National and Homeland Security Planning in The Shadow of Climate Change

NATIONAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY PLANNING IN THE SHADOW OF
CLIMATE CHANGE
A Master Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty
of
American Public University
by
Kate Morales
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
of
Master of Arts
April 2019
American Public University
Charles Town, WV
CLIMATE CHANGE AND HOMELAND SECURITY 2
The author hereby grants the American Public University System the right to display
these contents for educational purposes.
The author assumes total responsibility for meeting the requirements set by US copyright
law for the inclusion of any materials that are not the author’s creation or in the public
domain.
© Copyright 2019 by Kate Morales
All rights reserved

Dedication
I dedicate this thesis to my mother, who is writing her own thesis concurrently, a
constant source of inspiration in her commitment to learning and dedication to hard work.
I also dedicate it to my longsuffering and supportive husband, who showed me the
world and thus delayed this thesis by at least two wonderful, life-changing years.
Finally, I dedicate this thesis to the fine folks at Java Punk Coffee Shop in
Colorado Springs, who allowed me to sit in their shop and supplied me with coffee and
sanity.
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
by
Kate H. Morales
American Public University System, April 07, 2019
Charles Town, West Virginia
Robert A. Belflower, Ph.D., Thesis Professor
This paper identifies the effects that climate change will have on the national and
homeland security enterprises. A thorough review of existing research with regard to
projected results of a changing climate show that hundreds of millions of people will be
at risk throughout the second half of the twenty-first century. This research demonstrates
that the US defense and homeland security departments are not doing enough to combat
these effects or insulate themselves from them. The recommendations list out a series of
actions that should be taken in the next ten years in order to reduce or minimize some of
these impacts. Action should be taken quickly in order for these changes to take effect
and be impactful to the overall missions of national and homeland security.

Table of Contents
List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 7
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 8
Problem Statement .......................................................................................................... 8
Background of the Study ................................................................................................ 9
Research Purpose .......................................................................................................... 10
Theoretical Framework/Approach ................................................................................ 11
Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 13
Literature Review.............................................................................................................. 15
Sea Level Rise............................................................................................................... 17
Extreme Weather Events............................................................................................... 23
Extreme Temperatures .................................................................................................. 27
Resource Scarcity and Disease ..................................................................................... 33
Climate Change: The “Risk Multiplier” ....................................................................... 37
Homeland Security Planning Processes and Climate Change ...................................... 40
Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 44
Research Design............................................................................................................ 44
Method .......................................................................................................................... 44
Data Collection Plan ..................................................................................................... 45

Analysis Plan ................................................................................................................ 46
Limitations & Bias ........................................................................................................ 46
Results ............................................................................................................................... 48
Climate Change Impacts Population Movements ......................................................... 48
Homeland Security Strategies Do Not Address Climate Change Sufficiently ............. 50
Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 53
Recommendations ............................................................................................................. 56
National Security and Defense...................................................................................... 56
Homeland Security & Disaster Preparedness ............................................................... 57
Public Policy & Foreign Relations ............................................................................... 59
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 61
References ......................................................................................................................... 64
List of Figures
Figure 1: Climate Changes in the Context of the Supporting Evidence. .......................... 16
Figure 2: Causes of Sea Level Rise .................................................................................. 21
Figure 3: Observed Change in Very Heavy Precipitation ................................................ 25
Figure 4: Global cities with populations exceeding 100,000, heat effects in the 2000s ... 32
Figure 5: Global cities with populations exceeding 100,000, heat effects in the 2000s ... 32
Figure 6: People in Water-Stressed Areas ........................................................................ 35
Figure 7: The Staircase to Terrorism ................................................................................ 40

NATIONAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY PLANNING IN THE SHADOW OF CLIMATE
CHANGE
Introduction
The increasing incidence of climate change phenomena such as sea level rise and extreme
temperatures become ever more evident as human communities are affected. Each year yields
stronger storms, hotter summers, water-inundated cities, and harsher droughts (World Bank,
2012). As cities and nations experience these disasters, it becomes more difficult for them to
fund the responses without international aid. At the same time, the United States (US) continues
to invest in defense spending and prosecuting war around the world without regard to its impacts
on the climate (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment,
2019). Finally, increasing numbers of migrants flood the US southern border seeking asylum,
some from political turmoil or violence, and others from the conditions that make living in their
home nations impossible (Wallace-Wells, 2019).
Problem Statement
It is no mystery that changes to humans’ environments cause them to move (Black,
Adger, Arnell, Dercon, Geddes, & Thomas, 2011; Mesić & Župarić-Iljić, 2014; Scott, Alekseev,
& Zaitseva, 2003; Unruh, Krol, & Kliot, 2004). As climate change impacts begin to build and
compound in areas with large human populations, people in those regions will inevitably move if
they do not or cannot adapt to the more extreme environments (Berger, 2004). Lack of
thoroughly-researched guidance reduces much of the rhetoric surrounding migration and climate
change to guesswork and pontificating. A survey of existing literature found that there is no
comprehensive guide for decision makers and planners in homeland security to take into account
climate change impacts while developing their policy plans for years and decades to come.
Additionally, there is no thorough analysis of how climate change impacts will affect homeland
security-related topics such as people migration and resource scarcity. Researched analysis will
provide homeland security strategists, politicians, and emergency planners the opportunity to
develop long-term proposals with the growing impacts in mind. Further research must be
conducted to draw these clear lines and prepare the national security, homeland security, and
emergency management communities for the inevitable changes in the decades to come.
Background of the Study
As this paper is being written, the year is 2019 and the US government has just reopened
after the longest shutdown in its 243-year history (Foran, 2019). It was closed due to a dispute
between the Legislative and Executive branches regarding how funds should be spent in relation
to border security. The debate on border security will continue for months, years, perhaps even
decades to come. The current Presidential administration insists that there is a crisis at the
border and that the Department of Homeland Security requires funding, among other things, to
prevent crime and drugs from crossing the US’ southern border. Concurrently, the very same
Presidential administration has hinted that climate change is a hoax and has removed references
to climate change from government-sponsored sources in favor of terms like “resilience” and
“sustainability” (Dawsey, Rucker, Dennis, & Mooney, 2018; Environmental Data & Governance
Initiative, 2017; Foran, 2016). Meanwhile, the US is pursuing warfighting or peacekeeping
actions in 150 countries around the world, several in areas due to experience extremely
detrimental effects due to climate change (Defense Manpower Data Center, 2018)
At first glance, these topics may seem vastly disparate from one another, totally unrelated
in scope, priority, and emphasis. However, the two topics are not only connected, they are
inextricably linked at their very foundations. Homeland security not only must react to the
changes in the global climate, but must realize many of the disasters it was designed to respond
to have climatic origins. Likewise, the science which fully backs the evidence of climate change
should also recognize that the impacts on human civilization will be drastic, and the US will face
new challenges as a result. The movement of people throughout human history has resulted from
numerous stimuli, climate not being the least of them. It is no different today. As climate
changes and certain parts of the world become less hospitable or outright unlivable, human
populations will move to places whose environs are more welcoming—though the people who
already live there may not be so hospitable.
The odd political tension between wanting increased national security and refusing to
recognize the impacts of climate change and outright censoring evidence supporting it is what
ultimately drives this thesis. There are few analyses that blend these two topics, and no
comprehensive resource for planners, decision makers, and political representatives to reference
when preparing for the future. The homeland security industry must take the impacts of climate
change into account when building policy for the next decades; likewise, those involved in
predicting and planning for the impacts of climate change must not disregard the security
implications.
Research Purpose
This study explores the relationships between climate change impacts on human
populations and which of these effects defense and homeland security planners must take into
account while developing strategy for future decades. The primary goal of this study is to draw
direct links between climate change and the main concerns of national and homeland security,
namely topics like human migration, resource scarcity, disease proliferation, political and social
tensions, and terrorism. The secondary goal of this study is to analyze homeland security
strategy and determine what new considerations need to be added to include climate change
impacts. Finally, the analysis and recommendations of this study provide options for the
homeland security, emergency management, and environmental activist communities to learn to
speak the same language and approach issues in a holistic manner, rather than placing their
topics at odds as so often seems to be the case in modern political rhetoric.
Theoretical Framework/Approach
This paper approaches the issue of climate change and homeland security from several
angles, primarily the various theories of homeland security and of emergency management.
Since these theoretical frameworks often intersect, it is simple to find unifying concepts which
can be applied to both indiscriminately.
There is no single or universal theory of homeland security. As a pursuit, it is relatively
new to the US, having entered the public eye only in the years since the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001. Various education programs around the US teach homeland security with
different theories and priorities, but the most common themes include risk management, security,
terrorism, leadership, and social identity (Comiskey, 2018). Given that the threat landscape for
homeland security is constantly changing with various new threats and political priorities
reflecting the administrative approach of the day, education programs have tried to reflect these
changes in their curricula. Homeland security academics have a responsibility to educate future
practitioners to be able to adapt to changing priorities and threats as well; homeland security is
necessarily a dynamic field. Homeland security is also a naturally interdisciplinary field. In
most cases it is partnered with other academic pursuits such as emergency management,
intelligence, law, criminal justice, and public policy (Comiskey, 2018). One of the great
challenges of approaching a theory of homeland security is that different disciplines can imply
very different things when they use the term. In one community, homeland security might mean
preventing terrorism. In others it might mean something very similar to national security, or
managing catastrophes, or even a government overreach which limits civil liberties (Bellavita,
2012). For the purpose of this paper, homeland security will be defined in the most basic and
practical way, if somewhat oversimplified: homeland security is “activities intended to prevent
bad things from happening – whenever that’s possible, and when something disastrous does
happen, to work on response and recovery,” (Bellavita, 2012, p. 7). With this in mind, the
effects of unabated climate change, for the purpose of this paper, can be characterized as “bad
things” and the crises that result from those effects are “something disastrous”. Thus, homeland
security policy must work to address those negative consequences of inaction and prepare to
respond and recover from the disasters that result.
There is a strong systems theory component to this research. Since each climate-related
phenomenon does not result in any specific impacts or consequences, but rather has rippling
effects with many divergent results, and since individual consequences can be caused or
amplified by many starting phenomena, the entire effort of developing homeland security policy
in response to climate change must recognize the climate, the political environment, the global
economy, and trade structures as interconnected systems. Inasmuch as one phenomenon can
have cascading impacts, so the responsive policies must recognize that plans cannot correspond
to one particular cause to be abated. In general, however, systems theory is not particularly
helpful in developing specific answers to unique problem sets.
Finally, political theory plays an important role in any development of homeland security
policy, especially when climate change is involved. Though climate change is not debated
among the scientific community, it is a hotly contested issue in political circles. Changing
political tides in the US reflect different levels of belief in every aspect of climate change: if it is
occurring, if it is caused by humans, if human action can prevent it, etc. The resultant policy of
this disagreement is, at best, inaction, and at worst, proliferation and magnification of the
problem. The censorship of terms in official government documents make research into policies
ever more difficult, and use of code words in place of climate-related terms obfuscates the issue
in the name of political will to focus on other topics (Environmental Date & Governance
Initiative, 2017).
Research Questions
The research will address a number of questions that relate to the topic at hand.
1. How are climate change effects, namely sea level rise, extreme weather events,
extreme temperatures, resource scarcity, and proliferation of diseases, expected to
impact the movement of people globally?
2. Do current homeland security planning and development strategies take these climate
change impacts into account?
3. Which climate change effects will have the greatest impacts on homeland security
interests, and what can strategists and planners do to account for those impacts?
Significance
Ultimately, the research and recommendations contained within this report will serve as a
reference for those decision-making parties who require a source of data along with the relevant
qualitative analysis for future planning and policy-making. In the fall of 2015, President Barack
Obama, on a historic visit to the Arctic, spoke in dark terms about the future if climate change is
not abated: “We will condemn our children to a planet beyond their capacity to repair:
submerged countries, abandoned cities, fields no longer growing,” (Goodell, 2017, p. 75).
As an emergency management, defense, or homeland security professional, one cannot
simply build strategies to reduce immigration to the US without considering the causative
motivations for those people to migrate. Additionally, as more of the planet ostensibly becomes
unlivable, preventing migration in itself becomes increasingly impractical and inhumane. Thus,
homeland security professionals must take into account that climate change impacts become a
global issue, not a national one. They must plan for a world in which political boundaries and
humanitarian needs are at odds with each other. To argue that this new world is not already upon
us is naive (Wahlström, 2007). This research intends to serve as a planning resource for national
and homeland security professionals to use in preparing to move into the future. It gives the
homeland security community, emergency planners, and environmental activists common
ground in addressing the world as climate change impact become more tangible to human
communities.
Literature Review
Human populations move. Whether by migration, expansion, or conflict, this is one of
the few constant strings throughout human history as we know it. The reasons for human
population movement are many, but time and time again it becomes obvious that one of the
fundamental causes for migration is environmental change. Myers (1997) writes about this as a
new phenomenon: the environmental refugee. In his article, he discusses at length the movement
of people in the coming decades due to environmental factors like deforestation, desertification,
flooding, soil erosion, drought, and others. According to his paper, in 1995 there were already
approximately 25 million environmental refugees worldwide. He writes,
…Global warming could put large numbers of people at risk of displacement by
the middle of next century if not before. Preliminary estimates indicate that the total of
people at risk of sea level rise [could be as high as]162 million (Myers, 1997, p. 175).
In 2007, the United Nations issued a stark warning about climate change in reference to
human populations and disasters (Wahlström, 2007). This article states in no uncertain terms
that natural hazards due to climate change are increasing in frequency, and that cities are
expanding quickly due to urbanization, which puts ever more people at risk of climate effects.
Given that the majority of urban centers find themselves close to major bodies of water, they
necessarily experience the impacts of climate change more directly. According to Wahlström,
Megacities like Tokyo, built on seismic areas, or exposed coastlines like
Shanghai, are at particular risk. In [other cities] …, decaying infrastructure, land erosion,
crowded conditions and a paucity of rescue services could spell potential calamity should
an earthquake or powerful storm hit (Wahlström, 2007, para. 4).

