. It has been seen during
war and/or in its aftermath in countries as varied as Afghanistan, Bosnia,
Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lebanon, Libya, South
Sudan and the United Kingdom (as seen in Northern Ireland). Governments
are almost always part of the problem, with politicians and officials often
responsible for the violence, which then becomes part of the political
bargaining between elite groups.183 The result is persistent low-level violence
and instability, as can be seen in some eastern provinces of the DRC.184
Research on these ways of holding and using power suggests a need to
rethink how peacebuilding and state building works (or fails) in such contexts.
If peacebuilding focuses exclusively on war-related violence, it may overlook
much of what is necessary to prevent the next war. This is one reason why
narrow concepts of security are outmoded. The same research emphasizes
the need for whole-of-society approaches to peacebuilding, working not only
at the level of elites but at the grass roots. The process of recovering from
prolonged violent conflict is complex, long and dangerous, but there are
examples from locations as diverse as Colombia, Georgia, India, Sicily and the
USA to show it is possible.185 Some examples in the literature on environmental
peacebuilding suggest that cooperation to defend the natural environment and
re-nurture ecosystem services can be a way of overcoming social and political
divisions and the propensity to violent conflict.186 We return to environmental
peacebuilding in part 4 of the Environment of Peace report.
1.3.4. Military spending and the arms trade

Increased military spending and major weapons transfers during the 2010s
are evidence of a widespread and growing atmosphere of insecurity. In 2021

2 500
2 000
(constant 2020 US$ billion)
1 500
Military expenditure
1 000
500
0
90 95 00 05 10 15 20
19 19 20 20 20 20 20
Africa Americas Asia and Oceania Europe Middle East
Figure 1.5. World military expenditure, by region, 1988–2021

Notes: To allow comparison over time, all values used in this figure are adjusted for inflation and expressed in constant (2020) US dollars.
The absence of data for the Soviet Union in 1991 means that no total can be calculated for that year.
Source: SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, Apr. 2022.
world military spending surpassed $2 trillion—the highest level it has ever

been (see figure 1.5).187
SIPRI’s data shows that the end of the cold war in 1990 ushered in a
decade of reduced military spending. However, from 1999 it picked up and,
aside from the immediate wake of the 2008–2009 financial and economic
crisis, it has risen steadily since. In 2020—the first year of the Covid-19
pandemic—military spending rose by just over 2 per cent.188 The world’s five
biggest spenders in 2021 were, in order, the USA, China, India, the UK and
Russia, which between them were responsible for just over 60 per cent of the
global total.
Meanwhile, the global trade in major conventional weapons grew steadily
from 2002 onwards, though it has stabilized and fallen slightly in the last few
years (see figure 1.6).189 The 2010s saw it at its highest level since 1990,
though significantly lower than its peak in the 1980s.
The five largest arms exporters during the 2017–21 period were, in
order, the USA, Russia, France, China and Germany. The USA’s share of the
global market is 39 per cent, Russia’s is 19 per cent, while the share for the
next three combined is 20 per cent—in other words, the top five exporters
hold over three-quarters of the world market. Market concentration is much
more marked on the supply side than the demand side. The five biggest arms
importers in 2017–21 were, in order, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Australia and
China, which between them were jointly responsible for about 38 per cent of
imports.

50
40
(billions of trend-indicator values)

Volume of arms transfers
30
20
10
0
1982– 1987– 1992– 1997– 2002– 2007– 2012– 2017–
1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 2021
Figure 1.6. The trend in international transfers of major arms, 1982–2021

Notes: The bar graph shows the average annual volume of arms transfers for 5-year periods and the line graph shows the annual totals.
The SIPRI trend-indicator value (TIV) is a measure of the volume of international transfers of major arms. The method used for the SIPRI TIV
is described on the Arms Transfers Database web page.
Source: SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, Mar. 2022.
1.3.5. Weapons of mass destruction

Like the reduced number of armed conflicts from 1995 to 2010, the falling
number of nuclear weapons has been an under-reported good news story. At
its peak in the 1980s the global stockpile of nuclear warheads and bombs
totalled some 70 000. In January 2022 SIPRI estimated the total to be some
12 705.190 Though today’s nuclear weapons are in many ways more capable
than those built 30 years ago, the reduction is both large and significant. As
shown in figure 1.7, the period when nuclear arsenal reductions were fastest
was the 1990s.
There are signs, however, that nuclear reductions have stalled. Of
the 12 705 warheads and bombs, just 3732 (about 30 per cent) are
operationally deployed, which means they are on bombers, in missile siloes
or in submarines ready for use. Almost all of these are owned by Russia and
the USA. France and the UK are the other two countries with operationally
deployed warheads, though in much smaller numbers, while none of China’s
warheads is operationally deployed.191 In 2020 the number of operational
warheads increased by 100—the first increase in a long time.192 In addition,
commercial satellite imagery in 2021 showed what appears to be construction
of 300 new intercontinental ballistic missile siloes in northern China.193 If so,
this could signify a major increase in the overall size of China’s arsenal by as
much as 1000 warheads.
Bilateral arms control between Russia and the USA, which was
responsible for almost all the reductions in the global nuclear stockpile,
entered crisis followed by stasis during the 2010s.194 While the extension of
the 2010 Russian–US Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and
Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (normally known as New START) in

80 000
70 000
Estimated no. of warheads 60 000
50 000
40 000
30 000
20 000
10 000
0
1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 2022
Total inventory Russia United States
Figure 1.7. Estimated global nuclear warhead inventories, 1945–2022

Note: The total inventory of the nine countries possessing nuclear weapons (i.e. the United States, Russia, France, China, the United
Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea) includes stockpiled warheads plus those that are retired and awaiting dismantlement.
Source: Kristensen, H. M., Korda, M. and Norris, R., ‘Status of world nuclear forces’, Federation of American Scientists, 2 Mar. 2022.
February 2021—the one remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty

between Russia and the USA—kept open the opportunity to breathe new life
into the process, there are many obstacles to surmount in order to do so.195
Nine states own nuclear weapons. In order of going nuclear they are the
USA (first nuclear test detonation in 1945), Russia (1949), the UK (1952),
France (1960), China (1964), Israel (unknown—believed to own nuclear
weapons by 1966), India (1974), Pakistan (1998) and North Korea (2006).
The proliferation of nuclear weapons is generally regarded as one of the
most serious risks in world politics. Although some question the good faith of
governments in ‘the nuclear club’ who argue against further states joining it, a
world with a multitude of nuclear-armed states is a forbidding prospect.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—first signed in 1968 and
entered into force in 1970—along with its associated safeguards administered
by the International Atomic Energy Agency, is the world’s primary instrument
for preventing nuclear proliferation.196 Around the time that it came into force,
some 15 states had ‘near nuclear’ status.197 At the time, six states possessed
nuclear weapons. They have since been joined by three more.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave
up the nuclear weapons they, so to speak, inherited from the Soviet Union.
This was the only responsible decision since all three lacked the infrastructure
needed to deploy and maintain nuclear weapons and keep them safe from
theft and accident. South Africa abandoned its nuclear weapon development
during the final years of the apartheid regime, while Iraq’s nuclear weapon
programme was dismantled under international supervision during the 1990s
(as investigation following the 2003 Iraq war showed) and Libya’s in 2003–
2004.198 Iran’s development of nuclear technology has been controversial in

