4
Possible Futures

A panel of invited experts shared their perspectives and engaged workshop participants on scenarios for how climate change, and human responses to it, could precipitate security challenges in South Asia. Dr. Upmanu Lall, of Columbia University, shared perspectives on “Access to Water Resources and Security Conflicts.” Professor Vimal Mishra, of the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinagar, explored “Drought and Food Security in South Asia.” Mr. Chris Richter, the Regional Migration, Environment and Climate Change Specialist at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), offered perspectives on “Human Mobility in a Changing Climate: Understanding the Nuances of a Complex Topic.” A member of the workshop planning committee, Dr. Katharine Mach, of the University at Miami, moderated the panel and facilitated a plenary discussion. Later, workshop participants broke into smaller, structured discussions on the scenarios to build a “systems” understanding of the potential risks.

ACCESS TO WATER RESOURCES AND SECURITY CONFLICTS

Lall prefaced his remarks by reflecting on the spatial variability in both rainfall and socioeconomic conditions across South Asia. He noted that security in the region is critically influenced by interactions between these two sources of natural and societal heterogeneity, and that the uncertainties in their future variability constrain our ability to anticipate security risk. He pointed to the floods and resulting humanitarian crisis in Pakistan during the summer of 2022 as a clear example of the need to understand future variability. From a meteorological perspective, Lall explained that the 2022 floods resulted from an earlier drought and weather conditions that allowed a tropical cyclone born in the Bay of Bengal to penetrate across the continent and generate record

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¹ This list is the rapporteurs’ summary of the points made by individual speakers, and the statements have not been endorsed or verified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

rainfalls in Pakistan and in northwestern India. He noted that, while this phenomenon has been relatively infrequent in those regions, it is a fairly common occurrence in northeastern India. An important question going forward, in his view, was whether a future state of the climate might shift these statistics so that intense rainfall events and flooding become more common in the northwest. Given the significant human and national security impacts of these disasters, he argued that conversations on climate change must shift away from their current focus on climate conditions in the mean—for example, a 1.5- or 2-degree warming—and much more toward understanding future climate variability—for example, the likelihood of extreme events.

Lall framed his presentation from a water conflict perspective and offered an analysis of the current security landscape in South Asia, using the 2022 Pakistan floods as a framing example. He also described the climate teleconnections linking observed and projected rainfall variability in the region to the evolution of the larger climate system. Finally, he considered the possibilities for water-related conflicts in the region in the future.

Lall shared a conceptual framework for understanding the interactions between natural and societal systems in South Asia and emergent conditions such as human and national security risks (Figure 4-1). He identified pathways to conflict that connect climate impacts on key environmental factors of concern, such as heatwaves and water cycle extremes, to the resultant environmental degradation, decreasing agricultural productivity, and loss of habitability that produce resource scarcity and drive human migration. At the same time, Lall noted that resource scarcity is also significantly influenced by population growth and urbanization, through pathways of economic growth, per capita consumption, and growing social inequity. He noted that the form and strength of governance constitutes a critical underlying condition affecting the evolution of security risks but is very heterogenous across the region. In both Pakistan and India, Lall noted that national adaptive capacity has been constrained by relatively large defense expenditures compared to public spending in infrastructure and food provision.

Lall suggested that the 2022 Pakistan floods map strongly onto this conceptual framework and provide a view of a potential climate future. He recounted the immediate impacts of the disaster, including destruction of homes, infrastructure, and crops and livestock, along with water-borne disease outbreaks. These occurred against a backdrop of political instability and upheaval, in which multinational investment and governance capacity were both significantly reduced. He suggested that a plausible future for Pakistan, and the wider region, would be one of more persistent and intense climate extremes, with higher temperatures and rainfall, but also longer droughts. In addition, society will experience a number of worsening compounding challenges, including poverty, economic inequity, and extremism, all exacerbated by continued political instability.