The Department of Defense also historically has addressed climate change phenomena,
the hazards they may cause, and the potential impacts of those hazards. This is clearly spelled
out in a 2017 report from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. This report’s intent is to
help installation planners in their assessments and facility plans in the future. As such, it
includes a helpful appendix that serves as a sort of “crash course” in climate science for people
who may have little to no training in those topics (Leidos, Inc. & Louis Berger, Inc., 2017). This
includes Figure 1, which pits climate phenomena along a line of increasing supporting evidence.
Figure 1: Climate Changes in the Context of the Supporting Evidence (Leidos, Inc. &
Louis Berger, Inc., 2017, p. C-4).
As Figure 1 demonstrates, the strongest evidence exists in support of heat waves and
coastal flooding. Climate scientists vary on how to communicate the various phenomena
resultant from climate change. Terms like “heat waves”, “extreme temperatures,” “rising global
temperatures” are often used interchangeably, but are not often clearly explained in policy
documents. The term “heat wave” does not necessarily evoke the realization that many sections
of the world will be too hot or humid to sustain life, often for months, if not years, at a time.
Likewise, “coastal flooding” may summon images like the storm surges following recent
hurricanes, but does not necessarily reflect entire cities being accessible only by boat, or
infrastructures collapsing because they were not designed to sit or operate in several feet of
water. Thus, investigating the effects of these phenomena must be done in the context of the
hazards and impacts to human-populated regions and long-term consequences of those impacts.
There are numerous other causes for human migration due to climate change that Myers
does not address. These include sea level rise, extreme temperatures, resource scarcity, and
proliferation of disease. These causes are addressed heavily in the literature and will be
reviewed categorically in the sections to follow.
Sea Level Rise
Perhaps the most-publicized impact of climate change is sea level rise. While sea levels
are indeed rising the world over, this impact is much more nuanced and diverse than usually
communicated by the media (NOAA, 2018). The average person might think that living a few
feet above sea level will protect them, but this communicates a dire misunderstanding of how sea
level rise affects cities, upstream communities, food supply, and water quality.
The first concern in regard to sea level rise is the most obvious one: intrusion of water
into human infrastructure. In his book “The Water Will Come”, author Jeff Goodell (2017)
details a number of prominent locations that will be gone by 2100: The Kennedy Space Center,
the naval bases in Norfolk, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, most of South Florida, and some entire
nations, like the Marshall Islands and the Maldives. With hundreds of millions of people living
at or within a few feet of current sea level, many of them very poor, it is easy to see how many of
them would quickly become climate refugees. Sea level rise and thawing permafrost are already
threatening villages in Alaska. In 2017, the Obama administration’s budget proposal included
$100 million to relocate Alaskan villages to higher, more stable ground, but that line item did not
appear in the final version of the budget (Goodell, 2017). The same book mentions later that
more people are displaced by disasters (floods, storms, and the like) than conflict or violence—
about 20 million per year. By 2050, the International Organization for Migration projects, there
will be more than 200 million climate refugees. The city of Jakarta alone, home to 50 million
and growing quickly, may be entirely submerged by then (Wallace-Wells, 2019). In China, the
Pearl River Delta floods every year to the point where the government evacuates over 120,000
people every summer. The Pearl River Delta is also home to the city of Shenzhen, where many
modern electronics are manufactured; that city will also likely be completely flooded soon
(Wallace-Wells, 2019). In the US, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) estimated that by
2045, more than 300,000 homes and commercial properties will be disruptively inundated with
water at least 26 weeks per year (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018). By 2100, that number
rises to 2.5 million properties, valued today at over $1 trillion just in real estate, and impacting
nearly 5 million people in the US alone. The report admits,
Many experts in risk assessment, credit ratings, real estate markets, insurance
markets, and flood policy… recognize that the risk of sea level rise to coastal real estate
is significant and growing— and that for the most part, financial markets do not currently
account for these risks (p. 2).
Miami-Dade County may be experiencing the most persistently obvious effects of tidal
flooding, with pumps running constantly to keep sea water out of the streets. However, the real
estate market is still slow to adjust, and investment in coastal real estate continues to grow
(Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018). This also does not account for lost revenues and jobs
provided by military bases that will need to close, ports that need to be reconstructed or
relocated, and the dozens of other business sectors that find themselves at or near sea level. In
the next 15 years, the report claims, about 280,000 people in the US will need to either adapt or
relocate as their homes will be inundated by regular floods, high tides, or intruding sea water. As
the report notes, many of the smaller communities in coastal areas will be hardest hit; climate
change mitigation and flood abatement funds are more likely to go to large cities like Houston,
Miami, and New York, than to smaller, poorer, and higher-percentage minority communities in
Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Florida. Of the communities the report
studied, nearly 40 percent have poverty levels higher than the national average. The economic
impacts of this are difficult to summarize; large portions of the tax bases of these regions will be
at risk, but residents have few or no resources to aid their relocation. Additionally, many of the
homes in coastal regions belong to elderly people—homeowners who often subsist on fixed
incomes or whose wealth is tied up in the property they inhabit. The study found that 60 percent
of the at-risk communities have populations of elderly people above the national average. As
those homes or the surrounding neighborhoods become flooded over time, those properties
decrease in value while property taxes are expected to rise in order to compensate in
communities that are not inundated in order to pay for the mitigation work, relocations, and
repairs.
In 1968, the US government started the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which
subsidizes insurance costs for homeowners in the event of floods (Haddow & Bullock, 2003). It
has been an embattled program for much of its life, since it depends on the participation of
communities and cannot require continuing insurance after an initial purchase. Thus, many
homeowners purchase insurance in order to have their mortgage loan approved, then cancel
shortly after their home purchase is complete. This results in the vast majority of homes in
floodplains and other flood-vulnerable regions not being insured for flood damage. This is of
increasing concern as more and more homes in the US become vulnerable to persistent flooding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has known about these problems since at
least 1991, when a study was commissioned to determine impact of sea level rise on flood
insurance rates. In the early 1990s, the expected magnitude of sea level rise was 1 foot to 3 feet
by 2020 (Federal Emergency Management Agency; Federal Insurance Administration, 1991).
The “100-year flood” was the primary concern, but the study did find that the number of houses
in the floodplain areas would increase significantly by the end of the twenty-first century
(Federal Emergency Management Agency; Federal Insurance Administration, 1991). Today, the
minimum sea level rise expected is four feet, and as many as eight feet of rise are possible if the
“business-as-usual” scenario is realized (Wallace-Wells, 2019). According to former FEMA
director Craig Fugate, much of the risk from floods has been transferred from insurance
companies to FEMA, which pays out losses that insurance does not cover. Even after $16 billion
in NFIP debt was forgiven in 2018, the program is still $20 billion in debt as of January 2019
(McKay, 2019). Insurance prices and risk analyses are typically done with a 100-year back look.
However, with the vast majority of the research suggesting that the rate of climate change is
accelerating, those analyses of past data become ever more unhelpful. The Union of Concerned
Scientists issued a warning about this program in 2013, and FEMA provided a plan in 2016 to
update the embattled National Flood Insurance Program. That plan was discarded in 2017 and a
new plan issued by new FEMA leadership which ignored sea level rise predictions in their
entirety (Lopez, 2017).
A 2015 paper by the US Geological Survey (USGS) goes into detail explaining how to
model sea level rise and what the major concerns are. This paper indicates that the problem for
coastal communities is more complicated than simple inundation by rising tides from the ocean
(Doyle, Chivoiu, & Enwright, 2015). The causes of sea level changes are described in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Causes of Sea Level Rise (Doyle, Chivoiu, & Enwright, 2015, p. 2)
In addition to the physical elements causing the ocean to actually increase, cities
themselves are also contributing to the problem (Wallace-Wells, 2019). As populated areas
increasingly drill for water, a number of secondary effects result. First, the extraction of water
from the ground empties out underground reservoirs. Next, the reservoirs collapse under the
weight of the land and structures above them. Then, soil that is more densely-packed becomes
saturated with water more quickly. This water acts as a sort of sinkhole, pulling heavy buildings
into the ground. As the ocean moves in and erodes the soil, beaches retreat and cities slowly
sink, making them more vulnerable to the advancing oceans. Studies on Jakarta show that it is
sinking at a rate of 1-15 cm per year—at those rates, by 2050, more than 95% of the city will be
under water entirely (Abidin, Andreas, Gumilar, & Fukuda, 2011). Cities like Venice, Miami,
and Hong Kong are similarly sinking and thus exacerbating the effects sea level rise has on them.
One of the most significant sectors to fall victim to rising oceans is the very foundation of
modern civilization as we know it: the internet. A 2018 study overlaying data about climate
change and sea level rise predictions with the locations of physical infrastructure found that the
fiber optic lines which carry internet data between places and the polyethylene conduits
protecting those lines are first of all heavily threatened by water, humidity and ice, which cause
signal attenuation (loss of intensity), corrosion, signal loss, and fiber breakage, specifically due
to freezing (Durairajan, Barford, & Barford, 2018). The researchers found that the greatest
impact to internet infrastructure will occur in the next fifteen years. After that, impacts continue
to rise at low but significant rates. They also find that cities with significant amounts of internet
infrastructure are also at great risk of water inundation, most notably Los Angeles, CA, New
York, NY, Miami, FL, New Orleans, LA, San Francisco, CA, and Seattle, WA. These cities also
contain long-haul conduit whose outages will also affect far-reaching areas of the US and the
internet as a whole. Finally, the study calls out ten internet service providers who have
infrastructure at risk due to climate change, noting that those providers with the greatest amount
of infrastructure, especially in the aforementioned cities, will experience the greatest
vulnerability. The researchers note that their predictions address only sea level rise specifically,
and that they do not account for impacts to internet infrastructure caused by storms, coastal
degradation, and other climate-related phenomena. Additionally, they comment that their
research was intended to focus on the regions that are at greatest risk, not the inland assets and
services that rely on those locations. The economic impacts of these risks are not enumerated in
the study, and it is nearly impossible to calculate them without knowledge of some mitigation
actions that can be taken. The potential cost of inaction here cannot be understated.
Sea level rise is one phenomenon of climate change which cannot be slowed or stopped
at this point in time. The best that nations can do is to minimize the eventual impacts. With a
minimum of four feet of sea level rise in the next eighty years, hundreds of millions of people, if
not billions, will find themselves either homeless or afloat in their current cities. Every city in
the world will see impacts, if not from being inundated itself, as nearly every coastal city will
almost certainly be, then by the influx of refugees from places that are flooded.
Extreme Weather Events
The statement by former FEMA chief Craig Fugate is telling in reference to extreme
weather:
We’ve lost time. We’re in a race. Can we adapt faster because the most
immediate impacts will not be sea-level rise, it’s going to be extreme-weather events… if
every event is record-setting, it means past data isn’t helping us (McKay, 2019, para. 11).
The world is already at a stage where every year is a record year, and nearly every storm
outstrips the definitions of standards set in the last century. New York City, already the victim
of historic storms in the past two decades, was as of 2005 predicted to experience the eponymous
“500-year storm” about every twenty-five years (Garner, Mann, Emanuel, Kopp, Lin, Alley,
Horton, DeConto, Donnelly, & Pollard, 2017). Furthermore, by 2045, that frequency will likely
increase to every five years. The study that predicted this increase also noted that tropical storms
will also likely move to higher latitudes as oceans warm to produce hurricanes further north, as
was seen with Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Global Climate Models (GCMs) such as those
produced by the IPCC, often also do not account for these relocating extratropical storms, and
many are now being recognized to have critically underestimated the frequency of major weather
events (Lin, Kopp, Horton, & Donnelly, 2016).

