Developing Strategic and Operational Environmental Intelligence Capabilities

Abstract

This article examines the role of environmental change in conducting intelligence assessments, and the important role in integrating scientific data with background assumptions behind military and security planning. Tracing the development of environmental security concepts, recent military and intelligence interest in climate and environmental changes are based on practical concerns over critical vulnerabilities of infrastructure, energy supplies, and system stability. Examples from Central Asia illustrate the cascading nature of environmental security risks, particularly with water and energy systems. The discussion follows with how scenarios and risk assessments can be integrated with concepts from environmental net assessments, and why traditional assumptions of probabilities, uncertainties and secrecy may be misleading. It is essential to understand not only how extreme future changes might be, but what capabilities we and allies posses to adapt to environmental-related hazards.

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Developing Strategic and Operational
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Chad M. Briggs
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Developing Strategic and Operational
Environmental Intelligence
Capabilities
CHAD M. BRIGGS*
ABSTRACT This article examines the role of environmental change in conducting
intelligence assessments, and the important role in integrating scientific data with
background assumptions behind military and security planning. Tracing the development
of environmental security concepts, recent military and intelligence interest in climate and
environmental changes are based on practical concerns over critical vulnerabilities of
infrastructure, energy supplies, and system stability. Examples from Central Asia illustrate
the cascading nature of environmental security risks, particularly with water and energy
systems. Thediscussion follows with how scenarios and risk assessments can be integrated
with concepts from environmental net assessments, and why traditional assumptions of
probabilities, uncertainties and secrecy may be misleading. It is essential to understand not
only how extreme future changes might be, but what capabilities we and allies posses to
adapt to environmental-related hazards.
Introduction
Intelligence services and operations have existed for centuries, becoming
more professionalized in the twentieth century in response to greater needs
for technical expertise, and in recognition of severe consequences of inaction
or surprise. A combination of events during the Second World War, notably
the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in addition to the advent of nuclear
weapons, largely shaped intelligence organizations in the United States.
1
Despite the historical importance of environmental and energy issues in
operational conduct of conflicts, intelligence analysis has been overwhel-
mingly concerned with actions of foreign countries and risks of violent
action (often military or terrorist).
2
Yet viewed from the perspective of
intelligence as a general activity of analysis, the Central Intelligence Agency’s
*Email: chad.briggs@afminerva.us
1
United States, National Security Act, 1947 (Pub. L. No. 235, 80 Cong., 61 Stat. 495, 50
U.S.C. ch.15).
2
Cynthia Grabo, Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning (New York: Rowman
& Littlefield 2004). Harold A. Winters, Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the
Conduct of War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1998).
Intelligence and National Security
Vol. 27, No. 5, 653–668, October 2012
ISSN 0268-4527 Print/ISSN 1743-9019 Online/12/050653-16 ª2012 Taylor & Francis
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(CIA) definition can be interpreted more broadly: ‘Reduced to its simplest
terms, intelligence is knowledge and foreknowledge of the world around us –
the prelude to decision and action by US policy-makers’.
3
Early warning intelligence post 9/11 is often popularly understood to
mean warning against specific attacks or actions by terrorists, but its historic
usefulness has been in providing a credible background for understanding
the world and what risks are possible. A fully developed system of early
warning can help provide planning capabilities for new and emerging risks
or, as Sir David Omand writes: ‘The intention of such analysis is less to guide
prediction of what will happen than to provide a rational basis for the
identification of national and international capabilities that may be needed
to cope with the range of futures thus identified’.
4
This line of reasoning has
been further expanded by Leon Fuerth, who has described the ever-
increasing complexity of security risks (along with the difficulties associated
with anticipatory governance of long-range and emerging security chal-
lenges).
5
An underlying component of such complex risks has been environmental
factors, referring to the physical environment within which potential risks
and conflict take place. The majority of current security planning takes
environmental conditions as largely static, assuming either a steady-state
background or the existence of ‘normal’ conditions within a historically
established variation. As scientific capabilities have grown in recent decades,
background knowledge of atmospheric, oceanographic, or geographical
conditions may have been taken for granted by many intelligence analysts,
leading to continued assumptions of static environmental conditions during
scenario planning. Increasingly, scientific research has indicated that
boundary conditions are changing in environmental systems on a global
scale, meaning that the rules of behavior for climate, weather, and
ecosystems have themselves shifted, and with them the ability to predict
future environmental conditions. Often, predictive models use initial starting
conditions and project linear trend lines to indicate future conditions, but in
environmental systems non-linear shifts are much more common than the
models suggest.
6
Complex and chaotic systems resist easy prediction (think
of weather reports beyond three days), while at the same time underlying
conditions themselves are changing. The future may look nothing like the
present.
3
Quoted in Michael Warner ‘Wanted: A Definition of ‘‘Intelligence’’’, Studies in Intelligence
46/3 (2002) 5https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/
csi-studies/studies/vol46no3/article02.html4, emphasis added.
4
David Omand, ‘The Coastline of The Future: Some Limits on Forecasting and Prediction’ in
Chiara de Franco and Christoph O. Meyer (eds.) Forecasting, Warning and Responding to
Transnational Risks (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) p.21.
