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ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE

IMPACTS AND TERRORISM IN ASEAN (1990-2018)

Anwar Luqman Hakim, Zora A. Sukabdi

School of Strategic and Global Studies, Universitas Indonesia, Central Jakarta, DKI Jakarta, Indonesia

anwar.lh@kemlu.go.id

zora.arfina@ui.ac.id

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Published: January 31

, 2023

In August 1967, realizing that peace and stability is the catalyst to economic

growth, 5 nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and The

Philippines) formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The group eventually evolved and adding more members resulting with a

grouping of 10 states with the addition of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia,

Lao’s PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam. This paper intends to review the link

between climate change and terrorism in member countries of the

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Association of Southeast Asian

Nations/ASEAN). The datasets used to form the empirical model are the

number of terrorist attacks from 1990-2018 recorded in the Global

Terrorism Database (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and

Responses to Terrorism (START) and Climate Change Indicators 1990-

2018 recorded in The World Bank. Using multiple regression analysis, the

study answered the research question as ‘An increase in access to

electricity, rainfall, and farmland size has a statistical probability of

increasing terrorism attacks in ASEAN, while an increase in greenhouse gas

emissions, statistically has a probability of reducing terrorism attacks in

ASEAN member states.

Keywords: climate change,

terrorism, ASEAN

This work is licensed under CC

BY-SA 4.0

INTRODUCTION

In August 1967, realizing that peace and stability is the catalyst to economic growth, 5

nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and The Philippines) formed the Association

of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The group eventually evolved and adding more members

resulting with a grouping of 10 states with the addition of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao’s

PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam.

In 2015, at the urging of Indonesia, ASEAN member countries formulated the ASEAN

Community which consists of three pillars: political security, economic, and socio-cultural. The

formation of the ASEAN Political Security Community was guided by the ASEAN Political-

Security Community Blueprint adopted on 1 March 2009. The leaders of ASEAN set out to create

a harmonious, just, and democratic environment for their people, among others through responding

effectively and timely to security threats.

However, to date, ASEAN has not made a conscious effort to link the threats from terrorism

and those non-traditional security threats brought about by climate-change. Given that the

Southeast Asian region mainly consists of developing countries where the presence or absence of

natural resources is still a determining factor driving the economy, the issue of inequality can

evolve into conflict, horizontally and vertically.

The issue of human security is predicted to develop into a higher security issue, which causes

political instability, conflicts with and within countries, movement of people, and threats to and

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caused by scarcity of resources and infrastructure (The Expert Group of the International Military

Council on Climate and Security, 2020). The United States of America, under the leadership of

Joe Biden, has reverted to the notion that the biggest threat to the United States is climate change.

This is reflected in statements from the leadership of the United States, including the President's

speech at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on July 27, 2021 (The White House,

2021).

The US Global Leadership Coalition (2021) in its climate change fact sheet has shown that

the developing world is receiving the brunt of the climate crisis. For these countries, the climate

change is acting as “’threat multipliers’ and catalysts for conflict”. This phenomenon, coupled with

the fact that developing nations mostly rely on agriculture, a sector heavily vulnerable to changes

in climate, has pushed millions of people into poverty on a yearly basis.

The Southeast Asian region itself, unfortunately, is not a stranger to the threat of terrorism.

Sandhiyudha (2016) noted that Southeast Asia as a region has become a theatre on the global war

on terror with terrorism conducted by insurgent groups as well as off-shoots of known international

terrorist groups and movements. Since 1970 to 2020, the Global Terrorism Database (National

Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), n.d.) has identified

14,498 terrorism incidents throughout Southeast Asia. The three prominent types of attack in these

incidents are bombing and explosion (35.6%), armed assault (33.6%), and assassination (11.9%).

This paper intends to review the link between climate change and terrorism in member

countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Association of Southeast Asian

Nations/ASEAN).

Asaka (2021) in his initial review said that there are two academic thoughts in discussing

whether there is a link between terrorism and climate change, namely: climate change exacerbates

existing conditions of social vulnerability thereby encouraging acts of terrorism (Price & Elu,

2017); or climate change drives terrorism and vice versa through complex circular relationships

(Baird, 2006). Silke & Morrison (2022) asserted that there is a gradual shift in the role played by

climate change in terrorism-related conflicts. The UK government even has put environmental

organisations such as Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, and Extinction Rebellion along the likes of

Combat 18, Al Qaeda, and Islamic State in the terrorism prevention literatures (Dodd & Grierson,

2020).

Gerstl & Helmke (2011) noted that ASEAN has had a shift in views regarding the issue of

climate change, although it is still heavily influenced by issues of economic growth and interests

between countries. This view is also in line with the results of Islam and Keieu's research (2020)

that regional groups, including ASEAN, experience obstacles in implementing climate change

policies due to the priority of national development issues from each member country. Subiyanto

et al. (2018) found that climate change tends to disrupt or threaten the livelihood of the people,

thus it warrants closer examination as it may relate to security issues in many levels.

There are differences in climate change indicators used by institutions in Indonesia, or by

foreign agencies such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or the World

Bank. Indonesia, as stated in the National Action Plan for Climate Change using indicators of sea

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level rise; changes in rainfall; increase in surface air temperature; and extreme weather

(Government Regulation No. 61 of 2011). The EPA (2021) uses a variety of indicators including:

greenhouse gas emissions, concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, seasonal

temperatures, heat waves, rainfall, drought, ocean temperatures, sea level, coastal flooding, river

flooding, ice melt, deaths related to high temperatures, deaths related to low temperatures, forest

fires, distribution of marine species. The World Bank (n.d.) uses many indicators to measure

climate change impacts and human securities including greenhouse gas emissions, percentage of

farmed land, average rainfall, access to education, access to electricity grids, yield per hectare.