The term “extreme weather” encompasses a wide variety of events which are exacerbated
by a changing climate. These can include hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, floods, intense
rainstorms, tornadoes, heat waves, cold waves, droughts, and blizzards. Each of these types of
events has already been observed to be increasing both in frequency and intensity. In the
Northeast part of the US, there are 71 percent more intense rainstorms than a century ago
(Walsh, Wuebbles, Hayhoe, Kossin, Kunkel, Stephens, Thorne, Vose, Wehner, Willis,
Anderson, Doney, Feely, Hennon, Kharin, & Knutson, 2014). The National Climate Assessment
notes that since 1900, average US annual precipitation has increased by five percent. However,
these numbers are somewhat dampened by the extreme droughts in the first half of the twentieth
century. After 1960, the average rainfall steadily increases in most regions of the US. This trend
is not evenly-distributed—the Northeast has seen the greatest increase in rainfall and storm
events, followed by the Midwest and the Great Plains. The Southern parts of the US, both east
and west, have seen a mixture of increase and decreasing rainfall, with powerful droughts
impacting both regions at different times.
In the Northeast and Midwest, individual events of heavy precipitation have notably
increased in frequency. A heavy precipitation event is defined by the National Climate
Assessment as “A 2-day precipitation total that is exceeded on average only once in a five-year
period.” (Walsh, et al., 2014). Except for Hawaii, every region of the US has seen a change in
heavy precipitation between 1958 and 2012 as depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Observed Change in Very Heavy Precipitation (Walsh, et al., 2014)