5
Leon S. Fuerth, ‘Foresight and Anticipatory Governance’, Foresight 11/4 (2009) pp.14–32.
6
Marten Scheffer and Stephen R. Carpenter, ‘Catastrophic Regime Shifts in Ecosystems:
Linking Theory to Observation’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution 18/12 (2003) pp.648–56.
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That climate and environmental changes may pose new risks to security
and intelligence agencies has been well documented in recent years.
7
The US
National Intelligence Council refers to climate change as a potential ‘threat
multiplier’, and has warned of the risks to political stability posed by shifting
temperatures, precipitation, and sea levels.
8
What is less clear is how security
agencies and military services translate scientific data into actionable intelli-
gence, or how general warnings of ‘increased risk’ globally can be scaled
down to specific geographical regions. This article lays out the risk and
vulnerability framework available to intelligence services, and how scenario
planning can translate complex scientific data into early warning capabil-
ities.
9
In contrast to common assumptions of resource degradation leading
directly to violent conflict, providing early warning of environmental risks
requires a new suite of approaches, based on vulnerability and risk assess-
ments of systems underlying security.
The Development of Environmental Security
Historically, environmental conditions have placed enormous challenges on
both strategic planning and military operations. The challenges of weather
and disease to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 are well known,
10
and
the ability to supply food (read: energy) to British forces during the
Peninsular War (1808–14) freed Wellington’s forces from some impacts of
7
For example, Defense Science Board, Trends and Implications of Climate Change for
National and International Security (Office of the Secretary of Defense, November 2011)
5http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA552760.pdf4; National Intelligence Council,
Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC: GPO 2008) 5http://
www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf4; US Department of
Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review 2010 (Washington, DC: GPO 2010) 5http://
www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf4; CNA Corporation, Na-
tional Security and the Threat of Climate Change 5http://www.cna.org/reports/climate/4;
German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), World in Transition – Climate
Change as a Security Risk (London: Earthscan 2008); Peter Halden, The Geopolitics of
Climate Change (Stockholm: FOI Swedish Defence Research Agency 2007); Cleo Paskal,
Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World
Map (Toronto: Key Porter Books 2010).
8
National Intelligence Council, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence & House
Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming: Statement for the Record by
Dr Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis – National
Intelligence Assessment on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to
2030 (2008) 5http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20080625_testimony.pdf4(accessed 24
September 2011); National Intelligence Council, Global Water Security: ICA 2012-08
(Washington, DC: NIC 2012).
9
Although focused primarily on environmental changes, it should be emphasized that these
capabilities were developed in order to gain better understanding of energy security risks, and
the two areas remain integrated throughout these methods.
10
Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed
Napoleon’s Greatest Army (New York: Broadway Publishing 2010).
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environmental risks.
11
While operating out of New Guinea in the Second
World War, the US 5th Air Force attributed over half of its aircraft losses
to severe weather, while the demands of strategic bombing forced the
US military to professionalize weather prediction and the science of
meteorology.
12
A larger concept of environmental security stemmed from 1960s-era
concerns over natural resource depletion, with the underlying assumption
that growing human populations and consumption would result in conflict.
Focused largely on developing countries in Africa and Asia, the post-Cold
War environmental security literature made strong causal claims that rapid
population growth was linked to resource degradation and continued
conflict in those regions.
13
The Kaplan/Homer-Dixon narrative dominated
the environmental security debate in the 1990s, matching geopolitical frames
set out by Huntington (culture/religion) and Connelly/Kennedy (migration/
immigration) on the new risks of the South.
14
By the end of the 1990s,
however, the resource degradation-instability thesis quickly faded following
the resultant lack of empirical research to substantiate the claims,
15
and new
threats post-11 September 2001.
Climate change was the issue that shifted the framing of environmental
security, by emphasizing a global process rather than locally, state-
controlled resources. Although dismissed as a security issue by Homer-
Dixon and others in the 1990s, by the mid-2000s climate change had
emerged as a legitimate risk. Data suggested that the pace of change had
quickened considerably, and that climate sensitivity was possibly far greater
than had previously been understood.
16
In the 2000s, the impetus for this
new framing came not from the academic world, which after 2000 had
scaled back on resource-conflict research. Instead, the US Department of
11
Troy Kirby, The Duke of Wellington and the Supply System During the Peninsula War
(Fort Leavenworth: Army Command and Staff College) 5http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/
GetTRDoc?Location¼U2&doc¼GetTRDoc.pdf&AD¼ADA5473954(accessed 26 Septem-
ber 2011).
12
Thomas E. Griffith, MacArthur’s Airman (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press 1998)
pp.140–1.
13
This line of thought was most vividly illustrated by Robert Kaplan, ‘The Coming Anarchy’,
The Atlantic Monthly, February (1994) pp.44–76 who cited Thomas Homer-Dixon, ‘On the
Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict’, International Security 16
(1991) pp.76–116. As Dalby pointed out, such claims ignored international economic
influences, and historical impacts of colonization. See Simon Dalby, ‘The Environment as
Geopolitical Threat: Reading Robert Kaplan’s Coming Anarchy’, Ecumene 3/4 (1996)
pp.472–96.
