Description
The links and dependencies between climate change’s effects on natural systems and their impacts on maritime security (in particular maritime crime) have been acknowledged by states, international organizations, and academics (e.g. Germond and Mazaris, 2019). Understanding them is crucial in order to address future threats to the global maritime order that will be deeply affected by the effects of climate change. However, the precise identification of these links requires developing a methodology at the intersection between social science and marine science to account for the cumulative nature of the effects and impacts in question, and thus help identifying precise issues and devising policy solutions.
This paper proposes to base such framework for analysis on the underlying methodology of Cumulative Effect Assessments (CEAs). Although CEAs have so far mainly been applied to assess human impacts on ecosystems, it is possible to apply similar methods to study the links between climate change and maritime security (Roudgarmi 2018). To do so, we suggest using an Effect to Impact Pathway (EIP) methodology, as developed by Judd et al. (2015), to map the relationships between certain ‘Activities’ (e.g. human induced emissions of greenhouse gasses), the ‘Pressure’ engendered (e.g. warming sea temperatures) and their ‘Impacts’ (e.g. food shortages) via ‘Receptors’ (e.g. fishing communities) on certain sectors of society (in this case maritime migration and maritime crime, e.g. illegal fishing).
It is then possible to generate an assessment map that investigates the ‘Impacts’ that the human induced greenhouse gas emissions have on maritime security. This map will be created using scientific data from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The resulting improved understanding of the whole effects-to-impacts relationships should contribute to policy responses. The paper shows the utility of a multidisciplinary approach in understanding causal chains that transcends climate science. The proposed analytical tool can then be applied in further studies to assess the dependencies and synergies between climate change and the occurrence of maritime insecurity.
