The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the world’s largest and most powerful intergovernmental military alliance, encompassing 30 European and North American countries who participate in mutual defense in response to an attack by an external party.
In June, NATO released two new security documents: the Brussels Summit Communique and a Climate Change and Security Action Plan. Together, these documents affirm NATO’s approach to climate change, recognizing it as a ‘threat multiplier,’ a term used to describe the ways in which climate change exacerbates conflict and insecurity.
The Climate Change and Security Action Plan asserts the role of climate change in political fragility, conflict, displacement and migration. Thus, the short plan spells out general actions NATO will incorporate into its defense and security planning on climate awareness, climate adaptation, mitigation and international cooperation and outreach. In addition, the bloc will be assessing the feasibility of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
There are no public statistics on NATO’S exact contributions to climate change. Most militaries within NATO remain exempt from reporting their emissions, and therefore their emissions remain difficult to quantify despite decades of calls to report. However, NATO’s largest military contributing country, the United States’ Department of Defense, is the world’s largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gasses, and its military emissions alone are higher than many industrialized country’s total emissions. So a Biden administration plan to increase defense spending even over the previous administration, is not only incredibly alarming, but runs counter to robust climate action plans.
Even though NATO’s exact footprint cannot be calculated, one can conclude its historical harm has been great by creating or exacerbating vulnerabilities by consistently being party to longstanding security and conflict scenarios.
The International Committee of the Red Cross notes two important points in this respect: 12 of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change are also in conflict, and conflict and certain means of warfare can cause harm to natural and built environments. Military attacks can lead to soil, water, air and land contamination, and the indirect effects of conflict can result in further environmental degradation. All of this can lead to, and has in many circumstances, led or contributed to reducing institutional capacity to protect the environment, large-scale displacement and natural resource exploitation to sustain conflicts, such as in Syria where Dr. Marcus King documented water weaponization by actors.
NATO is correct to outline climate change as a destabilizing force, however, for us, it is of concern that many military actors, including NATO, characterize migration and displacement as part of that instability and thus approach this as an issue of traditional security instead of human security and protection.
For sure, sudden large-scale displacement arising from conflict is destabilizing, most of all for the refugees experiencing it. However, it is paramount that the security sector distinguish that it is not migrants and refugees that are destabilizing the world. In fact, it is the historic contribution to climate change and failure of states to tackle climate change - where 70% of the effects are felt in fragile countries - that are exacerbating vulnerabilities and thus contributing to the multiple drivers that are increasing displacement and forced migration around the world.
In a world where over 82.4 million people are now forcibly displaced - that is over 1% of the global population - failed climate finance pledges to help affected countries adapt, closed borders and increasing securitized responses, a function NATO will no doubt continue to play a role in implementing, is tantamount to failure to prevent and protect the unfair and disproportionate victims of rich, industrialized nations.