Severe climate impacts can come from nowhere. Their effects can cascade across society, and create a bigger problem than the sum of their individual parts. These impacts are similar to those resulting from pandemics or traditional security threats. That is why we need to plan for climate like we plan for security – at the national level, supranational level and across continents.
It’s easy to spot the security consequence of major climate events. Everyday needs remain unmet, energy outages and lack of access delay rescue and clean-up, economic outputs stagnate, currencies and other mechanisms that underpin a mature economy collapse, civil unrest may follow and people become displaced outside their own communities with the consequential knock-on effects from country to country and continent to continent.
The Global South has already suffered many of these impacts. Increasingly these effects are migrating across borders and countries in the northern hemisphere are starting to wake up to the security implications of climate change.
The UK is awake but unprepared
‘The security blind spot’ states categorically that: “The UK is not prepared for major climate security threats.” It says that the UK Covid inquiry found considerable inadequacies in how the government and wider UK are prepared for major non-malicious threats that could create whole-system civil emergencies. “Many of these problems are common to the climate case, but some are specific to threats resulting from cascading impacts and tipping points,” it says.
The report concludes that “improvement in risk assessment will highlight how the threats to the UK from climate change are far more severe and disruptive than is generally understood across politics and the wider public.”
It also says that climate action is not futile and that the unavoidable will have to be managed so that, ultimately, the unmanageable is avoided. But it will all require imagination – and the development of that imagination is not yet evident but we are running out of time.
EU analysis identifies five pathways
At EU level, the Climate and Security Trend Analysis entitled ‘Navigating peace in a changing climate’, commissioned by the EU, identifies five critical pathways through which climate change exacerbates security risks. These are:
• water governance, food pricing and natural resource management,
• migration, displacement and livelihoods,
• energy transition, decarbonisation risks and critical minerals,
• environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and environmental crime, and
• global governance, financial reform and climate justice.
The report says: “These pathways will continue to shape the complex interplay between environmental degradation, climate change, and security in the years ahead, necessitating effective action from the EU.”
But the EU’s global leadership and strategic relevance depend on its ability to address climate and security risks where impacts are greatest; not just standalone events that require simple tactical intervention. It acknowledges that this means demonstrating meaningful partnerships with countries facing the most extreme challenges, thereby building the diplomatic capital needed to advance the EU’s broader geopolitical interests.
In other words, something more than the traditional approaches is needed. The EU points out that climate action can serve as a vehicle for peacebuilding rather than a source of new tensions. A clear upside to climate action beyond the obvious outcomes is being recognised at EU level. Let’s see where this recognition is headed.
Globally, the UN has its own mechanism
Meanwhile, the global perspective demonstrates just how difficult the security of our world has become, given the numerous crisis that compound each other. The climate/security nexus is being opening debated. “The United Nations Climate Security Mechanism is designed to address the links between climate, peace and security in our work,” pointed out António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations at the UN Security Council in February 2024.
Most recently, the UN has highlighted its efforts and those of its partners in South Sudan, where climate change-related extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, are exacerbating local conflict dynamics, displacing communities, eroding livelihoods and increasing competition for limited resources.
These types of example – and there are many of them – shine a light on the complexity of conflict and security as they interplay with climate and other manmade disasters.
NATO too is concerned
Climate is charging up the NATO agenda. In 2022, NATO’s new Strategic Concept identified climate change as a major issue. The document talks about the cross-cutting importance of investing in technological innovation and integrating climate change, human security and the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ agenda across all core tasks.
It also states: “NATO’s southern neighbourhood, particularly the Middle East, North Africa and Sahel regions, faces interconnected security, demographic, economic and political challenges. These are aggravated by the impact of climate change, fragile institutions, health emergencies and food insecurity.” These types of situation provide fertile ground for the proliferation of non-state armed groups.
Climate change is a defining challenge of our time and has a profound impact on security. NATO calls it a crisis and a threat multiplier. “It can exacerbate conflict, fragility and geopolitical competition,” it says. “Climate change also affects the way our armed forces operate.”
NATO concludes that it should become the leading international organisation when it comes to understanding and adapting to the impact of climate change on security. It has vowed to lead efforts to assess the impact of climate on defence and security, and – importantly – address those challenges.
Let’s see where this takes us. What is heartening is that the language of sustainability is now inclusive of (perhaps being replaced by) the language of security with all the urgency that that implies.