Thoughts on the Climate and Security Centre of Excellence
Climate security & NATO
Climate change is one of the defining security challenges of our time. This often-repeated phrase has been established repeatedly. Extreme weather events are the most likely events to become global threats according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The 2022 report ranks environmental risks as the three most severe long-term threats to the planet as well as the most potentially destructive to its people. While promising commitments were made in Glasgow at COP26, most environmental experts predict that these pledges are not ambitious enough to attain the commitment pledged by 196 countries during COP21 in 2015 that led to the Paris Agreement—i.e., to limit global warming to well below 2°C while aiming for 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels. As global temperatures continue to rise, so do the likelihood and intensity of climate shocks and climate security risks.
The security environment is increasingly picking up on these signs as well. More and more national departments of defence are starting to acknowledge climate change as a critical national security issue as well as a threat multiplier in already vulnerable and fragile contexts. Though still limited, the word ‘climate change’ is increasingly appearing in national defence strategy documents. However, conceivable action by the world’s largest international security organization remains rather limited. NATO, its member states being among the greatest emitters of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, contributed to the summit in Glasgow by participating in a side-event: a discussion on climate, peace, and stability.[i] Although NATO is not a first responder for all climate-related challenges, the urgency of climate security threats requires more pressing action from the intergovernmental military alliance.
Even though NATO has been addressing global warming, environmental challenges, and energy consumption for over half a decade, this has largely been from an environmental protection and sustainability perspective. The endorsement of the Climate Change and Security Agenda in March 2021 seems to represent the first time NATO leaders publicly and collectively declared the link between climate change and national security. The Climate Change and Security Action Plan—endorsed at the NATO Summit in Brussels on 14 June 2021—establishes the framework for delivering on NATO’s Agenda on Climate Change and Security. This Action Plan stipulates specific goals and measures for enhancing Allied awareness, engaging in climate change adaptation and mitigation, and increasing NATO’s outreach to contribute to the global response to climate change. Although this plan is quite ambitious, future results will tell us if these plans are ambitious enough.
A Climate and Security COE
During that same summit in June, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the establishment of a NATO Centre of Excellence on Climate and Security (CAS COE). NATO COEs are nationally or multi-nationally established and sponsored centres that are part of a wider supporting network that contributes to the functioning of the Alliance. They offer recognized expertise and experience within a defined subject matter area to the benefit of the Alliance by encouraging internal and external information exchange. Traditionally, NATO COEs are centred around four pillars of support for NATO members and partner countries. These include concept development & experimentation (CD&E), doctrine development & standards, education & training, and analysis & lessons learned. NATO COEs offer support to concept, doctrine, and standardization development by organizing working and writing groups of doctrines, leading and progressing CD&E initiatives, and offering custodianships. They organise conferences and seminars to increase expertise and bring together the wide array of researchers and professionals available within NATO. They seek to distribute in-depth knowledge through annual reports, assessments, white papers, journals, and conference publications. COEs offer courses and trainings to military leaders and personnel and seek to implement new expertise through exercises and evaluations. COEs seek the identification and implementation of lessons learned, through analysis, support to and data from exercises, and workshops.[ii]
The aim of the Canada-hosted COE on Climate and Security is to enhance understanding and support adaptation to and mitigation of the security implications of climate change within NATO. It seeks to “facilitate the exchange of expertise among Allies, build capacity to address the security implications of climate change, and help advance our ongoing efforts to reduce the climate impact of our military activities”. The Canadian plan to establish a NATO Climate and Security Centre of Excellence (CAS COE) is envisioned to be realised “in 2023 or afterwards”.[iii] Although this is the normal timeframe for a NATO COE to be established, it does not really reflect the ‘urgency’ of climate change’s security threats stressed by NATO and others. Although we need a COE on Climate and Security—or any form of multinational military action on climate change and security—the establishment of this proposed COE brings to light what is at the core of climate action: we needed to start yesterday. Not today, not tomorrow. And certainly not in two years’ time. We do not need military personnel to be trained and educated in ‘2023 or afterwards’, we needed them yesterday. We do not need to ‘better understand’ the security implications of climate change in ‘2023 or afterwards’. The security implications of climate change will have been reviewed, analysed, and discussed a hundred times over by 2023, rendering the need to ‘better understand’ them practically unwarranted. We do not need to ‘adapt to and mitigate the security implications of climate change’ in ‘2023 or afterwards’. The security implications of climate change are facing vulnerable societies this day, and we need action now.