Lall explained that South Asia is teleconnected to climate and societal variability elsewhere in the world. A particularly important climate teleconnection is the interannual oscillation between El Niño and La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which imprints itself on temperature and precipitation patterns around the world. Lall noted that the 2022 Pakistan floods have been associated with the prevailing La Niña climate conditions at the time. In addition to the climate system, an important societal teleconnection occurs through the international economic system. Lall noted that 2005–2008 droughts in grain-producing regions of Eurasia led to significant increases in food prices globally and impacts in food-importing regions in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

Lall next considered how future climate impacts might translate into conflict in South Asia. As an example, he noted that the region experiences significant internal migration related to seasonal agricultural labor and also to urban growth. In this setting, climate shocks could destroy rural livelihoods, increase rural-to-urban migration, and intensify stresses on urban and peri-urban environments. If governments were unable to provide adequate services and cope with these changes, there would be a higher potential for radicalization or conflict. As another example, Lall noted that much of the water infrastructure in the region is more than 50 years old and susceptible to climate-related failures as water extremes intensify and become more frequent. Dam failures, in particular, would create disruptions in food production, energy generation, and transportation and supply chains. Droughts could also impact water access through groundwater depletion and constraints on thermoelectric energy production. Lall judged that the prospects for these conditions to manifest and produce unrest and conflict are quite high across the entire region.

Lall also considered the potential for interstate conflict in the region and identified two broad categories related to transboundary water conflicts. The first group of conflicts, involving India, Pakistan, and China, might occur through disputes over dams in the Indus River basin. The second group, involving India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and China, might occur through Chinese actions to dam or modify in some way the flow of the Brahmaputra River. Lall assessed that the potential for these conflicts is modest, and that concerns over transboundary waters have historically been resolved through conversation and cooperation. He acknowledged, though, that lack of transparency in agreements could lead to conflict.

Lall concluded by identifying his most critical water-related concern, which would be a succession of years of significant floods and droughts that disrupt lives and livelihoods and challenge socioeconomic recovery. In addition, he expressed concerns over increased migration and potential conflicts with receiving communities. He noted that concerns would be intensified during times of political instability and when global teleconnections, both natural and societal, would synchronize disruptions in South Asia with other regions.

DROUGHT AND FOOD SECURITY IN SOUTH ASIA

Mishra prefaced his remarks by noting that South Asia is characterized by a very high degree of both vulnerability and exposure to climate-related hazards, due largely to the region’s high

population density, relatively low level of adaptive capacity, and relatively high number of climate hazards. He cited the high national and regional mortality rates in response to recent storms, floods, and droughts as evidence of the vulnerability of large, densely packed populations exposed to frequent and varied climate hazards. He also recalled the significant mortality and other adverse impacts of India’s most recent heatwave, noting that the country simply had more heat for more people.

Against this backdrop Mishra reviewed the current understanding of key climate drivers and impacts in the region, focusing on food security and nutrition. He noted that South Asia’s high level of climate exposure and vulnerability are likely to continue, given the most current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections for the region. For temperature, there is a very strong indication that the region will continue to warm on an annual and seasonal basis. For precipitation, although the projections are not as robust as for temperature, the majority of climate models indicate that precipitation will increase in the future, including during the key monsoon season. For variables linked to agriculture, such as soil moisture, the projections are mixed and point to an uncertain future. Mishra explained that the key impacts of projected climate change will stem from extreme events, including more frequent and intense heatwaves and droughts, and will occur in new locations where such extremes may not have been observed previously. In addition, compounding and cascading interactions between extreme events will amplify their impacts.

With respect to food security, Mishra explained that the most current Global Hunger Index scores conditions in the South Asia region as “serious.” He noted that, relative to a decade ago, several important factors indicate a continuing regional vulnerability to climate change. The region has more undernourished people, with a sharp increase since 2020; has food prices at their highest-ever levels, despite a decrease earlier in the decade; and has more than double the number of conflicts. While the number of people living in extreme poverty has dropped steadily, the COVID-19 pandemic created an increase in 2020, for the first time this century. Mishra further noted that climate change is affecting food security mainly through water impacts, and that food security in the region is essentially a function of water availability. He shared his own recent research findings demonstrating that changes in food production in India over the past 70 years have been very tightly coupled to temperature and monsoonal precipitation and temperature, with higher grain yields associated with lower temperatures and more rainfall. Despite the fact that rainfall is projected to increase in India over the next century, Mishra explained that its interaction with concurrent warming would also create drought conditions that would continue to affect crop production and food security (Figure 4-2).

