Giving Tuesday and CSR Successes in 2023
Friends and Colleagues,
At the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR), we have continued to expand our activities, our team, and our impact through 2023. Today, I’d like to share some of our accomplishments with you—and thank you, our supporters, networks, and participants in our efforts. Here are just a few of CSR’s 2023 highlights:
Creating New Tools to Help Understand & Address Systemic Global Risks. In June, CSR’s Center for Climate and Security (CCS) launched its Military Responses to Climate Hazards (MiRCH) Tracker, a first-of-its-kind effort to quantitatively track and qualitatively understand the security implications of the growing demand for military humanitarian assistance and disaster relief around the globe. Meanwhile, in September CCS launched two interactive reports that help visualize climate security impacts in Turkey and Iran, continuing an innovative partnership with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, and briefed key Executive Branch officials and bipartisan Congressional staff on the findings.
In September, CSR’s Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons launched the CSR Biodefense Scorecard through which we track where stronger policy development is occurring or lagging, and highlight markers of policy implementation. In the coming weeks, the Nolan Center will release two additional open-access tools: a biodefense budget tracker to serve as a companion to the Scorecard; and The Nuclear Weapon Systems Project, a qualitative approach to portray data and visualize how the types of nuclear capabilities fielded in the world have evolved since the advent of these weapons.
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Climate Security at COP28: Issues to Watch
By Elsa Barron and Erin Sikorsky
As the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change kicks off in the UAE later this week, a range of challenging security and geopolitical dynamics will shape the landscape against which the negotiations will unfold. At the same time, it’s never been clearer that action to tackle climate threats can pay peace, security, and stability dividends. For the climate security community, we recommend watching these four topics closely during the COP:
1. Nexus of Climate and Peace on the COP Agenda
For the first time in the history of the UN climate conference, peace is explicitly named on the agenda. The thematic focus for December 3rd is Health/ Relief/ Recovery and Peace and will focus on “accelerating adaptation, preventing and addressing loss and damage, including in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, which face severe barriers to accessing climate finance and strengthening climate action.” One of the hallmarks of the day will be the launch of a declaration on these topics by the COP28 host government, UAE, and other government and NGO partners. The declaration will be accompanied by a package of solutions – practical and implementable steps that signatories can make to ensure progress in these areas.
More broadly, climate security will be featured at COP in multiple events in the Blue and Green Zone, with the United States sending a large delegation of officials from the Department of Defense responsible for climate and clean energy policies.
Additional resources to consider:
2. The Geopolitical and Security Implications of Climate Finance
It is increasingly clear that investment in climate finance – particularly finance for adaptation – is a critical tool in the climate security toolkit. Buying down future risk of instability and conflict by helping vulnerable countries manage the energy transition and adapt to climate hazards is a smart security investment.
Shortfalls in such funding are also increasingly a geopolitical flashpoint. As US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned in her annual testimony to Congress earlier this year, “Tensions also are rising between countries over climate financing.” High-and middle-income countries are still lagging in their commitments to climate finance for low-income countries.
Negotiations over the new loss and damage fund were tense in the lead-up to COP, as countries debated how to structure a fund aimed at providing payments for climate disasters suffered by nations that have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The operationalization of this fund, as well as the push to double funding for adaptation and meet and exceed the yearly $100 billion promise for finance, will be the focus of many developing countries in the COP discussions.
Additional resources to consider:
- Climate Finance, Food Security and Cracks in the Transatlantic Alliance at COP28 (CCS)
- Rich Nations Cut Aid for Climate Shocks, Even as Risks Grew (NYT)
- For National Security, Climate Finance Must Be Made ‘Conflict-Proof’ (The Hill)
3. The Impact of War on Climate and Environmental Concerns
The wars in Gaza and Ukraine will loom over negotiations at COP28. As the United States in particular prioritizes military aid to Israel and Ukraine and falls short on its climate finance commitments, it risks increasing frustration from countries in the Global South that feel betrayed by the unkept promises of wealthy nations for financial support. At last year’s COP in Egypt, Ukraine held a session on war-related emissions in an effort to hold Russia to account for the damage caused by its invasion, and it’s likely similar conversations will be held at this COP.
Both conflicts have serious environmental consequences, on top of their devastating and immediate humanitarian implications. Gaza is facing extreme food, water, and fuel shortages due to the combination of a seventeen-year siege, more acute blockades during the current war, and a lack of humanitarian aid, and is unable to desalinate critical water supplies or operate sanitation facilities before sewage water enters the Mediterranean Sea. In Ukraine, the conflict threatens long-term ecological health, agricultural productivity, and global food security.
Additional CCS resources to consider:
- In Focus: The Interwoven Roots of Systemic Food Insecurity in Palestine
- One Year Later: Unraveling Climate and Ecological Security in Ukraine
- Climate, Ecological Security and the Ukraine Crisis: Four Issues to Consider
4. The Global Stocktake and Future Climate Security
One of the main objectives of COP28 is to complete the first-ever Global Stocktake, which will assess progress toward the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Ahead of COP, the UN Environment Program’s Emissions Gap Report found that with current commitments, the world is on a trajectory toward 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming, nearly twice the Paris Agreement limit.
The world’s projected warming provides a map for understanding future climate security risks. With greater temperature rise comes more extreme heat, disaster, drought, ice melt, and sea level rise. In addition to the direct effects of these conditions on the security of impacted communities, they also intersect with existing social, political, and geopolitical dynamics, creating additional security risks. For example, recent analysis of Iran and Turkey illustrates the potential for water insecurity to exacerbate regional tension and conflict risk. Amidst the pursuit of greater investment in climate adaptation, it is important to re-emphasize that drawing down emissions today makes adaptation more achievable and climate security risks more manageable in the future.
Additional CCS Resources to Consider:
Climate Finance, Food Security, and Cracks in the Transatlantic Alliance at COP28: Recommendations for the Global Stocktake
This blog post is part of the Nexus25 project, a joint initiative of the Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Center for Climate and Security, focused on sustainable multilateralism, and supported by Stiftung Mercator.
In the runup to the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), climate change’s role in complex security and humanitarian crises is continuing to challenge the capacity and ambition of the international community. As perhaps the most contentious issue in global climate action, climate finance is rightly a top priority for advocates and world leaders in Dubai.
While most member states recognize that climate change is driving, and will continue to drive, migration and food insecurity, and is disproportionately impacting marginalized populations, climate finance is a glaring gap in their policies and plans to respond to the resulting threats. The massive injection of funding required and the domestic politics that continue to stymie investment from world leaders is a critical barrier to meeting countries’ emissions and resilience goals, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). In this context, we recommend three key priorities in the leadup to COP28: finding new approaches to climate finance; improving messaging on the urgency of the climate threat; and repairing transatlantic relations to show leadership.
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Event Summary: Implications for NATO of Climate Security Scenarios in the Balkans
An exercise conducted with the Halifax Peace with Women Fellowship 2023
By Lily Boland
On October 30, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) led a scenario exercise on climate security for the new class of the Halifax Peace with Women Fellowship, which convenes senior female military leaders from NATO and partner countries for a 3-week executive tour of the political and technological capitals of the United States and Canada. The exercise sought to socialize a better understanding of how climate change hazards shape security risks in a region of importance to the NATO alliance (in this case, the Balkans) and help identify ways in which NATO, partner countries, and their militaries can better prepare for and prevent these risks. Participants included the fellows class along with officials from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Force Education & Training and Office of Arctic and Global Resilience.
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