"Climate change is already having a profound impact on international security," according to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who will present the report in Brussels on Thursday (13 March).
Solana points "reductions of arable land, widespread shortages of water, diminishing food and fish stocks, increased flooding and prolonged droughts" as drivers of increasingly hostile competition between states for dwindling global resources.
The west faces the potential for conflict with Moscow over resources in the Arctic, according to the report. The Arctic ice cap is melting at an increasing rate due to a rise in global average temperatures, making commercial exploitation of mineral and other resources in the untapped Arctic a possibility in future (EurActiv 17/09/07).
Russian scientists made headlines and startled the international community last year when they placed a flag on the Arctic sea bed in an apparent claim to precious mineral deposits.
Another concern cited in the report is the possibility of millions of 'environmental' migrants or refugees fleeing climate change-related fallout. "The multilateral system is at risk if the international community fails to address these threats," Solana warns.
In April 2007, the US military put forward a similar report warning that climate change could become "an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism" (EurActiv 17/04/07).
Solana makes a number of recommendations for dealing with the problem, including providing greater EU disaster response and conflict prevention capabilities. More 'carbon diplomacy', or cooperation with countries likely to be most affected by climate change, is also recommended.
And since rising waters and melting sea ice are expected to have a profound impact on the size and location of existing borders and territories, there is a need to "address the growing debate over territorial claims, exclusive economic zones, and access to new trade routes", he said.
While the report does not make any explicit calls for greater military spending as a means to deal with climate change fallout, Greenpeace issued a "word of warning" in response to the text.
"Any suggestion to increase military spending to deal with the impacts of climate change should be swiftly replaced with the notion that, to avert the starkest of these predictions, we need to act now to combat climate change", Mahi Sideridou told EurActiv.
