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• Quadrennial Defense Review Should Spark Interagency Climate Conversation « Climate Progress: "The Center for American Progress recently argued that Northwest Africa is a region to watch in regard to climate and its impact on security and policy, both for the United States and the European Union. The outlook in the region is particularly worrisome according to Blair: “The effects of climate change in North Africa are likely to exacerbate existing threats to the region’s water and food resources, economies, urban infrastructure, and sociopolitical systems. Cities probably will face deteriorating living conditions, high unemployment, and frequent civil unrest. Climatic stress coupled with socioeconomic crises and ineffective state responses could generate localized social or governmental collapses and humanitarian crises. Climate change will likely increase the already substantial migration of North Africans to Europe. The region also will serve as a route for transmigration if Sub-Saharan Africans flee severe climatic stress.” A recent report by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies also concludes that transit migration through the Maghreb—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania—to other locations contributes to the destabilization of Northern African societies. This instability in turn provides an operating environment for the rapidly growing regional branch of Al Qaeda, which operates in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Mali, Chad, and Niger. “From their low point following 9/11, terrorist incidents in the Maghreb and Sahel have climbed to a staggering 204 in 2009, a new high level of intensity. This escalation represents a 558 percent increase in terrorist operations that have killed more than 1,500 people and wounded 6,000 others,” writes Yonah Alexander in the report."