Foreign policy-makers are waking up to the impact of climate change on conflict zones worldwide, and will add their voice to those calling on governments at the UN conference in Bali to act urgently.

An internal presentation to senior diplomats at the Foreign Office listed every recent, serious breakdown of civil order around the world and mapped it against those countries hardest hit by climate change. The fit was almost perfect. One of the diplomats present said there was an "audible intake of breath" from the audience when the slide was shown.

As the scientific debate has been unequivocally settled by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year, it has become increasingly apparent that its effects will have major implications for foreign policy.

"Climate change presents an enormous challenge to the international community, and unless we respond effectively we won't be able to deal with the implications," said John Ashton, the UK's special representative for climate change. "We need to see how we can use the assets at our disposal to something about it."

Those assets include the know-how to build international coalitions, and the kind of influence over governmental decision-making that environment ministers can only dream of. Analysts point out that while environment experts know how to make emissions trading work, it's a "political fact" that you get a quicker response to a security crisis.

Delegations from some 190 countries began talks on the Indonesian island of Bali yesterday, aimed at agreeing a "road map" for a successor to the Kyoto protocol. There are concerns that, despite scientific and business consensus on the urgent need for deep cuts to carbon emissions, Bali will be simply more talks about talks.

From rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean to the increasing spread of desert in Africa's Sahel region and water shortages in the Middle East, global warming will cause new wars across the world and is being described by diplomats as a "threat multiplier" – adding new stress to areas of traditional geopolitical instability.

Mr Ashton was brought into the Foreign Office by the former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett last year as a "climate-change ambassador" to try to instil a sense of urgency on the issue in the diplomatic service. Britain also used its presidency of the UN Security Council to lead its first debate on climate change and conflict. "What makes wars start?" asked Mrs Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats... to peace and security itself."

Those sentiments were echoed in June by the head of the UN Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, who launched a report revealing the environmental roots of the conflict in Darfur.

Mr Steiner said global warming would produce new wars. "People are being pushed into other people's terrain by the changing climate and it is leading to conflict," he said. "Societies are not prepared for the scale and the speed with which they will have to decide what they will do with people."

How 'climate proofing' could prevent conflict
Were global carbon emissions to be cut by half today, any mitigating effects on climate change would take at least two decades to appear. In the short term we are locked into global warming, so efforts to "climate proof" the nations set to be hit hardest by it is one of the biggest tasks facing the UN, and the most effective means of reducing the likelihood of climate-driven wars.

Schemes to mute the impact of climate change, such as wider use of drought-resistant crops, irrigation or better forecasting of storm surges, could help protect hundreds of millions of people.

In parts of Sudan, for instance, a study showed that a shift to small-scale irrigated vegetable gardens and efforts to stabilise sand dunes had raised food output.

For Uruguay and Argentina, the report urged "a review of coastal and city defences, and of early-warning systems and flood-response strategies" along the river Plate. In Gambia, a projected decline in rainfall this century is likely to cut yields of millet. Cases of dengue fever in the Caribbean could triple, and better education about the risks could help. "Adaptation is not an option – it's essential," said Neil Leary of the International Start Secretariat in Washington, who led the studies.

(By Daniel Howden, The Independent, 06/12/2007)