14
Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs 72/3 (1993) pp.22–49;
Matthew Connelly and Paul Kennedy, ‘Must It Be the Rest Against the West?’, The Atlantic
Monthly December (1994) pp.61–84.
15
See Nils P. Gleditsch, ‘Armed Conflict and the Environment: A Critique of the Literature’,
Journal of Peace Research 35/3 (1998) pp.381–400.
16
Gerard H. Roe and Marcia B. Baker, ‘Why Is Climate Sensitivity So Unpredictable?’,
Science 318/5850 (2007) pp.629–32.
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Defense began taking the issue on itself, albeit slowly and not necessarily in
line with prevailing political priorities of the White House. In 2003 Schwartz
and Randall produced a report on abrupt climate change and security risks,
highlighting the sensitive nature of climate systems and possibilities for
sudden, ‘Day After Tomorrow’-type scenarios.
17
That same year, USAF
Colonel John Lanicci argued for the need to integrate environmental security
and strategic weather into Air Force Weather Agency and intelligence
operations, including identifying potential climate-related geopolitical
instabilities.
18
This built upon environmental intelligence work the Air
Force had done since the 1960s (with satellite work of the 2nd Weather
Group, in cooperation with the National Reconnaissance Office, and open-
source volcanic eruption data) from Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska.
19
Following the European heat wave in 2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005,
and the increasing pace of climate change data, interest in vulnerabilities to
shifting environmental conditions increased considerably in the US and
Europe. Work began on a public report on the threats of climate change to
US national security at CNA, released in 2007 and signed by 12 retired flag
officers. The CNA report described climate change and shifting environ-
mental conditions as a ‘threat multiplier’, and indicated that the military
needed to take emerging risks seriously.
20
Indeed, 2007 was also the year
when the US security services made explicit the link between environmental
and energy security; two fields that previously had been considered separate
and distinct. The head of the US Department of Energy’s Office of
Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence established the Energy and Environ-
mental Security Directorate, intended to help identify strategic risks at the
intersection of the two areas.
21
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) soon
after followed with its own climate center, while the European Commission
(EC) and later European Union’s European External Action Service (EEAS)
also worked on climate security and early warning indicators.
22
The shift in
17
Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its
Implications for United States National Security, Global Business Network report (2003)
5http:/climate.org/PDF/clim_change_scenario.pdf4. A sample media reaction is Mark
Townsend and Paul Harris, ‘Now the Pentagon tells Bush: Climate Change will Destroy
us’, The Observer, 22 February 2004 5http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/
22/usnews.theobserver4.
18
John M. Lanicci, Weather Operations in the Transformation Era. Air War College
Maxwell Paper No. 29 (Maxwell AFB: Air University Press 2003) pp.11–5. See also John
Barnett, ‘Security and Climate Change’, Global Environmental Change 13/7 (2003) p.17.
19
Mark Cornell, ‘Beyond the Veil: A Look behind the Scene of Weather Intelligence’, USAF
Observer 50/3 (2004) p.9.
20
CNA Corporation, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.
21
Charles Mead and Annie Snider, ‘Why the CIA Is Spying on a Changing Climate’,
McClatchy News, 10 January 2011 5http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/10/106406/
why-the-cia-is-spying-on-a-changing.html4.
22
European Commission, Climate Change and International Security: Paper from the High
Representative and the European Commission to the European Council (2008) 5http://
www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/reports/99387.pdf4.
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strategic intelligence framing for environmental risks focused much more on
scenario-based risk assessments, examination of abrupt shifts in complex
systems, and more engagement with unclassified scientific communities. The
experiences of these programs may provide guidance for future efforts in
establishing strategic environmental intelligence capabilities.
Frame
Environmental factors in security differ from traditional concerns in several
ways, but primarily from their existence as risks rather than threats. That is,
in carrying out a net assessment of risks, vulnerabilities, and response
capabilities to environmental security, there is often no intentional action,
and impacts are often indirect.
23
Environmental security in this sense is
based upon the assumption that changes in underlying conditions can
trigger cascading impacts across complex systems, and vulnerabilities within
these systems can create ‘surprises’ for operational and strategic planning.
These complex systems can be pushed into new stability levels, where non-
linear shifts occur and historical experience is no indicator of future
behavior. These are the ‘tipping points’ described in much popular and
scientific literature.
24
Technically speaking, changes in boundary conditions
can lead to intersections of complex systems in phase space, leading to
mutually reinforcing non-linear risks that are not predictable from the
standpoint of traditional, linear projections.
25
These new conditions place
stresses on vulnerabilities, many of which may have gone previously
unrecognized.
As with any risk assessment, the ability to anticipate risks in one area is
made more difficult by uncertainty in related systems. Geophysical shifts
trigger changes in related ecosystems and socio-economic systems (especially
via infrastructure). These systems can change either on their own or due to
human-related actions, and abrupt changes in related systems can be
triggered by relatively small changes in climate. Failures in one system can
create cascading effects in other systems, with feedback effects that can
either dampen or accelerate changes. For example, modest increases in
average air temperature in Amazonian South America (*28C) may
precipitate the dying-off of rainforests, which are highly sensitive to changes
in air temperature. Loss of rainforest (i.e. failure of a central ecosystem
node) further increases local temperature and reduces rainfall, significantly
23
There are important exceptions relating to the use of environmental resources as ways to
deliberately undermine social resilience in conflicts. See Chad Briggs, Lucy Anderson and
Moneeza Walji, ‘Environmental Health, Security, and the Long-term Consequences of
Conflict’, Conflict, Medicine & Survival 25/2 (2009) pp.122–33.