Four pillars of support
Say this COE was established today instead of in 2023 or afterwards, what can—and should—this Centre do exactly? In line with the four pillars of NATO COEs, the CAS COE will most likely focus on enhancing and distributing in-depth knowledge on climate security challenges and solutions for the Alliance in the coming decades. While climate change will affect military tasks and operations by intensifying and giving rise to security threats, it will also influence environmental conditions in operational contexts. Research should identify the specific strategic, operational, and tactical implications of climate change for NATO and its member countries and analyse the complex climate-security dynamics in the operational contexts of NATO missions and operations. Ideally, such analysis and the resulting lessons learned are data-driven. The CAS COE does not need to execute all this research from scratch. In fact, considering the average time it takes to set up and execute a research project, it will take months for the CAS COE to provide practical and actionable results. The added value of the CAS COE would be to bring together research that is already being done within NATO member states—both by defence departments as well as public and private research institutions focusing on climate security. Instead of spending precious time on duplicating research, the key responsibility of the Centre should be to coordinate combined efforts and unite the rich body of knowledge that already exists throughout the Alliance. Moreover, CAS COE should take advantage of the wide range of expertise present within the Alliance. It can form the link between climate-security focused research and policy departments with data science centres within NATO member states. By blending a wide diversity of perspectives and insights—both from researchers and practitioners—CAS COE can produce valuable lessons learned and identify gaps in knowledge. Taking this research even one step further, CAS COE could contribute to climate risk prevention. The Centre might consider focussing its analyses on the identification of drivers of instability and insecurity in and surrounding NATO countries before climate change begins to act as a threat multiplier. This requires a shift in military-strategic thinking from the largely reactive containment approach to insecurity to preventive methods that seek sustainable forms of security in countries critically vulnerable to the effects of global warming. However, not being part of the NATO Command Structure hopefully offers some room for innovative thinking.
The CAS COE will disseminate climate security insights, lessons learned, and best practices through education, training, and conferences for top military leaders and experts. CAS COE should make use of existing programs and connect overlapping activities within the Alliance. Moreover, conferences, seminars, and workshops organized by the CAS COE should aim to move beyond talking about climate security implications and climate-related challenges for the armed forces. The Alliance would profit from activities that focus on the practical implementation of climate-security knowledge to joint military training, exercises, and missions of and by NATO member states. CAS COE should act as a bridge between research—both military and civilian—and practice and principally focus its efforts on the translation of insights from climate and security research and analysis to practical applications for military leaders. The Centre can actively stimulate the incorporation of climate and security implications and challenges into NATO concept, doctrine, and standardization development. It could formulate and provide guidelines and blueprints for the planning and design of joint military training, missions, and operations. Specifically important will be how to incorporate climate security dynamics into the planning and design of joint humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping operations. Again, NATO and CAS COE should make use of how much they can learn from existing initiatives, for example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Military Ready Group (AMRG), which coordinates the multilateral deployment of ASEAN militaries in response to natural disasters in Southeast Asia. Knowledge and expertise should not be kept within the Alliance but must be shared with partners to ensure the mutual exchange of experiences and expertise.
CAS COE can support technological development and experimentation. The substantial contribution of militaries to global GHG emissions also implies that they can play a significant role in reducing global GHG emissions through investments in renewable energy and climate smart technology and designs. Military operational needs in the face of global warming already drive the development of smarter infrastructure and equipment and stimulate more sustainable technological innovations. CAS COE should actively support and promote climate and energy smart technological innovations throughout the Alliance that integrate the emission reduction targets of the Alliance and its member states. Reducing the military ecological footprint of armed forces requires fundamental changes in defence procurement and deployment. CAS COE could develop guidelines or standards to which new technologies should comply and serve as a platform for concept development, design, experimentation, and testing. Such a platform should bring civilian and military research together and serve as an innovation lab where defence and industry can meet to engage in joint experimentation and development. Research, practices, and technological innovations that contribute to climate change mitigation and climate risk reduction should serve both civilians and militaries.
An all-inclusive approach
Effective mitigation and adaption to climate security threats is achieved when everyone is on board. Another domain in which CAS COE should act as a bridge between defence and public and private research institutions is in climate monitoring, modelling, and early warning efforts. Early warning and risk modelling, both traditional military capabilities, are vital in mitigating and adapting to climate security impacts. Military climate modelling to assess climate change impacts in identified strategic contexts and on national military infrastructure could lead to highly precise modelling of climate variabilities. More precise modelling and climate simulations could support civilian mapping of future climate events and enhance early warning of extreme weather events. The United States’ Army is already using climate modelling to determine where and how they build military installations. It is testing its coastal storm modelling system, CSTORM-M, together with Microsoft to increase the scalability of its models and allow it to run improved simulations of coastal sea rise. CAS COE should support such efforts throughout the Alliance and actively promote exchanges among member states as well as civilian research and climate modelling. CAS COE can facilitate and coordinate the dissemination of best practices within the Alliance.
Military intelligence, with its unique resources and analytical and collection capabilities, can contribute to climate security threat assessments and early warning of climate shocks. In-country experts can support the identification of causal mechanisms between the onset of conflict and changing climate conditions in operational environments. Such expertise can be used to pinpoint priorities for conflict intervention and post-conflict reconstruction missions. Cooperation among intelligence services can be complicated, but it is not unlikely. CAS COE could serve as a platform to launch multinational military intelligence cooperation in the field of climate security. Joint military intelligence efforts can be advocated through conferences and seminars. CAS COE should engage in talks with agencies about how they want to contribute to mitigation and adaptation efforts to security threats shaped by climate change and extreme weather events.
