"It's a challenge not just for the [federal police] and our state and territory colleagues, but for law enforcement the world over," he said.

Print Email Add to My Stories

Climate change will affect security, scientist warns
Posted Wed Oct 3, 2007 1:32pm AEST

Map: Canberra 2600
A former CSIRO scientist and academic is warning that climate change will create serious issues for national security.

Dr Graham Pearman has raised concerns about water shortages, energy use and rising sea levels at the annual homeland security summit in Canberra.

Dr Pearman says now that the science allows us to anticipate what will happen, action is needed to prevent a human disaster.

"Maybe hundreds-of-millions of people being exposed to drought and this can have an impact both on their political stability, on their propensity to actually migrate and move, their capacity to feed themselves," he said.

"The quality of their economy and all of those things affect the way we trade with them and the way we interact with them."

Dr Pearman says that Australia needs to examine how to handle the difference in resources and stability of other nations.

"What do we do if for example many people in our neighbouring countries of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea on the coastlines are subjected to major losses of life and livelihood as a result of rising sea level?" he said.

"We need to think about these things before they happen."