WASHINGTON — Global warming is likely to create humanitarian disasters, increase illegal immigration and destabilize precarious governments and could add to terrorism, according to a new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.
"Logic suggests the conditions exacerbated (by climate change) would increase the pool of potential recruits for terrorism," said Tom Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, who testified before a joint House committee hearing Wednesday.
Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia are most vulnerable to warming-related drought, flooding, extreme weather and hunger. The intelligence assessment warns of a global spillover of those troubles: increased migration and water-related disputes, Fingar said in prepared remarks.
Climate change alone would not topple governments, but it could worsen problems like poverty, disease, migration, and hunger that could destabilize already vulnerable areas, Fingar told the committee.
On the other hand, efforts to reduce global warming by changing energy policies "may affect U.S. national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself," he stated.
"The operative word there is may, we don’t know," Fingar said.
The national intelligence assessment on the national security implications of global climate change through 2030 is among periodic intelligence reports that offer the consensus judgment of top analysts at all 16 U.S. spy agencies on major foreign policy, security and global economic issues.
Congress requested the report last year. The assessment is classified "confidential."
It predicts that the United States and most of its allies will have the means to cope with climate change economically. Unspecified "regional partners" could face severe problems.
Fingar said that the quality of the analysis is hampered by the fact that climate data tend not to focus on specific countries but on broad global changes.
Africa is among the most vulnerable regions, the report states. An expected increase in droughts there could cut agricultural yields of rain-dependent crops by up to half in the next 12 years.
Parts of southern and eastern Asia’s food crops are vulnerable both to droughts and floods, with rice and grain crops potentially facing up to a 10 per cent decline by 2025.
As many as 50 million additional people could face hunger by 2020, and the water supply — while larger because of melting glaciers — will be stressed by growing population and consumption. Between 120 million and 1.2 billion people in Asia "will continue to experience some water stress."
Latin America may experience increased precipitation, possibly cutting tens of millions of people from the ranks of those in want of water.