the West for many years. Despite the barrage of accusations against Iran, the
country does not possess nuclear weapons and is a party to the NPT, meaning
it has forsworn the option of developing, producing or owning them. It has
never acknowledged having a programme to develop nuclear weapons, nor
ever been proven to have one, although there are indications of a possible
programme before 2003.199 The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often
known simply as the Iran deal, blocked the country’s path to developing
nuclear weapons until at least 2030.200 Under the administration of President
Donald J. Trump, however, the USA announced in 2018 that it would pull
out of its obligations under the deal, which it did the following year, despite
clear evidence that Iran was fully implementing its obligations.201 Since the
US withdrawal, Iran has started to breach the limits on its nuclear activities.
Negotiations on restoring the deal with full compliance in 2021 did not achieve
their goal and continued into 2022,202 and remain unresolved at the time of
writing.
The existence of nuclear weapons, even in much smaller numbers
than three or four decades ago, remains a source of extreme risk. The
probability of deliberate nuclear war is low but is not and cannot be zero.
At the beginning of 2022 the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council—the P5 of China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA; all nuclear
weapon states—tacitly acknowledged this in a unanimous statement worked
out in an informal P5 group. Harking back to the epochal statement made
by the Soviet and US leaders, Mikail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, upon
meeting in Geneva in 1986,203 it affirms that ‘nuclear war cannot be won and
must never be fought’.204 Welcome as this acknowledgement of reality was, as
was the support given to it by India as another of the states in possession of
nuclear weapons,205 it left some observers wondering about the justification
for continuing with the nuclear modernization path on which all of the P5 are
set.206
Further, there are risks of accident, including war by accident. For the
period 1950–80 the USA officially acknowledges 32 of the most serious
category of accidents—‘Broken Arrow’, which covers unexpected events when
a nuclear weapon was accidentally launched, fired, detonated, stolen or
lost, with six nuclear weapons permanently lost.207 In addition, a declassified
US Department of Defense document lists 65 other accidents and 716
incidents—many trivial—involving nuclear weapons in a single decade, 1957
to 1967.208 While safety procedures may have improved since then and the
number of warheads has diminished, it would take a major act of faith to think
the risks of mishandling nuclear weapons have been eliminated. Neither the
Soviet Union nor Russia has reported accidents with nuclear weapons, though
there are reports of two nuclear weapons having been lost on the seabed in
1989 when a Soviet submarine sank.209 Again, it would be an act of faith to
assume there have been no other incidents.
As well as hardware accidents, there can be software accidents.
The most famous incident, which arguably brought the world closer to

nuclear devastation than on any other occasion of which there is public
knowledge, happened in September 1983. A Soviet Colonel, Stanislav Petrov,
saw information on his computer screen that an American Minuteman
intercontinental ballistic missile had been launched, targeting Moscow. He
had moments to decide what to do. Feeling that if a nuclear strike were to be
launched it would involve a massive onslaught rather than a single missile, he
reported the incident as a system malfunction. When the computer identified
further Minuteman missile launches, he stood by his scepticism and again
reported a system malfunction.210 The information was therefore not passed
up the line to an authority who could have decided to retaliate against the
non-existent attack. As September 1983 was a period of particular tension
in US–Soviet relations, such a decision would have been quite likely, with
catastrophic consequences.
Recent years have seen the use of chemical weapons (CW). The main
violator of the norm against CW use has been the Syrian government, which
has employed CW over the course of a decade of internal warfare. The first
allegations came in December 2012, with further CW attacks taking place
in 2013.211 Following a Russian proposal, an unprecedented effort was made
to achieve CW disarmament in the midst of war, and by June 2014 all CW
that the Syrian government claimed it held were shipped out of the country.212
Nonetheless, reports of CW use in Syria soon re-surfaced.213 An independent
commission established by the UN Human Rights Council confirmed at
least 34 CW attacks conducted by the Syrian government from 2013 to
the beginning of 2018, many using chlorine or sarin, a nerve agent,214 while
Human Rights Watch reported a total of 85 CW attacks in the same period,
most by the government.215
CW have also been used as apparent instruments of political control,
punishment and intimidation in cases such as the polonium poisoning of
Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006;216 the attempted
novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal, another Russian defector residing in
the UK, and his daughter in 2018 (an incident that resulted in the death
of an uninvolved British woman);217 and the novichok poisoning of Russian
opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020.218
Meanwhile, the forward march of technology continues, including artificial
intelligence (AI). One area in which this is having an impact is the increasing
feasibility of autonomous weapon systems.219 It is now well within the bounds
of technological possibility that weaponry capable of autonomously acquiring
and striking targets will be deployed in defensive systems, and it is by no
means impossible that autonomous weaponry will be deployed in an offensive
mode and made available for use in fast-paced combat. There are also
implications for strategic nuclear forces—developments in missile defence
mean that, in crisis, an increasing mass of data would need to be handled with
speed. To handle such tasks, AI would likely be used.220
Uncomfortable questions also emerge over cyber security.221 It has
become a cliché to say that, in the next war, the first attack will be in

cyberspace—however, the more uncomfortable thought is that the first
attacks have already occurred. Protecting critical infrastructure such as
health systems, public transport, energy generation and communications is a
recognized priority for national security planning. Parts of this infrastructure,
such as communications and financial services, can be severely disrupted by
hacking; in others, cyberattacks can disrupt them for short periods without
physical attack. Such concerns extend to military communications and
information systems in light of what are sometimes called ‘left of launch’ cyber
tactics—hacking into command and control systems for major weapons.222
1.3.6. Global geopolitics

Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the past decade-and-a-half
had witnessed a marked deterioration in international security.223 The evidence
lies in the material on peace, conflict and security issues already covered.
By late 2021, the Russian military build-up on its borders with Ukraine and
increased Chinese military activity around Taiwan underlined the unstable
condition of global politics. In February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, the
human impact of which has been immense. While casualty estimates are
notoriously unreliable, evidence of the destruction of towns and cities could
be seen on television screens and news media around the world, and seven
million people became refugees from Ukraine in the first six months of
fighting.224
The twin crises over Ukraine and Taiwan did not, however, come out of
the blue. One component of the process of rising tensions and deepening
confrontation that has intensified over the past decade has been the
vicissitudes of arms control and disarmament. Whereas the 1990s saw a
plethora of arms control, arms reduction and disarmament treaties, since the
2010s the arms control architecture has begun to crumble. The three great
powers—China, Russia and the USA—are all enhancing their armed forces,
as are the USA’s allies in Europe and Northeast Asia. China has increased
its annual military spending every year over the past quarter of a century.225
Russia has several new strategic weapon systems under development, many
of them dramatically unveiled by President Vladimir Putin at a public ceremony
in March 2018.226 The USA increased its own military spending during
the Trump administration,227 is carrying through long-term programmes to
enhance and modernize its nuclear weapons and missile defence,228 and has
established the new US Space Force.229 The military doctrines of both Russia
and the USA declare a willingness to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict if
fundamental national interests are at stake.230 In the USA, the administration
of Joe Biden announced its intention ‘to reduce the role of nuclear weapons
in our national security strategy’231 and, in mid-2021, started a review of the
country’s nuclear posture.232 This posture has, however, remained consistent
across successive administrations since the start of the 1990s.233 Amid the
atmosphere set by the Ukraine war, it seems unlikely that US doctrine will
change significantly in the near future.

