Climate Change - A threat to National Security of India- Understanding and identifying the key threats to Indian National Security emanating from Climate Change

Abstract

Question of survival and security are the fundamental questions before any individual, community, group or state. This has always been the question of debate, discussion and writing in all the fields of knowledge. Apart of intellectual exercise, question or survival and security leads to conflicts and wars among individuals, groups and state. Perception of threat has been changing from time to time, but state ( be it in the form of city state, nation state or some other form) was always the key actor in security. Some time it protected its people from external threat and sometime it created threat to its own people. Over the period of time, on the basis of time – space and ideology, ideas of threat are manifested in different forms.

National security is about protecting the boundary from external actors. But what should be done when the external actor is not one state or two states? How to recognize the enemy? How to solve the threat in absence of clear enemy? These questions become relevant when we discuss climate change? There is no one single actor which can be made responsible for the climate change. Climate change is a problem which will impact all the actors in international actors. It has the capacity to pose a threat to national security of a nation.

This paper is a humble attempt to understand these big questions in the light of climate change and Indian national security. We will deal with the question of threat India have and its capacity to deal with these threat. Paper is been divided into 5 sections.

First section of the paper will deal with question of security in International Relations theory. Key aspects of security and its relations with human security and national security will be explored.

Second part of the paper will deal with the question of climate change and global warming. What are the causes of global warming and climate change and what can be the impact of climate change on world security and how it impact national security? In this section, we will also discuss the measures taken for solving the environmental and climate change.

Third section of the paper deals with impact of climate change on Indian National security. Traditional and nontraditional aspects of security will be explored in connection with climate change.

Fourth section will try to look into the measures India has taken to reduce the impact of climate change on its National Security, at domestic level as well as on international level.

Fifth section will find the problems in Indian strategy and end with few suggestions for a better mechanism to deal with climate change and its impact on national security.