The main purpose of this paper is to discover the relationship between climate change and

terrorism in ASEAN countries with the research being a discussion about ASEAN’s vulnerability

to terrorism affected by climate change that the aforementioned research have not specifically

studied. The research question posed is "How does climate change affect terrorism attacks in

ASEAN?"

METHOD

The research was conducted quantitatively comparing existing data on several relevant

climate change, food security, and energy security indicators with the number of terrorist attacks

in the ten ASEAN countries. The datasets used to form the empirical model are as the number of

terrorist attacks from 1990-2018 recorded in the Global Terrorism Database (National Consortium

for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), n.d.) and Climate Change

Indicators 1990-2018 recorded in the World Bank (n.d.).

The years 1990 to 2018 were chosen because of the latest availability of reliable data for all

variables that can closely reflect the empirical condition. The datasets were collected annually and

published generally two years after the collection. The datasets used were processed using Stata v.

13 for the Windows operating system.

Table 1. Description of Variables

Variable

Description

Mean

Std. Deviation

VIF

Attack

Terrorism Attack

74.07975

142.9485

1.46

GHGE

Greenhouse Gas Emission Total

246259.2

243520.3

3.50

Electricity

Access to Electricity Network

77.57908

23.54961

1.82

Yield

Crop Yield per Hectare

3281.839

904.7105

2.42

Rain

Average Rainfall

2189.27

417.6232

4.31

Land

Percentage of Farmland

16.63648

8.892609

4.14

The VIF values for the six variables used are far from 10, indicating that each variable is

feasible to use and has a small possibility of contamination (multicollinearity).

The study uses a quantitative method with multiple regression analysis (Grant et al., 2018)

to show the relationship between terrorist attacks as the dependent variable and indicators of

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climate change (greenhouse gas emissions, access to electricity grids, crop yields per hectare,

average rainfall, and the percentage of farmland) as independent variables.

Formula used for testing

𝑌 = 𝛽

+ 𝛽

𝑋

+ 𝛽

𝑋

+ 𝛽

𝑋

+ 𝛽

𝑋

+ 𝛽

𝑋

+ 𝑒

Y is the number of terrorist attacks per year, 𝛽

𝑋

is the greenhouse gas emissions, 𝛽

𝑋

access to the power grid, 𝛽

𝑋

is crop yield per hectare, 𝛽

𝑋

is average rainfall, 𝛽

𝑋

is percentage

of farmland, 𝛽

is value constant, and e is the error term.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Table 2. Multiple Regression Analysis Results (R

= 0.3159)

Hipotesis

P>|t|

Coefficient

Std. Error

Significance

Result

H1 (Attack & GHGE)

0.007

-0.0002358

0.0000864

Yes

Rejected

H2 (Attack & Electricity)

0.000

2.473852

.6744679

Yes

Accepted

H3 (Attack & Yield)

0.978

0.0006411

.0228447

Rejected

H4 (Attack & Rain)

0.013

.1527333

.06069

Yes

Accepted

H5 (Attack & Land)

0.000

12.05739

2.851774

Yes

Accepted

Constant

0.003

-570.8526

188.8995

The model used has the ability to predict the results of the variance of 31.59%. Each variable

is statistically significant except for the variable with reference to the crop yield per hectare. Other

variables show a positive statistical relationship with terror attacks except for greenhouse gases,

where an increase in greenhouse gases by 1 KT CO2e has the possibility of reducing terrorist

attacks by 0.0002358.

Based on the results of statistical calculations, the hypotheses H2, H4, and H5 can be

accepted.

CONCLUSION

The study attempted to find out the relationship between the number of terrorist attacks and

greenhouse gas emissions, access to electricity grids, crop yields per hectare, average rainfall, and

the percentage of farmland in the ten ASEAN member states using quantitative approach based on

data collected since 1990 to 2020. Using multiple regression analysis, the study answered the

research question as ‘An increase in access to electricity, rainfall, and farmland size has a statistical

probability of increasing terrorism attacks in ASEAN, while an increase in greenhouse gas

emissions, statistically has a probability of reducing terrorism attacks in ASEAN member states.

This study is beneficial for policymakers to design, formulate, and implement laws related

to counterterrorism to address and identify potential future hotspots in the region and in the world

at large. Data regarding other types of climate change indicators and means and methods of

terrorist attacks are also beneficial to give a more complete picture of the situation.

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The gap in this study is that it is simplistic and not comprehensive in nature. It is beneficial

to have the study replicated using broader datasets with more observations. This study is unable to

explain the relationship between the terrorist attack with the changes in electricity access, rainfall,

farmland size, and greenhouse gases emissions.

The research simply has shown the link between terrorism and climate change. The findings

that increasing access to electricity, rainfall, and the percentage of farming land can increase the

likelihood of terrorist attacks should be of concern to stakeholders. In addition, it is necessary to

carry out more in-depth research on climate change indicators that have an impact on terrorist

attacks, in order to be able to formulate appropriate anticipatory policies. There needs to be close

cooperation between the government and academia to encourage further research on the linkages

and influences of terrorism and climate change.

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