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Yearly Archives: 2024
CCS Comments on the First National Nature Assessment Zero Order Draft
Last month, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) and its Ecological Security Program (ESP) had the opportunity to comment on the Zero Order Draft for the First National Nature Assessment (NNA1) prepared by the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and is publishing its input here. Last year, CCS submitted public comments on the NNA1 Draft Prospectus and published a blog post about the input. As noted at the time, NNA1’s work to assess the status and trajectory of the US natural environment and the risks of its degradation marked an important step in evaluating broader ecological security issues in the US. This report will be similar in scope to National Climate Assessments published since 2000.
CCS continues to broadly support the themes and framework of the Zero Order Draft, and looks forward to NNA1’s completion in 2026. As indicated in the comments, the USGCRP has included the majority of the recommendations CCS made on the Draft Prospectus and incorporated them into the new outline. While all twelve of the anticipated chapters of the NNA1 have implications for domestic and international security, Chapter 9: Nature and Risk, Resilience, and Security in the U.S. and Chapter 10: Nature and Climate Change in the U.S. have the most direct relation to the work of CCS and ESP.
Overall, CCS’s comments emphasize the importance of expanding the geographic focus of the NNA1 beyond domestic, publicly owned lands and including analysis on potential risks of maladaptation to human security and U.S. national security. Below are CCS’s specific comments under the aforementioned chapters.
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Reshaping Multilateralism Episode 5: The Economics of Food Security
Episode 5 of the Nexus25 project’s podcast, Reshaping Multilateralism, is now available, with Dr. Michael Werz, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Senior Advisor at the Munich Security Conference as host and Dr. Maximo Torero Cullen, Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; and Dr. Vera Songwe, Founder and Chair of Liquidity and Sustainability Facility as guests. They discuss the evolving state of global food security, the intersections between price spikes and national security, and multilateralism’s capacity to address these risks.
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Fostering Leadership in NATO on Climate and Women, Peace and Security
On 12 November 2024, CCS hosted a roundtable on NATO’s efforts to tackle non-traditional security threats, including climate change and Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). The following summarizes the key points of the Chatham House Rule discussion.
By Siena Cicarelli and Erin Sikorsky
In 2021, NATO launched its Climate Change and Security Action Plan, which committed the alliance to mainstreaming climate security in its plans, posture, and international engagements. Since then, the Alliance has made notable progress in implementing the Action Plan, recently opening the Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence in Canada (CCASCOE) and building critical internal climate literacy throughout the Alliance.
This mirrors the institutional pathways used by other cross-cutting priorities like the WPS agenda, which has made significant inroads over the past 15+ years by leveraging binding UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) commitments and institutions like the Nordic Centre for Gender in Military Operations (NCGM) to elevate gender considerations within the Alliance. As a result, there is more cross-cutting gender and climate policy today than ever before, including the Alliance’s explicit recognition of “the compounding impacts of gender inequality, conflict, and climate change on women and girls, with implications for security.”
However, given the ongoing war in Ukraine and major political shifts amongst leading Allies, both these agendas face the risk of being deprioritized or sidelined. As the Alliance looks to 2025 and beyond, gender and climate advocates must be prepared to overcome the perception that there is a trade-off between tackling climate and WPS issues and more traditional “hard security” issues.
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Event Summary: CCS-Nexus25-ETTG Policy Conference: EU-Africa Relations in Transition
The Nexus25 project, a transatlantic effort led by the Istituto Affari Internazionali and Center for Climate and Security, hosted its first annual conference in Rome on October 29th, 2024. This invite-only conference, organized in collaboration with The European Think Tanks Group, centered on enhancing EU-African partnerships from the lens of mitigation, adaptation, and the energy transition.
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