Global climate change exacerbates problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries. As the globe warms, more and more countries will become unstable with violent protests and revolution as a result.
Most of us are familiar with the role that drought enhanced climate change played in the Syrian civil war. It wasn’t all related to the changing climate of course, but it left rural people dependent on farming no choice but to evacuate to the cities which in turn inflamed societal tensions. Other factors such as corrupt leadership, inequality, massive population growth, and the government's inability to curb human suffering all had their role to play in the grisly conflict.
Pentagon officials have made this point repeatedly, and they been planning for these climate security scenarios for years. Even today, the Department of Defense plans for societal disruption from climate change despite protests from the GOP (and in particular the Trump regime) who state, despite all evidence to the contrary, that global warming does not exist.
E&E News reports that the recent nation wide protests in Iran have parallels with what has occurred in Syria. Iran has been dealing with climate change enhanced droughts since the 1990’s.
A severe drought, mismanaged water resources and dust storms diminished Iran's economy in recent years, according to experts who study the region. While the protests are largely driven by resistance to the country's hardline conservative government, such environmental factors might have contributed to the largest protests inside Iran in years.
Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understood that climate change and water mismanagement was ravaging family farms, and his government provided subsidies to families who struggled to put food on the table, said Amir Handjani, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center. When the current president, Hassan Rouhani, signaled that he would reduce those benefits, enraged Iranians across the nation's arid countryside joined the wave of protests.
"You have climate change, shortage of water, they can't grow their crops, and now they're getting their cash handouts taken away," said Handjani. "It's a panoply of issues coming together at once."
Amir Handjani notes that the role of climate change in Iran has not been a security issue reported by the international media. Media did note that the protests occurred in cities outside of Teheran. Where the protests did erupt is where climate refugees now call home after having migrated from farms whose land was dried out from drought. The resident in these areas are more conservative and generally do not speak against the ayatollahs as they do in Tehran and other major cities.
In the near future, rainfall is expected to fall 20 percent while the temperature will rise by a eye popping 5 degrees Celsius. With humidity calculated in, Iran along with the rest of the middle east, will become so hot that it will be uninhabitable by 2070. Just this past summer, Iran recorded the “highest temperatures witnessed on Earth, at 128.7 degrees Fahrenheit”.
While middle- and upper-class people can afford air conditioners in a region where temperatures reach 110 degrees for several days in a row, many others cannot. They are forced to work in deadly temperatures or lose paid work hours, Ehsani said. In addition, increased desertification has caused enormous dust storms that engulf cities and freeze activity, sometimes killing people caught in them, he said.
Environmental issues have brought some protesters into the streets, Ehsani said, in part because climate change is now seen as a contributor to inequity. Newscasts on the environment are potentially reinforcing Iranian views, since that topic is not generally censured by government officials. Environmental issues aren't seen through the same political lens as they are in the United States, he said.
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