Mishra reviewed some of the key impacts from recent climate events that have affected agriculture and food production in South Asia and provided a glimpse into the region’s future. Heatwaves in India and Pakistan in 2019 and the premonsoon heatwave across South Asia in 2022 both resulted in significant mortality and large numbers of hospitalizations, creating tremendous pressures on public health infrastructure. The heatwaves also produced record temperatures that were unprecedented in terms of magnitude as well their timing early in the year, with both overlapping with key crop growing seasons and lowering yields by 10–35%. Directly following the 2022 heatwave, devastating monsoon rains and flooding in Pakistan affected millions of acres of crops, killed hundreds of thousands of livestock, disrupted the lives and livelihoods of agrarian communities, and precipitated a national humanitarian and socioeconomic crisis. Mishra commented that the flooding serves as a canonical example of the types of events that are expected to occur with greater frequency in the future. Looking ahead, Mishra reviewed recent climate modeling research and projections for heatwaves and flooding in the region (see Mishra et al., 2017, 2020; IPCC, 2022). Heatwaves are expected to increase dramatically in their frequency, areal extent, duration, and the number of people exposed. River flooding is expected to increase in relation to increases in precipitation, which will come mostly in the form of extreme events rather than uniformly distributed

rainfall across the season. Mishra explained that this would be due to a lower number of rainy days but greater rainfall on those days, which would create flooding.

Mishra concluded his remarks by sharing an IPCC summary assessment of the feasibility of different adaptation options for managing risks to food and water security (see IPCC, 2022). The response actions included improved water use efficiency and water management (assessed as medium feasibility), improved cropland management (medium feasibility), and efficient livestock systems (low feasibility). Mishra also noted several cross-cutting actions that were assessed as highly feasible. These include improved disaster risk management and development of climate services, including early warning systems. Mishra cautioned that no matter what adaptation actions society takes, the region will not entirely avoid the negative impacts of climate disasters.

HUMAN MOBILITY IN A CHANGING CLIMATE

In his remarks, Richter reflected on the complex and varied relationship between migration, the environment, and climate change, noting that environmental factors and climate change are rarely, if ever, the sole determinant of migration. He explained that environmental drivers are just one of many context-specific factors that influence human movement (Figure 4-3). He shared a theoretical framework for understanding how the contributions of demographic, economic, environmental, social, and political drivers can collectively shape human decisions to stay or move from a given place. Importantly, Richter noted that environmental change may also exert an influence on the other drivers. As an example, climate change may impact economic drivers of mobility such as employment opportunity, particularly in settings with environmentally sensitive industries like agriculture.

Richter noted that just as there are multiple drivers of climate mobility, there are also multiple forms this mobility can take. Disaster displacement, emergency evacuation, and planned relocation are forms of climate mobility that generally result from decisions to avoid impending hazards but which can involve very different degrees of agency and empowerment of the people that are moving. By contrast, transhumance² and migration are examples of established patterns of mobility that can be reshaped and/or disrupted by climate change. Richter described a similarly diverse set of possibilities for the distances and durations people will ultimately move, noting that most human mobility in the context of climate change takes place within countries. He noted that the motivations and decision processes of people who are displaced, evacuating, relocating, or migrating are very distinct and highly context specific. Given the diversity of climate mobility drivers, forms, and outcomes, Richter argued that the policy approaches developed by the security community should also be tailored to specific contexts.

Turning his attention to South Asia, Richter offered an assessment of the magnitude of human mobility in the region. With respect to cross-border migration, he noted that South Asia is a significant migration region, with India being the top migrant origin country in 2020. With respect to displacement, he noted that the South Asia region accounted for the second largest share of disaster displacement globally in 2021, with 5.25 million people forced to leave their homes due to sudden onset hazards. Over the preceding decade, this number aggregates to more than 60 million people displaced internally within the region, with India accounting for more than 40 million (IDMC, 2022).

Richter turned to the question of how human mobility might evolve in the future in South Asia. He first acknowledged the difficulties of building scenarios for human mobility, especially in the context of climate change. Given the diversity of mobility drivers, forms, and outcomes, it would be extremely challenging to estimate future patterns of climate mobility accurately—particularly as the climate state itself is changing. He noted that several previous efforts have attempted to quantify the potential future scale of human mobility linked to climate change, but that many of

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² Transhumance refers to the regular movements of livestock between seasonal pastures and, by extension, to the movements of people who tend the livestock. Transhumance is a form of pastoralism or nomadism.

those analyses utilized oversimplified methodologies and did not adequately account for the diverse factors that drive migration. Long-standing challenges related to data availability and quality are also significant barriers. Richter noted, however, that methodologies have become more sophisticated over time. He highlighted that while significant gaps persist, efforts to improve data availability are continuing. IOM, for example, holds the largest global repository of displacement data. Richter also expressed optimism regarding several new tools that can help researchers gain deeper insights into migration. These include early warning systems, model-based forecasts, survey-based forecasts, and foresight frameworks that have taken on an increasingly important space in humanitarian and development programming and policymaking. With respect to forecasting displacement, Richter noted that other approaches are helping to identify risk “hotspots” for disaster displacement, using standard hazard-exposure-vulnerability frameworks. These types of analysis indicate that displacement risk has quadrupled since the 1970s, an increase he attributed to factors including rapid, unplanned urbanization and development in hazard-prone areas of developing countries.