24
For example, Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big
Difference (New York: Little, Brown and Company 2000).
25
A political analogy would be several countries changing their borders and systems of
government at once. The political, social and economic systems would begin to interact in
unforeseen and potentially destabilizing ways.
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accelerating loss of adjacent rainforest via drought and wildfires. The loss of
rainforest also reduces downstream water flows, increases loss of regional
equatorial glaciers, and creates a ‘flip’ of the Amazon from a carbon sink to
carbon source, positive feedback loops for global warming and social
impacts.
26
Such potential temperature-induced tipping points in tropical
rainforests have already been documented, and the role for environmental
intelligence is to map out cascading impacts and potential future scenarios
for appropriate response. A marginal change in air temperate may not seem
significant in and of itself, but it can set off a cascade of related changes that
multiply in intensity and potential risks. Practically speaking, the challenge
lay in translating such complex scientific data into actionable intelligence
for decision-makers, in an attempt to reduce strategic and operational
surprises.
In terms of a ‘surprise attack’, the same primary ingredients can apply to
abrupt environmental change impacts if one removes the deliberate action
and existence of an aggressor. According to Kam, the three components are:
the event is contrary to expectations of future events, that there is a failure of
advance warning, and that the event exposes a lack of preparedness for the
given situation.
27
Admittedly, removing the aggressor and the action make
early warning and advance preparation difficult from a cognitive perspec-
tive, as past security issues have almost always contained primary actors.
Strategic surprises, like emergent environmental problems, have generally
occurred when ample information is available to respond to the situation,
yet the risk was not recognized or acted upon by decision-makers.
Effective risk identification requires a substantial departure from past
visions of the environment as a largely external force, and one whose
complexity can be reduced to simplified trends. A common approach to
climate security studies, for example, is to take policy summaries from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and apply them to
national security models of interstate conflict. To do so assumes causal links
that are extremely tenuous, and reduces key aspects of climate dynamics
(particularly abrupt changes and localized impacts) in favor of averaged
changes that obscure key vulnerabilities and tertiary impacts. The alternative
approach for environmental intelligence is to examine underlying networks
that provide stability, as do ecologists in researching food webs and
ecosystems, or climate dynamicists in identifying climate tipping points and
complex interactions between component systems. A combination of rising
sea level and increasing severity of tropical storms, for example, can pose
flooding hazards to coastal airfields and render them unavailable during
26
G.B. Bonan, ‘Forests and Climate Change: Forcings, Feedbacks, and the Climate Benefits of
Forests’, Science 320/5882 (2008), pp.1444–9. R.S. Bradley, M. Vuille, H.F Diaz and
W. Vergara, ‘Threats to Water Supplies in the Tropical Andes’, Science 312/5781 (2005)
pp.1755–6.
27
Ephraim Kam, Surprise Attack: The Victim’s Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press 1998) pp.8–9.
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crises, risks that trigger cascading problems for campaign planning.
28
Similarly, extreme heat events in Europe have both forced the shutdown of
nuclear reactors in France, and in Russia sparked wildfires that destroyed a
naval air station and nearly damaged a nuclear facility.
29
In such cases little
appropriate response exists, and authorities are left responding with sub-
optimal solutions to events they had not anticipated.
Efficiency and Vulnerability in Central Asia
The states of Central Asia provide an example where smaller environmental
changes are quickly multiplied into significant stressors within a vulnerable
system. When the central Asian republics were part of the Soviet Union
(USSR), extensive investments were made in irrigation projects for cotton
and other export crops, particularly in Uzbekistan. Large-scale diversions of
water resulted in severe ecological damage to the Aral Sea, whose surface
area has decreased 90 per cent by 2010, effectively destroying local
economies and communities. During the 1980s and 1990s, over 100,000
residents were displaced as livelihoods disappeared and environmental
exposures to dust greatly increased. Upstream, these diversions have placed
demands on multiple users, as with affected states experiencing environ-
mentally related shortages. The reliance of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan on water for both agriculture and hydropower has meant that any
decrease in precipitation forces trade-offs between the two industries, while
at the same time intensifying political conflict between riparian users in the
region. The system created under Soviet times never anticipated environ-
mental changes, and was left highly vulnerable to any shifts.
30
The system is particularly sensitive to environmental changes due to the
relationship between precipitation and reservoir levels. Hydropower reser-
voirs in Central Asia (as in many areas, including California) rely on meltwater
from winter snows to replenish reservoir levels. Although the exact relationship
between precipitation, snowpack levels, and reservoir levels varies according
to local geography, generally speaking a decrease of only 5 per cent in
precipitation levels is easily amplified into a 10 per cent decrease in snowpack,
resulting in even greater loss in reservoir levels. As the Central Asian economies
were planned with assumptions of full reservoir capacities, in recent years
28
See Cleo Paskal, The Vulnerability of Energy Infrastructure to Environmental Change,
Chatham House briefing paper (London, Royal Institute for International Affairs) 5http://
www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/1090434. Risks of volcanic ash plumes
during military operations have been wargamed by USAF. In both the 2003 and 2010
heatwaves, tens of thousands of civilians died.