Tree ring data in the western US indicated that the years from 2004-2014 have been the
driest in the past 800 years (Karl, Melillo, & Peterson, 2009). Heat waves have become more
frequent and last longer than in previous decades. Prolonged exposure to extreme heat without
rainfall results in historic droughts which impact both crop growth and human inhabitants. Areas
of California and Texas are already seeing groundwater depletion due to drought (Karl, Melillo,
& Peterson, 2009).
Flooding is another resultant issue of extreme weather. Hurricanes, rain storms, and new
tidal patterns are affecting communities at unprecedented levels. Myrtle Beach, Florida, is one
such community. In late 2018, the county council pushed through approvals for new housing
developments, even though those neighborhoods had just been added to FEMA’s flood zone
maps and those roads had just been flooded two days before the vote (Hucks, 2018). Entire
communities constructed and ready to sell have had to be abandoned because of constant
flooding, but the county council appears to be in denial of the inevitable and will need to fund an
approximate $18 million cleanup effort for the houses that had already been sold to new owners.
Other cities in low-lying areas also experience flooding regularly, not all of them coastal.
In the past two decades, flooding due to climate change has been demonstrated in cities across
the world: Alexandria, Tunis, Rio de Janeiro, Accra, Buenos Aires, New York City, Los
Angeles, Bangkok, and Nairobi, just to name a few (Gasper, Blohm, & Ruth, 2011). Along with
flooding comes a litany of other problems—pollution of drinking water, overflow of sewage
systems, spread of disease, and destruction of crop growing operations (Gasper, Blohm, & Ruth,
2011).
Every region of the US is somehow impacted by climate change hazards, making it
difficult to find any sector that, by 2050, will be habitable year-round. Additionally, according
to Thomas Smith, the Acting Assistant Secretary for DHS's Office of Policy - Strategy, Plans,
Analysis and Risk (SPAR) in 2015, “More frequent severe droughts and tropical storms,
especially in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, could increase population
movements, both legal and illegal, toward or across the US border.” (Smith, 2015, para. 5).
Climate change and its resultant effects have been implicated in migratory events worldwide
already, and will prove even more impactful in the years that follow. Urbanization is a major
result of the movement of people away from flood zones, but cities, under pressure from the new
immigrants, continue “developing” communities for housing, i.e., fabricating dry land out of
natural wetlands that then no longer have the ability to absorb moisture as they were intended to
and certainly cannot handle the increased moisture of more frequent and more severe flooding
(Uluocha & Okeke, 2004). This puts not only those new communities at risk, but also the
neighboring ones that for decades have been dependent on those marshy lands to protect them
from inundation.
Extreme Temperatures
One of the greatest causes for lack of habitability in human-civilized regions will be
extreme heat. Global regions have already begun to see these impacts in the heat waves that
have gripped different parts of the world in the early parts of the twenty-first century. Europe,
Russia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, the US, and Central America have seen summer
temperatures causing deaths in the tens of thousands (World Bank, 2012). Currently, the
International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issues a median prediction that at today’s
emissions levels, 4ºC (7.2ºF) increases by 2100 are not only possible, but likely (IPCC, 2014).
Average temperatures in general increase and cause a danger to humans, according to the
literature. However, some of the more alarming consequences arise in relation to humidity
increases. Human heat regulation works by using the surface area of the skin to radiate heat
away from the interior of the body. In order for this process to work, there must be a
temperature inequity between the air and the surface of the skin; to wit, the air must be at least 1-
2ºC (1.8-3.6ºF) cooler than the skin (Sherwood & Huber, 2010). Humidity adds to this problem
by narrowing the gap in temperature between the air and the skin, making the heat exchange
process less efficient. This phenomenon is discussed at length in a paper written in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Authors Stephen C. Sherwood and
Matthew Huber (2010) used wet-bulb temperature measurements, in which the measuring bulb
of a thermometer is covered in a wet sock and spun around, in addition to the standard dry-bulb
measurements. They also used a combination of measurements derived from a variety of sources
in order to found their analysis. They concluded that humans cannot survive sustained wet-bulb
temperatures in excess of 35ºC (95ºF) for more than six hours. Extreme wet-bulb temperature
events (in excess of 26ºC, or 78.8ºF) often last for days or weeks and even night does not provide
relief from these conditions. Sherwood and Huber also review paleontological records to
compare today’s estimates against past periods of elevated temperatures. The greatest challenge
they find is that previous periods of elevated temperatures occurred on evolutionary time scales,
which allowed species impacted by heat to adapt in order to survive, namely decreasing size and
thereby increasing surface-area-to-mass ratios, allowing for more efficient exchange of
temperature. Humans, however, do not have the luxury of a time scale of evolutionary
proportions; Sherwood and Hubert intimate that if humans are to adapt to higher temperatures
and humidity, they must develop technology which mitigates those impacts. For example,
promotion of wider use of air conditioning worldwide could provide some relief from the
elements, but at today’s rates, these improvements are unaffordable for the vast number of
people. Moreover, with the modern methods of climate control, it is frankly impractical to apply
these to livestock, a great number of whom will be impacted. This is applicable to crop
agriculture as well. Toward the end of Sherwood and Huber’s analysis is this conclusion:
If warmings of 10°C [18°F] were really to occur in next three centuries, the area
of land likely rendered uninhabitable by heat stress would dwarf that affected by rising
sea level. Heat stress thus deserves more attention as a climate-change impact (Sherwood
& Huber, 2010, p. 9555).
Many parts of the world will be drastically impacted by these higher temperatures. A
2016 paper written for Nature Climate Change focuses on southwest Asia and the limitations of
the human body to adapt to temperatures that are becoming ever more frequent in those regions
(Pal & Eltahir, 2015). The authors predict that at current escalation levels, large regions of the
Arabian Gulf will become uninhabitable deserts and even the coastal areas would have
constrained development due to increasing temperatures and humidity. Their study found that in
portions of the Gulf, annual average temperature maxima regularly exceed 50°C (122ºF). This is
an alarming measure, having implications for much more than human bodies themselves. For
example, they note that at 10°C (18°F) lower, most machinery cannot function, aircraft become
unable to take off and land, and roads and rail lines can buckle. Thus, not only is the temperature
dangerous for humans simply stepping outside, especially if exposed to sunlight and/or
improperly hydrated, but the infrastructure supporting those humans can no longer work
properly. Predicting the impacts of these trends toward the end of the twenty-first century
(namely, the years 2071-2100) requires the use of two scenarios. One, IPCC Representative
Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) assumes a business-as-usual future in which no action is
taken to curb climate change (IPCC, 2014). The second scenario, RCP4.5, accounts for some
mitigative action. In RCP8.5, the entire area of the Southwest Asian coastal regions, to include
the Gulf, Red Sea, and Arabian Sea, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, produce humidity
maxima in excess of 31°C (87.8°F) regularly, and several coastal regions exceed 35°C (95°F).
At these temperatures, many cities in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia become
thoroughly uninhabitable for major swaths of the year. Others, such as Kuwait City, are
geographically protected from the most extreme impacts. Pal and Eltahir predict that Muslims
living in these areas who pray outdoors daily will be unable to do so. Additionally, the Hajj, the
pilgrimage to Mecca conducted by about 2 million Muslims annually, will become physically
impossible as it is linked to the lunar calendar and thus can only be conducted in the summer for
several years in a row. Pal and Eltahir also discuss some of the impacts of these higher
temperatures. While the majority of the region may be totally uninhabitable, especially in
summers, by the end of the twenty-first century, the intervening time will experience major
impacts as well. In today’s summers, Saudi Arabia is estimated to burn 700,000 barrels of oil
per day to keep up with its air conditioning requirements – more than 70% of its total energy
consumption (Demirbas, Hashem, & Bakhsh, 2017). Another estimate purports that by 2050
there will be a worldwide demand for nine billion air conditioning units (University of
Birmingham, 2018). It is an unfortunate coincidence that the majority of locations where
temperatures will become unmanageable—those with the greatest cooling demands—are also
places of abject and extreme poverty. It is unlikely that the economic outlook of those regions
will change, and even so, the power requirements often outstrip the availability of supply. Pal
and Eltahir end with a cautionary warning detailing the impacts of their temperature predictions:
Under such conditions, climate change would possibly lead to premature death of
the weakest-- namely children and elderly. A plausible analogy of future climate for
many locations in Southwest Asia is the current climate of the desert of Northern Afar on
the African side of the Red Sea, a region with no permanent human settlements owing to
its extreme climate (p. 199)
It is not just already-hot regions that will experience deadly heat effects. As much of the
world’s population moves into cities and those cities respond by growing, they increase their
own temperatures as well. The concrete, asphalt, glass, and metal in cities produces a
phenomenon known as the “heat island effect” and may artificially increase a city’s temperature
by up to 12°C (21.6°F) at night (Environmental Protection Agency, 2018). Today, 354 global
cities experience summer heat with temperatures exceeding the 35°C (95°F) threshold. By 2050,
studies predict that that number will exceed 970 cities (Urban Climate Change Research
Network, 2018). The number of people living in those cities is growing, too, meaning that by the
same time period, the number of people exposed to those deadly city temperatures will exceed
1.6 billion (Urban Climate Change Research Network, 2018). Nearly a quarter of those people,
in half of the cities, are expected to be living in extreme poverty, making the abatement of those
heat extremes ever more challenging (Urban Climate Change Research Network, 2018).
In the Arab world specifically, rural-to-urban migration as a result of climate change is
measurable. According to a report by The World Bank, 56 percent of Arab people currently live
in urban centers, and by 2050 that number will increase to 75 percent. Over time, extreme
droughts have been directly linked to this rural-to-urban migration, and as many as one million
people may move to cities in response to individual droughts (World Bank, 2012). These
migrations have intersectional effects, not the least of which is that in most cases, those
migrating are men, leaving women and children behind to deal with the effects of droughts and
extreme temperatures, fight the battles of dying agriculture, all while having little to no access to,
or rights related to, property ownership. Additionally, migration to urban areas increases strain
on water and other resources, leads to exploitation of workers, and can have dire health effects if
those migrants move into makeshift shanty-towns as is often seen in poorer nations (World
Bank, 2012). These issues will be addressed in later sections of this paper.
Many sources indicate that those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are the
poor. As those poor migrants move to cities and away from the sweltering conditions of their
rural homes, the cities themselves increase in temperature as well, and cannot adapt to serve both
the tasks of cooling their inhabitants and the new strain on resources and health impacts brought
by the rapidly-expanding populations. According to the report “The Future We Don’t Want”,
…Climate change will have a downward pull on the financial resources of many
residents currently not considered to be especially poor. Should cities face extreme
climate events more frequently, leaving little time for recovery, this could ultimately
increase overall levels of urban poverty (Urban Climate Change Research Network,
2018, p. 20).
Figures 4 and 5, created from a compilation of NASA datasets, RCP 8.5 estimates, and
the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Projects, show the number of cities and their populations that
will be at risk of deadly temperature extremes by the 2050s:
Figure 4: Global cities with populations exceeding 100,000, heat effects in the 2000s.
(Urban Climate Change Research Network, 2018, p. 13)
Figure 5: Global cities with populations exceeding 100,000, heat effects in the 2000s. (Urban
Climate Change Research Network, 2018, p. 13)

