Armies must ready for global warming role: Britain

LONDON (Reuters) – Global warming is such a threat to security that military planners must build it into their calculations, the head of Britain’s armed forces said on Monday.

Jock Stirrup, chief of the defense staff, said risks that climate change could cause weakened states to disintegrate and produce major humanitarian disasters or exploitation by armed groups had to become a feature of military planning.


But he said first analyses showed planners would not have to switch their geographical focus, because the areas most vulnerable to climate change are those where security risks are already high.

“Just glance at a map of the areas most likely to be affected and you are struck at once by the fact that they are exactly those parts of the world where we see fragility, instability and weak governance today.

“It seems to me rather like pouring petrol onto a burning fire,” Stirrup told the Chatham House think-tank in London.

Reuters