29
BBC, ‘Medvedev Sacks Officers over Russia Fire Failures’ 5http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
world-europe-108719974(accessed 5 August 2010).
30
Tobias Siegfried et al., ‘Coping With International Water Conflict in Central Asia:
Implications of Climate Change and Melting Ice in the Syr Darya Catchment,’ Peace Research
Institute Oslo (PRIO) paper (February 2010) 5http://climasecurity.files.wordpress.com/
2010/06/siegfried.pdf4.
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countries such as Kyrgyzstan have had to decide between providing hydro-
power in the winter (essential for heating the capital of Bishkek), or summer
irrigation water (essential for economic output).
31
In 2008 reservoir levels at Toktogul fell enough that just such decisions had
to be made, and existing unrest in the capital prompted more winter
hydropower production. With existing complaints concerning energy prices
(related to aging infrastructure and loss of subsidies from the now dissolved
USSR), and severe winters, government measures to conserve electricity by
shutting down schools and businesses fueled discontent with the government.
Similar conditions existed with the Nurek Reservoir in Tajikistan, resulting in a
loss of 7 per cent GDP in one year.
32
The winter use of water for power
production must be balanced by less use of water for summer irrigation. This
places greater pressures upon agricultural production and food security, and
regions vulnerable to political instability often experience a combination of net
out-migration and food insecurity (this may be a reinforcing process).
33
In
2008, food prices in many parts of Central Asia rose 26–32 per cent, with the
WorldFoodProgramreportingthat1.5millionpeopleinTajikistanwerefood
insecure.
34
Lack of reliable transport within countries may hamper transfer of
food, even when available. Although environmental changes were only one
ingredient in the recent instability in Kyrgyzstan, it may have been a factor in
worsening unrest and illegitimacy of the government in Bishkek.
Further scenario work on Central Asia could focus on the increasing
environmental pressures to these already vulnerable systems. As stated,
marginal changes can force difficult decisions on government leaders and,
given existing tensions in the region, loss of either food or energy only serve
to worsen legitimacy issues. According to the vulnerability framework, the
resilience of Central Asian republics may be limited by the fragility of the
systems, as a whole. Migration and food trade with Russia are significant
considerations, and overall stability concerns may impact the continued
existence of both US and Russian military bases in the region. Understanding
the dynamics of instability in Central Asia therefore requires a broader
understanding of environmental influences on energy and political systems,
what systems need to be bolstered in terms of resilience, and how conditions
may change in the future.
31
Adam Albion, ‘Winter of Discontent – Electricity Supply Problems in Central Asia’, Jane’s
Intelligence Review 20/12 (2008) pp.54–5.
32
Ben Slay, Central Asia Regional Risk Assessment: Responding to Water, Energy and Food
Insecurity (January 2009) 5http://waterwiki.net/index.php/Central_Asia_Regional_Risk_
Assessment4
33
International Organization for Migration (IOM), Internal Displacement in Central Asia:
Underlying Reasons and Response Strategies (Vienna: IOM Technical Cooperation Centre
for Europe and Central Asia 2005).
34
Ben Slay, ‘Energy Security, Poverty and Vulnerability in Central Asia and the Wider
European Neighbourhood’, CASE Network Studies and Analysis No. 396 (December 2009)
5http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id¼15270234. Food insecurity refers to
the World Health Organization definitions of physical and financial access to daily dietary
needs. See 5http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story028/en/4.
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Asia has the lowest per capita availability of water in the world, at the
same time that 74 per cent of all irrigated water use occurs on the continent.
When other factors are considered, such as rising affluence and consumption
(especially for food and energy) of the region, shifting precipitation patterns
due to climate change, shifts in demographics toward more vulnerable (often
coastal) regions, and the dynamics of riparian politics, conditions as
witnessed in Central Asia may become much more common.
35
China’s
massive Three Gorges Dam has received a great deal of attention, in
terms of forced relocation of millions of people (currently 1.5 million,
though many more may be moved due to geological risks), damage to the
Yellow River ecosystems, and even increased earthquake risks.
36
Yet more
problematic from a security perspective are projects that affect down-
stream countries, whether on the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, or the
Tigris.
37
The overriding concerns should not be of open conflict between
states, but rather tracing the complex consequences of actions on those
systems that underlay stability, as well as the possibilities for cooperation
among affected states.
The role of environmental intelligence is to help identify such potential
vulnerabilities in advance, allowing opportunities for appropriate response
and resilience building. Environmental changes can create operational
mission decay, or create new, strategic and security risks whose nature and
course is difficult to predict using current models.
Scenario Risk Assessments
Like much of the previous literature on strategic warning, the intent of
environmental intelligence is not necessarily to predict specific events, but
rather to help identify a range of potential conditions that can pose risks
and/or threats. Systemic vulnerabilities, like the Central Asian example
above, can be identified in advance given the proper risk framework and
access to emerging scientific data.
