strengthening sovereignty security and sustainability in an era of climate change加强主权安全和可持续发展在一个气候变化的时代.pdfVIP

Sustainability 2011, 3, 1416-1451; doi:10.3390/su3091416 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 /journal/sustainability Article Strengthening Sovereignty: Security and Sustainability in an Era of Climate Change Rymn J. Parsons 1221 Candlewood Drive, Virginia Beach, VA 23464, USA; E-Mail: rymn.parsons@; Tel.: +1-757-341-0458; Fax: +1-757-341-0499 Received: 1 August 2011 / Accepted: 12 August 2011 / Published: 31 August 2011 Abstract: Using Pakistan and the Arctic as examples, this article examines security challenges arising from climate change. Pakistan is in crisis, and climate change, a transnational phenomenon perhaps better characterized as radical enviro-transformation, is an important reason. Its survival as a state may depend to great extent on how it responds to 2010’s devastating floods. In the Arctic, the ice cap is melting faster than predicted, as temperatures there rise faster than in almost any other region. Unmanaged, a complex interplay of climate-related conditions, including large-scale “ecomigration”, may turn resource competition into resource conflict. Radical enviro-transformation has repeatedly overborne the resilience of societies. War is not an inevitable by-product of such transformation, but in the 21st Century climate-related instability, from resource scarcity and “ecomigration”, will likely create increasingly undesirable conditions of insecurity.