International Security & War

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentary Assembly debated a resolution this week that calls on member states to recognize climate change as a significant security risk, with “force multipliers” like rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns that will increase competition for food and water, shift global migration patterns, and...

One-fifth of the world’s countries will face severe water shortages by 2040, and many Middle Eastern nations will bear the brunt of the crisis, according to research published last month by the World Resources Institute.

The heart-rending photos of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old refugee who drowned at sea on the treacherous passage from Syria to Turkey, have generated a flurry coverage on the role of climate change and drought in triggering the civil war in Kurdi’s home country.

The Middle East’s long relationship with its water supplies is the subject of a survey article that appeared earlier this month on New Statesman’s CityMetric site.

Climate change is as serious a threat as nuclear war, but a safer climate future “need not be beyond reach,” according to a report commissioned by the United Kingdom government and led by ex-UK chief scientist Sir David King.

A recent report to the G7 shows that climate change could trigger social unrest, violence, and civil wars in countries that are already unstable, VICE News reports.

Climate change is on track to kill 250,000 people per year between 2030 and 2050 and undo 50 years of public health gains, a team of more than 40 European and Chinese researchers concludes in a commission report published in the prestigious UK medical journal, The Lancet.

More than half of the world’s 37 largest aquifers are depleting at a faster rate than they’re being replenished, NASA reported this week, based on gravitational data from global satellite monitoring.

Actor Charlize Theron, fresh from her lead performance as Imperator Furiosa in the latest Mad Max film, is warning that humanity faces a bleak future if climate change is not addressed.

Climate change “constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday in a commencement address to graduates at the U.S. Coast Guard academy in Connecticut.

Water supplies in São Paulo, Brazil could run out as soon as July, and local officials are considering calling in the military to deal with “possible social chaos” resulting from the severe drought, the TeleSUR television network reports.