38
Various alternative futures can then
35
Brahma Chellaney, Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press 2011) pp.8–46.
36
US Geological Survey, Geographical Overview of the Three Gorges Dam and Reservoir,
China – Geologic Hazards and Environmental Impacts (Washington, DC: USGS 2008)
5http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1241/pdf/OF08-1241_508.pdf4.
37
Richard Stone ‘Mayhem on the Mekong’, Science 333/6044 (2011) pp.814–8.
38
If the scientific data has no definite conclusion then, obviously, things are not so
straightforward. Although the nature of the conflict is a key variable, most often we find data
exhibit modeling uncertainty rather than epistemic or even measuring uncertainty. That
suggests potential variation in system behavior, which is valuable knowledge in itself. So in
planning we use alternative futures scenarios, combining that variation as much as possible.
We find that sort of conflicting data useful, while climate denialists misrepresent what it really
means. When this author trained as a pilot it was the same principle (especially in Wisconsin
in March) i.e. if weather forecasts were widely divergent, it suggested an unstable front, and
one had to plan for that instability. One didn’t pick a point, one picked ranges (much like the
non-committal BBC weather forecasts).
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be mapped out, illustrating where security risks might arise and where
greater surveillance and/or intervention might be prioritized.
Scenarios have been used by the military for decades in preplanning for
operational and strategic risks. Work by Herman Kahn and others at the
RAND Corporation established a systematized framework for ‘war games’
and divining complex futures, with a particular emphasis on the complex
interactions between different future trends.
39
Royal Dutch Shell also used
these methods in the 1970s, in particular work conducted by Pierre Wack
and his team, who helped Shell navigate the oil crises and OPEC embargo.
40
The purpose of scenarios was to help decision-makers react under new and
shifting circumstances, whether combat-related or in terms of strategic
planning, by providing conditions under which they would likely have to act
in the future. Planners assumed that certain poor decisions were irreversibly
costly, and that decision-makers could not rely upon past experience in all
situations. One could not always fight the last war, even metaphorically
speaking, but this (so the allegory goes) is what the military is designed to
do.
Environmentally related scenarios can be plotted using a multi-step
process, which provide both transparent and systematic application of
scientific data, and exploration of cascading risks across complex systems.
Under the Minerva approach, scenarios for climate security are created by
first plotting potential, abrupt environmental changes in a given geographi-
cal region. A multi-dimensional analysis could help determine potential
interactions between key environmental factors, systematically mapping the
boundaries of what is possible. In contrast to traditional scenarios, which
use two dimensions of variance and four possible, alternative futures, the
starting points for complex systems assume multiple (up to ten) dimensions,
with a preference for choosing conditions at the extremes rather than relying
on what is ‘most likely’. The approach also differs from the Kahn-Weiner
method of scenario creation (much closer to NIC estimates), which identifies
multiple trend lines of future drivers. The Minerva tools focus more on
extremes and ‘wild cards’, meaning that linear trends can abruptly shift and
change the nature of the system as a whole.
41
Security specialists and environmental scientists can then identify areas in
this matrix where monitoring and/or research is weak, areas in which
changes are already known to be occurring, and outcomes that are judged
39
Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the
Next Thirty-three Years (New York: Macmillan 1969); Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of
Armageddon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1991) pp.33–50.
40
Pierre Wack ‘Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids’, Harvard Business Review 63/6 (1985)
pp.139–50. A number of Shell Oil planners went on to found the Global Business Network.
Discussions of changes in underlying environmental conditions in scenarios was highlighted
by Harvey A. DeWeerd, ‘A Contextual Approach to Scenario Construction’, RAND
document P-5084 (1973) 5http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P5084.pdf4.
41
Tracy Briggs and Chad Briggs, Air University Minerva Initiative 2010–2011: Energy and
Environmental Security (Maxwell AFB: Air University Press 2011) pp.6–21.
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either too implausible or too insignificant to study further.
42
Identification of
‘blind spots’ is a key objective, and with them potential risks of disrupting
associated systems. This bundle of starting conditions can then be used to
examine potential security impacts – these can be chosen either because they are
poorly monitored but have a high potential impact, or because significant
changes have already been observed and probability was deemed moderate to
high. In 2009, for example, the abrupt climate team at the US Department of
Energy’s GlobalEESE
43
project chose glacial melt in Peru as a scenario starting
point, in large part due to the high probability of impacts, the significant
dislocations that would occur once water to cities like Lima disappears, and the
relative lack of security discussions surrounding the region (a traditional
assessment would assume relative stability).
44
Once the suite of background conditions was determined for scenarios,
groups of experts could begin mapping cascading impacts. The subsequent
impact tracing can be undertaken by multiple teams, either to account for
multiple perspectives or for regional specificity of impacts. Beginning from
central assumptions of environmental changes, potential first-order (im-
mediate) impacts would be identified. From each potential first-order
impact, a group of related second-order impacts would be identified, and so
on in spider web pattern (technically, a scale-free network topology).
45
When impacts would feed back into worsening or alleviating the original
problem, such feedback effects would be highlighted, and critically
vulnerable parts of the system could be identified. By ‘testing’ (rather than
assuming) system dynamics, and by including experts from disparate fields,
it is hoped that scenarios can help identify unforeseen security impacts and
allow for Phase 0 (pre-operation) planning.
