Supporting nature-based coastal resilience in the geopolitical landscape

Climate change and natural hazards threaten coastal communities and the military installations and activities that rely on them. Nature-based solutions—where ecosystems and principles of ecology are harnessed by people to deliver specific ecosystem services¹—can be a tool for making these communities more secure. Conservation of existing ecosystems, in particular, can help to mitigate risk in the first place. By supporting these solutions, the security community can increase the resilience of military installations, as well as the overall security of partners and allies. Such policies will increase goodwill, protect military readiness, and bolster deterrence.

Water World

There are about 2.5 billion people living within 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) of the sea, with around 300 million living within 5 meters (about 16 feet) of a rising sea level.² Coastal populations are expanding faster than inland ones and about a third of major metropolitan areas are located on the coast. As a consequence, past projections suggest that coastal flooding will impact around 200 percent more assets and 300 percent more people by 2050 and 2070 respectively.³ This increasing exposure is due to a combination of expanding population and investment threatened by sea level rise, land subsidence (exacerbated in some locations by coastal development), and more frequent and/or more intense natural hazards such as hurricanes and typhoons.

Coastal communities are vulnerable to a wide range of climate and ecological insecurities in addition to those linked with sea level rise and storms. For example, overfishing, pollution, and species range shifts in response to warming waters all threaten fishing and tourist economies around the world, with resultant international security consequences as national fleets increasingly come into conflict as they chase fish into contested waters.⁴ Equatorial countries face the additional threat of extreme heat under realistic warming scenarios. Many of these countries lack financial and institutional capacity and are subject to domestic or geopolitical pressure.