In short, the willingness as the cold war ended to address nuclear and
similar fears by cooperative arrangements has been replaced by a focus on
maintaining military strength. There is only one bilateral Russia–US arms
control agreement left: New START. Events have moved on a long way since
the 1990s, when it seemed that a degree of Russian integration with the
West was on offer. Long before the invasion of Ukraine, this was no longer
regarded as a possibility on either side. A speech by President Putin at
the 2007 Munich Security Conference made clear Russian objections to a
European order that had been shaped by the West during a decade of Russian
weakness.234 Seemingly paying no heed to this, in April 2008, NATO officially
welcomed the aspirations of both Georgia and Ukraine to join the alliance and
stated that one day they would be members.235 Four months later, Russian
forces crossed into Georgia in response to a Georgian attack on Tskhinvali,
capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia—an attack that was itself
described by a European Union (EU) inquiry as a disproportionate response to
partisan attacks on Georgian targets.236 In 2009, during his first year in office,
President Barack Obama attempted to ‘reset’ relations between the USA and
Russia.237 The effort had little effect. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and
operations in eastern Ukraine marked a decisive moment in the deterioration
of the relationship and of international security.
The Biden administration’s emphasis on extending the New START
agreement with Russia in its first weeks in office indicated a much greater
commitment to arms control than was apparent in the Trump administration.
Policy on arms control, however, is not the same as policy towards Russia. The
Biden administration has been more critical than the Trump administration,
with the US president responding affirmatively when asked if he regarded
the Russian president as a killer, prompting a furious response from Russian
media and diplomats.238 While the more abrasive posture adopted by the Biden
administration may in part be due to the evidence of Russian influence in the
2016 US presidential election,239 it also reflects a deeper suspicion of Russian
policy and motives—an attitude reciprocated by the Russian leadership.240
Relations between China and the USA deteriorated over approximately
the same period, due to a combination of political competition, strategic
confrontation and economic rivalry. China’s economic growth during the past
four decades has averaged close to 10 per cent annually.241 Though growth
was much slower in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s
was the only major economy that grew at all that year.242 Some analysts believe
China’s economy is already larger than the USA’s by one measure and expect
it to outstrip the USA by all measures during the 2020s. Others, however,
suggest this will happen much later, if ever.243 Since the international financial
crisis of 2008–2009, China’s economic strength has become the foundation
for a more assertive international policy. As well as strengthening its armed
forces, it has pressed its interests in the East and South China Seas; gained
friends and allies in Africa using development assistance and investment; and
launched a major transport infrastructure investment programme across Asia

in the Belt and Road Initiative.244 Moreover, China has presented itself as a
new champion of multilateralism, globalization, and of action to mitigate and
adapt to climate change.245 It has, in short, strengthened both its hard and soft
power, as well as its political and commercial weight, in world affairs.246
In the USA the response has been a bipartisan consensus on opposition
to China’s rise that is reminiscent of the consensus that existed on the Soviet
threat. One aspect of this response has been the ‘trade war’ initiated in 2018,
which has resulted in China and the USA each imposing high trade tariffs on
the other.247 By the first quarter of 2021, the higher tariffs had become the
new normal between the two countries.248 Even so, and despite the resulting
sour atmosphere, trade between the two countries continued to flourish.249
Meanwhile, the trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the USA
known as AUKUS, launched in September 2021, may be of limited near-term
military significance but sends a clear political and strategic message of an
alliance against China.250 Together with its AUKUS allies—as well as others,
including Canada, France, Germany, Japan and New Zealand—the USA has
conducted ‘freedom of navigation’ operations in areas of the South China
Sea that China, despite a 500-page judgement against it in July 2016 by the
Permanent Court of Arbitration, continues to claim as part of its territorial
waters.251 In September 2018, in a dangerously close encounter, a US warship
and a Chinese warship passed within 40 metres of each other.252
Whether this should be regarded as a rerun of the US–Soviet cold war
with one change in the cast of characters is debatable and hotly debated.
One line of thinking in the USA treats the confrontation between the two great
powers as inevitable;253 an alternative approach points to the economic and
commercial links that tie China and the USA together in a way that was never
true of the cold war rivals.254
Against this difficult background, the joint Chinese and US statement on
enhancing climate action, issued at the November 2021 COP26 international
conference on climate change in Glasgow, offered a welcome sign that both
powers could nonetheless seek to cooperate on at least this global issue.255
The two offered strong statements of intent rather than binding commitments.
Nevertheless, their coming together over climate change raised the possibility
of other areas of pragmatic cooperation where long-term interests are shared,
such as health risks and loss of biodiversity. A virtual summit between
President Xi Jinping and President Biden the same month was generally
interpreted as easing tensions and stressing the value of cooperation, though
it failed to identify further areas for action.256 However, when Speaker of the
US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi made an official visit to Taiwan in
August 2022, thereby giving a forthright statement of support for Taiwan’s
continuing autonomy257—a position with bipartisan backing, as a follow-up
visit by members of the US Congress demonstrated258—China responded by
suspending military and climate cooperation with the USA.259 It seems likely
that a mix of confrontation, competition and some areas of cooperation will
continue to characterize Chinese–US relations in the coming decade. Much

depends on which aspects of the relationship receive the greatest attention
and effort from the two governments.
1.3.7. Drivers of insecurity

Intensifying geopolitical rivalries and the accompanying political ambitions,
clashes and crises are driving increased insecurity on a global scale. They
also reduce the capacity for managing conflict and political rivalry on regional
and national scales. In 2019 there were missile strikes, proxy attacks and
challenges to freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf, while armed clashes
escalated to new levels between two nuclear-armed states, India and
Pakistan, over Kashmir.260 In 2020 war erupted in Ethiopia and open warfare
returned to the South Caucasus with the escalation of conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan.261 The absence of international capacity when it came
to cooperatively managing and mitigating these conflicts was striking. Only in
the South Caucasus was there an effective intervention to limit the violence,
carried out by Russia, acting alone and effectively ignoring the apparatus set
up by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to respond
cooperatively to the conflict.
The same deficiency was notable in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite intense scientific cooperation in the development of a vaccine
between research teams in a number of countries with advanced scientific
capacity—though not between all the countries where such capability exists—
the distribution of the vaccine revealed severe limitations in the extent and
generosity of cooperation. The WHO issued a clear warning about the severe
health risk to all posed by ‘vaccine nationalism’—a me-first approach to
immunization.262 UN Secretary-General António Guterres attacked it in the
following terms: ‘Vaccine nationalism and hoarding are putting us all at risk.
This means more deaths. More shattered health systems. More economic
misery. And a perfect environment for variants to take hold and spread.’263
The economic consequences of vaccine nationalism would likely also be dire,
including for countries that stocked up with more vaccine than they needed.264
A study by the Rand Corporation estimated vaccine nationalism as potentially
imposing a global economic cost of $1.2 trillion a year, while investing in
equitable worldwide vaccine distribution offered a return on spending of 4.8 to
1 ($4.80 earned for every $1 spent).265
This deficiency of cooperation was evident even when it came to a
straightforward humanitarian appeal. In an attempt to turn a health crisis into
a peace opportunity, Secretary-General Guterres issued a global ceasefire call
in March 2020.266 There was significant support for this, including from some
parties actively engaged in armed conflict.267 International support, however,
was hindered by an argument between China and the USA about whether
a UN Security Council resolution endorsing the appeal should mention the
WHO.268 In the end, the impact was limited, with few ceasefires lasting beyond
a month.269

