Greg Austin wrote this piece for his weekly column in New Europe

In 1974, British espionage novelist John Le Carré published his most famous title, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In September 2009, the CIA set up its Center on Climate Change and National Security. What is the connection with Copenhagen?

“Tinker” is a quaint English word that used to mean someone who worked fine metal. In more recent usage, it came to mean “an experimental fix or change” or “inconsequential change”. As people from around the world leave Copenhagen in mid-December to prepare for the New Year at home – and their long term future, their view of the conference results might well be captured by the phrase, “tinkering at the edges”.

Others will recall more vividly the “tailors” they met in the Danish city. China will be remembered as the most expert tailor, the one who stitched up some rather ragged and uninspiring cloth into a set of “emperor’s new clothes” with its rather skilful use of the concept of cuts to its “carbon intensity”. This allows China to grow its carbon emissions while making dramatic cuts to its seriously inefficient energy use.

The “Soldiers” of Copenhagen can be imagined in many ways, from the armies of militant environmentalist campaigners to the more conventional uniformed variety, who brought the important message that climate change is a national security threat now that we need to prepare for.

So, who will be the spies? There will be two types. One will be looking for the climate extremists, those likely to turn to violence. The other will be the long-term intelligence analysts, the desk jockeys who will be keen to gather data and make new scientific and official contacts to help them understand the climate security threat. The spies with the most money in Copenhagen will be those that report back to the CIA’s new Center on Climate Change and National Security, opened only on September 25, 2009. The move was opposed by Wyoming Senator, John Barrasso, who said that the CIA “should be combating terrorists, not spying on sea lions”. But his challenge to the related appropriations bill on October 6 failed. The CIA center is open for business.

In a review by Brendan Kenny of the 1974 Le Carré novel, we are reminded of its main idea: “In a world increasingly governed by means of information, those who control it have power and wealth”. One of the main sources of CIA information collection will be American remote sensing satellites, for which in terms of types and numbers the United States has no equal. The challenge for the CIA will be to share its information wealth on climate security with the rest of the world.

This will not be as important at the global level as it will be at the local level: in places like the Arctic, the Himalayan glaciers or the Horn of Africa, where we see already the outlines of our climate future. Of the three areas, the Horn of Africa will be one area where the CIA’s work will most definitely need to be shared.

Available evidence gathered by Alexander B. Murphy and Demian Hommel for the University of Oregon suggests that Somalia and Ethiopia will be among the areas of the world hardest hit by climate change because of the stresses imposed on fresh ground water availability for drinking and rain for agriculture. A 2008 study by Peter G. Jones and Philip K. Thornton suggests that Ethiopia and Sudan will be among the hardest hit as “reliable crop growing days” fall below 90 per year.

Yet these three countries do not have adequate scientific resources to plot the economic, social and political impacts of climate change. They certainly do not have adequate resources to respond to the changes in water availability and reduced agricultural production induced by climate change.

This is where the worldwide importance of the CIA effort can be seen most visibly: not just in the accumulation of scientific data, but in the integrated multi-disciplinary analysis of its immediate social and political impacts. As we all think about what happens after Copenhagen, let us remember that knowledge is indeed power and hope therefore that the United States will open up the CIA files on these important topics as a matter of urgency.