In the coming years, the Indian Ocean will face a significant number of environmental security threats driven by climate change and other human activity. Moreover, they cannot be properly understood or addressed in isolation from each other. A range of threats – including natural disasters, rising sea levels, extreme weather events and deteriorating fish stocks – have the potential to combine and cascade into overwhelming geo-environmental challenges that can affect the entire region in ways far beyond their individual impacts. What might initially appear to be ‘merely’ environmental issues can often have significant strategic consequences.

Geo-environmental challenges also often go well beyond the ability of individual states to respond and generally demand a collective response. But while the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) may be an epicentre for many of these challenges, the region currently has few institutions that are well suited to the task of organising a response. As a first step, the region needs better mechanisms to build shared understandings among civil and military agencies and non-governmental groups about how to mitigate and contain environmental security threats.

As Chair of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) until end of 2021, the UAE will have an opportunity to demonstrate its regional leadership and set the agenda for regional cooperation. The UAE is already demonstrating leadership in renewable energy. This chapter explores how the UAE could also consider initiatives to bring together the region to address other geo-environmental challenges.

Growing Threats

Significant disruptions in the natural environment are likely to create a range of security threats in coming years. This section discusses existing natural hazards faced in the IOR, the potential impact of climate change and other human interactions on the environment, and how these might create environmental security threats.

The IOR has long been an epicentre for a range of natural hazards, including climatological (cyclones and droughts), geological and tectonic (earthquakes and tsunamis) and hydrological (such as floods and tidal surges).

Along with the Pacific, the Indian Ocean experiences the most serious natural hazards in the world, but it is also one of the regions with the least capacity to respond. The impact of many natural hazards, such as cyclones, floods and earthquakes, is magnified by the relatively high population density in parts of the region. This may be further exacerbated by the growth of huge, dense, urban areas, particularly in coastal areas.