However, geopolitical rivalry, regional instability and political ambitions
are not the only drivers of insecurity. They play out against a background of
longer-term factors that are shaped to a significant degree by the fact that
we live in a hyper-connected world. There are two important aspects to this.
One is what is often known as connectivity: the ways in which far-flung parts
of the world are connected to each other by trade, travel, communication and
information flows. While connectivity can and does have positive implications,
it also acts as a transmission mechanism for risk,270 linking issues and
locations. The second aspect is how diverse issues and spheres (such as
security, economics, environment, society, politics, health) are connected
to each other. These linkages are as pertinent a source of risk to human
societies, economies and polities as the various linkages in the biosphere,
explored above in relation to the onset of the Anthropocene epoch. Tracking
these linkages in and between the natural and security spheres may help in
developing an understanding of the most fruitful targets for remedial action.
In that spirit, it is worth thinking through connectedness in the background
drivers of insecurity. Here we focus on vulnerabilities in trade, cyberspace,
social inequalities, food insecurity and disease.
1.3.7.1. Trade
The world relies on the sea for transport of food and energy, as well as for
communication. Each year, enough maize, wheat, rice and soybean are
transported to feed approximately 2.8 billion people.271 Over 80 per cent
of world trade by volume goes by sea, accounting for over 70 per cent of
global commerce by value.272 In all, the global food trade has 14 transport
chokepoints: 6 are in inland waterways and 8 are maritime. Among the key
chokepoints, the Panama Canal and Strait of Malacca (including the Singapore
Strait) are especially important for transporting grain, while over a quarter of
global soybean exports go through the Strait of Malacca and a fifth of global
wheat exports go through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles on their way
from Ukraine and Russia. So far this century, 13 of the 14 chokepoints have
experienced some form of disruption, mainly due to violent conflict or extreme
weather events, which are becoming more frequent under the impact of
climate change.273
Each year, approximately 2 billion tonnes of crude oil are transported
by sea.274 The key chokepoint for oil is the Straits of Hormuz in the conflict-
affected Gulf region—around one-third of the global crude oil seaborne supply
goes through the Hormuz seaway, which consists of two lanes, each two miles
wide (about 3.22 km), with a two-mile-wide safety gap between them. Other
maritime chokepoints for energy transport are the Bab al-Mandeb between
Yemen and Djibouti, and the Suez Canal. The March 2021 case of the cargo
ship Ever Given offers a vivid demonstration of the potential fragilities and
risks at play. The ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, reportedly because of a
strong gust of wind, resulting in 12 per cent of global shipping being held
up.275 By the time the Ever Given was re-floated six days later, some 10 million

barrels of crude oil (1.3 million tonnes) were waiting at each end of the
canal.276
The melting of Arctic Sea ice due to climate change has opened up a new
sea route north of Siberia. In 2018, Chinese container ships used this route to
travel from Shanghai to Hamburg, reducing the length of the voyage by some
6000 miles (almost 10 000 km) compared to going via the Suez Canal.277
Russia is planning a new generation of large icebreakers to keep the sea
clear for navigation and has stated it expects to have year-round commercial
shipping going through the northern route in 2022 or 2023.278 Russian
forecasts of 80 million tonnes of goods by 2024 and 130 million by 2035
are, however, small compared to total trade volumes.279 It seems unlikely the
Northern Sea Route will ease the problem of chokepoints being disruptively
sealed off in the near future. Worse, in today’s geopolitical climate, it could
develop into a new zone of contention, not least because as the ice melts
access is opening up to natural resources, including a major oil and gas field
on the continental shelf off Russia’s Barents Sea coastline.280
Other modes of transport are also vulnerable to disruption, such as oil
pipelines and energy complexes. A US fuel pipeline operator had to shut down
operations after a ransomware cyber-attack, closing a pipeline carrying 45 per
cent of the east coast’s supply of diesel, petrol and jet fuel. The short-term
effects included price increases, with some US states declaring emergencies,
and reports that at least 3500 petrol stations had run dry.281 Whatever the
source of these disruptions, they reveal vulnerabilities and drive insecurity.
1.3.7.2. Cyberspace
The closing of the US pipeline also illustrates the vulnerability of critical
infrastructure such as energy, transport, health and communication systems
to cyber disruption. From Swedish supermarkets282 to the Irish health service283
to the hacking attack via software provider Solar Winds on hundreds of
organizations including government agencies,284 and more, we are persistently
reminded that our increasing reliance on cyberspace generates growing
vulnerabilities. In many countries, everyday transactions—such as salary
payments, household purchases, travel arrangements, insurance, banking,
and pension contributions and payments—are conducted online, with proof
of identity likewise provided virtually. In addition, communications, public
utilities (e.g. the electricity grid and water distribution) and the management
of transport (e.g. urban and highway traffic and air traffic control) all depend
on efficient functioning within cyberspace. As a general rule, the more
sophisticated and extensive a country’s online capabilities are, the more
vulnerable it is to cyber intrusions.285 In turn, the consequences of cyber-
attacks are more damaging, the effects on individuals of cyber-crime are more
destructive, and the security arrangements required become more elaborate.
The pace at which software companies modify their products makes it hard for
security measures to keep up.286 As in the case of the biosphere, the choices

made in building modern societies are making for an increasingly precarious
world.
The actual insecurity generated by cyber-dependence is not the only
problem. Though much of what goes wrong in cyberspace is accidental, there
is a persistent temptation to attribute problems to hostile action by criminals
or governments. Cyberspace has physical locations—some in outer space in
satellites, some in ground-based installations—and more than 90 per cent
of all data travels at some point through ocean cables.287 From collisions
with space debris to the consequences of extreme weather, these physical
embodiments of cyberspace face a range of hazards. Among them, the role of
human error is significant.288 There is now considerable concern about the false
alerts generated by cyber security systems, with one estimate suggesting that
45 per cent of system downtime is unnecessary.289 There is also concern about
how to handle incidents whose causes are unknown, and how to manage
public and political perceptions so as to avoid an escalatory response against
a body, such as another government, which may not have been responsible—at
least deliberately—for the disruptive incident.290 Amid the current geopolitical
context of rivalry and suspicion, the atmosphere created by an incident is often
febrile. Managing the situation becomes harder in proportion to the level of
hostility, conflict and mutual recrimination there is in international politics. The
more peaceful the global context, the more straightforward a calm response
will be.
1.3.7.3. Inequality
Countries are also made vulnerable by inequalities, both vertical (as between
social classes) and horizontal (as between groups divided by race, ethnicity
or gender), as well as between them. Inequality is not just a matter of income
and wealth, though it often starts there; it is also about political voice, access
to power, social inclusion, and access to basic services including health
provision and education.
Inequalities of income (what we earn) and wealth (what we own) are both
sharp. The global average of individual annual income is about $16 700;291
however, 85 per cent of the world’s population live on less, with around 65 per
cent living on less than $10 a day and about 10 per cent in what is currently
defined as extreme poverty—living on $1.90 or less a day.292 The richest 10 per
cent of the world’s population earns just over half of the global income each
year, while the poorest half of the population earns a mere 8.5 per cent of
the total.293 Wealth inequality is even more striking than income inequality:
the poorest half of the global population owns just 2 per cent of all economic
wealth, while the richest 10 per cent owns 76 per cent.294
This is a field where the data and its meaning are hotly contested. There
appears to be general agreement that while economic inequality between
countries has declined, it has increased within most countries.295 Taking a
broad view, since about the turn of the century, inequality between individuals
within a country has become a more important component of global inequality