Resource Scarcity and Disease
The intersectional results of climate change are many. In terms of the homeland security
effects, however, few are as impactful as resource scarcity and disease. In most cases, each
degree of warming on average leads to a ten percent decline in crop yields (Battisti & Naylor,
2009). The relationship of temperature to crop yields is not linear, however, and thus effects will
naturally be higher in some areas and lesser in others and in some cases yield decline will
accelerate as temperatures continue to rise. Compounding the impact of this is the growing
population. By 2100, some studies estimate that Earth will have 50 percent greater population,
and with 5C (9F) of warming (a reasonable estimate based on business-as-usual predictions),
worldwide grain yields will be 50 percent lower (Battisti & Naylor, 2009). The impact on animal
proteins is even greater since many pounds of grain are required to produce one pound of meat
and animals, especially cows, contribute significantly to warming (Battisti & Naylor, 2009).
Given the combination of exacerbated yield depletion and growing population, the United
Nations estimates that by 2050, the amount of food produced around the world will need to
double, but it will be ever more difficult to do so (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2009).
The optimal growing conditions for most food crops, such as grain, corn, and soybeans, will
need to move north. However, even in those regions, cultivation proves more challenging; with
more carbon dioxide in the air, weeds grow more effectively and choke out the food crops while
the food plants themselves grow thicker leaves in the presence of more carbon, making them
ever less effective at absorbing that which would otherwise fertilize them (Kovenock & Swann,
2018).
Warming is not the only climate-related factor that makes food production more difficult.
Sea level rise and its resultant erosion often increases salinity of surface water, making it
unsuitable for drinking or for agricultural purposes (Kundzewicz, Mata, Arnell, Doll, Kabat,
Jimenez, Miller, Oki, Sen, Shiklomanov, 2009). According to Gasper, Blohm, & Ruth, areas
that already experience food and water shortages will find even more challenges to come, and
those which are not already impacted will find themselves so shortly (2011).
As precipitation becomes more variable and demand for water rises, water
scarcity will become an ever more salient issue. Likewise, floods, droughts and severe
precipitation have caused damage to urban food sources, increasing the already prevalent
issue of food scarcity (2011, p. 153).
With food-growing regions becoming ever-more inhospitable, people from agrarian
regions are already fleeing for urban centers, leaving fewer people to operate the farms upon
which the rest of the population depends. Impacts are greater in more vulnerable developing
countries, meaning that more than likely masses of people will begin migrating to developed
countries, thereby increasing the strain on their resources. The poorest of the poor will find
themselves in hastily-assembled slums outside major cities, likely in the most flood- and
landslide-prone areas (McBean & Ajibade, 2009).
As cities grow, demands for water increase exponentially and in unexpected ways. For
example, increased need for cooling requires vast amounts of water. This affects industry,
municipal districts, development, in addition to populations. Globally, over 70 percent of fresh
water is used for agriculture and between 10 and 20 percent is used by industry (Khokar, 2017).
Human usage of water depends heavily upon the hydrologic cycle, in which evaporating water is
precipitated on mountains as snow and stored in glaciers and icecaps. In a warmer climate,
precipitation occurs more frequently as rain and there is ever less snow. Glaciers and icecaps
melt and flow into oceans, reducing the amount of stored water planetwide. Desalinization is
costly and inefficient. Thus, access to clean water becomes ever more restricted and expensive
(International Resource Panel, 2015). By 2030, water demand around the world is expected to
exceed supply by 40 percent (United Nations Environment Programme, 2016). In a study
addressing water and conflict, one study found over 500 water-related conflicts since 1900, with
half occurring after 2010 (Gleick, 2018). One of those conflicts is the Syrian Civil War, which
was initially spurred by a five-year drought and ultimately produced a global refugee crisis,
displacing well over six million people with an additional seven million in need of humanitarian
aid (UNOCHA, 2019). Figure 6 shows predictions of people living in water-stressed areas by
year from world regions, namely the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC), and the Rest of the World (RoW):
Figure 6: People in Water-Stressed Areas (United Nations Environment Programme, 2015)
Need for clean water and sanitation also helps prevent food spoilage. The World Health
organization has estimated that each year nearly 25 percent of liquid vaccines must be discarded
unused because of breaks in the cold chains (University of Birmingham, 2018). In addition,
flooding can cause spread of disease as well, since drinking water is often contaminated by
agricultural runoff, sewage, and other pollutants. In poor communities unable to sanitize water
before drinking, these problems become multiplied.
Contaminated water is just the tip of the proverbial disease iceberg. As permafrost melts,
diseases long-extinct on modern earth can reawaken and infect communities of people, plants,
and animals. This has already been observed in communities around the world: in 2016 in
Siberia, a strain of anthrax buried in the permafrost was released and killed a boy and over two
thousand reindeer, and infected over 80 people (Scientific American, 2016). More concerning to
many researchers, however, is the potential for modern diseases to adapt quickly, especially as
the environment of a warmer climate increases their rate of growth. Movement of people into
ever-denser urban settings makes the spread of disease easier as well, making the quarantine of
infected areas practically impossible. Variants of viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) such as
yellow fever, Ebola, Zika, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile, and dengue have long been confined
to the tropics. However, as the tropical regions grow, so do the ranges of these viruses. The
viruses themselves are also mutating, causing devastating effects. Zika, for example, has been
known since the 1950s, but was mostly confined to regions of Southeast Asia and Uganda.
Sometime between 2007 and 2015, it both spread to the Americas and mutated into a form that
causes birth defects (World Health Organization, 2016). Most VHFs and similar mosquito-borne
diseases thrive in hotter regions, and are spread more easily in populated areas; the World Bank
has predicted that as many as 3.6 billion people worldwide will have to contend with malaria by
2030 (World Bank Group's Climate Change and Development Series, 2016).
Climate Change: The “Risk Multiplier”
The 2019 Department of Defense report about changing climate reflects on five climate-
related events and their expected impacts on 79 military installations around the US: recurrent
flooding, drought, desertification, wildfires, and thawing permafrost (Office of the Under
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, 2019). These events are all secondary
side effects of rising temperatures, and the report does not address that as an issue in its own
right. However, the 2014 Department of Defense Climate Change Assessment Roadmap does a
better job of naming climate change phenomena which are likely to affect defense activities:
rising global temperatures, rising sea levels, changing precipitation patterns, and increasing
frequency and intensity of extreme weather. According to that report, “The changing climate
will affect operating environments and may aggravate existing or trigger new risks to US
interests” (Department of Defense, 2014, p. 4). The report goes on to specify that the
international impacts of climate change can include spread of disease, displacement of
populations (causing mass migrations), interrupting access to food, water, infrastructure, and
energy resources, and spreading disease—all topics of interest to both homeland security and
national security professionals. Additionally, this report calls out the increased instability in
nations that are unable to adequately respond to climate change; this instability potentially opens
up avenues for extremism and the development of terrorism.
In a 2018 statement on climate change, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General
Joseph Dunford said,
When I look at climate change, it's in the category of sources of conflict around
the world and things we'd have to respond to. It can be great devastation requiring
humanitarian assistance — disaster relief — which the US military certainly conducts

routinely (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment,
2019, p. 8).
Most parts of the world are seeing extreme weather of increasing magnitude and
frequency. The International Disaster Database shows that climate-related disaster killed 1.4
million people and affected over 5.5 billion people between 1981 and 2010—for reference, the
population of the world in 1981 was only 4.5 billion (World Bank, 2012) (World Bank, 2017).
The number killed and affected will naturally only grow as the population of the world
approaches 8 billion in the next decade. Of note as well is that as certain climate-related
phenomena increase in frequency, their associated hazards magnify as well. For example, an
increase in precipitation not only leads to water inundation as the immediate effect, rain or snow
can also cause landslides, mudslides, avalanches, ruined crops, and water contamination.
Second- and third-order effects also multiply, such as resettlements, economic impacts, and food
scarcity.
In a written statement, DHS Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Policy- Strategy,
Plans, Analysis, and Risk (SPAR) outlined four ways in which climate change would have
homeland security consequences:
1. Weather events causing population movements into the US
2. Smuggling and trafficking increase through newly-opened routes due to sea ice melt.
3. Public, plant, and animal health risks due to higher temperatures.
4. Communications and cyber infrastructure disruption by temperatures, sea rise, and
extreme weather (Smith, 2015).

A section in the 2015 edition of the journal Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy on
environmental impacts on homeland security concludes, “Environmental security will soon be
the central driver of all securities” (O'Sullivan, 2015, p. 208).
The seminal work on the development of terrorism is a paper by Dr. Fathali M.
Moghaddam entitled “The Staircase to Terrorism” (Moghaddam, 2005). It describes six steps to
terrorist acts in psychological terms. The ground floor of the staircase, where most people live,
is the perception of deprivation—that fairness and justice are not evenly distributed among
communities and that some are left without. The first floor is an exploration of options to fight
the perceived unfair treatment, in which people realize that injustice exists, and they begin to
look for methods of personal mobility out of the place of deprivation as well as to cry out for
societal change in regard to procedural justice. The second floor Moghaddam calls
“Displacement of Aggression” (p. 162). This is best demonstrated among authoritarian
governments in Africa and Asia who are simultaneously propped up by US support while they
foster anti-American sentiments in a ploy to distract attention from their own corrupt actions.
Citizens of these nations are educated from a young age with a strong bent toward blaming their
societal problems on the US. The third floor of the staircase is moral engagement. Moghaddam
explains that terrorist organizations may seem immoral to outside observers because of their
willingness to attack purportedly innocent civilians. However, within the organizations
themselves exists a strong alternate morality, in which the sacrifice of some is justified for the
sake of the struggle to achieve what they perceive to be an ideal society. Thus, those involved in
terrorist organizations are in fact morally engaged, and, in their perspective, it is the enemy who
are amoral or immoral. The fourth floor is perceived legitimacy of the terrorist organization as
one who can bring about the necessary change, as well as categorical polarized view that the
world is aligned with an us-versus-them construct. The fifth floor is the terrorist act, that of
violence against civilians. In terms of climate change, many of these concepts can be applied
toward the future world in which there will undoubtedly be “haves” and “have-nots”. Figure 7
depicts the staircase to terrorism.
The Terrorist
Act
Perceived
Legitimacy of
Moral Terrorist
Engagement Organizations
Displacement
of Aggression
Exploration of
Options to
Perception of Fight Injustice
Injustice
Figure 7: The Staircase to Terrorism (Moghaddan, 2005)
Homeland Security Planning Processes and Climate Change
Within Myers’ paper on environmental refugees come a number of policy options as
recommendations. First, Myers recommends reducing the impetus for migration by mitigating
the environmental impacts. At the time of his writing, there is no institutionalized denotation for
dealing with environmental refugees, and most national governments do not recognize them as a
class of refugee. Additionally, Myers notes that plans moving through the United Nations (such
as the Anti-Desertification Action Plan) would greatly reduce the cost of dealing with
environmental migrants. Next, Myers recommends deeper analyses of all the external pressures
that cause people to move, such as population growth, poverty, conflicts, and ethnic tensions,
many of which may be exacerbated by climate impacts. Understanding these contributory
causes, he argues, can relieve pressures to move before they become irreconcilable. Finally, he
comments that the single most important strategy is to pursue sustainable development in order
to secure for human populations their basic needs: water, energy, food, healthcare, and the like.
This could be accomplished by better application of foreign aid to focus on building sustainable
communities and alleviating poverty. These recommendations, Myers asserts, occur at little to
no cost and can greatly reduce the number of people migrating due to environmental changes
(1997).
Regions of the world outside the US are already building in plans for climate change and
their own security. The League of Arab States (LAS) are already responding to mitigate threats.
They have developed a 10-year strategy aimed at minimizing disaster losses. Details of these
strategies, however, are fleeting. Individual Arab nations are choosing to follow the Hyogo
Framework for Action (HFA), which focuses on disaster risk reduction, early warning, increased
preparedness, and building resilience (World Bank, 2012). In one case study, the nation of
Djibouti, suffering a multi-year drought, used HFA priorities to analyze its disaster and build a
list of mitigation activities, which enabled UN crisis funds to be mobilized and applied (World
Bank, 2012).
In early 2019, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the
Green New Deal, a sweeping but non-binding resolution aiming to address climate change by
halting greenhouse gas emissions through legislation on fossil fuels, transportation, and
agriculture. It addresses briefly the mass migration which will occur and impact the US as well
as the massive damages to infrastructure and potential for hundreds of millions to be exposed to
heat stress. This policy aims to keep total global warming below 1.5ºC (2.7ºF). Specifically, the
resolution states,
…Climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the US (1)
by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and

