Vulnerability of Food Security and Energy Infrastructures to Climate Change and Terrorism
Elizabeth L. Malone, Larry G. Morgan, R. Cesar Izaurralde, Son H. Kim, and Allison M. Thomson
Executive Summary
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Our Vulnerability Project builds on the capabilities of three models, all of which were developed and extensively used at the Joint Global Change Research Institute: the MiniCAM, EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Model) and VRIM (Vulnerability-Resilience Indicators Model). Through the Technosocial Predictive Analytics Initiative, we are enlarging the domain set to include important, but rarely modeled, elements of governance and culture. This project focuses on the Indian subcontinent to examine the interrelationships among food and energy security, climate change, and counterterrorism.
Models
- MiniCAM - an integrated assessment model used to study the energy sector, greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and mitigation scenarios
- EPIC - a watershed-scale biophysical model used to examine agriculture (management and productivity) and ecosystems
- VRIM - an indicators model that produces comparative analyses of social and environmental resilience to climate change
- STELLA™ model that integrates information from MiniCAM, EPIC, and VRIM, adding governance/cultural factors.
Decision makers and analysts focusing on national security, socioeconomic well-being, or global climate change increasingly recognize that actions in one of these domains will affect the others. This project integrates the broad domains that are crucial to the understanding of global issues involved in climate change and human security.
The initial focus area–India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh–comprises a complex regional context in which climate change and terrorism have significant implications for energy and food security. In addition, the area has an energy infrastructure that is still developing–rapidly–with active debates about the sources, including biofuels and nuclear power.
In this region, food security is a serious issue, with a still-growing population and high population density, and food-productivity/water-resource issues exacerbated by floods, droughts, and monsoonal variations. Similarly, energy production has not kept pace with demand, and the fuel sources are largely fossil-based, contributing to climate change and air pollution. The political security of the region shows fissures, with wealth and income inequalities contributing to class and ethnic tensions, ongoing disputes over territories and resources (including water), the presence of terrorist organizations, varying religious ideologies, and international negotiations over nuclear weapons.
Projects
Most of the connections between climate change impacts and human security issues (including conflict) have been made in the form of narratives. For example, "water wars" stories have connected projected water scarcity with armed conflict, and "environmental refugee" stories have connected climate change conditions with privations that drive people from their homes and perhaps across international borders, with resultant massive social problems. This project seeks to demonstrate, through a new modeling approach, the connections between global issues involved in climate change and human security.
Impacts
The value of this integrated model is that it accounts for consequences of actions in one domain for other domains or sectors. The model embodies knowledge from relevant domains, thus compensating for the lack of cross-sector expertise–e.g., an action taken to increase biofuels production has consequences both for energy and agriculture. We expect the impact to be an improved capability to analyze cross-domain issues.