than inequality between countries.296 Put differently, social class and gender
now matter more than nationality as determinants of individual inequality.
Oxfam depicts the extraordinary state of individual inequality with
the startling claim that 26 people between them own the same amount
as the poorest 3.8 billion297—though this estimate includes a great deal of
paper wealth (e.g. stocks and shares), whose value fluctuates up and down.
Estimated in this way, the total wealth of the world’s approximately 2000
billionaires amounted to just under $12 trillion in 2020, having grown by
almost $4 trillion over the previous year.298 By comparison, the global total
of economic stimulus that governments put into their Covid-19 responses
amounted to $10 trillion.299 This reflects a trend over the past 40 years in
which countries have become significantly richer, but their governments have
become significantly poorer.300 That is to say, there has been a general rise
in accumulated private wealth, from 3–4.5 times the size of annual gross
national income (GNI) in most rich countries in 1970 to 5–8 times the size of
GNI today. Meanwhile, public wealth has declined in nearly all countries since
the 1980s, the exceptions being oil-rich countries with large sovereign wealth
funds, such as Norway.301
Globally, men own 50 per cent more than women, who are excluded
from many jobs,302 still earn less for comparable work in most places, form
the majority of those at the bottom of the economic pile, and globally put
in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid work as carers each day.303 These economic
markers of gender inequality are only part of the story. Across the world,
laws control and restrict women’s behaviour more than they do men’s, and
in many countries crimes against women are treated less seriously by police
authorities and the judicial system than crimes against men.304 The education
of girls is fundamentally a question of fairness. It has also been held up as a
strategic development priority305 and a directly attributable cause of increased
economic output.306 However, other factors are also key if the education of girls
is to lead to economic growth;307 not least, there has to be an effective and
responsive state. More generally, the under-recognition and disparagement of
the productive work undertaken by women inevitably detracts from a country’s
resilience in the face of multiple challenges. In other words, unfairness
exacerbates vulnerabilities.
There is much academic debate about whether and how inequality
contributes to armed conflict.308 Part of the problem is that there is no neat or
comprehensive explanation of the role played by any such factor—inequality,
poverty, access to land, climate change, governance—in conflict causality.309
Violent conflict is never caused by just one factor. The real issue is whether
and how individual factors interact to create a context conducive to armed
conflict, within which groups and their leaders opt to pursue political ends with
violent means.310 From this perspective, the evidence is clear that inequality
generates persistent conflict risk.

1.3.7.4. Hunger
Having fallen steadily since 2005, world hunger began increasing again in
2017.311 In 2021, 193 million people were acutely food insecure, meaning
they were unable to meet their food consumption requirements—an increase
of nearly 40 million from the year before—and over 39 million faced food
emergencies, suffering very high acute malnutrition.312 Hundreds of millions
more, though in less desperate straits, are permanently hungry and under-
nourished, with modelling indicating that the number of under-nourished
people in the world will reach nearly 670 million in 2030.313
Food waste is an important issue. Estimates vary due to different
definitions and methodologies about which parts of the food chain are
included in the analysis. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization calculates
that, measured by value, 14 per cent of food produced globally is lost post-
harvest before reaching the retail level. The UN Environmental Programme,
meanwhile, estimates that 17 per cent of food available at the retail, food
service and consumer level is wasted by being thrown away.314 Improving
supply chain efficiency will not, however, address the most significant part of
the problem.
The main causes of the increase in world hunger are the consequences
of armed conflict and the impact of climate change.315 Though the Covid-19
pandemic negatively impacted global hunger statistics in 2020, violent conflict
remained the primary driver of global hunger.316 The effect, however, is not one
way—hunger also drives violent conflict,317 and lasting food insecurity in the
wake of war serves to feed the next war.318 Without resolving the problems of
insecurity and climate change, it is unlikely sustained progress can be made
in reducing world hunger. At the same time, if the problems of food insecurity
go unresolved, countries will remain vulnerable to the maladies that hunger
brings, including social upheaval, community fragmentation, psychological
destabilization and low physiological immunity.319
1.3.7.5. Disease
For the most part, the relationship between health and violent conflict has
been studied only by looking at the impact of conflicts on human health. From
the treatment of wounds to the consequences of health infrastructure (e.g.
clinics, hospitals, pharmacies) being destroyed or closed in the midst of violent
conflict, the negative impact of war on health is a well-studied area.320 Likewise,
it is well known that war has spurred major advances in medicine, such as
blood transfusions in World War I and the use of antibiotics in World War II.321
While the possibility of disease as a threat to peace and security is a relatively
recent notion and so not yet thoroughly researched, it has nonetheless entered
high policy. In the USA, a National Intelligence Estimate on the link was issued
as far back as January 2000.322 In 2014, the Obama administration pushed
for the creation of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA)323—a cooperative
effort involving 44 governments at the outset and some 70 by 2020324—and

in 2016 assigned the task of coordinating the US role in the GHSA to the
National Security Council.325
To understand how a pandemic may have negative impacts on peace
and security, it is worth starting with Covid-19. Official data on the scale of
the pandemic is unreliable due to, among other reasons, methodological
shortcomings and the limited capacity of many national reporting systems.
How much the result understates the full impact of Covid-19 is hard to pin
down. Studies of excess mortality—how many more people died in a given
period than is normal for a given country—suggest the true number of deaths
from Covid-19 is significantly higher than the official count.326 By the end of
September 2022, the confirmed Covid-19 death toll was 6.55 million;327 the
WHO’s estimate for deaths in 2020 and 2021 related to Covid-19, however,
based on excess mortality, put the death toll at 14.9 million (in a range from
13.3 to 16.6 million).328 Another study, based on a model that takes prevalence
of the disease as well as excess mortality into account, estimated 23.2 million
Covid-related deaths (in a range from 16.1 to 27.7 million).329
Given the global reach of the pandemic, an economic impact was
inevitable. In 2020, economic output fell in all bar 20 countries, including
all major national economies except China.330 The pandemic also depressed
wages in two-thirds of countries for which official data is available,331 and
is estimated to have driven approximately 120 million people into extreme
poverty in the course of 2020, reversing three decades of progress in poverty
reduction.332 Initial estimates for 2021 indicated a continued, albeit smaller,
spread of extreme poverty in the pandemic’s second year.333 These impacts
tend to sharpen social inequality and thus deepen social vulnerability and risk
of conflict.
At the same time, it is well established that consolidated democracies are
internally more peaceful than autocracies, semi-democracies and transitional
states.334 Given that the condition of democracy is a significant factor in
conflict causation, the deterioration in the quality of democracy in recent
years, accelerated in 2020 and all too often justified as part of governmental
responses to the pandemic, is of considerable concern.335 Thus, through rising
inequality and declining democratic quality, the pandemic forces itself into our
thinking on prospects for peace, conflict and security.
The number of armed conflicts tends to increase some two to three
years after a major economic disruption. Examples include the oil price shock
of the early-to-mid-1970s, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global
economic crisis of 2008–2009.336 The 2020 Covid-related economic downturn
may have the same effect—historically, pandemics have been followed by
periods of social unrest, political instability and heightened conflict.337 Both the
direct effects of disease and its social and economic repercussions, as well
as deficient government responses to it, combine to contribute to the erosion
of human wellbeing. This plays out against a socio-economic background that
is conducive to rising levels of inequality, on a foundation in which ecosystem
services decline because of environmental crisis.
We are living in an age of vulnerability.