46
The process is also meant to
incorporate scientific data as it becomes available, rather than waiting years
for it to disseminate to an IPCC Assessment summary.
The Bright Light of Uncertainty, and False Allure of Secrecy
In translating scientific data into scenarios, a significant challenge lay in not
being overwhelmed with large amounts of data, and evidentiary rules of
scientific research that do not match risk assessment guidelines. A standard
42
Chad Briggs and Henrik Carlsen, ‘Environmental and Climate Security: Improving Scenario
Methodologies for Science and Risk Assessment’, American Geophysical Union Research
Abstract (December 2010) 5http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMNH12A..05B4.
43
Global Energy and Environmental Strategic Ecosystem.
44
Jennifer Gonzalez, ‘Abrupt Climate Change Scenarios and Security Foresight: Climate
Change & Water in Peru’, US Department of Energy briefing paper (November 2009).
45
For a general discussion of scale-free networks and complex systems, see A.L. Barabasi and
E. Bonabeau, ‘Scale Free Networks’, Scientific American 288/5 (2003) pp.50–9.
46
The importance of including regional and field experts cannot be understated. See George
W. Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 2001) pp.172–5. The US Air Force Minerva program plans to use such
methods in outlining strategic risks to the Asia-Pacific Basin to 2030, in cooperation with
Project Blue Horizons 5http://csat.au.af.mil/blue_horizon/index.htm4.
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response to environmental risks is to wait for more information or ‘full
certainty’ on the relevant issue, despite such weight of evidence not being
placed on other risks (e.g. terrorism). Although the sources of this mismatch
are contentious, in effect the rules of scientific research are applied to
environmentally related assessments, requiring a focus on ‘known quantities’
and the most conservative assessments available. In scientific research, a
95 per cent confidence interval is standard practice for peer-reviewed,
published data, despite environmental projections being inherently uncertain
enterprises.
47
When describing potential change in systems, therefore, estimates
of smaller marginal changes are preferred, or the median results from multiple
model projections using conservative estimates. Such practices historically
underestimate risks to a large degree, by failing to describe the full range of
potential impacts, and by relying on historical experience for projections of
novel and unique conditions.
48
In other words, traditional estimates of
environmental intelligence use well-established and historical experience to
prepare for future events, despite the systems themselves changing in significant
and unexpected ways. Relying on ‘best available’ data leaves analyses without
the ability to anticipate extreme conditions.
For example, IPCC model projections of Arctic sea ice extent indicated a
linear reduction in sea ice cover, with a band of variance around a ‘most
likely’ scenario. In reality, the observed changes in sea ice extent quickly
exceeded even the variance bands, surprising both scientists and naval
planners.
49
Likewise, reports of carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 surpassed
even worst-case scenarios in the IPCC Fourth Assessment, despite a global
economic recession placing a drag on fossil fuel consumption.
50
Imbedded
assumptions in the models and scenarios prevented effective examination of
more extreme conditions, in large part due to preferences for ‘most likely’
probabilities based on historical experience. Military experience with
warning intelligence has suffered from similar problems (‘preparing for the
last war’), but has also offered clues for effective response to preparing for
novel events.
51
In military security, the threat being watched effectively may
pose less of an overall risk precisely because it is being watched, while other
risks may exist outside of surveillance capabilities. Assessments should
47
Kristin Shrader-Frechette, ‘Methodological Rules for Four Classes of Scientific Uncertainty’
in John Lemons (ed.) Scientific Uncertainty and Environmental Problem Solving (London:
Blackwell Scientific 1996) pp.12–39.
48
See for example, Margaret S. Torn and John Harte, ‘Missing Feedbacks, Asymmetric
Uncertainties, and the Underestimation of Future Warming’, Geophysical Research Letters
33 (2008) L10703, doi:10.1029/2005GL025540.
49
Julienne Stroeve, Marika M. Holland, Walt Meier, Ted Scambos and Mark Serreze, ‘Arctic
Sea Ice Decline: Faster than Forecast’, Geophysical Research Letters 34 (2007) L09501, doi:
10.1029/2007GL029703
50
‘Global CO2 Emissions Rising Faster than Worst-case Scenarios’, Washington Post,4
November 2011 5http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/global-co2-emissions-
outpacing-worst-case-scenarios/2011/11/04/gIQA74r1mM_blog.html4.
51
See Richard Danzig, Driving in the Dark: Ten Propositions About Prediction and National
Security (Washington, DC: CNAS 2011).
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include both what is known, and what is not monitored or cannot be known
at this time.
52
Defining both of these boundaries and the ‘known unknowns’
can help establish risk parameters.
53
A related concern with handling gross amounts of uncertainty lies in the
fact that the traditional rules of tradecraft and secrecy that dominate
intelligence agencies and offices. Despite the public releases of NIC estimates
on environmental security, some portions remain classified and the work of
the CIA Climate Center remains under a veil of secrecy.
54
The former
director of the GlobalEESE program at the US Department of Energy has
argued that such approaches are unnecessary and possibly counter-
productive in environmental matters, as the relevant insights represent
‘open secrets’ that belong to no nation,
55
but are rather hidden by layers of
complexity and require open collaboration in order to address.
