Ambiente e a geografia política

Michael Kountouris, «Politicalcartoons.com»

Uma das consequências pouco faladas das alterações climáticas são a alteração de fronteiras e a consequente necessidade de serem renegociadas. Se em muitos casos pode ser algo pacífico, como no caso do degelo de glaciares na fronteira entre a Suíça e a Itália nos Alpes, em outras, como escreve a The Economist, podem ser uma fonte de instabilidade e conflito em certas regiões politicamente mais instáveis:

[…] Nowhere is this truer than along the disputed sections of India’s border with Pakistan and China. India and Pakistan have been locked in occasionally violent competition for control of Kashmir since their bloody partition in 1947. James Lee of the American University in Washington, DC, reckons «it is a very good bet that the Kashmir glaciers will get caught up in the India/Pakistan dispute.»

India’s border with China is also unresolved. The two countries fought a brief war over it in 1962. In early June, India signalled that it would boost its military presence close to the border. China responded on June 9th, when the Chinese Global Times published an editorial entitled «India’s Unwise Military Moves» denouncing India’s troop deployment.

At the same time, the melting of sea ice around the north pole is causing old rivalries to heat up over conflicting claims to what could be valuable stretches of seabed that are becoming accessible as a result. […]

Rising sea levels will also eat away at all coastal communities, especially large, densely populated portions of many South and South-East Asian countries as well as tiny island nations in the South Pacific. In Bangladesh, where about 10% of the country is less than a metre above sea level, tens of millions could be displaced by global warming. India has already constructed a 4,100 kilometre (2,560 mile) fence along the border in an attempt to curb illegal immigration.