CLIMATE change is already acknowledged as a national security risk in the US but Australia seems unprepared for what some experts are calling “the longest war”.

Sherri Goodman, a former Pentagon and US Department of Defence official, has helped to develop groundbreaking reports on the links between climate change and national security.

While Australians may not yet recognise the risks, Ms Goodman told news.com.au that in the US, the link was widely accepted within the military and national security leadership.

Even Donald Trump’s new Secretary of Defence James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that climate change was a threat to the country’s troops.

“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,” Mattis reportedly confirmed in a statement.

Ms Goodman, who coined the term “threat multiplier” to describe the climate change risk, said Australia is not immune to its potentially devastating impacts.

So far, climate change is believed to have been a factor in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Egypt.

Ms Goodman said climate change would create prolonged instability and cause underlying tensions to seep out through a variety of conflicts.

Extreme drought is thought to have created conditions in Syria and Iraq for the rise of Islamic State, as well as the Arab Spring in Egypt.

“The food crisis was the spark that lit the match for the Arab Spring because there were wheat shortages in Russia and Ukraine, and Russia stopped exporting wheat after a prolonged drought,” Ms Goodman said.

“That led to a food shortage in Egypt and in other Arab Spring nations.”

Ms Goodman said Australia needed to better understand these types of connections so it could prepare and take steps, not just to respond when people’s lives were at risk during a natural disaster.

media_camera Protesters ride on an armoured personnel carrier as it moves through the streets near Tahrir Square on January 28, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. Picture: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

“We need to understand where droughts and water scarcity and extreme weather events are becoming forcing factors in conflicts,” she said.

“The climate is continuing to change because of the carbon that we’ve put into the system and so we need to understand these changes and then we need to be able to respond to them.”

She said Australia was not well prepared for this “longest war”, particularly as many political leaders did not accept climate change posed any problem to future prosperity.

Ms Goodman said she hoped recent extreme weather events like Cyclone Debbie, heatwaves and bushfires would be a “wake up call”.

“You have the capability, you have the power within in Australia to make the country more resilient,” she said.

“You’re already sort of a resource power house, but you want to be one that’s sustainable and continues its economic vitality for the rest of this century, and the way to do that is to appreciate the full range of both risks and opportunities.”

HOW IT COULD IMPACT US

Australia has already been given a recent taste of the havoc that extreme weather can bring, with homeowners complaining of looting in the aftermath of flooding and wild weather created by Cyclone Debbie.

But while Australia is a robust economy and has a stable political regime, many of our neighbours are not so lucky.

“The Asia Pacific region is ‘disaster alley’ for extreme weather events and natural disasters,” Ms Goodman said.

“The intensity of these events have been increasing in recent years, most likely fuelled by higher Pacific Ocean temperatures,” she said.

As one example Ms Goodman highlighted the situation in the Philippines, which was one of the countries most at risk of climate change due to sea level rise and storm surges.

Importantly, it was also politically unstable, where insurgents are creating problems for an authoritarian government.

“It wouldn’t take that much to push that country over the edge and these are countries right in your region,” she said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop also highlighted concerns that Islamic State may

establish a caliphate in the Philippines recently.

“There is concern that ISIS may well seek to declare a caliphate, an Islamic caliphate, in the southern Philippines,” she told Sky News last month. “This brings the threat right to our doorstep,” she said.

media_camera Members and supporters of the communist party of the Philippines' armed group, the New People's Army (NPA) shout slogans during a protest near Malacanang Palace in Manila on March 31, 2017. Picture: Ted Aljibe/AFP

Climate change has also been established as the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, which supports 70,000 jobs within the region.

“I had the great privilege 20 years ago ... to dive in the Great Barrier Reef and it’s one of the most beautiful sites I’ve ever seen in my life,” Ms Goodman said.

“Now that I know that the bleaching has changed the corals, I don’t know that I’d come back here right now. And I’m sure I’m not alone in my thinking.”

While Australia’s economy may be able to survive the loss of tourism if the Great Barrier Reef was to die, Ms Goodman said other countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, may not.

“Australia is a robust economy and a resilient society but you are here as part of the coral triangle,” she said.

“Can their economies withstand long-term and perhaps, permanent bleaching? I don’t know. But I think we should be all very concerned about that.”

Australia is also surrounded by low lying Pacific Islands where whole populations are at risk of being flooded and losing their sovereignty within our lifetimes.

“People get desperate when they lose their homes, their food, their shelter, their water,” Ms Goodman said.

“Climate change acts as an accelerant of instability,” she said.

While it may not be the only cause acting to create this, climate change can aggravate existing threats like terrorism, the development of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, corruption and political instability.

“So climate becomes a threat multiplier on all of these existing threats,” she said.

OTHER COUNTRIES ALREADY ACTING

Ms Goodman has been sounding the warning on the climate change risks to national security since 2007 and also appears in the documentary The Age of Consequences, which was partly screened on Four Corners recently.

She Goodman said there had already been a response within the national security community in the US and within the clean energy community.

Ms Goodman said military and national security leadership in the US certainly understood the link between climate change and threats to national security.

“Now, does everybody understand it? No. Do some people want to continue to deny it? Yes. But that’s why it’s important to keep explaining it and raising the concern,” she said.

Ms Goodman said countries like China were already acting.

“China does have a strategic view of its future, it looks out and plans out decades ahead to see what kinds of resources it needs to feed its massive population,” she said.

That is why one reason it has bought agricultural land in Africa, and Ms Goodman said it was also the reason why China was moving into the Arctic so that it could access mineral rights and other investments when the area was opened up.

“I think China is on a global quest, for resources to feed a hungry and thirsty nation and it’s going to continue,” she said.

“That’s why (Australia) should be mindful of Chinese foreign direct investment and what the implications are for this society.”

Ms Goodman believes there is widespread recognition that increasing extreme weather events are linked to climate change but said people didn’t always agree on what the solutions were, and what the response should be.

“If we keep our eyes wide open and pay attention to these risks, we can begin to reduce them,” she said.

“We can make our societies more resilient. Those opportunities are already there, in terms of responsible community planning, energy resilience, community level infrastructure resilience.

“We just need to be aware of what those risks are and incorporate them into planning both at the local and the national level, and strategic levels.”

Sherri Goodman will be appearing at events in Canberra and Melbourne this week, including in Sydney on Tuesday at 6pm at the Lowy Institute.

Email: charis.chang@news.com.au | Twitter: @charischang2

Originally published as The ‘long war’ we’re not prepared for