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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October 2024 Update: Military Responses to Climate Hazards (MiRCH) Tracker
By Ethan Wong
In October 2024, the Military Responses to Climate Hazards (MiRCH) tracker documented 48 military deployments in response to severe storms, floods, and wildfires in 11 countries, including India, Mexico, the Philippines, Spain, the United States, and elsewhere.
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The Story Behind Climate Security and What it Means for US Foreign Policy
This piece is cross-posted on New Security Beat, the Blog of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security program.
By Noah Fritzhand and Angus Soderberg
Hurricanes Helene and Milton battered the southeastern US in September and October and caused a combined estimate of $300 billion in damages. These storms were only the latest example of a cascade of disasters that is expected to worsen as climate change intensifies. Yet the impacts do not stop at dollars and human lives. Threats to security and stability also will multiply as rising temperatures increase the variability of rainfall patterns and the intensity of storms.
A recent event co-hosted by the Wilson Center with the Center for Climate and Security examined the underlying dynamics of climate security and their implications for US foreign policy. Peter Schwartzstein, Wilson Center Global Fellow and environmental Journalist in Residence at the Center for Climate and Security, who was among the speakers at the event, observed that “climate change’s most debilitating and greatest impact on violence is when it is acting on other drivers of instability.”
Climate change can exacerbate regional instability by altering the availability of life-sustaining resources such as water, food, and land. And US officials are discovering that the sheer scope of climate stress can challenge US interests as well. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization at the US Department of State (DoS) Anne Witkowsky noted that close to “3.6 billion people [are] living in regions susceptible to climate change, [and] more than 1 billion of those people living in regions experiencing conflict.”
Communities around the world are facing climate stressors that threaten their lives and livelihoods, compound conflict risks, and challenge the ability of governments to provide services for their citizens. Recognizing that climate change is no longer just a future threat, countries and multilateral institutions now have taken a new interest in understanding the interactions between climate, conflict, and security.
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