Climate change is quietly igniting border disputes

The bad news in a world that is broiling is that we're likely to see much more of this.

- Peter Schwartzstein

In recent years, Greek soldiers on patrol along the Evros River have found themselves at times unsure of which country they were in. Sometimes extreme rain swells the river, which forms most of the Greece-Turkey land border, enough to obscure telltale markers. On other occasions, drought reduces it in places to a patchwork of stagnant puddles, with little discernible water separating the two sides. On other occasions, thick smoke from nearby wildfires has covered the river, also known as the Meric or the Maritsa, in an all-concealing haze.

There is never a good time to stray over a border as politically charged and bristling with weaponry as this one, and lately tensions have been high. In 2022, Greece and Turkey were at each other's throats over disputed maritime boundaries and other issues. In the river's pea soup of uncertainty, a conflict is waiting to happen.

SHAPE-SHIFTING

Borders are, by their very nature, tense places, where territorial claims, ethnic spats and competition for natural resources frequently play out. To these beefs we are adding the impact of climate change on the geographic features that demarcate many frontiers.

As rivers, mountain ridges and other physical boundaries shape-shift under the pressure of more extreme weather events, they are fashioning new or intensifying old bones of contention. Adjoining nations, many wrestling with longstanding challenges and inclined to believe the worst of the other as a consequence, are often poorly equipped to manage the fallouts peacefully.