Climate change and security in Canada
| Author | Wilfrid Greaves |
| DOI | 10.1177/00207020211019325 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essay |
Scholarly Essay
Climate change and
security in Canada
Wilfrid Greaves
Department of Political Science, University of Victoria,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Abstract
This article examines the implications of human-caused climate change for security in
Canada. The first section outlines the current state of climate change, the second
discusses climate change impacts on human security in Canada, and the third outlines
four other areas of Canada’s national interests threatened by climate change: economic
threats; Arctic threats; humanitarian crises at home and abroad; and the threat of
domestic conflict. In the conclusion, I argue that climate change has clearly not been
successfully “securitized” in Canada, despite the material threats it poses to human and
national security, and outline directions for future research.
Keywords
Canada, climate change, security, human security, Arctic, national security
Canada is severely affected by climate change. Its massive land area; diverse cli-
mate regions, ecosystems, and species; expansive and vulnerable infrastructure;
and population centres that are, on the one hand, dense urban areas and, on the
other, isolated rural communities, pose a range of climate challenges. As the fede-
ral government’s most recent climate assessment outlines, significant impacts
include ocean acidification along all three coasts; increased but highly variable
seasonal precipitation; reduced freshwater access; loss of Arctic sea ice; coastal
Corresponding author:
Wilfrid Greaves, Faculty of Social Sciences–PoliticalScience, University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Road, David
Turpin A341, Victoria, British Columbia, V8P5C2, Canada.
Email: wgreaves@uvic.ca
International Journal
2021, Vol. 76(2) 183–203
!The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00207020211019325
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flooding; and more extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, drought, extreme
snow and rainfall events, and wildfires.
1
Due to its high latitude and the suscep-
tibility of Arctic and sub-Arctic climates to warming, Canada has already warmed
by approximately twice the global average, and many communities have experi-
enced severe climate change-related damage. Without dramatic and rapid global
action to mitigate humanity’s aggregate greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the
effects of climate change will worsen severely over the course of this century.
Unfortunately, effective mitigation is unlikely. Earth’s system has not yet
responded fully to the greenhouse gases already released into the atmosphere by
human activities, and global GHGs continue to rise, leading many scientists to
note the growing difficulty of avoiding a “ghastly future.”
2
Combined annual rates
of natural and human-caused emissions exceed any period in the last 22,000 years,
and atmospheric GHG concentrations are higher than any point in the past
800,000 years, with the planet on track to exceed the worst-case scenarios modelled
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
3
These conditions are
well outside the range in which human civilization has developed and will result in
a radically different global climate from that in which current social, demographic,
and geographic configurations emerged. Recent data indicate that environmental
changes are occurring faster than predicted by climate models. Rising global tem-
perature raises concern over “tipping points” that may catalyze rapid, uncontrol-
lable threshold effects with catastrophic consequences for ecological integrity and
resilience around the globe.
4
This new geological era of the Anthropocene, char-
acterized by human interference in natural systems on a planetary scale, is under-
mining Earth’s capacity to provide a “safe operating space for humanity,”
5
signifying nothing less than a radical shift in humanity’s relationship with the
global biosphere.
1. Elizabeth Bush and Donald S. Lemmen, eds., Canada’s Changing Climate Report, Ottawa,
Government of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2019.
2. Corey Bradshaw et al., “Underestimating the challenges of avoiding a ghastly future,” Frontiers in
Conservation Science 1 (2021): 1–10; and World Bank, “Turn down the heat: Climate extremes,
regional impacts, and the case for resilience. A Report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics,” Washington, DC, 2013.
3. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Summary for policymakers,” in T.F.
Stocker, et al, eds., Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science basis. Working Group I Contribution
to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge,
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 11.
4. Timothy M. Lenton et al., “Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 6 (2008): 1786–93; Timothy
M. Lenton, “Arctic climate tipping points,” Ambio 41, no. 1 (2012): 10–22; and Chris Derksen and
Ross Brown, “Spring snow cover extent reductions in the 2008–2012 period exceeding climate
model projections,” Geophysical Research Letters 39, no. 19 (2012).
5. Paul J. Crutzen, “Geology of mankind,” Nature 415 (2002): 23; and Rockstr€
om et al., “A safe
operating space for humanity,” Nature 461 (2009): 472–475.
184 International Journal 76(2)
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