Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change on Russia, China, and the U.S.

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 6.0, University of Luzern, course: Strukturen der Weltordnung, language: English, abstract: In a first step, it is necessary to develop three scenarios of the future development of climate change since every scenario comes with different geopolitical implications and their intensity. Then, the paper will be invested into elaborating on the geopolitical changes in Russia, the United States and China and research in what degree these three states will be affected by climate change. In a third step, the paper will summarise the findings and try to construct which changes climate change brings within the global geopolitical state.

Climate crisis. Fridays for Future. Greta Thunberg. Flight shaming. Unknown a few years ago, these words dominated the headlines worldwide, until the media attention was distracted to the corona virus. After a relaxation of the situation with the virus, it is expected that the media will regain its focus on climate change. Today, the discourse on climate change is dominated by the natural sciences and much research is being done on the effects of climate change.

With academics and journalists focusing on the effects of climate change, only insufficient work is being done in researching and publishing work about the consequences of these effects of climate change on other sectors. One major example can be geopolitics. Whilst the effects of climate change are being meticulously researched, the consequences of said effects on the global geopolitical situation are not given enough attention, considering the fact that climate change will be a driving factor in geopolitical power shifts in the next decades. Ice is melting, lands are drying, and permafrost is making place for fertile land; these are examples for effects of climate change which will catalyse geopolitical changes, to which this paper be subjected to.