An effective response to climate-related security threats requires collaboration across many sectors and must consider diverse perspectives. In addition to engaging and coordinating with the usual suspects—i.e., renowned international and regional organizations from the global climate and security community—the key is to form a truly diverse and inclusive community. Climate security threats concern everyone. The impacts of climate change will be more devastating for already vulnerable groups of the population. In formulating its response to climate change, the Government of Canada plans to include, consult, and integrate diverse perspectives including those of women and girls, indigenous peoples, and marginalized and vulnerable populations. This could be a vital role through which CAS COE can add value. A COE can build a network of partners in an area of expertise in corners that NATO cannot reach. The key is to find the right way to deal with more underrepresented partners. The best approach might be to reach out to them with an open attitude, without concrete ideas on working groups, projects, or other concrete forms of partnerships. Let these groups fill in how they would see a partnership with a NATO Centre of Excellence on Climate and Security. How do they think about cooperation and exchange? How would they like to help and support NATO, and what kind of support would they need in return? Incorporating all voices and perspectives on climate security solutions with an open mind can lead to the most innovative ideas and lessons.
A common threat
A key principle of NATO COEs is that there is no duplication with existing assets, resources, or capabilities already present within the NATO environment. There are many COEs already in existence, and climate change touches upon almost all their domains. The purpose and scope of COEs like Energy Security (ENSEC), Crisis Management and Disaster Response (CMDR), Cold Weather Operations (CWO), and Civil-Military Cooperation (CCOE) can easily be linked to climate security. However, climate security will also be an increasingly important threat to deal with for COEs like Air Operations (AO), Maritime Security (MARSEC), Military Engineering (MILENG), Modelling & Simulation (M&S), Security Force Assistance (SFA), and Stability Policing (SP).
Both AO COE and MARSEC COE will see a growing need to focus on adaptation to the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather conditions and events as these affect military planning and the execution of tasks. Aircraft performance depends on wind as well as air temperature and pressure. As a result, changing weather patterns, like more frequent extreme temperatures, directly affect air operations. Maritime operations are equally impacted by changes in weather patterns. More intense and frequent precipitation and storms might hinder the execution of maritime operations.[iv] Marine forces also need to become designed to better operate in the Arctic region where retreating ice is opening new trade routes and spurring competition for resources, like maritime resources and raw materials. These developments are already influencing the geopolitical environment and lead to increased military operations and exercises in and around the region.[v] This new operational context also poses new challenges to maritime capabilities due to the combination of extremely cold air temperatures with high wind speeds, high sea waves, and ice obstacles while manoeuvring in such high latitudes poses difficulties for GPS systems. Rising sea levels, rising temperatures, and more frequent and intense weather extremes will present equally severe challenges to military engineering as these affect the resilience of military installations, infrastructures, and equipment. Where located near coastlines, military installations must deal with rising sea levels and more frequent and intense flooding events or tropical storms. In highly arid environments, dust and sandstorms could erode or damage military equipment, affecting electronic equipment or causing more frequent blockage of weapons systems.[vi]
Considering the number and scope of existing COEs, and the fact that every NATO COE is in some way affected by (or will be in the near future) climate security, a key role for the COE on climate security is to engage with each of these centres on their specific link to climate change, to educate and advise fellow COEs on how—one way or another—they will increasingly see the effects of climate change within their own domain. An important added value of the Climate and Security COE can be to connect these centres in discussions around climate change and the implications of climate change on each COE. The role of CAS COE is to combine knowledge and expertise, disseminate best practices on climate security and energy smart solutions, and to assist in doctrine development and analysis of climate risks across all areas of military expertise. Essentially, CAS COE could function as a directorate that examines or oversees the implementation of adaptation and mitigation capacities to address the security implications of climate change as well as sustainable innovations across the Alliance. The Climate and Security COE should operate as a common threat through the NATO COE structure that connects the COEs around the theme of climate security, advises each centre on how its subject matter area connects to and is affected by climate change, and specifies how it can incorporate climate security considerations into its own concept development, experimentation, doctrine development, standards, education, training, analysis, and lessons learned.
Notes
[i] Weathering Risk, “Climate, Peace and Stability: Weathering Risk Through COP and Beyond” 2 November 2021, accessed 14 February 2022, https://weatheringrisk.org/en/event/climate-peace-and-stability-weathering-risk-through-cop-and-beyond.
[ii] North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), “Centres of Excellence,” 3 November 2021, accessed 14 February 2022, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_68372.htm.
[iii] Prime Minister of Canada, “Strengthening Transatlantic Defence and Security,” 14 June 2021, accessed 14 February 2022, https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/backgrounders/2021/06/14/strengthening-transatlantic-defence-and-security.
[iv] Rene Heise, “NATO is responding to new challenges posed by climate change,” NATO Review, 1 April 2021, accessed 14 February 2022, https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/04/01/nato-is-responding-to-new-challenges-posed-by-climate-change/index.html
[v] Department of Defence, “Report on Effects of a Changing Climate to the Department of Defense,” January 2019, https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/29/2002084200/-1/-1/1/CLIMATE-CHANGE-REPORT-2019.PDF.
[vi] Heise, “NATO is responding to new challenges.”
Image: https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/04/01/nato-is-responding-...
