Academics fear for future as 'four horsemen' ride towards Scotland

Gilmour, who hails from the Borders, is one of Scotland’s most distinguished international diplomats. He served at the United Nations for 30 years and rose to be assistant general secretary for human rights and the political director in the office of the secretary-general.

Today, The Herald on Sunday has caught up with him in Berlin, where he runs the Berghof Foundation which campaigns for peace.

We’re discussing his new book The Burning Question. It investigates how climate change is fuelling conflict around the world.

Andrew Gilmour

In turn, those conflicts are fuelling mass migration into Europe as refugees flee violence and inhospitable homelands.

Finally, here at home the arrival of refugees is being pounced on by the far right.

Gilmour makes clear he’s no opponent of immigration.

He detests the Conservative government’s Rwanda policy which he says “embarrasses” him as a Scot “living abroad”.

Gilmour served in many conflict zones: Iraq, Afghanistan, West Africa, South Sudan, the Balkans, and the Middle East.

It is Syria, though, which proves his troubling thesis. “It’s no coincidence,” he said, “that the Arab Spring happened in Daraa.”

This southern Syrian town was the epicentre of protests which sparked the country’s bloody civil war.

The region was “particularly badly hit by climate change”, Gilmour explained. “Farmers were desperate.”

Desperation, combined with the barbarity and corruption of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, pushed many towards revolt.

That revolt was countered with violent repression, and the conflict spiralled out of control in 2011.

Gilmour was based in Iraq between 2007/09. “There was an appalling drought at the time,” he said. “I’ve seen claims it was the worst drought since the dawn of civilisation in Mesopotamia. It lasted from 2006/11.

“Sunni farmers in Iraq and Syria had their farms just completely made uninhabitable, unproductive and infertile.

“There was major population movement into the cities of both countries.”

al-Qaeda

The government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq “didn’t give a s***” about Sunnis, Gilmour said. Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party is Shia. The result of political sectarianism? Many of these desperate farmers “joined al-Qaeda” – the Sunni extremist terror group.

Both Syria and Iraq show how bad government, repression and simmering resentment can spill over into brutal bloodshed when the effects of climate change are added into the mix, creating a swathe of hungry, poor, panicked – and very angry – people.

When it comes to migration, refugees from Syria, fleeing war and climate change, would eventually make their way into Europe. German chancellor Angela Merkel famously offered shelter to more than one million refugees, mostly Syrian.

Germany’s far right seized on Merkel’s policy. The Alternative for Germany party is expected to dominate state elections later this year.

In Scotland, the far-right group Patriotic Alternative has targeted refugees, many of whom fled Syria, housed in hotels in towns like Erskine by the Home Office.

Gilmour warned Scotland not to believe mistakenly that climate change and events in faraway places won’t have ramifications here at home.

Camels weak from lack sustenance stand behind a salt water well as they migrate to find food near Mochesa in Wajir county in Nairobi, Kenya

“Some Scots are strangely complacent about the global climate emergency,” he said, “taking the view that we’ll be less affected than places in North Africa or the Middle East.”

While it’s true, Gilmour added, that Scotland won’t suffer the same “devastating heat and droughts” as Iraq or Somalia, “it would be foolish to imagine that Scotland will be able to insulate itself from the harmful effects of the intersection of climate and conflict”.

He said: “We’re seeing how this intersection leads to both the rise of extremist armed groups, deeply opposed to Western values … and also increased migration patterns.”

In fact, Scottish history proves the nexus between climate change and war. Gilmour, an Oxford-educated historian, says that from 1637 “Scotland suffered the longest drought in its recorded history, combined with searingly cold winters … The misery this caused was clearly a contributory factor in the invasion of England by a Scots army in 1640”.

He added: “It’s been suggested that over three centuries earlier in Scotland, climate issues – cold winters and wet summers, leading to food shortages – played a role in heightening anti-English sentiment and support for William Wallace’s rebellion for independence in the 1290s.”