communities around the world; and (2) by acting as a threat multiplier… (Green New
Deal, H.R. 109, 116th Congress, 2019, para. 5)
Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s resolution failed in Congress and was referred to a
subcommittee without any hearings. The Department of Defense has issued numerous reports
commenting on the threats that climate change presents to national security. No legislation
regarding climate change has been passed in the US Congress since 2012 (Center for Climate
and Energy Solutions, n.d.).
A 2016 report by the Institute for Policy Studies found that the US spends 28 times more
money on the military than it does on climate (Powell, Pemberton, & Doctor, 2016). According
to their analysis, the US should spend $55 billion annually to combat climate change, with a
further $145 billion each year from the private sector. As of 2017, only $21 billion was
requested in the national budget for climate spending. Furthermore, the authors point out that the
military has identified climate change as an imminent and serious security threat, but the budget
to pay for mitigation, preparation, prevention, planning, policy development, and response falls
short each fiscal cycle. In comparison, China spends a fraction of what the US does on the
military, even though its military is substantially larger than the US’. China also spends one and
a half times what the US does on climate change (Powell, Pemberton, & Doctor, 2016).
The 2015 National Security Strategy reflects climate change as one of the top strategic
risks to US interests and devotes an entire section to confronting climate change. It states that
climate change will contribute to “…increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over
basic resources like food and water…” (The White House, 2015, p. 12). In comparison, the
2017 National Security Strategy issued by the Trump White House does not mention climate
change at all. It contains a section which refers to “American resilience”, and a number of
generic priorities regarding improved risk management, preparedness, planning, and information
sharing. Additionally, the Strategy contains a section which prioritizes American production of
fossil fuels, but does briefly mention reducing pollution such as greenhouse gases, mostly
through technological breakthroughs not specified. It also rejects any regulation on energy
production or usage (The White House, 2017). There is also no reference to dealing with
refugees, other than a brief mention that instability in other world regions have triggered refugee
movement into Europe, which, according to the Strategy, has had an overall negative impact.
O’Sullivan’s paper makes the recommendation that every nation must focus on planning,
development, and implementation of climate change adaptations and policies (O'Sullivan, 2015).
According to a report in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
failure to plan and act on those plans has already begun to cause disastrous effects in the wake of
some of the more recent climate-related incidents. Storms such as Katrina and Rita, author
William Waugh posited, have become examples of poor disaster response and the lessons of
those failures fall flat at the feet of officials who seem only to want to repair the national
emergency management systems if they are incentivized. This brings to light the vital point that
the incentives to avoid the disastrous impacts of climate change are not viewed as politically-
relevant enough to actually spur action. Only in retrospect is any demand for change voiced and
by then it is already far too late (Waugh, 2006).

Methodology
Research Design
This research will use a qualitative approach to incorporate myriad publicly-
available resources such as databases, policy papers, government planning documents, and peer-
reviewed literature to identify:
1. Predicted implications of climate-related effects on the movement of people globally.
2. Homeland security planning and development strategies that should take climate
change impacts into account.
3. Research supporting or disputing the impacts of climate change to homeland security
in reference to sea level rise, extreme weather events, extreme temperatures, resource
scarcity, and proliferation of diseases.
Method
The study will employ an in-depth meta-analysis of existing research detailing the
impacts of climate change on human populations as well as policy documents from the US
government and governing organizations worldwide which address the impacts of climate
change on their local jurisdictions, with emphasis on how they intend to maintain security in the
wake of these impacts (Van Thiel, 2007). The research will also find case studies which
demonstrate specific impacts to regions and how those communities have responded to the
changing climate (Yin, 2014).
The study will then evaluate and establish whether climate change is already impacting
national security globally and homeland security in the US specifically. Next, the study will
blend qualitative findings with existing literature, policy documents, and official statements to
develop recommendations for the US government to use in developing both homeland security
strategy and climate change mitigation plans (Van Thiel, 2007). These recommendations will be
developed in reference to impacts on global migration, resource distribution, political instability,
social tensions, and terrorism.
Data Collection Plan
Data collection will focus on several areas. First, data collection will focus on scientific
studies documenting the impacts of climate change effects on human populations, with special
emphasis on sea level rise, extreme weather events, extreme temperatures, resource scarcity, and
proliferation of diseases. Second, research will look for policy documents issued by US and
other nations in regard to how climate change affects their national security strategies. In the
US, official documents referencing climate change and its impacts can come from a variety of
governmental sources, to include the Departments of Defense, Energy, Agriculture, and
Homeland Security, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and other relevant agencies.
Finally, data collection will include case studies of regions already experiencing these effects and
how they are addressing the impacts (Yin, 2014).
Because the research is mainly a meta-analysis and systematic review of existing research
on climate change and a qualitative analysis of existing policy and planning documents, this data
collection plan does not require quantitative aspects. The qualitative approach is appropriate for
meta-analyses and systematic reviews (Van Thiel, 2007). The synthesis of the existing studies
with the homeland security planning aspect provides a research product which uniquely marries
two fields that are often politically and academically at odds.
Because the data is by vast majority of the qualitative variety and by nature nominal, a
qualitative meta-analysis is most appropriate to draw the conclusions this study seeks to develop.
Additionally, the data is not measurable and the analyses to be done will not produce statistics
but rather best practices. Thus, the study will require survey and review that is not
computational or ordinal; it is highly interpretive and will require in-depth associations to be
developed between the climate change science data, sociological studies, and public policy
documentation. The qualitative meta-analysis approach allows the flexibility the research
requires to marry these disparate fields into one unified research strategic approach and develop
the appropriate and related analyses and conclusions.
Analysis Plan
The study will evaluate the scientific data regarding how climate change impacts
human populations with special focus on the five aforementioned categories. This data will then
be blended with the predicted and actual impacts of climate change-driven human movement on
national security infrastructures and plans. Furthermore, the research will utilize qualitative data
to enumerate which aspects of US homeland security policy are most vulnerable to impacts from
climate change, with emphasis on global migration, resource distribution, political instability,
social tensions, and terrorism. Previously performed case studies will be used as reference points
to extrapolate larger-frame recommendations for national policy building and preparatory and
mitigative actions (Yin, 2014).
Limitations & Bias
Limitations in this study lie in the politicization of the data. Many policy papers
strive to be politically neutral, however the US finds itself in a unique position of both having to
address the burgeoning impacts of climate change while denying the science that supports it. As
such, the data may be censored or obfuscated and research will have to take into account that
sometimes terms like “climate change” may be replaced with other terms. Additionally, the
policy papers will likely be intentionally vague and will reference climate change impacts, but
will not specify. Conversely, the scientific data will likely focus solely on the impacts and
effects without addressing political implications. Scientific data should inherently be apolitical,
but on occasion the analyses associated with such data are addressed from a political perspective.
Thus, this research and analysis will need to take this into account. Additionally, it is likely that
scientific data will be agnostic of political boundaries and thus must be analyzed in accordance
with those boundaries. There will also likely be a dearth of analysis in reference to which
countries will experience the impacts of population movement the most—this will need to be
extrapolated from what is available.

Results
Climate Change Impacts Population Movements
The phenomena of climate change undoubtedly will spur the movement of people
globally. As demonstrated, sea level rise will submerge or greatly inundate nearly every coastal
city around the world. This has far-reaching impacts to industry, trade, and communications.
One of the most concerning impacts is the submergence of the infrastructure of the internet
which, if not relocated or hardened, will most certainly suffer severe service interruptions. This
will impact economics and global banking, as well as limiting communications for individuals
and businesses. The inundation of cities will disproportionately impact poor communities, which
are often relegated to less-developed areas of cities which may sit on marshland and are not as
resilient to environmental changes.
Extreme weather events will make large portions of many nations, the US included,
unlivable for many weeks of the year. With some communities being inundated with water half
the year, and others subjected to storms that become ever more frequent and destructive, it is
reasonable to suspect that many people will seek to move. Exactly how many will move cannot
be accurately estimated, with technological innovations and future political priorities as yet
unknown. However, it will certainly number in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. It can
also be assumed with a high level of confidence that a large number of people, most likely the
poorest and most vulnerable communities, will die before any meaningful innovations and
interventions are implemented.
In addition to sea levels threatening coastal cities and extreme weather other areas
unlivable, extreme temperatures will challenge many of the regions thought to be immune to the
other impacts. The Mississippi Delta in the US, where agriculture is a major industry, will no
longer serve that primary purpose, and humidity will make even going outside dangerous for
most of the day. The same is true for the Middle East, portions of Africa, the Indian
subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. Areas that are not underwater will be uninhabitable, and those
who can will leave en masse.
When those people do move, they relocate to places which face their own challenges
resulting from climate change. Food and water will become ever scarcer and dearer unless
massive technological innovations are implemented in the next five to ten years. Finding places
to grow food to feed the growing population will be more challenging than ever, and many
agricultural operations may need to become semi-nomadic as prime growing locations move
north. Alternatively, growing operations may seek hydroponic options, which allow for greater
crop yields in smaller footprints, and may use only a tenth of the water as soil growing does
(Romeo, Vea, & Thomsen, 2018).
Water filtration technology will become forefront as ever-more communities experience
contamination of their water sources. Those that depend on glacier and snow melt will need to
begin finding new sources of water soon, as the glaciers of North America will have all but
vanished by 2030 (Glick, 2019). Snow will be an unreliable source of fresh water by the end of
the twenty-first century, with most areas experiencing an average 65% decrease in overall
snowfall across ever-shortening snow seasons (O'Gorman, 214). Underground reservoirs are
already being depleted. Given the growing human population and decreasing supplies of fresh
water, cities distant from water sources will need to find ways to transport water. Cities along
coastlines may invest in desalinization technology, and everywhere, cities will need to invest in
better water treatment to filter that which becomes contaminated by sea level rise or storm
surges.
Diseases are notoriously difficult to predict, and as was demonstrated by the literature,
may emerge from the most unexpected places. Additionally, growing cities with already-
existing hygiene and waste management problems will experience greater risk. Areas with
migrants congregating in tight living spaces with limited access to clean water and healthcare
will find that disease will spread more quickly and be harder to contain. Mass migrations can
carry pathogens and vectors with them, and the expanding ranges of other diseases will bring
communities into risk that were previously protected. In arctic regions, emergence of unknown
pathogens from thawing permafrost will introduce communities to diseases to which they have
little or no immunity. Although disease will likely not cause mass migrations, it will travel with
groups as they move, endangering more people than ever.
Homeland Security Strategies Do Not Address Climate Change Sufficiently
Homeland security and national security strategies do not do enough to address the new
challenges that climate change will bring. A major influencer on these strategies is the political
motive of the incumbent presidential administration. During the years of the Obama White
House, an emphasis on climate change could be observed in many strategies and plans. Barack
Obama was also the first US President to visit the Arctic regions and to comment on land loss in
those areas (Goodell, 2017). However, even in those years, little was done in terms of preparing
for the changes to come. Budgets included only nominal investments in climate change
mitigation, and even the commitments of the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol are not
enough to stop catastrophic impacts from occurring within the next eighty years. Even so,
Obama-era plans did not address any preparatory actions which would alleviate stresses on
coastal cities, ease the process of migration, or address the undoubtedly-unprecedented numbers
of climate refugees in the decades to come.