1.3.8. The idea of security
The complex mix of challenges on today’s security horizon suggests a need to
think hard about what we mean by security—that is, the security of whom or
what, against what threat?
Hans J. Morgenthau was an intellectual giant in the study of international
politics in the 20th century. He was a leading figure in the realist school of
international relations, which regards rivalry between states as inevitable and
even right, because ‘politics, like society in general, is governed by objective
laws that have their roots in human nature’.338 Central to these ‘objective laws’
is ‘the concept of interest defined in terms of power’.339 For Morgenthau, a
political realist ‘thinks of interest defined as power, as the economist thinks
of interest defined as wealth’.340 Thus, ‘International politics, like all politics,
is a struggle for power’ in pursuit of the national interest.341 This does not
mean simply pursuing power by force—for Morgenthau, diplomacy was about
persuasion and negotiation as well as power and pressure, and could entail
concessions on non-vital issues.342
Here is to be found the intellectual justification for conducting geopolitics
in a way that undermines the prospects for cooperation on the world’s great
security challenges. For Morgenthau, self-centred international behaviour
is inevitable, realistic and natural—and therefore right. What mattered for
Morgenthau was to understand that this is the nature of things and, given that
reality, to get the greatest advantage possible, measured in terms of power.
What we can see today, more clearly than was visible in the 1940s when
Morgenthau wrote his magnum opus, because we can now see the damage
inflicted on the biosphere since the Great Acceleration began (at around
the time he was writing), is that that kind of international behaviour is self-
defeating and destructive.
Morgenthau’s thinking remains influential. Looking back from our current
vantage point, however, it is clear that the core weakness in Morgenthau’s
theorizing of politics is his assertion that it is based on human nature. What
he did not and perhaps could not recognize is our human connection with the
natural environment—the biosphere of which we are a part. If that environment
decays, interest based on power becomes a second order concern at best.
Politics and political relations must henceforth be conceptualized in
relation to nature, not merely on a contestable interpretation of human nature.
Recognizing that we face a planetary emergency means recognizing that state
policy based on acquiring as much power as possible in the national interest
is entirely outmoded, wasteful and counter-productive because it is damaging
to the interests of the people who make up the country. This could be branded
‘ecological realism’ because preserving the biosphere is a core national, as
well as human, interest.343 Henceforth, national and international policies must
be rethought in light of a concept of interest based on achieving balance in the
biosphere. While rivalries and contestations will inevitably remain, security will
not be achieved by pursuing them. Rather, facing the complex mix of security

issues currently presented in the Anthropocene, the critical element of security
is cooperation.
It is that simple.
1.4. People and governance

The discussion thus far brings us inevitably to the question of governance.
No environmental issue is purely an environmental issue. Concerns about
the natural environment arise from a recognition that something has gone
wrong in human interactions with it and, therefore, that this relationship
must be governed differently if it is to be improved. Attempting to improve
environmental governance, however, brings us face-to-face with the toxic
geopolitics of the current period. This is one of the key linkages between
the crisis in the environment and the bleakness of the international security
horizon. As part 2 goes on to show, there are further linkages between
environmental stress and conflict.
An important part of the discussion around the planetary emergency
concerns how we govern both our relationship with nature and our
international political relations. On both fronts, this entails action at multiple
levels. Some of what is needed to restore ecosystem health and much of what
is needed to build peace must be carried out in local communities, whether
urban or rural. On the other hand, some of the action is of necessity national,
regional and international, and almost all the more localized action requires
national or international support and investment. Accordingly, this section
focuses more on global than local governance.
The task today is threefold:
• To manage the consequences of climate, environmental and
other challenges that have built up over time and that will
unavoidably unfold over the coming years;
• To ensure that the changes made to address the drivers
of environmental damage do not generate new risks of
insecurity and injustice; and
• To ensure that steps taken to build peace and security are
sensitive to the environment.
This can only be fulfilled through collective action at different scales (local,
national, regional, global) and in different spheres—in local communities,
in the machinery of government, in relations between governments, and in
the economy and the business sector. The emphasis on collective action, in
turn, means that a model of governance fit for purpose in the Anthropocene
epoch must place adaptiveness and social inclusion at its core. This
envisages good governance as an adaptive process of working together,
whether in communities, on a national scale, in cross-border cooperation or
in international partnership. For this to be possible, there must be a process

of negotiating a viable bargain between participants, balancing their interests
in the most productive way. This is equally true for relations between states
and for relations between community groups. Or looked at slightly differently,
whatever the condition of international political relationships, they have to be
good enough to permit potential adversaries to work together on the primary
problems.
1.4.1. Deficiencies of global governance

The difficulty here is that international governance is not in a good condition.
Its deficiency was visible on a world stage in COP26—the 26th Conference of
Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Glasgow
in November 2021. While governance deficiencies are probably less important
than economic interests and inertia in explaining the lack of progress on
addressing climate change thus far, without improved governance there is little
chance of achieving the necessary changes in economic functioning. Though
the concluding statement at COP26 was regarded by many as a step forward
compared to previous statements of intent and policy, it fell considerably short
of what was needed.344 Positives included accelerating the process of making
national commitments more ambitious.345 Overall, however, global warming
will continue:346 even if all promises are fulfilled the rise in global average
temperature will likely exceed the 1.5°C limit set as the goal by the 2015
Paris Agreement.347 Less optimistic assessments, based on current policies,
show average warming will clearly exceed the 2°C limit agreed as essential
in Paris.348 Strikingly, the President of COP26 apologized tearfully at the end
of the conference for last-minute changes that watered down the conference
statement’s green commitments, replacing an undertaking to ‘phase out’ coal
with an intent to ‘phase down’.349
This is only one symptom among many of the flaws in global governance,
despite the energy and effort invested and the gains achieved through
agreements and international institutions. The WHO set up an independent
panel to analyse its role in responding to Covid-19, with the subsequent report
highlighting that most governments ignored warnings of a possible pandemic,
were unprepared, and were slow to acknowledge the dangers of Covid-19
when it emerged.350 Moreover, once the crisis was upon them, vaccine
nationalism reared its head (see section 1.3.6).
Lack of effective cooperation and coordination allows many flaws in
global governance to persist. While some of these may be created in error,
others are clearly the result of deliberate action by the parties benefitting from
them. For example, the absence of coordination creates loopholes through
which large amounts of unpaid tax slip. It is estimated that the world loses
$427 billion annually in direct tax revenues due to tax avoidance (which is
legal) and evasion (which is not). Multinational corporations are responsible
for 60 per cent of these lost taxes, wealthy individuals the remainder.351
A further reason underlying the lack of coordination is simply that state

sovereignty is an important value in international politics, permitting states
to act independently of each other even when the state, as a unit, is not of a
scale that is appropriate to the problem. This creates a fragmented governance
framework, which, for example, makes it difficult to take care of the 64 per
cent of the world’s ocean surface that constitutes what is known as areas
beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). ABNJ are a global commons increasingly
affected by unsustainable and illegal fishing, pollution from shipping, and
mineral extraction.352 Institutions and agreements focused on ABNJ deal with
individual issues, making it difficult to create new rules that address emerging
and cross-cutting issues.353
The governance of outer space also reveals gaps. The current legal
framework was largely developed in the 1960s and 1970s—the most
recent multilateral treaty is the Moon Agreement, which was adopted by
the UN General Assembly in 1979 and entered into force in 1984.354 Taken
together, these agreements do not regulate private actors, who have become
increasingly important and active in space and lack any enforcement
mechanisms.355 Nor do they provide clarity over preventing or managing the
militarization of outer space, or provide instruments for handling disputes.356
In sum, scanning the instruments and institutions of international
governance reveals dated measures driven—or at least constrained—by
a narrow conception of national interest among competing states, or by
vested interests. These processes have little prospect of engaging affected
communities, and lack sufficient responsiveness to today’s realities and
concerns. While it is not impossible for states to come together and cooperate
in the sustainable management of ABNJ or other global commons, it is
undoubtedly difficult, requiring the appetite and determination to arrive at
joint, cooperative approaches and solutions.
1.4.2. Improving governance

According to the Commission on Global Governance, governance is ‘the sum
of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their
common affairs. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse
interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken’.357
Since the earliest times, identifying, preparing for and responding
to security risks has been among the primary functions of governance. In
democratic political theory, though individuals and communities are diverse,
the state should be directed by a sense of the common good—the overall,
balanced interests of the whole citizenry. When the state is not thus directed,
it is repressive.358 When the state represents and serves as best it can the
collective will of the people, the result is a shared ‘conception of political
justice’ and institutions that citizens engage with and, as a general rule,
trust.359 All things being equal, global governance simply extends the principles
of the common good, balanced interests and a shared conception of justice.
Unfortunately, however, all things are not equal, which goes a long way to
explaining global governance’s deficiencies.

