Climate change and maritime security

Abstract

Climate change has been recognised as a major issue for coastal populations. Under this context, the potential socioeconomic , environmental and health impacts at local, regional and global scales have received considerable attention by scientists. The knowledge gained feed official strategic documents, which aim to increase awareness but also propose and apply management and mitigation measures towards reducing risks for human beings and the natural environment. Dependencies between human security, social vulnerability of coastal communities and the occurrence of maritime crime have also been studied. There is a consensus on the need to deepen the understanding of the links between climate change effects and threats to maritime security, but it remains to be seen if existing knowledge on the interplay between climate change and maritime security has been translated into policy. This article offers a synthesis on recent evidence and knowledge gained to elaborate the nexus between climate change impacts, social vulnerabilities and the occurrence of maritime criminality. We further explore the extent to which official documents account for the maritime dimension of climate change security. Despite the existence of an embryonic official discourse linking climate change and maritime security, our analysis reveals significant gaps between the concerns raised by the academic community and what is acknowledged in national and regional official strategic documents. Informing decisionmakers and stakeholders about the possible dependencies between climate change and maritime security is thus a crucial step towards improving global ocean governance.

Existing and Emerging Topics and Potential Priorities for the Safety and Security of the Maritime Environment

“…These are further described below, and include the blue economy, strategic competition, asymmetric threats, and climate change. The literature review examined strategy, academic, and public media documents obtained through Google searches (Bueger, Edmunds, and Ryan, 2019;Fickling, 2022;Germond and Mazaris, 2019;Koehring, 2022;Okafor-Yarwood, 2020;Paris, 2022;United States Coast Guard [USCG], 2018; United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and USCG Tri-Service Strategy, 2020; U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 2019). We also leveraged the team's diverse expertise to identify important topics for policymakers and planners (e.g., Resetar et al, 2020;Tingstad et al, 2020;Vedula et al, 2023;Wirth et al, 2021).…”

Untitled

“…The coastal population is getting vulnerable to a new type of criminal offense as anthropogenic effects are getting prominent in coastal climate change. Sea level rise is hampering the living conditions and occupational security of coastal communities which in turn give rise to many forms of property crimes [24]. Lynch, Stretesky, and Long (2020) have done a cross-sectional analysis of temperature rise Figure 1: Broad themes of crime covered in the reviewed literature and increase in violent crimes with the daily temperature data of New York and London.…”

Innovation and New Strategic Choices

“…The inundation of low-lying areas of land may create new havens from which maritime criminals or terrorists can operate. 27 Moreover, the retreat of sea ice is likely to open new shipping routes around the Arctic. This will have implications for the protection of shipping, as well as search and rescue and environmental clean-up capacities in case of accidents at sea.…”