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The Elephant in the Climate Room: Financing Sustainable Security and Supporting Future-Fit Systems
By Siena Cicarelli, Erin Sikorsky and Michael Werz
Every year, leaders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank – as well as key stakeholders from civil society, the private sector and regional financial bodies – gather to assess the landscape of international development finance. This year, they will do so against the backdrop of a complex geopolitical landscape, where one of the most consequential election years in human history, continued conflict in Ukraine and Gaza, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events have divided multilateral bodies and strained the funding landscape.
While this year’s agenda will cover everything from water security to streamlining taxation, one key challenge will dominate discussions: the staggering costs of the green transition and how these relatively inflexible financial institutions can evolve to support global climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience building – particularly in fragile, conflict-affected and violent situations (FCV). As seen at 28th UN climate conference (COP28) and the 2024 World Bank Fragility Forum, most stakeholders recognize that existing efforts are falling short and are eager to move from admiring the problem to identifying tangible steps and best practices needed to address this challenge.
(more…)A Marshall Plan to Combat Climate Change in the Asia-Pacific: The Missing Piece of the New U.S. Security Strategy
This article is cross-posted from e-International Relations
For the first time since the days of William Howard Taft, the United States is officially reorienting its security and defense strategy to the Asia-Pacific region, closing down military bases in Europe, redeploying soldiers to bases in Australia, and placing the region front and center in its strategic documents. As stated in the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance note, “while the U.S. military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity re-balance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” But if this shift is to translate into leadership, the United States needs a complementary investment agenda for building the region’s resilience to key emerging threats – including climate change. (more…)
Fighting Fire with No Finance
In its most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, the U.S. Department of Defense officially recognized climate change as a security threat. But policy-makers are not treating it like one. As we outlined in our piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the U.S. commits considerable resources to combating other security threats, like terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and these funds are certainly subject to trimming from time to time. However, they are never in danger of being virtually eliminated – as the U.S. Congress seems to be threatening now with climate finance – moneys that are essential for mitigating the risks of climate change, and incentivizing action in the developing world to do the same.
See Juliet Eilperin’s article for more on the situation in the U.S. Congress.
Matching Resources to Security Risk: the Climate Change Anomaly
Our piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, written with Christine Parthemore of the Center for a New American Security, addresses the discrepancy between U.S. financial and political capital spent on combating three security risks (WMDs, terrorism and economic crisis) and the financial and political capital spent on combating the security risk of climate change. It makes the point that the U.S. national security establishment has recognized the threat of climate change as comparable to other security risks, but U.S. policy-makers have not responded accordingly. See the full article here, and cross-posted below: