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BRIEFER: Climate Change a “Top Tier Threat” in the 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy
By Sherri Goodman, Holly Kaufman, and Pauline Baudu
The Biden Administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), released in October 2022, elevates attention and focus on climate security beyond any prior NSS. The security risks of climate change get the attention in the NSS they have long deserved. Climate change is in fact framed as a top-tier threat on a par with geopolitical challenges from U.S. adversaries and competitors.
The NSS states:
“Of all of the shared problems we face, climate change is the greatest and potentially [most] existential for all nations. Without immediate global action during this crucial decade, global temperatures will cross the critical warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius after which scientists have warned some of the most catastrophic climate impacts will be irreversible.”
The world is already experiencing deadly and life-altering climate-related catastrophes (e.g, flooding in Pakistan, fires and drought in California, hurricanes in Florida) when the Earth’s global average land and ocean surface temperature has risen at least 1.1 degrees Celsius since the mid-1800s (approximately 2 degrees Fahrenheit). This NSS recognizes the unprecedented risks posed by such disasters. It therefore includes climate risks and related solutions in every aspect of national security and foreign policy, from reduction of carbon pollution to building resilience at home and abroad, and threading climate risks into every regional strategy. In this regard, the new NSS includes many of the recommendations in our Briefer of June 2021,“Climate Change in the U.S. National Security Strategy: History and Recommendations.”
The most recent NSS addresses our five key recommendations as well emerging concerns due to Russia’s war in Ukraine. These are 1) include all sectors, not just energy, including sources and sinks; 2) expand the concept of climate security to ecological security; 3) increase environmental monitoring; 4) forecast and plan for unpredictability; 5) assert strong U.S. leadership on climate and inter-related global ecological concerns, including passing aggressive climate and environmental restoration legislation and appropriating sufficient funding.
This briefer by the Center for Climate and Security focuses on these five recommendations and the relevant provisions within the NSS, concluding that the NSS both succeeds in recognizing the interdependence of all natural systems and resources, but also embodies several contradictions which should be improved. However, “the theme of the 2022 NSS is spot on: ‘No country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues like the climate crisis because of bilateral differences.'”
EVENT: Understanding the Army, Navy, and Air Force Climate Strategies
By Elsa Barron
The United States Army, Navy, and Air Force have each released a climate plan this year, marking an important step towards integrating climate security planning across the Department of Defense.
On Thursday, November 3rd, from 2:00-3:30 pm Eastern Time, The Center for Climate and Security will convene representatives from each department to discuss their climate plans and answer questions from the audience.
The panel, moderated by Hon. John Conger, Senior Advisor at the Council on Strategic Risks, will include:
- Hon. Sherri Goodman, Chair of the Board at the Council on Strategic Risks, and Senior Strategist at the Center for Climate and Security
- Ed Oshiba, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Energy, Installations and Environment)
- Paul Farnan, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Installations, Energy and Environment)
- Jim Balocki, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Energy, Installations and Environment)
- Rachel Ross, Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer of DoD
For a comparison of the Army, Navy, and Air Force climate plans, see this article by John Conger.
For further reading, also see the “Army Climate Strategy,” the Navy “Climate Action 2030,” and the “U.S. Department of the Air Force Climate Action Plan.”
And Air Force Makes Three… Comparing the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force Climate Plans
By John Conger
With the release of the U.S. Department of the Air Force Climate Action Plan on October 5, 2022, we now have climate plans developed by each of the military departments. The Army published its Army Climate Strategy in February 2022 and the Navy released Climate Action 2030 in May 2022. Below, I’ll highlight some of the key similarities and differences between the three approaches, which will help us develop a more complete forecast for where and how the Department of Defense (DoD) will address the security challenge posed by climate change.
Just as the three military departments have their own distinct cultures and personalities, these three plans are quite different, even as they all move toward a common set of goals.
(more…)Backgrounder: Climate Change and the National Defense Authorization Act
An often-overlooked area of bipartisan collaboration in Washington revolves around the security threat of climate change, with Republicans and Democrats agreeing on legislation to highlight and respond to the threat, and putting forward bills that have become law. More must be done to reduce the scale and scope of the threat, but as Congress develops the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), it is worth looking back at the progress the United States has seen over the past several years, much of which aligns with the priorities described in the Climate Security Plan for America and the follow up report, Challenge Accepted.
In this backgrounder, we track key provisions that have been included in NDAAs from Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 through FY 2022, building from the initial, bipartisan declaration in 2017 that climate change was a direct threat to national security, to requirements for vulnerability assessments, resilience authorities, strategy requirements, and mainstreaming consideration of climate impacts on mission.