Richter considered the question of how climate-related human mobility might undermine security conditions in South Asia. From his perspective, the key area of concern is the risk that climate impacts pose to human security, since it is well understood that the poorest and most disadvantaged households and individuals are disproportionately impacted by climate risks. Each person experiences human mobility differently and faces different risks, so human-centered solutions are essential. Richter commented on linkages to conflict, noting that security discussions often focus on the relationship between climate change, migration, and conflict. He explained that the connection is usually grounded in a few different scenarios, generally involving resource stress, disputes, tensions, and ultimately conflict. Depending on the scenario, the displacement may drive resource stress or be engendered by it. In some other scenarios, displaced people in fragile settings become vulnerable to recruitment or victimization by armed groups. Richter explained that while there is robust evidence linking climate impacts to resource stress and disasters, the evidence for a general link between climate impacts, migration, and conflict is less conclusive, and indicates that the linkages are indirect and somewhat context dependent. In a similar vein, Richter commented that widely discussed linkages between climate impacts, migration, and human trafficking are largely based on anecdotal evidence and that more research and evidence is needed on this particular topic.

Richter concluded his remarks by addressing the need for a holistic response to climate mobility. He noted that IOM has identified a set of key actions for the international community that are based on three pillars. The first is to look to migration as a positive adaptation strategy that can take people out of harm’s way, and for governments to create conditions for safe, orderly, and regular passage of climate migrants. The second is to create climate solutions for people already on the move or who have been displaced, and to find ways to assist and protect them from climate risk. The third element would be to look for solutions that allow people to stay in their communities if they want to, and to build resilience and address adverse environmental drivers so that migration becomes a choice and not a necessity.

PARTICIPANT DISCUSSIONS

Workshop participants broke out into three smaller, structured discussions intended to advance a “systems” understanding of the scenarios explored by the expert panel. Each group selected one or more of the case studies, or agreed to explore a new one, and received some organizing prompts for their discussion:

• “Gaming out” a scenario: What are plausible pathways for security risks to continue evolving into the future? What external influences, underlying conditions, and systems interactions could shape that evolution?
• Prioritizing climate security risks: What are the most pressing current and emerging climate security risk pathways in the South Asia region? What analytic capabilities and capacities are needed to anticipate these risks? What data, information, and understandings are most urgently required?

After the breakout sessions, participants from each group (A, B, and C) reconvened in plenary to reflect on and synthesize the key points from their discussions.

The group discussions explored multiple current and anticipated security risks in South Asia arising from physical climate hazards, such as heatwaves, droughts, and flooding, as well as climate-driven societal transitions, such as rapid decarbonization. Collectively, the groups described climate-related risks to food, water, and energy security; human health; and livelihoods. In addition, Group C discussed four major risk categories reflecting U.S. security interests in the region. These include geopolitical security, global health, economic security, and domestic security.

In plenary, participants discussed some of the key challenges related to understanding how these risks could interact with each other and scale relative to each other. A representative from Group A noted that their discussion had explored the nonlinear behavior of impacts resulting from successive or overlapping events involving, for example, sequential floods or simultaneous heatwaves and droughts. A representative from Group B shared that their discussion considered the question of how to prioritize different risks relative to each other, and what information was needed to make the prioritization. Ultimately, the group chose to apply the IPCC’s framework for assessing severity of a given climate risk, based on evaluation of its magnitude, likelihood, temporal behavior, and the societal ability to respond to that risk.

With respect to the climate and security risk pathways in the region, all of the groups recognized that risks will involve multiple interactions between natural systems and societal systems such as food, energy, water, finance, and governance. The groups also noted the critical influence that social cohesion and strong institutions have in modulating the evolution of risk. Group C’s discussion also highlighted that significant risk pathways may involve slow-onset climate impacts, not just sudden onset events, and may involve unprecedented or previously unknown impacts.