Scorched earth an insecure place

Over time, the climate change issue will inexorably move to the centre of the foreign policy and national security concerns of all states. Only last month the European Union's commissioner for external affairs Benita Ferrero-Waldner revealed that her talks with Chinese leaders had focused on climate change and that efforts to contain greenhouse gases have already become a centrepiece of the EU's external policy.

Unless carefully handled, tensions between the developed and developing worlds over responsibility for a deteriorating climate, already in evidence, may escalate. Climate change will also raise anxieties about food and energy, and increase the likelihood of destabilising competition for scarce resources that could be a particular problem for our region because of Asia's high levels of energy dependence and growing demand for food and water.

Supply of key agricultural products such as wheat, rice and corn is set to drop by one-third in China because of forecast temperature rises.

Although these sobering statistics should be a wake-up call for action, complacency should not be replaced by alarmism or defeatism.

If climate change is human-induced, then the solutions can and must be found within our collective resources and wisdom.

As a first step, the Government needs to take a more comprehensive approach by developing a national strategy on climate change that considers all the consequences of a rapidly warming planet. For this is an issue that transcends the environment and goes to the heart of national and international security.