Two issues to consider here are incentives and social position. From
a long-term and societal point of view, it is clear that the cost of inaction
on climate change is much larger than the cost of action, while the cost
of persisting with security policy based on narrow notions of national self-
interest is greater than moving towards a security approach based on
cooperation and sustainability. Impacts are felt at different temporal and
spatial scales, however, and differentially by each social group, with those who
have the power and resources to take action potentially disinclined to do so,
misguidedly believing themselves immune to the costs of inaction. These are
straightforwardly political issues, not just at the global level but in national
and local politics too. Winning the arguments over these issues is part of the
challenge of shifting to environmental sustainability and a secure peace.
There is effectively no choice other than to take up the challenge. Flaws
in global governance are imperfections in an important and continuing
enterprise. Entry into the Anthropocene epoch only emphasizes the
importance of establishing a normative and regulatory framework capable of
ending the harm inflicted on the natural environment by human action. At the
same time, entry into the Anthropocene represents a fundamental contextual
change—more of the same is simply not good enough. In relation to both the
environment and security issues, we need transformative change.
Here we offer nine areas for change in pursuit of the urgent collective
task of not only thinking differently—as Einstein declared was necessary
about the onset of the nuclear age—but planning how to act differently.
The nine concern data issues, inclusivity, legitimacy, dialogue, the need for
coordination, the free rider syndrome, political trust, countering populism, and
the problem of linearity.
Today’s biosphere and security risks, as explored above, involve many
uncertainties as to the timing and scale of impacts. At the most basic level,
there are grounds for concern about flaws in the data reported by governments
on which climate pledges and modelling are based.360 This is not a problem
of climate science but of whether national governments have the will and
capacity to provide accurate data on GHG emissions. Leaving aside issues
of deliberate distortion of data, there are significant challenges in knowledge
acquisition, storage, management, dissemination and application. These
affect all environmental issues, not just climate change.361 New technologies
capable of processing the huge amounts of data involved can help identify
risks, including ones that have a low probability of occurring but a high impact
if they do.362 The era of big data offers previously unavailable opportunities to
gather insights about the severity and exposure of climate hazards, as well
as their interaction with political, economic and social variables.363 These
approaches hold great promise when it comes to informing planning and
investment by governments, businesses and communities. However, it is
important that such technologies are not seen as silver bullets but rather
contributions to enhanced decision making.

One way of improving decision making is to emphasize mechanisms
that involve working collectively, with broad and diverse participation. As the
IPCC’s 2022 report repeatedly emphasizes, inclusivity broadens the range of
individuals or actors involved in assessing a set of risks, thereby increasing
the sum and diversity of knowledge exerted on the problem. This in turn
makes it more likely a creative solution will be found, and improves collective
ownership of the outcome.364 While four major actors—China, the EU, India and
the USA—could, if they were able to reach agreement, start to reduce the more
than 50 per cent of global GHG emissions they are jointly responsible for at
present,365 the chances of such an agreement being successfully implemented
without the buy-in of a wide range of actors—from Indigenous people to major
corporations—are extremely low.
Communities interact frequently and share a location or identity (e.g.
neighbourhood, religious or kinship groups). They work through informal
networks based on trust, reciprocity and social norms—what some call
‘social capital’.366 Communities generally have more knowledge about local
circumstances than is available in a country’s capital, let alone international
organizations. They are therefore better placed than centralized planners
to establish policy, plans and priorities,367 and also have greater incentives
and ability to influence local affairs.368 Communities thus have an advantage
in managing the risks they face in their localities (such as local violence or
flooding) due to their proximity to the people affected and their ability to
recognize, understand and resolve local tensions. However, risks often exist on
a scale that local communities are not equipped to handle.
Reliance on personal interactions is both a strength of communities and
a potential weakness. Communities are not necessarily fair or inclusive, and
can be marked by strong inequalities in power and wealth. Who is included
and who is excluded in decision making determines what policies are selected
and how they are implemented.369 Local communities may exclude vulnerable
people (chronically ill, widowed), women, new entrants (migrants, refugees)
or those who happen to be different (ethnic and other minorities) from fair
access to local markets, community spaces, public service or political voice
and power.370 Exclusion exposes some groups to a greater likelihood and worse
impact of environmental hazards, while generating grievances and potential
conflict arising from resentment at unequal distributions of power and
resources.371 Thus, while the attractions of acting locally are great, there is a
risk it becomes too narrow in both focus and participation. Avoiding these risks
is a challenge we return to in part 4.
The core point here is that there are differences of position, allegiance
and interest in all societies and communities. These differences produce
competing claims, especially when addressing the complex interplay between
different priorities over environmental and security risks. This competition
can only be handled by institutions accepted as legitimate arbiters by all the
competing groups. Ownership or control of an institution by one group will
necessarily diminish the legitimacy of how claims are settled. This issue

of legitimacy is especially important in the context of an issue in which
transformative—or even just far-reaching—change is envisaged, such as
responding to climate change. Only by adopting an inclusive approach can it
be ensured that differences between stakeholders in a community or society
are moderated peacefully. This mindset also holds true for UN member states,
often referred to—hopefully rather than accurately for the most part—as ‘the
international community’.
The emphasis on legitimacy and inclusivity means that effective
governance must involve continuous dialogue. In producing a viable,
negotiated compromise, it is vital that different groups’ concerns are aired,
understood and balanced against each other. In order to be effective
rather than merely a public relations exercise, the process needs to involve
government institutions, business, community groups and civil society.
Dialogue is also needed to develop a coordinated approach,372 which
constitutes a fundamental element in addressing Anthropocene challenges.
Coordination is required between issues (e.g. climate, security, health,
inequality, trade, cyber vulnerability), actors (e.g. governments, businesses,
international agencies, cities), actions (e.g. analysis, forecasting, policy-
making, financing, implementation), spaces (e.g. cyberspace, outer space,
the oceans, the land) and scales (from the local to the global). All this goes
well beyond the often articulated need to escape institutional and intellectual
siloes, though that is not a bad starting point. Ultimately, it involves setting
aside how these topics have been divided up in the past and ignoring who has
got what piece of the action hitherto—in other words, a fresh start in figuring
out what is most likely to enhance both security and the natural environment.
Coordination, in short, is not simply a technical question of aligning actions on
diverse issues, nor of effective implementation of agreed measures. Rather,
coordination is also a process of negotiation, which is why dialogue is required
to achieve it.
Dialogue-driven coordination that aims for legitimacy and inclusivity is
also necessary when it comes to dealing with the free rider problem. The
simplest definition of a free rider is someone who benefits from a collective
action without paying; the free rider problem is that the efficient production of
collective goods is jeopardized by the incentive not to pay for it.373 If the input
of every actor (e.g. governments, cities, corporate entities) is required to make
something (e.g. climate action) successful, there is a chance everyone will
contribute. However, if the withdrawal of an actor’s contribution would make
no discernible difference to the overall benefit, which the delinquent actor
would continue to receive regardless, a rational actor might decide not to
contribute. And then another. And perhaps more. Once a certain momentum
of non-payment of dues has built up, the incentive not to bother may become
too much to resist, at which point the whole effort collapses. This may be
especially tempting when the benefit of the action lies well into the future but
its costs are to be paid now. What free riders need to know is that the costs of
inaction far outweigh the costs of action.

