Is climate change a security threat?

Is climate change a security threat?
Every year an average of 114,000 people migrate from their homes world-wide due to large, catastrophic floods. A recent study proves that such flood-induced migration can ignite existing civil conflicts and pose a security threat in weak and fragile countries.
Original Paper:
Ghimire, Ramesh, Susana Ferreira, and Jeffrey H. Dorfman. 2015. "Flood-Induced Displacement and Civil Conflict." World Development 66: 614-628. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.09.021
The frequency and intensity of natural disasters are expected to increase in the future as a result of climate change. Every year thousands to millions of people are forced to leave their homes due to large-scale natural disasters such as floods. As floods sweep across landscapes they destroy natural resources (crops, croplands, forests, pastures, freshwater, and fish) and infrastructure (power lines, roads, and buildings). In turn, the lack of basic needs and resource scarcity ignites Malthusian conflicts in which people compete for limited resources and, often, are forced to migrate to unaffected areas.
To understand these flood-induced migrant patterns, the study analyzes historical data from 126 countries from 1985 to 2009. With a two-step econometric estimation approach, the study estimates 1.) the number of people displaced due to flooding as opposed to conflict or other natural disasters, and 2.) the effect of flood-induced displacement on conflict. Since information on indirect migration due to floods is not available, the researchers included in their econometric analysis a range of socioeconomic and political variables to account for the variables that are believed to ignite civil conflicts. These variables include:
Infant mortality rate (as a measure of inequality)
GDP growth (economic growth)
Youth population
Population density
Oil-wealth (studies show that countries with oil-wealth tend to face corruption and weak governance)
Ethnic tensions
Democracy
Instability
Anocracies (as a measure of political robustness, anocracies are political systems which are neither democratic or dictatorial but somewhere in between, they tend to be characterized with instability and proneness to civil war)
Country area in square kilometers
Terrain ruggedness
Conflict in neighboring country, and
Brevity of peace (years since the last conflict in the country).
For years academics and policy-makers have predicted that climate change will ignite conflict and pose a security threat. In his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech U.S. President Obama stated that climate change "[will] fuel conflict for decades." Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy said "climate change is already having considerable impacts on security." While climate change has the power to change nature's course and increase the intensity of large natural disaster that may fuel conflict, this study shows that catastrophic floods increase the probability of confrontation in conflict-prone countries rather than igniting new conflicts. The bottom line is that climate change does pose a threat to security, but more so in vulnerable and unstable developing countries.
(Photo: UNICEF/Tomislav Georgiev)