Last week, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) team traveled to NY Climate Week and the UN General Assembly to convene government officials, NGOs, multilateral organizations, and scientific experts on a broad range of security-related topics, including climate mobility, food security, renewable energy, solar geoengineering, and climate disinformation. The climate security nexus was featured both at the UN and in Climate Week convenings, with seven countries raising it in the Secretary-General’s High-Level Meeting on Climate, and multiple private sector events explicitly exploring security and resilience.
For a broader overview of key takeaways from the week, including disconnects between clean energy investors and geopolitics, and how the US is stepping back while China is stepping up, you can also check out CCS Director Erin Sikorsky’s latest Substack newsletter, Reflections on Climate Week, Power & Politics.
Below is a quick snapshot of our busy week.
Climate Interventions at High Latitudes: A Security Simulation
In partnership with Reflective, CCS hosted a 2030 scenario exercise exploring the global security and geopolitical implications of proposed hypothetical high-latitude stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) deployment aimed at preventing the rapid decline of Arctic and sub-Arctic sea ice. Exercise participants debated the risks, trade-offs, and uncertainties associated with such an action, role-playing the responses of key countries and alliances. The event brought together top scientists and security-minded policymakers, helping to bridge the gap between theory and practice on the critical topic of solar geoengineering. For more on the security dynamics of SAI and other geoengineering interventions, read our latest blog.
Nexus25 Breakfast Discussion: Human Mobility at the Nexus of Food, Climate, and Security
As part of the Nexus25 project, the CCS team convened a private roundtable discussion on how climate change, food security, and conflict are reshaping human mobility. This event focused on potential policy interventions, including how to follow up on the concrete commitments made in the 2024 Pact for the Future, aimed at addressing the root causes of irregular migration and climate change.
Following opening remarks from Dr. Beatrice Mosello and Dr. Michael Werz, experts spanning multiple UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, private sector companies, research institutions and more discussed: how national authorities can properly mobilize domestic resources and engage in long-term planning across the climate mobility continuum; how policymakers can minimize the impact of divisive rhetoric surrounding migration and human mobility and galvanize support for anticipatory action that helps people safely move or stay; and what new alliances and strategies at the multilateral level are required to manage increased human mobility.
Feeding Resilience: Risks at a Food, Climate, and Geopolitical Inflection Point
The CCS team facilitated a strategic foresight exercise on food insecurity, climate shocks, and geopolitical turmoil as part of the Feeding Resilience program. Drawing on our new analysis of Ethiopia, the exercise prompted participants to explore a plausible future crisis involving instability in East Africa, food and climate shocks in Europe, and intensifying geopolitical competition. Multinational participants, representing defense, development, humanitarian, diplomatic, and multilateral perspectives, discussed varying trajectories of the scenario, which underscored the ties between European interests and global food security, the importance of the information environment and immigration politics, the growing influence of China, and potential policy interventions.
Keynote Remarks: 4th Annual Climate and Conflict Convening
CCS Deputy Director Tom Ellison gave keynote remarks at the Peace Department’s 4th Annual Climate and Conflict convening, on the interrelated challenges of climate policy reversals and hypernationalist, anti-democratic politics in the United States and around the world. Ellison warned of the implications for human, US, and global security and offered ways forward, including CCS efforts to drive progress outside the US federal government and address the nexus of climate change, insecurity, and disinformation. Panelists and attendees, representing military, environmental law, state and local, climate justice, philanthropic, and private sector perspectives, spent the day discussing the impacts of climate policy rollbacks, new partnership options, and effective communications best practices.
Source: Foundation House
Climate Ambition in the Asia Pacific
CCS Director Erin Sikorsky moderated a conversation among Australian, Korean, and Taiwanese experts, hosted by the Taiwan Climate Action Network, on their respective countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions. Panelists discussed the opportunities and challenges related to adopting and implementing ambitious climate goals. The group also discussed the security and resilience benefits of the clean energy transition, as identified in the Council on Strategic Risks project, Renewable Energy is National Security.
Overall, the busy week underscored the importance and resonance of climate security issues in today’s fraught geopolitical environment. Managing systemic risks requires bringing experts and policymakers together across different disciplines and communities to build new knowledge and explore solutions.