56
The
relevant data are often held by scientists around the globe, who at times are
able to offer insight to risks that far exceed what rules of scientific publishing
allow them to say publicly. If critical uncertainties offer key insights into
risks, intelligence analysts must be able to draw upon knowledge of why key
areas remain uncertain, and what potential pathways lay beyond established
experience.
Yet in accessing this wealth of scientific information, it is possible to
confuse open source information with open access to such information.
Scientists, as a rule, do not simply give up insights and emerging data, but
wish to ‘shepherd’ such data and help to explain its significance. Access thus
requires an open process through which scientists can participate, and
establishment of trust that their work will not be misinterpreted.
57
The
52
The USAF volcano monitoring at Offut Air Force Base routinely issues such ‘black reports’
when monitoring has failed in a given area, as lack of data might be misinterpreted as lack of
risk. A historical example of this fallacy, when German cruisers passed undetected up the
English Channel in 1942, was described in Patrick Beesly, Very Special Intelligence (New
York: Ballantine Books 1977) pp.123–9.
53
Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World (Washington: Polity Press
2006) pp.102–4.
54
David Biello, ‘Why is the CIA Keeping Climate Change Secret?’, Scientific American,23
October 2011 5http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id¼why-is-the-cia-
keeping-climate-chan-11-10-234.
55
See Carol Dumaine, ‘Common Security, Uncommon Challenges’, Keynote address to the
International Security Forum, Geneva, Switzerland (18 May 2009) 5http://www.oss.net/
dynamaster/file_archive/090808/eeb6300b90fe044331e6a4c8c10006cc/GenevaSpeech1.1.pdf4.
56
Richard Dahl, ‘Does Secrecy Equal Security? Limiting Access to Environmental Informa-
tion’, Environmental Health Perspectives 112/2 (2004) pp.A104–7.
57
One of the earliest arguments for unclassified environmental intelligence networks was
Simon Dalby, ‘Security, Intelligence, the National Interest and the Global Environment’,
Intelligence and National Security 10/4 (1995) pp.175–97. See also David Bray, Keith Daum
and Sean Costigan, ‘Nurturing an Energy and Environmental Security Ecosystem to Inform
Government Policy’ (Social Science Research Network 2008) 5http://ssrn.com/
abstract¼13032234.
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transparency is necessary for critical examination and updating of potential
geophysical conditions and, particularly where scientific issues need to be
debated among communities of scientists, scenarios may only have lasting
legitimacy when they are not closed ‘products’ but interactive processes. The
potential benefits of not waiting for peer-reviewed literature represent a
substantial time curve, often measured in years. Scientific networks are
themselves important early warning systems for emerging risks and,
although early surveillance may yield a larger number of false positives in
warning, the incorporation of early data into scenario processes can help
prepare planners for larger categories of events and trends that may have no
precedent. The key task, as stated before, is to provide experience with
emerging trends and risks, not specific prediction of events. As with flight
training, one spends substantial time training for catastrophic events,
precisely in order to prevent their becoming catastrophes in practice. There
are legitimate concerns over the release of sensitive information, particularly
intelligence products that highlight critical vulnerabilities of systems.
58
But
overall the need is for establishing communities of experts who can assist
intelligence analysts and security planners in imagining emerging risks.
Conclusion: Net Assessment and Applications
In laying out some approaches to environmental intelligence, we have
argued that approaches to energy and environmental risks can effectively
draw from both military intelligence and natural science methods. Effective
application can help frame seemingly intractable risks suffused with
uncertainty, and instead produce workable scenarios to assist strategic and
operational planners. Although many of these approaches are well
established in theory, application of strategic environmental risk assessments
are still being refined. Inclusion of energy and environmental systems to
strategic planning can add detail and texture to existing analytical efforts,
and help provide early warning of potential risks to related political,
military, social and economic systems. Net assessment of energy and
environmental security (EES) risk would provide a holistic view of future
conditions, both of strategic space and potential operational challenges to
traditional security concerns. EES planning is therefore a support function
when applied to security assessments, both broadening the scope of security,
but also translating risks into meaningful warnings. Such analyses are not
only provided as stand-alone reports to decision-makers, but are best
integrated into ongoing assessments, and as training tools within war games
and professional military education. With repeated warnings that environ-
mental changes are creating new risks to security and stability, these new
approaches are necessary steps in providing resolution and detail to such
risks, and engaging the resources of both militaries, scientists, and security
services in preparing for shifting environmental conditions.
58
We hope to elaborate on such data risks in future work, particularly as they relate to post-
conflict reconstruction and risks of environmental terrorism.
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Disclaimer
This article does not represent any official views or policies of the US Air
Force or the US Department of Defense.
Notes on Contributors
Chad Briggs is Minerva Defense Fellow and Chair of Energy and
Environmental Security at the Air University, US Air Force. Dr Briggs is
also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Environmental Security in The
Hague, was formerly Senior Advisor at the US Department of Energy, and
was a Fulbright professor to Berlin, Germany and Budapest, Hungary. He
holds a PhD in political science from Carleton University in Canada.
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