Impacts of climate change on parking points in Overseas France and abroad – Ivory Coast’s case
Research on the security impacts of climate change has so far focused largely on conflict risks and human security threats. While climate change is known to have a multiplier effect on threats to security and stability, its impact on military infrastructure has received little attention. Yet a large number of military infrastructures are located in areas that will be particularly affected by the impacts of climate change. With the exception of the United States and Australia, very few countries have undertaken an assessment of their military infrastructure, whereas a great many studies exist on the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure.
This paper examines the vulnerability of French military infrastructure and locations to the impacts of climate change, first on a generic level and then applied to French locations in Côte d’Ivoire. It mobilises both the vulnerability analysis methods used for civilian infrastructures and those developed by other armed forces. It presents an analysis grid based on the specific nature of military facilities, which can be applied to other types of military infrastructure, and which will be applied to the French Forces in Côte d’Ivoire (FFCI).
The first part presents the main impacts of climate change for the period 2030-2050, and the main vulnerabilities of military infrastructures to these impacts. This part is largely based on the latest IPCC special report published in 2018, which specifies the impacts of climate change by 2030. A second section reviews civilian vulnerability analysis methods and examines the extent to which they can be applied to military infrastructure. This section focuses on methods used to assess the vulnerability of hotel, transport and critical infrastructure (sensitive industrial sites, nuclear infrastructure, etc.). It also includes the methods used by other armed forces to conduct a similar exercise for their infrastructure. These methods are critically assessed in order to identify the elements that can be used to analyse the vulnerability of the French armed forces. On this basis, a third part proposes an analysis grid applicable to French military infrastructures, which is then tested with a case study on the French forces in Côte d’Ivoire (fourth part). The first version of the note (December 2018) was updated in July 2019 following a mission to Abidjan in June 2019.
