By Peter Schwartzstein

The greater the impact of climate change, the greater our awareness of the security challenges it’s leaving in its wake. In recent years, there has been a relative deluge of research in this space. However, while most of that work has been timely and essential and has included significant related studies, such as those on the relationship between heat and interpersonal violence, the full spectrum of climate-related security risks has not yet been adequately explored. Crime, though arguably one of the most widely felt of these fallouts, has received relatively little attention to date in the climate security literature. This brief paper is an attempt to begin redressing that shortfall. While crime, as a form of insecurity, might seem low stakes in comparison to terrorism and inter-state conflict, its sheer breadth ensures that many more people have likely suffered from it compared with more ‘macro’ forms of climate-related violence. From petty theft to not-so-petty assaults, climate change is leaving its mark on almost every category of crime. Furthermore, while existing climate impacts aggravate poverty, inequality, and the other forces that at least partly underlie lawbreaking, there is evidence to suggest that there might be much worse climate-related crime in store. After all, the messier, more disorderly world that climate change is stoking may be tremendously beneficial for criminals, especially as climate stresses shrink some states’ capacity and thereby their ability to tackle ne’er doers. At the same time, various types of crime may both undermine climate action and exacerbate climate stresses themselves. We may be overlooking a key plank of the conflict-climate nexus to our considerable collective peril. A relative dearth of research complicates attempts to articulate the extent and essence of the challenge. As with other forms of climate-related insecurity, the precise nature of climate’s contribution to crime is often hard to pin down, given the messy interplay of climate and other drivers of instability. However, through an analysis of the limited existing studies, a collation of the researcher’s own extensive fieldwork in this space, and three short case studies, each of which also draws off the researcher’s prior work, this is an attempt to get the ball rolling. Ultimately, the hope is that this short and summary briefer might serve as a springboard to—and an entry point for— future work

Washington, DC: Council on Strategic Risks, Center for Climate and Security , 2024. 9p.

By: Roy E. Wright, Jeff Byard, Craig Colten, Tracey Kijewski-Correa, J. Marshall Shepard, James M. Shultz, Chauncia Willis-Johnson

Experiencing a single disaster - a hurricane, tornado, flood, severe winter storm, or a global pandemic - can wreak havoc on the lives and livelihoods of individuals, families, communities and entire regions. For many people who live in communities in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region, the reality of disaster is starker. Endemic socioeconomic and health disparities have made many living in Gulf of Mexico communities particularly vulnerable to the effects of weather-climate hazards. Prolonged disaster recovery and increasing disaster risk is an enduring reality for many living in Gulf of Mexico communities. Between 2020 and 2021, seven major hurricanes and a severe winter storm affected communities across the region. As a backdrop to these acute weather events, the global COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, producing a complex and unprecedented public health and socioeconomic crisis.

Traditionally, the impacts of disasters are quantified individually and often in economic terms of property damage and loss. In this case, each of these major events occurring in the Gulf of Mexico during this time period subsequently earned the moniker of "billion-dollar" disaster. However, this characterization does not reflect the non-financial human toll and disparate effects caused by multiple disruptive events that increase underlying physical and social vulnerabilities, reduce adaptive capacities and ultimately make communities more sensitive to the effects of future disruptive events. This report explores the interconnections, impacts, and lessons learned of compounding disasters that impair resilience, response, and recovery efforts. While Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities, 2020-2021 focuses on the Gulf of Mexico region, its findings apply to any region that has similar vulnerabilities and that is frequently at risk for disasters.

National Academies Press, 2024