A Climate for Leadership: how Australia should respond to increasing disasters with retired Admiral Chris Barrie | Webinar

Australia Institute webinar with Richie Merzian and Chris Barrie

Climate change is increasingly a national security issue and in this Australia Institute webinar Former head of the Australian Defence Forces Chris Barrie and Head of climate and Energy at the Australia Institute Richie Merzian discuss the implications for responding to increasing climate related disasters involving the ADF and some of the National Security implications of failure of leadership to address climate change at the Federal Government level.

Richie Merzian outlines how Australia shaped an outline that countries could adopt for climate adaptation plans. Australia is helping to fund and implement plans with countries in our Pacific region, yet have failed to draw up a National Climate Adaptation Plan for our own country. 

So Australia has not worked out a risk assessment for estimates of the cost of climate change and climate driven weather disasters. "It has left us vulnerable and luching from one disaster to the next, when the majority of countries have undertaken developing these climate adaptation plans."

"It's extraordinary we are missing in action in Australia, when it is the security of our own people we should be concerned about. Worse than that, as Richie has pointed out, we have not learned anything from being involved in the processes, putting these adaptation plans together. It is almost like the leadership is absolutely vacant at the moment and I think this should concern all of us." said Chris Barrie.

Australian Defence Force poorly prepared for #Climate change

This article was originally posted at nofibs.com.au

Rob Sturrock and Dr Peter Ferguson give some hard truths about the security implications of climate change now and in the near future for Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. In their June 2015 report they claim that climate change is the threat equivalent to a hundred years war, which Australia and the Australian Defence Forces (ADF), are ill prepared for on a strategic level.

"Without intending it, we are confronting a threat akin to a Hundred Year War." say Sturrock and Ferguson. While the Government focusses on hardware upgrades such as new submarine contracts and traditional short term defence asset replacements, the essential strategic planning for operating in a climate changed world is being sorely neglected.

Their report, The Longest Conflict: Australia's Climate Security Challenge (Download the PDF) was released in June 2015 by the Center for Policy Development.

According to the report authors, defence personnel indicate that climate change will not feature strongly in the upcoming Defence White Paper, due for realease in late 2015 or early 2016. The 2014 Defence Issues Paper, while identifying many security threats and opportunities, neglected to mention climate change was one of them.