The advent of the Trump administration has created even more challenges from a
preparedness and mitigation standpoint. Almost immediately upon taking office, President
Trump revoked several of the executive orders passed by President Obama (Sabin Center for
Climate Change Law, n.d.). References to climate change were removed from homeland
security and national security strategies (The White House, 2017). Although some departments
did issue reports addressing the challenges of climate change, few of them offered any
recommendations for battling those impacts. The Department of Defense report on climate
change in 2019 only mentions a handful of military bases in the US and comments on their
mitigation actions, which focus primarily on stronger standards for new construction and minor
infrastructure improvements to specific bases on bridges, roads, and a few individual mission-
related facilities (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment,
2019). There is no mention of US military establishments around the world, nor is there any
discussion of relocation missions or bases in the continental US which may experience
catastrophic events.
Homeland security policy experiences similar swings in priority. The literature agrees
that the impacts of climate change are at this stage at least somewhat inevitable, and that a
humanitarian crisis of unprecedented magnitude is inevitable, both in the US and around the
world. Current international definitions of refugees do not include those who are displaced due
to climate change. Countries due to experience the fewest impacts of climate change such as
those in much of Europe, and those with the financial stability to sustain some of the burden of
adaptive technologies and policies, like the US, should expect to experience the greatest demand
to take in refugees and help resettle those impacted by the changes to come. As of 2019, current
US policy is moving in the opposite direction, reducing aid funding to other nations and limiting
numbers and types of refugees being given asylum. The research did not identify any existing
policies which include preparations for mass migration, though some of the policies did mention
it as a possible consequence of unabated climate change.

Discussion
General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is right to think that
one of the impacts of climate change is that the Department of Defense will increasingly be
requested to provide Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA), especially in reference to
disaster relief (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, 2019).
However, this assessment is short-sighted in its lack of perspective to how climate change
impacts will affect military operations at home and abroad. Almost no research has been done
with regard to military installations in the US which are at increased risk of temperatures so
extreme that planes cannot fly or maintenance crews cannot work. Only mild references to
increased “black flag” conditions exist in some of the reports. As seen in many of the more
recent sources of research detailed in this study, it is increasingly concerning that at all levels, the
ultimate severity of the impacts of climate change are not being reflected accurately, or are not
being taken seriously.
The rate at which climate change is occurring is accelerating. A number of factors
impact each other, creating a cascading effect. As temperatures increase, permafrost in the arctic
thaws. This releases humidity into the air, as well as up to 1.8 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, in
the form of methane—more than is in the atmosphere today (NASA Science, 2013). Those
increased greenhouse gases allow even more heat absorption. This, in addition to coal dust from
power plants landing on ice and darkening it, melt arctic and Antarctic ice ever faster,
accelerating ocean rise. If action is not taken to abate the causes of climate change, the
consequences go from disastrous to extinction-level. Any nation, empire, society, or culture that
wants to survive the changes to come must be prepared to address it at a global level. People
groups will be impacted at catastrophic levels, and not in equal proportions. The vast majority of
those affected are in poverty, or other positions that make them effectively unable to help
themselves. Thus, the nations that survive these impacts must work to help all those who
become victims, refugees, of a changing climate.
Even Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal only briefly addresses the mass
migration and other world-altering impacts of climate change. While this policy would have
increased pressure on the presidential administration to take climate change more seriously, as a
resolution it was non-binding, meaning it did not require any money to be spent or any
legislative or policy changes to be made. It was more of a priority statement, a manifesto of
sorts, without any teeth to bring it to life. Additionally, while it voiced the imminent need to
keep total global warming below 1.5 C (2.8F), the Congress of the US is not in a position to do
this singlehandedly; it requires thorough commitment from all the major greenhouse gas-
producing nations in the world. China, which in the past several years has surpassed the US as
the leading contributor to climate change, funds climate change reduction programs at a higher
level than the US but makes no meaningful commitments to reducing greenhouse gas production,
cleaning up pollution, or abating the changes which make its lands some of the most vulnerable
on the planet.
Several of the US policies and proposals referred to climate change in the security and
defense circles as a “threat multiplier” but few define the term, and fewer still are specific in
regard to how climate change acts as such. The usage of climate change seems to exist solely as
a clarion call for some unspecified action, a tokenistic representation of a cause for no particular
reason. Never is the threat of climate change considered enough on its own to warrant any
change in the status quo.

Overall, the US government and state governments within the country have shown that
they do not take climate change seriously. Even those regions that are attempting to mitigate
effects and pursue a more sustainable, renewable, resilient future are not acting quickly or
decisively enough to make a difference in time. Cities, states, and the federal government must
begin looking at 2040 as a proxy cutoff date for any changes to be made in policy and planning.
Given that many of the more disastrous effects of climate change begin to be evident by 2050,
this notional goal date of 2040 toes the line even so. However, if action is not taken by then, it
will be far too late and planning must begin for the worst-case scenarios.
In the Western Hemisphere, the governments of the US, Mexico, Canada, and the Central
and South American nations must decisively work together to determine how to handle the
impacts to the equatorial and tropical regions, which are projected to experience the worst effects
of climate change. The temperate and extra-polar regions will experience effects, but they will
be more manageable, and thus can adapt. It is reasonable to presume that many of the tropical
areas will be largely uninhabitable by 2050 and any food growing operations there, such as
coffee, chocolate, tea, beef, and numerous other fruits and vegetables must move with the
impacts of climate change to regions with more favorable growing conditions. Alternatively,
governments could invest in technology for these food production operations, particularly those
which require limited human interaction. As a result, these nations would need to plan for the
employment of those displaced by climate-resilient technology. US policy in regard to refugees
will become crucial here. Historically, the US has not been welcoming to refugees from the
South. However, it will soon not have a choice but to develop a more hospitable policy or face
violence and even war.

Recommendations
The recommendations resulting from this research have been divided into three
categories in order to address the principle questions this paper sought to answer. First, national
security and defense options must be addressed to prepare the Department of Defense for the
changes to come resulting from climate change. Next, homeland security and disaster
management are addressed to bolster the emergency aspect of the climate crisis and prepare for
the mass migration to come. Finally, there are recommendations for public policy and foreign
relations, as without movement as a nation toward a climate-resilient standard, communities
around the US and the world will find themselves blindsided by the changing world and the
limitations they will face as a result.
National Security and Defense
1) The existing Department of Defense reports assessing the impacts of climate change fall
desperately short. New studies must be conducted which include mission limitations
such as heat restrictions to equipment and training, likely base closures and relocations
due to mission limits, sea level rise, and work restrictions, housing implications, and new
construction considerations. Overseas locations, particularly those in regions that expect
more extreme impacts, such as the Middle East, should be included in the assessments.
2) Congress should require the Department of Defense to include climate change-resilience
elements in the acquisition process for all purchases of mission technology, equipment,
and buildings. Items being acquired today do not have resilience built in, and with that in
consideration they have limited usefulness in the years to come.
3) Leadership of the Department has expressed the opinion that it is not the responsibility of
the DoD to pursue sustainable or resilient resources or energy (Department of Defense,