Weather also affected a whole series of conflicts in the 17th century including the Thirty Years’ War which devastated Europe, leaving up to eight million dead.

Gilmour’s work in war zones taught him “how much conflict has a climate dimension” as a “contributory cause”. However, as climate change spirals, it will “increasingly become a primary cause” of conflict as “water becomes scarcer”, droughts devastate food supplies, and the planet’s population grows.

“It doesn’t take a genius to see this will lead to more desperation, tension and conflict.”

He stressed, however: “I very much don’t want to be part of the discourse that migrants are ‘a bad thing’. I don’t believe that.”

We cannot escape from the reality that “one of the ways people cope [with climate change and war] is migration.” The movement of refugees will “be much greater” than it is now, however, as climate and conflict worsen.

“We’ve seen nothing yet,” Gilmour added.

China

EVENTS on one side of the planet can have ripple effects far away. In 2010, a “once-in-a-century” drought hit China. “It led to China stopping grain exports and buying stockpiles,” Gilmour said. “That prevented grain getting into Egypt, which meant the government was unable to provide subsidised bread.” That “contributed” to the unrest in Egypt during the Arab Spring in 2011.

In Africa, climate change is exacerbating poverty and desperation in the Sahel, fuelling the rise of Boko Haram, and in Somalia, playing into the hands of al-Shabaab. Likewise, in Yemen, climate change has helped recruitment into Islamist extremist organisations.

“These are some of the areas worst afflicted by climate change, with temperatures rising at a higher rate than elsewhere,” Gilmour added. “These are some of the poorest places on Earth, with terrain so inhospitable … When life gets tougher there’s often temptation to pick up weapons.”

Gilmour notes that it’s the countries “which have contributed least to emissions that suffer the most” from the effects of climate change and conflict. “Since 1960, Somalia has contributed as much, in terms of emissions, as America has done in the last two-and-a-half days. It’s astonishing.”

Gilmour is just back from Somalia and says the suffering is “absolutely terrible”. Like many refugees, Somalians are fleeing their country partly due to “our industrial policies and failure to take action to curb emissions”.

The history of colonialism and empire also hangs over climate change. Nations such as Britain, he said, “used the riches we got from slavery” for the Industrial Revolution, which “led to the pollution we’ve been pumping into the air for nearly 200 years”.

“That gave us the power to colonise these countries. We didn’t encourage them to develop. We wanted their products. You can see why they feel hard done by,” he said.

Gilmour dismissed any claims that Scotland wasn’t involved in colonialism, adding: “The empire-builders were overwhelming Scottish.” The historical irony is that nations which once colonised half the world – like France and Britain – are now facing migrants arriving from the Global South.

Putin

Russia, and Putin’s ally Belarus, have pushed migrants into bordering European nations in the hope of destabilising the West. “It’s no coincidence Russia, which benefits most from social dislocation in the West, is most keen to block climate measures at the UN … They think it will bring the far right which is pro-Putin. It’s very much part of their calculus.”

“Anti-migrant” parties are now “whipping up the nativist vote” as Western governments have failed to conduct an intelligent conservation with their electorates about immigration.

“The great challenge,” said Gilmour, “is how we can have a more compassionate and just response to migrants without fuelling the far right. How do we sensitise our populations into realising that firstly we really do have a moral obligation, and secondly that migration can actually do a lot of good for populations which are shrinking.” Failing to have a proper, informed debate means “hostility to migration” will simply grow.

Gilmour says the key solution is “climate justice” – in other words, Western nations taking responsibility for their historic actions and making the lives of people in struggling nations more tolerable so they aren’t forced to flee.

At the heart of climate justice is “environmental peace building”. An example would be aid organisations bringing communities together where there’s a risk of conflict – in nations like Somalia, where “every time there’s a drought it leads to an uptick in recruitment for al-Shabaab” – and providing funds for “huge solar parks, new irrigation systems, desalination plants for fresh water”.

