Psychology of climate change: social instability

Pacific RISA Research Fellow Dr. Kati Corlew contributed an article about climate change and social instability to the Community Psychology Practice blog last month, and we are pleased to share it with you here.  Her timely article explains that a well-established tenant of community psychology–that context matters–can be helpful in predicting how societies may be impacted by climate change.  The article offers research documenting how change or variability in the natural environment affects our physical and psychological well-being as individuals and communities.

Dr. Corlew received her Ph.D. in Community and Cultural Psychology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. Her dissertation explored the threat of climate change to both land and culture in the Pacific Island Developing Country (PIDC) of Tuvalu.  Now, she is developing a social network analysis of climate change professionals in the Pacific Islands region as part of her work with Pacific RISA.

Psychology of Climate Change: Social Instability

By Kati Corlew, Ph.D.

Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments

East-West Center

American Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III is the top military officer for the security of the United States in the Pacific, including trans-Pacific security threats from North Korea and other Asian locations. He is the leader of the United States Pacific Command (PACOM), which monitors security for a region covering approximately one half of the earth’s surface.

In March, 2013, Admiral Locklear stated that climate change is the largest threat to security in the region, as reported by the Boston Globe.

Admiral Locklear stated:

“Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

Storms of this magnitude damage infrastructure and disrupt the stability of societal functioning. Crops are destroyed and freshwater is contaminated. With basic needs and social structures thrown into disorder or destroyed completely, communities (or even entire countries or regions) are left in a state of heightened instability that threatens security.

Additionally, sea level rise threatens the long-term ability of coastal and island communities to continue to be communities. The Boston Globe goes on to report:

“The ice is melting and sea is getting higher,” Locklear said, noting that 80 percent of the world’s population lives within 200 miles of the coast. “I’m into the consequence management side of it. I’m not a scientist, but the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, they’re contemplating moving their entire population to another country because [it] is not going to exist anymore.”

Wholesale migration of entire populations due to climate instability is expected to overlap heavily with the experiences of refugees from political instability and war. Climate refugees will be populations who have lost everything, perhaps even their country. Without their community structures and relationships, property, and political power, populations who are forced to migrate because of climate change may wind up in a nebulous, uncertain, and inherently unstable position. Instability is often coupled with violence.

In Community Psychology, we explore the ways in which our social, political, and natural environments affect the physical and psychological well-being of individuals and communities. In essence, context matters. Researchers have been documenting the effects of climate change and variability on community well-being. It has been shown, for example, that countries experiencing El Niño are more likely to also experience war.

“Countries where the majority of the population lives in areas that become much warmer in El Niño years (red) are more likely to experience wars than those where temperatures are less affected (blue).”

Of course, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO, which includes El Niño and La Niña) is a seasonal weather pattern, not climate change. Do these things even relate? A recent consensus report about climate change in the Pacific indicates that they do.

Despite rumors of perfect and unchanging island weather, the Pacific is actually home to some pretty dramatic seasonal changes. A strong El Niño year can mean some island nations run out of drinking and irrigation water while others are plagued with storms. La Niña years can have similarly dramatic effects. In fact, the difference between an El Niño year and a La Niña year can be so strong that in the coming decades, the effects of climate change may be overwhelmed.

That is to say, in some years ENSO may greatly exacerbate climate change, while in other years ENSO could reverse the trends entirely. This means that we cannot expect to see a smooth slope of increasing impacts with climate change. We will instead see periodic upswings in disasters and climate change impacts, coupled with periods of relative calm.

In the coming decades, we can therefore expect periodic upswings in social instability. These “human dimensions” of climate change impacts on communities must be addressed along with the physical impacts.

References

Bender, B. (2013). Chief of US Pacific forces calls climate biggest worry. The Boston Globe, March 09, 2013. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/03/09/admiral-samuel-locklear-commander-pacific-forces-warns-that-climate-change-top-threat/BHdPVCLrWEMxRe9IXJZcHL/story.html.

Burke, J. (2012). Maldives’ political instability allows gang violence to flourish. The Guardian, October 22, 2012. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/22/maldives-political-instability-gang-violence.

Burkett, M. (2011). The Nation Ex-Situ: On climate change, deterrritorialized nationhood and the post-climate era. Climate law, 2, 345-374. Retrieved 3/15/13 from https://www.law.hawaii.edu/sites/www.law.hawaii.edu/files/content/coliver/345-374%20Burkett.pdf.

Duddy, P. D. (2012). Political unrest in Venezuela. Council on Foreign Relations Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 16. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.cfr.org/venezuela/political-unrest-venezuela/p28936.

Keener, V. W., Marra, J. J., Finucane, M. L., Spooner, D., & Smith, M. H. (Eds.). (2012). Climate Change and Pacific Islands: Indicators and Impacts. Report for The 2012 Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment. Washington, DC: Island Press. Retrieved 3/15/13 from https://www.pacificrisa.org/projects/pirca/report-materials/#.UUN9tByG3D4.

Kovats, R. S., Bouma, M. J., & Haines, A. (1999). El Niño and health. World Health Organization Protection of the Human Environment Task Force on Climate and Health. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.who.int/globalchange/publications/en/elnino.pdf.

Schiermeier, Q. (2011). Climate cycles drive civil war. Nature, 24 August 2011. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.501.html.

Smith, H. (2013). Greece’s fragile political stability at risk as violence escalates. The Guardian, January 23, 2013. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/23/greeces-political-stability-violence-escalates.

Turchin, P. (2012). Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780-2010. Journal of Peace Research, 49(4), 577-591. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/49/4/577.abstract.

Vidal, J., Saeed, S. (2013). Bangladesh’s climate refugees: ‘It’s a question of life’ – audio slideshow. The Guardian UK, January 29, 2012. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/interactive/2013/jan/29/bangladesh-climate-refugees-audio-slideshow.

Williams, N., & Pradhan, M. S. (2009). Political conflict and migration: How has violence and political instability affected migration patterns in Nepal? Population Studies Center Research Report No. 09-677. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/abs/5938.

Cover photo: Local risk reduction actions, such as using coral rocks to build temporary walls in Kiribati to break the swell of increasingly large king tides, is one example of communities acting to reduce their vulnerability.  Photo by UNISDR; used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.