This underlines the importance of growing public and political awareness
of the issues, an inspiring youth movement, more ambition for action
from countries worldwide, and an increasing sense of urgency. For global
governance to work, political engagement is crucial at the national and local
scales, where ordinary citizens have the capacity to influence things and
a sense of their own agency. However, sustained engagement by ordinary
citizens requires a belief that things can be influenced to change, which in turn
necessitates a degree of trust in at least some of the main public institutions.
Widely expressed concerns about a generalized decline in political trust place
this in doubt.374 The evidence for this decline is a good deal less clear than
many fear and, as far as democratic states are concerned, trust seems to
flow as well as ebb.375 There is little doubt, though, that, where it is possible to
identify the problem through opinion surveys and people are free to express
the distrust they feel, trust in many countries’ public institutions cannot be
taken for granted.
Distrust in institutions feeds dissatisfaction with the system of
government and with the balances and compromises demanded by
democracy. One of the current symptoms of this dissatisfaction is populism.376
Of concern here is that populism is often associated with a nationalistic turn
away from international cooperation, as seen in the USA, the UK and other
countries in western Europe in recent years. In both liberal and illiberal states,
populism tends to be anti-foreigner and especially anti-immigrant, and is often
associated with a systematic rejection of expert knowledge and science.377
Countering populism is unlikely to be successful if the focus is on
responding to populist arguments on their own terms. Instead, what is
needed is an alternative that can be put forward as more appealing and
urgent. From this perspective, it is important to bear in mind that resolving the
environmental and security dimensions of the planetary emergency involves
more than simply doing what is done today but a bit better. The climate
crisis, other environmental crises and today’s security challenges can only be
successfully tackled by a radical change of course. The old diplomacy is no
longer enough.378 The old politics is no longer enough. The old economic trade-
offs are no longer enough. And the old idea that you can simply make a policy
to fix each of these problems is likewise no longer enough.
One way or another, working within current institutional and political
realities, awareness has to grow that we are facing problems with a quite
particular profile. These are not problems for which there are linear solutions.
It is not a question of a single cause having a single effect. Rather, a
multiplicity of causes—social, political, economic, natural, technical, human,
military, contemporary, historical—interact to generate a multiplicity of effects
in each domain. There are six characteristics to these non-linear problems:379
1 They are multi-dimensional;
2 They have multiple stakeholders;
3 They have multiple causes;
4 They have multiple symptoms;

5 They have multiple solutions; and
6 They are constantly evolving.
This simple list offers an overview of everything that has been argued, as
well as all the evidence brought forward, both in this part and the rest of the
report. Parts 2, 3 and 4 continue in the same vein of identifying problems and
potential ways of addressing them in a mode that respects these six realities.
Policies, institutional designs and practical initiatives for a global environment
of peace will only work if they succeed in respecting them. The task ahead is
different from classic problem solving. There are no boxes to tick, no moment
when it will be possible to declare ‘job done’ and move onto the next issue.
The way of working must be attuned to the challenges faced and the ways
in which they interact; modified to meet different needs at different times in
different places, while maintaining a clear overall direction. It is an approach
to governance that emphasizes the importance of adaptiveness. If we can find
a way to work like this, then it will be possible to introduce an environment of
peace to the environmental crisis and interlocking security challenges of the
Anthropocene.

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International Expert Panel
Margot Wallström (Chair), former Minister for Hindou Ibrahim, SDG advocate and environmental
Foreign Affairs, Sweden, European Commissioner activist, Chad
for the Environment and UN Special Representative
on Sexual Violence in Conflict Ma Jun, Director, Institute of Public
and Environmental Affairs, China
Jörg Balsiger, Director, Institute and Hub
for Environmental Governance and Territorial Johan Rockström, Co-director, Potsdam Institute
Development at the University of Geneva for Climate Impact Research
Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Attorney-General, Minister
and Administrator of UN Development Programme for Economy, Civil Service and Communications,
and Minister Responsible for Climate Change, Fiji
Ilwad Elman, Chief Operating Officer,
Elman Peace, Somalia Dan Smith, Director, SIPRI
Chibeze Ezekiel, National Sustainable Development Isabel Studer, Founding Director, Sostenibilidad
Goals (SDGs) Champion for Ghana and Coordinator, Global, Mexico
Strategic Youth Network for Development
Ulf Sverdrup, Director, Norwegian Institute
Arunabha Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, of International Affairs
Council on Energy, Environment and Water, India
With thanks to the Environment of Peace Youth

Expert Panel, our peer reviewers, and SIPRI’s
Climate Change and Risk Programme, Operations
Department, Outreach Department and Soapbox.
Cover images
Top: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
Bottom:
4 Kevin Fleming / Getty Images ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE
Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute
Signalistgatan 9
SE-169 72 Solna, Sweden
Telephone: +46 8 655 97 00
[email protected]
www.sipri.org
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ELEMENTS OF

This project was funded by the Norwegian

1.1. Planetary emergency 1

1.2. The environmental crisis and beyond 5

1.3. Peace, security and international politics 18

1.4. People and governance 41

Elements of a Planetary Emergency

Security Risks of Environmental Crises

Navigating a Just and Peaceful Transition

Enabling an Environment of Peace

Other related materials

2 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 3

4 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

1.2.1. The biosphere

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 5

Gross domestic product (trillions 2011$)

6 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 7

1.2.2. Biosphere degradation and human health

8 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 9

10 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

1.2.3. Climate change

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 11

12 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 13

1.2.4. Resources, resources

14 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 15

1.2.5. Tipping into the Anthropocene epoch

16 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 17

Figure 1.2. Planetary boundaries

deterioration in the biosphere, or conversely, if corrective action is taken, the

1.3. Peace, security and international politics

18 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 19

governance while neglecting other critical areas, thereby weakening health

1.3.1. Casualties of violent conflict

20 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

No. of people foricibly displaced, worldwide (millions) 80

Figure 1.4. Total population forcibly displaced, worldwide

1.3.2. The environmental impact of violent conflict

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 21

22 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

1.3.3. Types of violent conflict

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 23

1.3.4. Military spending and the arms trade

24 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

Figure 1.5. World military expenditure, by region, 1988–2021

world military spending surpassed $2 trillion—the highest level it has ever

ELEMENTS OF A PLANETARY EMERGENCY 25

(billions of trend-indicator values)

Figure 1.6. The trend in international transfers of major arms, 1982–2021

1.3.5. Weapons of mass destruction

26 ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE PART 1

Figure 1.7. Estimated global nuclear warhead inventories, 1945–2022

February 2021—the one remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty