Despite a long history of confrontation and simmering tensions, three senior retired military leaders from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India urge the nations of South Asia to unite around a common rising threat in a new report.

Lt. General Tariq Waseem Ghazi of Pakistan, Maj. General A.N.M. Muniruzzaman of Bangladesh, and Air Marshall A.K. Singh of India, members of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change, write that India’s nearly two-year-old drought is just the “first hint” of destabilizing climate challenges to come.

The authors warn that social and economic changes driven by competition over rapidly depleting natural resources will lead to forced displacement across South Asia. Heavy flooding led to the movement of 1.5 million people within India and more than 20 million people within Pakistan in 2010. The report states that climate change could bring 62 million people below the extreme poverty line in South Asia by 2030.

As populations seek better opportunities across borders, countries will face new social and economic dynamics in a region already boasting five different religions and dozens of unique languages and dialects. As the authors state, “no country in South Asia can boast of resources to be able to adapt to large-scale migration from neighboring countries.”

The impacts of climate change are not insular and therefore require international dialogue and cooperation to mitigate, they write. Coordinated military and humanitarian responses to climate-related disasters may even lead to more cooperation in other realms.

Clear and Present Danger

Water and food security are two challenges not bound by geographic borders that climate change is expected to exacerbate and have already led to conflict in the region.

An estimated 330 million people have been impacted by two years of severe drought in India. The nation set a new record high of 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit in May. The government is shutting down coal-fired power plants as the water to generate steam dries up, and vast tracts of once-cultivated land have been left to ruin as groundwater is depleted. The west-central state of Maharashtra has been hit hardest, with more than 3,200 farmers committing suicide in 2015.

Issues of poorly managed water infrastructure are compounded by systemic social inequality fueled by the caste system. In February, thousands of members of the Jat caste blocked a major canal leading to Delhi, effectively cutting off water supplies to 25 million people in a bid to demand higher job and education quotas. At least 19 people were killed during the protests. Violence in the countryside has escalated around wells and watering points. Fifteen people were injured in the wake of a dispute that broke out after two motorcyclists got into an accident and a four gallon container of water spilled. A 13-year-old girl was murdered in the state of Madhya Pradesh when she used a neighbor’s hand-pump to collect water without his permission.

Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to the effects of sea-level rise in more ways than one. Scientists estimate the country will experience flooding of 17 percent of its cities, displacing about 18 million people by 2050. According to the World Bank, 20 million people in coastal areas are affected by salinity in drinking water.

Bangladesh’s rice and wheat production may decrease by as much as eight percent and 32 percent, respectively, by 2050, thanks to a toxic combination of sea-level rise and increased salinity of both soil and water, according to the report. Nearly 30 million women and 12 million children below the age of five already suffer from malnutrition.

In Pakistan, nearly half the population is suffering from food insecurity. Internal displacement will occur on a large scale as populations move away from water and food-scarce regions for survival, the retired military leaders warn.

The country was declared “water stressed” in 1990 and will reach “absolute water scarcity” by 2025, according to the government-run Pakistan Council of Research on Water Resources. In the district of Tharparkar, experiencing its fourth consecutive year of drought, 22,000 people have been hospitalized so far this year due to drought-related waterborne and viral diseases and more than 190 children have died.

Institutional Responses

Taking these trends into account, Ghazi, Muniruzzaman, and Singh recommend several steps to encourage intra-regional collaboration.

In conjunction with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, they suggest governments establish a body focused solely on monitoring climate change-related security threats and exchanging findings to encourage transparency among parties that are traditionally reticent to share information. The information gathered by this council would be incorporated into major government institutions to include ministries of finance, agriculture, energy, water, and defense.

By integrating the effects of climate change into military planning, governments will be better positioned to respond to disasters that could otherwise exacerbate economic problems, like unemployment, which, per the report, may lead to “militancy, terrorism, and organized crime, giving rise to fresh and aggravating the existing conflicts.”

Aggravating the strain between India and Bangladesh, for instance, is the influx of Bangladeshis displaced by rising seas. Ethnic tensions between the Bodo ethnic group in India and Bangladeshi migrants intensified when four Bodo youths were killed in 2012. In the months that followed almost 80 people were killed and nearly 400,000 people were relocated to makeshift camps after being displaced by riots.

But these traditional rivals share natural resources that are critical to each other’s fate. The report points to irrigation, rainwater harvesting, and reforestation as initiatives where cooperation could prevent tensions and lead to improved efficiency through shared experience.

At the Paris climate summit, India’s Minister of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, Prakash Javedkar, and Bangladesh’s Minister for Environment and Forest, Anwar Hossain Manju, agreed to jointly conserve the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Because the Sundarban Delta is located where the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mehgna rivers converge, this agreement could be the first step toward broader cooperation on other transboundary basin issues.

“Political disagreement must not prevent countries from holding dialogues on challenges as serious as climate change,” write the two generals and air marshal. With a unified voice, South Asia can illustrate how continuous, open, and inclusive dialogue can motivate long-term peace in the face of a common threat.