If the West “makes life more bearable”, the destabilising effects of climate change will reduce, as will the risk of conflict and the resulting refugee crises. People “need to feel there’s a future in their land and they don’t have to flee”.

Andrew Gilmour

The UN, national governments and international banks – including “Edinburgh’s financial institutions” – are needed to support such projects as there’s little or no investment in nations most affected by climate change and war.

The lack of finance simply “compounds historic injustice, conflict and climate change … The cycle of deprivation gets ever deeper and there’s no inducement for fighters to stop fighting”.

However, “the UN is partly paralysed at the moment”, riven by factions between Western governments and other nations over Ukraine and Gaza. Gilmour believes “the divide” – worse than it’s “ever been since 1945” – can be healed, however. “Who’d have predicted in 1985 that by 1991 the Cold War would have ended?”

“Climate litigation” will soon take centre stage, he believes, with struggling nations suing “polluting corporations. BP has warned its shareholders that climate litigation could affect their bottom line. I think that’s tremendous – the fact these corporations realise they may be sued for billions. We’ve only seen the very beginnings of this”.

Gilmour suggests that media moguls who “peddled disinformation” and “climate deniers” should also end up in the dock. Today, he added: “There’s more conflicts than at any time in the world since 1945. We’ll see more conflict, not less. We’ll see as temperatures rise an increase in migration … The far-right in Britain and elsewhere will try to take advantage of this. That’s why we need to start preparing. I don’t see any readiness on the part of most politicians to grapple with this.”

He noted, with irony, that many on the far right also “deny climate change. If they really wanted to stop migration they’d take measures to stop climate change affecting people in their home countries. Climate deniers and the anti-migrant lot are often the same people”.

In terms of climate action by the British and Scottish governments, Gilmour feels Scotland “made a pretty good effort … You can say ‘it’s easy to be good on rhetoric’, but better to be good on rhetoric than bad”. There’s a “brick wall of denialism in the Conservative Party and press”. he adds. “It’s ever more hostile to migrants and action against climate change. I’m incredibly disappointed.”

Science

FAR from Berlin, in his office at the London School of Economics, David Stainforth is providing the science which supports Gilmour’s thesis. An acclaimed physicist, Stainforth is one of Britain’s leading climate scientists.

His new book, Predicting Our Climate Future, explores the science behind what’s happening to global weather and ecosystems due to human activity. Like Gilmour, Stainforth is deeply worried about the social consequences of what the science is telling us about climate change. He, too, fears climate change will lead to more conflict and refugees fleeing their homes, which will be exploited by political extremists in Europe.

Stainforth is ruthless with fact, refusing to speculate on anything related to climate change which cannot be substantiated through science. “We know how greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide interact with radiation.

David Stainforth

“We know that they keep the surface of the planet 30 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be. We know that they’ve increased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.

“We know that’s a consequence of humankind’s activities. We know that leads to global warming. We know that warming the surface of the planet leads to disruption of the climate. That will lead to more intense rainfall in some places, and more droughts in others. It will lead to increasing temperatures across the whole planet – particularly so over land and at higher latitudes.”

Stainforth added: “It’s not credible to say ‘we can continue emitting greenhouse gases and there will be no further climate disruption’ … Things could be much worse than we tend to talk about.”

Earlier this year, the European Union’s climate service said that global warming had exceeded 1.5 degrees – the limit seen as crucial to avoiding the most damaging effects of climate change.

Stainforth warned that “if we maintain the planet at two degrees above pre-industrial [levels], you’re still going to be looking at three, four, five degrees warming in England or Scotland”.

Why? Because the planet “warms unevenly”, Stainforth explained. “Higher latitudes warm more than the tropics” and “land warms more than sea”. If the Earth warms by more than two degrees, “we don’t know exactly how much warming we’ll see in Scotland but we do know that it will be quite a lot more than two degrees”.

Extreme

WHAT would five degrees warming mean? “A completely different world,” Stainforth replied, when it comes to “where you can grow crops, where you can provide water”.

