Climate change threatens the West's security

Over the last two days, the EU's heads of government have been discussing climate change. Among the items on the agenda is a report by EU officials  Javier Solana and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, entitled "Climate Change and International Security".  The Guardian got hold of a copy of this report earlier this week and it contains some stark predictions.

Global warming, say the report's authors, could make a fifth of the world's population homeless. Scarcity of water and higher temperatures will lead to repeated crop failures and the complete loss of large areas of food-producing land. The immediate effects will be felt in south Asia, the Middle East, central Asia, Africa and Latin America, but, ultimately, Europe will bear the consequences. Areas critical to Europe's energy supplies will become destabilised at the same time as unprecedented numbers of migrants head for the relative safety of the West.

If the report's authors are right, the world could have a refugee population equivalent to that of China wandering the globe and looking for new homes.

Is this just paranoia from the EU? Probably not. In January, a report by senior NATO officers named climate change as one of four key threats to the security of the West. US defence chiefs have expressed similar fears.

So how should European countries respond? Even if you accept that global warming is man-made, any measures we put in place now, however extreme, will not prevent the Earth warming up significantly over the next few decades. We can take it as read that, whatever we do, in the next fifty years there will probably be a global climate catastrophe significant enough to uproot large numbers of people.

In a commentary on his report, Javier Solana said:

[W]we need to see whether existing rules of the game are "climate-proof".

Although he doesn't mention it, one of the rules of the game that will clearly need to be reviewed is the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. It was signed in the aftermath of the Second World War, amidst an atmosphere of post-Holocaust guilt.

The refugees in the minds of those who drafted and signed the document were the Jews and others fleeing persecution from Hitler's Germany, many of whom had been tuned away by democratic countries in the years before the war. The signatories agreed to provide refuge, including food and shelter, for anyone fleeing persecution in future.

But what seemed like a perfectly reasonable agreement in 1951 had unforeseen consequences. It is not just state oppression that can create refugees. Civil wars, tribal and clan conflict and gang violence have seen large numbers of people displaced. Under the convention, western countries are obliged to give homes to refugees. Because the definition of persecution is interpreted broadly, almost anyone from some countries can claim to be a bona fide refugee. In 2005 an immigration tribunal effectively ruled that anyone from Zimbabwe who turned up in the UK was at risk of persecution and therefore entitled to asylum.   

If climate change causes famine and shortages of water, it will almost certainly lead to wars. As the rules stand at the moment that means many of the displaced people will be entitled to claim refugee status. If the predictions in Javier Solana's report are anywhere near true, abiding by the agreement we signed in 1951 could see the UK obliged to take in millions of people, which would cripple our welfare system and de-stabilise the country.

So when Mr Solana talks about the rules of the game having to change, he is right. Can western countries maintain their current commitment to providing for asylum seekers? Will the UK's current policy of giving council accommodation to recognised refugees have to cease? Can we continue to offer free health-care and welfare benefits to new arrivals?

If this EU report is even close to being right, the UK and other European countries will not be able to maintain their current commitments under the 1951 convention. Their cherished welfare and health-care systems will also have to be drastically cut.

Is any of that on the agenda at the EU summit? If it is, I doubt whether we will hear anything about it. The EU will come up with some measures to reduce energy use and carbon emissions, which will make us all feel that something is being done, but the almost inevitable impact of massive immigration on European countries will be played down.

Europe's leaders should be asking themselves how they will cope with the de-stabilisation of large parts of the world. Will they be able to maintain our energy supplies when the states that control those resources are either hostile or have collapsed? What action will they take to secure dwindling water supplies? How will they manage the waves of migrants that want to come to Europe? What measures will they put in place to control the explosion in crime caused by the rapid influx of new people? How will they prepare a population reared on welfare and a free health service for a world where governments can no longer afford such things?

Are they really prepared to change the rules of the game or will they just keep playing according to the old ones until it is too late?