Climate change means no falling behind
I have written about this before using a metaphor: climate change can act like rough sandpaper on the world. Over the years, decades, and generations, climate change will wear away the fabric of nature and human civilization. If left unchecked, climate change will alternate from floods to drought, to wildfires through extreme weather. Climate change will remove forest cover, cropland, housing, roads, and rail connections.
In Syria, before the global refugee crisis, ISIS, or the civil war, there was an environmental crisis of over-used and mismanaged natural resources, made worse by the start of a long-term drought. When communities became destabilized because of climate change, this opened the door to many unfortunate and unforeseen events.
Without access to comprehensive environmental and climate data, at-risk communities become destabilized. People are first displaced in their own countries, then overflow into the world as global refugees. Civil wars develop, regions become unstable, and foreign terrorists, intelligence services, and military forces soon enter the picture. Syria is only the latest example.
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We've seen this happen in Ethiopia in the 1980s, Somalia in the 1990s, Sudan in the 2000s, and Syria and Libya currently. It's more than just less-developed countries on the line; developing countries can slip backward, and developed countries will find it hard to stand alone.
Early warning systems must be tied to civilian defense and protection subsystems for human settlements. This total package protects the human settlement, and in turn, the settlement protects the local environment. The habitats in and around settlements are another source of protection, and that is a nature-based solution.
These are only a few pieces to the puzzle, but there are many more. Such as how to drive down the cost of systems deployment to get more systems deployed to get more coverage, and when to use local production and field engineering resources for ongoing support. There are more parts to the puzzle. From time to time, I add another aspect to the picture at