Stainforth says that the “last interglacial period” – when the world warmed amid the Ice Age – “was about one degree warmer than the pre-industrial period”. Sea levels were six metres higher than now and “you had different sorts of trees and animals. It’s the time when you have hippos in Yorkshire”.

He explained that it “takes time” for ecosystems “to respond to new temperatures and climatic regimes … We’ve warmed the planet very quickly so the change in types of land cover will take a while to catch up. That means it could take a long time to get to the ‘new norm’, but it doesn’t mean current species won’t be affected very quickly”.

The effects of climate change on food supply and water availability will “cause friction between states. It’s going to cause people to want to move to where they can live comfortably. I cannot see that it won’t create more conflict and more migration”.

The spectre of the far right exploiting climate change and migration hangs over the conversation. “Instability always encourages an extreme response,” he said. Like Gilmour, Stainforth has no time for anti-migrant sentiment. “If we’re going to tackle this we need to behave as one world, we need to care about people wherever they are. We must maintain our humanity.”

Stainforth – again like Gilmour – warns Scotland against complacency. “We live in a highly globalised society,” he said. Even if climate change “were to have no direct impact” on Scotland, which “is absolutely not the case, the effects on trade, supply chains and conflict around the world will almost certainly affect the lives of Scots”.

He added: “It’s likely to affect the cost and availability of a whole range of goods, with knock-on effects for the Scottish economy.” Scotland will see “changes to ecosystems – changes to flora and fauna, Scotland will be different”. There will be “direct physical effects on Scotland … more intense rainfall events and more overall rainfall in winter … an increasing likelihood of winter floods and consequent damage to infrastructure”.

Stainforth says floods, droughts, heatwaves and landslides “will happen more frequently”, adding: “Our systems aren’t designed for what will be the ‘new norms’. That means councils and governments will be continually drawn in to supporting affected communities and rebuilding bridges, roads and buildings. That means they won’t have as much money for other things – social care, health, education, welfare, the arts, and sporting facilities.

“The consequences of climate change will be a steady degradation of our ability to provide social goods across the whole spectrum because we’ll increasingly be struggling to keep our basic systems working.

“You don’t have to care about climate or the environment to care about climate change – almost all aspects of our society and our communities will be affected.”

David Stainforth

Collapse

HE added: “Does that mean our society collapses? That depends.” The threat is down to how bad warming gets, and how well governments prepare. He “fears” that collapse is “within the domain of possibility”.

The key to keeping societies safe is government – once again – having honest conversations with the public, Stainforth believes.

He wants to see the “major parties in Westminster and Holyrood battling it out over the right route to net zero.

“Maybe the Tories say we do this through market tools and regulation; maybe Labour say we need a carbon tax; maybe the SNP say something else. But they should all be arguing about how, not whether, we do it, and getting the population onboard”.

The current debate about how green policies like heat pumps will cost households thousands of pounds simply “turns people off the whole green agenda”.

Low-income families can’t be made to “shoulder large financial” burdens to achieve net zero, so governments must put assistance in place.

“The electorate must be willing to support these changes. If it’s not done right, people will rebel against it.”

He notes the absurdity of talking up how “green” electric cars are, without having the necessary infrastructure in place to make sure they are powered by renewable energy.

Evidently, Stainforth believes, politicians watering down environmental pledges also undermines public support for tackling climate change by sending out conflicting messaging about what governments view as important.

He thinks, however, that with good political communication even those prone to climate denial can be reached and convinced – if governments explain to them how climate change will affect “their own lives” in the stark ways he’s already outlined.

“Politicians need to be straight with people,” he says.

“They need to talk about what’s credible and what’s possible.

“They need to ask people ‘what do you value?’

“Do you value being able to pay for decent education? Do you care about war and migration? About the threat to our infrastructure?

“We need to paint really vivid pictures for people of what’s happening so they’re able to build informed opinions.

“These conversations need to be happening right now – not least in Westminster and Holyrood.”