2014). However, it will soon become a necessity. The DoD faces the choice of
continuing to contribute to the problem that will makes its missions more difficult, or
working toward solutions that will be sustainable in a world fighting climate change.
Thus, Congress should set a date for the Department to become carbon-neutral and link
this to funding for future programs. Compliance with this requirement can include
installing alternative energy generators such as solar panels and wind turbine on bases
that have the room, as well as consolidating missions that currently exist on multiple
bases into singular locations. The DoD has a base occupancy problem, with as many as
60 percent of base buildings being unoccupied (Government Accountability Office,
2015).. These buildings should be refurbished and repurposed in order to conserve
resources and assist in any relocations necessary due to other bases being uninhabitable.
Homeland Security & Disaster Preparedness
1) FEMA and NFIP must issue new and more frequent maps of flood regions and areas
of high risk. In partnership with insurance companies and robust risk forecasts, they
must create plans for how risk assessments are to be performed in the future as well
as allocating responsibility for disaster payouts. Given that the common method of
risk analysis by looking at the past hundred years for references is no longer reliable,
the programs must take climate research into account and determine better methods of
managing funds and payouts, to include developing incentive programs for people to
move out of known disaster-prone areas into areas that are more resilient, or subsidies
for building and repair programs that create resilience against similar disasters in the
future.
2) The Department of Homeland Security should work with other nations in the western
hemisphere to develop projections and plans for relocations of hundreds of millions
of people, including plant agriculture and animals. Additionally, the DHS should
develop programs which incentivize cities to be “climate change ready” in terms of
planning for flexibility to move people and operations to resilient locations and accept
refugees without needing to create slums, shanty-towns, or otherwise straining
existing resources.
3) The Department of Homeland Security, more specifically FEMA, should work with
regional governments and national building code standards to de-incentivize wetland
destructive construction and other climate change consequence-multiplying
development practices. Current strategies of obtaining resources like water and
energy by any means necessary not only contribute to greenhouse gas production, but
make the impacts of climate change much more severe in the regions being adapted
for human habitation. The Mississippi Delta, for example, continues to be dredged
and flood plains developed, making the natural process of water absorption that
wetlands and flood plains exist to perform increasingly difficult and, in some places,
impossible. In other areas, cities are sinking due to the emptying of underground
reservoirs, exacerbating the effects of climate change. The procurement of resources
cannot be done haphazardly, and FEMA must begin to consider negative incentive
programs as well, such as the unavailability of recovery funds to regions that ignore
its warnings.
Public Policy & Foreign Relations
1) The US Congress to request reports and studies to the ultimate end of developing a
strategy for relocation of major infrastructure assets such as internet data storage
facilities, gateways, power plants, and power grids to areas that are not in immediate
danger from climate impacts. Additionally, Congress should incentivize companies and
regions to develop climate-resilient upgrades for their infrastructure. This may include
smart, decentralized city power grids focused on renewable energy, investment into
satellite internet services, and development of more sophisticated, more robust cabling
and endpoint protections for relays and gateways.
2) Congress and states should also incentivize intentional climate-awareness in city
planning. Cities that consider future climate when authorizing building projects or
resource procurement operations not only insulate themselves to some extent against the
worst consequences of climate change, but also avoid contributing to the problem and
making it worse. Congress should also set a cutoff date after which all new construction
must be reflective of climate change effects. These dates and standards may vary per
region and apply differently to coastal cities versus inland locations. However, all cities
should become sensitive and responsive to climate change impacts on their locations
within the next two decades.
3) In order to allow cities to become more aware and plan more intelligently for climate
impacts, Congress should also invest in, incentivize, and subsidize large-scale climate
change-abatement technology and development programs. This may include resilient
infrastructure, innovative housing, water treatment technology, and new food production
methods. Without the development of these new technological solutions, cities may find
themselves fighting a new war with old equipment. Additionally, investment in these
programs now gives enough time for testing and revisions before they become
indispensable. This investment must happen within the next five years in order to hope to
become usable by 2050.
4) Congress and the White House must press the United Nations and the rest of the
international community to revise the definition of “refugee” to include those fleeing
from climate change impacts. Additionally, the US must partner with the global
community to actively minimize the ultimate results of climate change and reduce
exacerbating factors. Finally, the United Nations and its subordinate organizations must
develop a comprehensive climate refugee plan, to include distribution of resources,
placement of refugees, protections for those claiming climate refugee status, and
investment in mitigation and abatement programs around the world. Not every country
can afford to invest in development which can help it fight the consequences of climate
change, but a global effort to minimize impacts and keep people in their homes as long as
possible can reduce the overall burden to house and harbor refugees fleeing from acute
disasters.
The existing research confirms with a high level of confidence that climate change, even
at the most conservative levels, will affect or displace hundreds of millions of people worldwide
over the remainder of the twenty-first century. Countries that will experience less acute effects
and have the means to mitigate impacts should prepare themselves to assist with the brunt of the
climate refugee migration.

Conclusion
The conclusion of this research is nothing if not stark: climate change will drastically
alter the world in many ways, not the least of which will heavily impact both national and
homeland security. The research questions upon which this paper is established can now be
answered with a high level of confidence:
1. How are climate change effects, namely sea level rise, extreme weather events,
extreme temperatures, resource scarcity, and proliferation of diseases, expected to
impact the movement of people globally?
Climate change will create scenarios in which large regions of several nations are
uninhabitable and may not be available to produce food or support resource procurement.
Without a habitable region and resources to live from, hundreds of millions of people will move.
If nations do not plan for this wisely, the poorest and most vulnerable populations will
experience the most devastating consequences.
2. Do current homeland security planning and development strategies take these climate
change impacts into account?
Definitively, no. Homeland security strategies are naive at best and occasionally
intentionally ignorant. Overall, policies, planning documents, proposed legislation, and official
statements reflect and attitude toward climate change which see it as a far-fetched, futuristic
problem, and not one that can be addressed today. This approach is disastrously erroneous. The
changes which will make the world in the second half of the twentieth century livable must be
enacted today. This begins with a commitment to research, investment, and development in
areas that are forward-thinking with regard to climate change, take the threats seriously, and act
quickly enough to make a difference.

3. Which climate change effects will have the greatest impacts on homeland security
interests, and what can strategists and planners do to account for those impacts?
Extreme temperatures and resource scarcity will likely have the greatest impacts on
homeland security interests. These two climate phenomena will contribute to the largest causes
of human movement, and will undoubtedly be the driving factor in the migration of hundreds of
millions of people over the next fifty to eighty years. Homeland security planners, to include
emergency managers, must take decisive steps to prepare for these changes and incentivize local
governments to do the same. The current attitude toward migration involving stricter controls
and the building of walls is meaningless when the world itself is a changing environment. Cities
in the US must see that they are not immune to these impacts, and they must act quickly to begin
investing in technology and innovative solutions to face this crisis head on, rather than ignoring
it in the hopes it will eventually disappear.
The recommendations of this research for the US in particular come with a strong caveat.
The US finds itself at a crossroads in regard to its foreign relations. The staircase to terrorism
lays out the process of radicalization. Climate change effects prime the global community to
develop the exact conditions which can foster and nurture the development of terrorist cells. If
left without appropriate controls, it is possible for richer, more developed communities to
insulate themselves against the impacts of climate change and leave less developed groups to
their own devices. This has already been observed happening in communities around the world.
In the Middle East, droughts drive working age men into the cities to find work, leaving the
women and elderly to deal with the fallout (Sherwood & Huber, 2010). Unregulated,
unhindered, or undistributed, action on climate change can inequitably allocate abatement and
mitigation advances. A serious and realistic consequence of such inequity can be a rise in
terrorism, violence, and outright war. Thus, any changes to policy or funding should be made
with these concerns in mind. The climate crisis was not entered into alone; a global effort
created it. Therefore, facing its challenges and consequences cannot be done in an isolationist
manner.
The US and China are the largest contributors to climate change globally. They must
work to curb their contribution to this crisis. Additionally, they must plan to work toward
abatement of these consequences not just for their own citizens, but for all the citizens of the
world which will become victims of a changing climate. The global community has a
responsibility to fund further research and development into the building of new climate-resilient
cities, creation of water treatment, desalinization, and storage processes and technology, the
adaptation of the internet away from widespread coastally-located storage and processing
centers, and new ways of producing food which minimize human interaction in regions where it
will become too hot to work and live, adapting plants and animals for harsher climates or
different biomes, and investing in new ways of growing food that make it more available for the
communities with will depend on its production.
The US faces a change in the way it will need to conduct homeland security planning and
strategy development. The methods employed today will find themselves outdated within the
next decade and the consequences of inaction will become ever more apparent if the global
community does not act to reduce the contributing factors of climate change. The US will need
to address the changing world with an attitude of innovation, hospitality, and creative solutions.
The threats of terrorism and war should not be the driving factors in its creation of policy.
Instead, it must adopt a foundational commitment to taking care of its people and working
together to adapt to a changing world.

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NATIONAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY PLANNING IN THE SHADOW OF

Submitted to the Faculty

American Public University

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree

American Public University

these contents for educational purposes.

© Copyright 2019 by Kate Morales

All rights reserved

I also dedicate it to my longsuffering and supportive husband, who showed me the

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

American Public University System, April 07, 2019

Charles Town, West Virginia

Robert A. Belflower, Ph.D., Thesis Professor

homeland security enterprises. A thorough review of existing research with regard to

and be impactful to the overall missions of national and homeland security.

List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 7

Problem Statement .......................................................................................................... 8

Background of the Study ................................................................................................ 9

Research Purpose .......................................................................................................... 10

Theoretical Framework/Approach ................................................................................ 11

Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 13

Sea Level Rise............................................................................................................... 17

Extreme Weather Events............................................................................................... 23

Extreme Temperatures .................................................................................................. 27

Resource Scarcity and Disease ..................................................................................... 33

Climate Change: The “Risk Multiplier” ....................................................................... 37

Homeland Security Planning Processes and Climate Change ...................................... 40

Data Collection Plan ..................................................................................................... 45

Analysis Plan ................................................................................................................ 46

Limitations & Bias ........................................................................................................ 46

Climate Change Impacts Population Movements ......................................................... 48

Homeland Security Strategies Do Not Address Climate Change Sufficiently ............. 50

National Security and Defense...................................................................................... 56

Homeland Security & Disaster Preparedness ............................................................... 57

Public Policy & Foreign Relations ............................................................................... 59

Figure 1: Climate Changes in the Context of the Supporting Evidence. .......................... 16

Figure 2: Causes of Sea Level Rise .................................................................................. 21

Figure 3: Observed Change in Very Heavy Precipitation ................................................ 25

Figure 6: People in Water-Stressed Areas ........................................................................ 35

Figure 7: The Staircase to Terrorism ................................................................................ 40

NATIONAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY PLANNING IN THE SHADOW OF CLIMATE

home nations impossible (Wallace-Wells, 2019).

It is no mystery that changes to humans’ environments cause them to move (Black,

Background of the Study

Initiative, 2017; Foran, 2016). Meanwhile, the US is pursuing warfighting or peacekeeping

already live there may not be so hospitable.

homeland security, emergency management, and environmental activist communities to learn to

topics at odds as so often seems to be the case in modern political rhetoric.

can be applied to both indiscriminately.

There is no single or universal theory of homeland security. As a pursuit, it is relatively

necessarily a dynamic field. Homeland security is also a naturally interdisciplinary field. In

practical way, if somewhat oversimplified: homeland security is “activities intended to prevent

respond and recover from the disasters that result.

helpful in developing specific answers to unique problem sets.

extreme temperatures, resource scarcity, and proliferation of diseases, expected to

impact the movement of people globally?