Tuning Military Concepts, Doctrine and Force Design to Mitigate Human Security Challenges Arising from Global Environmental Change

Abstract

The South African Department of Defence considers the effects of climate change within a broader context of global environmental change, along with such drivers as freshwater decline; land degradation and desertification; stratospheric ozone depletion; and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. All of these elements converge to contribute significantly to contemporary environment-related threats to human security, more so in the developing world. Critics from both civil society and the military question the legitimacy of military involvement in government’s response to these, mostly non-military threats. These questions are placated in this rationale, which examines the nature of human security as it interfaces with the environmental security-related system, the corresponding institutionalised response on the part of the international community and the manner in which these initiatives ultimately involve conventional military capabilities. Such engagement demands specific mission capacity in addition to mission sustainability in the face of global environmental change.