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The National Academies Calls on USGCRP to Adopt Integrated Climate Change Risk Framing
In February, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) released independent guidance on high level priorities for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) as the USGCRP revises its next decadal strategic plan to be released in 2022. The NASEM’s assessment focused on climate change into the 2030s, and identified multidirectional and interrelated risks to consider (e.g., water-energy-food-health systems), the types of research needed to increase societal resilience to these risks, and actions that the federal agencies who support the USGCRP can do to implement the identified research, drawing on both social and natural sciences. National security is included in the recommended research areas.
The NASEM assessment argues for shifting USGCRP’s strategic direction to one based on integrated-risk framing instead of one focused on merely documenting changes to the natural environment and their effects on human systems. This shift would provide decision makers at multiple governmental levels more useful information on the interconnectedness of natural and social systems, potential risks and vulnerabilities. While there are different aspects of global change covered by USGCRP, the NASEM assessment focused on climate change.
(more…)The Leaders Summit on Climate is a Historic Moment in Global Security
By Kate Guy
Starting today, the Biden Administration is bringing together global leaders and Heads of State to catalyze ambition in the first ever Leaders Summit on Climate hosted by the U.S. Government. But this Summit is also historic in another way: the inclusion of a high-level conversation on the “global security challenges posed by climate change” at the center of its agenda. American defense and security leaders have never before attended a high-level summit on climate change, let alone chaired one.
Now, climate security issues will take a featured role in a dedicated session hosted by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, with participation from the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Joining them will be senior security officials from six countries (the United Kingdom, Japan, Kenya, The Philippines, Iraq, and Spain), as well as the Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg. This high-level participation represents a major advancement in the Center for Climate and Security’s decade-long effort to bring climate change to the big kid’s table of national and international security, as well as to better integrate security considerations into global climate policy.
(more…)Survey of Security Experts Warns of Potentially Catastrophic Climate Threats in the Next 20 Years
By Kate Guy
Urgent climate risks are impacting our world today in profound ways, as leaders from the United States and 40 other countries will discuss in the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate later this week. Climate change is no longer a “future” risk that will strike decades from now, but one that is already actively shaping the security landscape for all countries. These risks are now on track to increase significantly in response to the Earth’s continued warming trajectory, and will require new investments in resilience to keep communities safe. Forecasting surveys offer one tool for security actors to plan for this changing–and increasingly dangerous–future.
For the second year in a row, the Expert Group of the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS Expert Group) surveyed top climate security experts on their predictions of how and when climate security risks are likely to progress (see last year’s survey here). Their responses offer insightful opinions about which risks this expert community deems the most likely to disrupt security in the years ahead, as well as how these security threats may interact with each other.
(more…)A Climate Security Plan for NATO: Collective Defense for the 21st Century
This is an excerpt from an article published in Environmental Affairs, a journal from Policy Exchange
By Erin Sikorsky and Sherri Goodman
Since its founding in 1949, the core organising principle of NATO has remained the same: collective defense. An attack against one is an attack against all. Article 5, which articulates this principle, has famously only been invoked once, in the wake of 9/11. Today, however, some of the biggest security risks facing the Alliance do not come from states or organizations alone, but instead from transnational, actorless threats like climate change and pandemics. What does collective defense mean in the face of increased extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and surging sea levels? More importantly, how do these climate change effects exacerbate or contribute to other security risks facing NATO, whether the rise of geopolitics in the Arctic, political instability in the Middle East and North Africa, or the increasing need for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief within Alliance members themselves?
Read the full article here at Policy Exchange