There remain competing views and priorities across the alliance that may hinder efforts to tackle climate-security concerns. Yet climate change adaptation and mitigation is an enabler for the alliance to gain military advantage over adversaries.
NATO now encompasses 31 countries (potentially soon to be 32) in the Euro-Atlantic area, with significant but not full overlap with the EU. As discussed above, the 2022 NATO Strategic Concept is clear in identifying climate change as a challenge – not just as a global challenge, but as one for NATO specifically to address. The fact that this is a consensus document that all allies have signed up to is encouraging. While the leadership of the secretary-general has also played a key role in driving NATO’s current posture towards climate change, this is not sufficient in isolation – particularly as a new secretary-general may be selected in autumn 2023, if Jens Stoltenberg’s term is not extended a second time.
However, there remain competing views within NATO on how to tackle the range of threats that NATO countries face, including climate change, and which to prioritize. As a consensus-based organization, it is a challenge to get all its members to consider climate change with the same urgency. Yet by preparing NATO for climate-related security challenges, NATO allies also have an opportunity to improve their operational effectiveness by increasing interoperability and making their capabilities more resilient. Climate change mitigation and adaptation should be seen as a way to provide a competitive advantage for NATO allies over adversaries, rather than a distraction from crisis management. It is, in fact, an enabler.
Climate change adaptation during an era of geopolitical competition
In the context of the war in Ukraine, NATO allies cannot afford to compartmentalize security issues that have an impact on European and transatlantic security. Russia, China, climate-related security threats and other challenges all threaten transatlantic stability and security in the short- and long-term. Inevitably, this means NATO allies will always need to balance priorities between immediate threats and longer-term challenges. Part of the difficulty is the perception that climate impacts are not ‘hard’ security concerns, and climate may fall off the agenda as other security risks arise. As this paper has argued, this is a false dichotomy. To be an effective organization NATO, using the mechanisms and ideas outlined in this paper, must keep climate as a high priority on the political agenda.
NATO can use its partnerships to help tackle these geopolitical, long-term challenges. Direct action should be supplemented through a complementary strategy for strengthening its partnerships through political consultations, knowledge exchange and diplomacy. The recent addition of Finland to NATO and the application of Sweden are critical not only because of these countries’ political actions in the UN on climate and security, their large foreign aid budgets, and their strong connections across the alliance, but also because of their regional and geographical knowledge and enhanced military capabilities in the Arctic, which can potentially counter Russian and Chinese aggression.
The Indo-Pacific is a region of the world particularly at risk from climate change, and a likely theatre for military operations over the coming decades. Cooperation with NATO’s four existing Indo-Pacific partners – Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand – can strengthen political ties with countries playing an essential role in containing China in the Indo-Pacific, while also deepening partnerships with countries on the forefront of tackling climate change. NATO can boost these climate partner relationships by establishing a learning-based cooperation network to fast-track knowledge-sharing, co-design regional assessments and projections, and facilitate political consultations. NATO contact point embassies and liaison offices should utilize their in-depth country-level expertise to enable channels for knowledge exchange on climate vulnerabilities. This should be fed upwards to NATO HQ while being used to assist the host nation.
In the foreseeable future, NATO will face increasingly difficult trade-offs in pursuit of its mission. The implementation of NATO’s strategic priorities will create new inequalities, which may impact alliance cohesion. For example, some allies or partner countries will be more vulnerable to climate impacts than others and look to NATO to allocate more resources towards humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Similarly, NATO could provide incentives to accelerate the energy transition, but inflationary pressures and supply-chain disruptions could leave some allies in a better position than others to adopt new technologies. This could feed a perception of winners and losers, further complicating consensus-building on any common strategy.
Establishing credibility in the international climate architecture
The environmental and local impact of military action and conflict itself is an important consideration. Military facilities are estimated to cover 1–6 per cent of the global land surface and much of this land is ecologically vital. Military bases can displace local communities and strain already limited water, food and energy resources in climate-vulnerable regions. Military operations can alter the natural environment, including terrestrial and marine habitats, and create air, chemical and noise pollution from the use of weapons, aircraft and vehicles. NATO HQ and allies must ensure that they are minimizing negative impacts on the environment and local communities during military activities. This will help build NATO’s credibility internationally in this space.
Equally, if NATO is serious about its commitments to adapt to climate change, and adopt effective mitigation measures, it also needs to work on building credibility in some of the worst climate change-affected states. Where helpful and desired by a partner, NATO can support climate-vulnerable countries in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa to build resilience to limit the cascading impacts of climate-security threats (trade, migration, conflict etc.).
In turn, taking concrete action to support a reduction in NATO HQ and member state emissions, and doing so in a transparent and inclusive manner, can build NATO’s credibility as a serious climate actor in the military space as well as give NATO a foothold within the broader international climate community.
The EU: A key partner for NATO
The EU is a key partner for NATO and both institutions have a long track record of cooperation. The 2023 Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation presents a novel opportunity to build climate change into this partnership. Although the declaration is primarily symbolic, it reinforces the perception that neither NATO nor the EU alone can respond to and address multifaceted and cross-border climate risks, and it encourages deeper collaboration. There are 21 EU member states that are also NATO allies. This overlap means that issues prioritized at the EU’s Political and Security Committee will also likely make it onto the agenda of NATO’s North Atlantic Council. In particular, the transatlantic element of NATO (the role of the US) is a formidable strength in enabling both organizations to play complementary and mutually reinforcing roles to bolster climate cooperation.
Despite policy convergence on climate change, cooperation between the EU and NATO is hindered by political obstacles. Cyprus, an EU state not recognized by Türkiye, a NATO member, is the only EU country not a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme. For the EU, inclusiveness is a key principle in decision-making procedures, meaning it does not accept formal meetings between the EU and NATO where Cyprus is excluded. This could impact future scenarios for NATO–EU sharing of military capabilities in the context of climate security interventions, or support to humanitarian operations.
Given the level of coordination, but the absence of close cooperation between the EU and NATO, and the overlap in membership, it may be helpful to institutionalize a division of labour. For example, this may include an agreement on EU responsibilities for crisis responses to floods and forest fires in the EU, and NATO taking charge of capabilities and equipment and training standards. Such an approach may enable a faster response and avoid duplication.
Going forward, climate diplomacy will be essential to mitigate conflict and reduce tensions. As a result, it is vital that NATO and the EU raise the level of their frequent informal exchanges to formal discussions on climate security. Liaison committees and working groups including key stakeholders from the European External Action Service (EEAS) and NATO’s Emerging Security Challenges Division can play an integral role in influencing and shaping each other’s policies, procedures and projects on the front line of climate impacts across regions of interest including the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Indo-Pacific. As part of the EU–NATO Structured Dialogue on Resilience, the EU and NATO recently established a taskforce on resilience of critical infrastructure. This covers energy and space and will look at how to improve resilience in those sectors. A forthcoming joint communication on climate change, environmental degradation, security and defence will reinforce this partnership and aim to more closely align EU initiatives and financing with NATO activities. A technical partnership between the EU Military Staff, which is the source of military expertise within the EEAS, and NATO’s Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence could establish a similar coordination pathway to avoid duplication while enhancing synergies to meet NATO’s adaptation and mitigation objectives.
