Sum of All Fears: Indian Defense Planning and Climate Change

A recent natural disaster in northern India serves as a pointed reminder that climate change – and extreme natural events that follow as corollaries – must be seriously factored into Indian defense policy. It also starkly reminds us that the conventional distinction Indian security planners make between traditional threats (predominantly, Pakistan and China and terrorism) and non-traditional challenges, including emerging risks from climate change, is, with time, likely to be obsolete as the two interact in unexpected ways. Even though New Delhi continues to make all the right noises when it comes to climate change in multilateral fora, it is not clear to what extent the Indian defense establishment understands the burden rising temperatures could place on its already stretched resources and throw its long-term strategic plans off track.

On February 7, a flash flood in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district killed at least 72 people (with around 130 missing) and destroyed two hydroelectric power projects. It also washed away a key bridge constructed by the Indian Ministry of Defense’s Border Roads Organization, which has, in the recent years, doubled down on infrastructure connectivity in India’s Himalayan frontiers amid rising tensions with China in the region. 

While some have argued that the proximate cause of the disaster was melted glacial ice that flooded the Rishi Ganga river, scientists believe that climate change effects on the Himalayas – often called the “third pole” – could have played a crucial role. The same scientists believe that the Chamoli disaster is unlikely to be a one-off, and that more of its kind could eventuate in the future. Even without being a card-carrying member of the professional worrier class, one is left with a nagging feeling that disruptions in climatic patterns in the Himalayas come right at a time when militarily assertive China and India find themselves pushing and pulling along some of the world’s most forbidding terrain.

But it is not just the changing climate in the high Himalayas that stands to complicate the lives of Indian military planners. At sea they could soon find themselves adrift, as Indian naval strategists push forward with an ambitious plan to militarily develop the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Bay of Bengal archipelago, with about 500 islands, has often been termed by maritime thinkers as India’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Its location, such thinkers argue, provides a natural opportunity for New Delhi to build a so-called “denial complex,” whereby Indian fighter jets and missiles could allow India to threaten to choke off the Malacca Strait in a war with China, holding critical Chinese energy supplies passing through at risk.

And indeed, such planning is not purely in the realm of ideation. In recent years, India has significantly invested in developing the tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command. In 2019, the Indian Navy established a new base in the islands. The INS Kohassa, as the base was christened, was India’s fourth air base and third naval air facility in the archipelago. The islands also remain of interest for India’s military partners, equally wary of growing Chinese naval activity in the Indian Ocean; last year, a U.S. maritime patrol aircraft made history when it landed at the base for refueling, especially given that it happened amid a tense China-India military standoff in Ladakh.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands – including military facilities there – remain vulnerable to natural shocks, however. During the December 2004 tsunami, nearly 3,500 people there died. As Pankaj Sekhsaria, a noted expert on the islands, reported in 2006, the southern Andaman Islands and the Nicobars were particularly affected, while the northern part of the region was virtually unaffected. 

Climate change could also add to demands on the Indian military, drawing them with greater frequency into humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) roles. In India, the military’s “aid to civil authorities” function has been frequently invoked in the past, including to provide disaster relief and curb domestic unrest. Over the years, India has also sought to position itself as a “net security provider” in the Indian Ocean region. In the event that the worst-case scenarios around climate change come true, the Indian military could very well find itself on the frontline of HA/DR both at home and abroad, seriously straining its capabilities beyond the already taxing “2.5 front” scenarios it has planned for (involving China, Pakistan, and counterinsurgency functions).

And then, of course, there is the ultimate nightmare scenario for the Indian defense establishment: As second and higher order effects of climate change manifest themselves through shortages of critical resources such as water, even inside the country, violent organized crime could increase to the point that civil authorities find themselves unable to tackle it alone. Some of India’s most crowded cities, such as Mumbai and Kolkata, are also on its coasts, making them particularly susceptible to extreme weather events. At the other end of the geographical spectrum, so to speak, the politically volatile north Indian heartland could prove to be a major law and order challenge as groundwater levels continue to be depleted. (One scientist has noted that 70 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s replenishable groundwater has already been used.)

In an influential 1994 essay in The Atlantic, Robert Kaplan noted: “It is time to understand ‘the environment’ for what it is: the national-security issue of the early twenty-first century.” Indian security planners would serve themselves well to read and reread that statement.