As NATO Watches the World Burn: Climate Change’s Threatening Fate
Climate change has never been a higher risk to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)[1] and the world at large, posing direct, catastrophic physical threats to both national and human security globally. It destabilizes all regions of the planet at the local, national, regional, and international levels through disruptions in economic and resource stability, institutions, infrastructure, and key security environments. To ensure its survival and that of its member states, NATO must stop watching the world burn, and become part of the wider solution in a way that allows the Alliance to emerge as a leader in shaping how these new and dynamic security threats ought to be prepared for and prevented.[2]
Between the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1850 and today, human activity caused a global surface temperature increase of 1.8°F. If countries do not reach net zero by 2030, there is a mere shred of a possibility to keep global warming under 5.0°F. Per current levels, global warming is expected to be as high as 5.0 and 7.4°F until the end of the century, even if all existing climate policies are put in place. What makes matters worse is that past and future greenhouse gas emissions make changes in the climate “irreversible for centuries to millennia” because the world’s climate regulation mechanisms have become inoperable. The growing likelihood of a 7.4°F warming promises a dire future for the freedom and security of NATO’s members that the Alliance aims to guarantee because it significantly heightens the probability of instability, conflict, and human casualties through destabilizing physical impacts and aggravated social tensions.
Continued global warming results in physical impacts on NATO’s environment and on the citizens living on its territory through the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, cyclones, severe precipitation, sea level rise, wildfires, flooding, and droughts. These climate disasters that NATO has until recently been suffering from in isolated incidents are now overlapping and interrelated; occurring in closer temporal and geographical proximity. This makes the impacts more destructive as human and state resilience further erodes, exacerbating the insecurity of NATO’s citizens and the ecosystems they rely on for survival. Challenges to human health become greater as water-borne diseases spread more easily after floods, and summer heat levels in some regions become dangerous for human exposure, especially when combined with increased humidity. More intense, extreme weather events such as storms and wildfires severely heighten human casualties on NATO’s territory, including in the western United States and the Mediterranean, and prolonged droughts, sea level rise, and floodings lead to internal displacement, for instance visible on NATO soil after hurricane Katrina (2005) or Germany’s “flood of the century” (2021). Finally, the changing climate gives rise to the need to recalibrate and adjust NATO’s equipment, training, interoperability, and infrastructure, especially structures situated in drought or flood-prone areas.
These intensifying physical impacts will worsen geopolitical tensions that pose a threat to NATO in at least two critical ways. First, disputes over climate change responses and policies could arise as NATO member states will increasingly try to shift both the blame and the responsibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions amongst themselves and key competitors like China. Similarly, the debate will also center on who controls scarce resources and renewable energy technologies. Second, physical impacts of climate change intensify great power competition, a development that is most notable in the Arctic that is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe. Specifically, climate change and natural resource distribution have shifted the geopolitical balance in the Arctic because melting sea ice gave rise to competing claims over the Arctic’s oil and gas resources lying underneath, as well as increasingly ice-free sea lanes that are of high geostrategic importance as they would extent routes for regular commercial transit. The consequences are competitive posturing and rising geopolitical tensions among Russia, China, the U.S., and other NATO member states, including Canada and Germany. This has the potential to stoke future conflicts in NATO’s neighborhood and on its soil, or proxy wars in regions such as MENA that NATO could be drawn into through its security commitments.
The physical impacts of climate change also exacerbate social and political cleavages with international repercussions adversely affecting NATO’s security environment. Food, water, and resource stress adversely affect prices and availability, leading to famines and loss of livelihoods. The UN Refugee Agency estimates that by 2050, up to 250 million people will be displaced by climate change impacts. Consequences include state fragility, ethnic conflicts, coups d´états, deprivation conflicts over scarce resources, specifically water, and the exploitation of humanitarian crises, as well as the weaponization of resources by extremist groups, as can already be observed in recent violent conflicts in Darfur, Kenya, and the Sahel. This is not only extremely costly to the Alliance but will put such a strain on the Allies’ humanitarian and military resources, including in the form of peacekeeping and anti-terror operations, that NATO will have to start choosing high-priority incidents because it will lack the capacity and resources to respond to all conflicts and natural disasters of importance, even within its member states.
Furthermore, neither the U.S. nor European southern borders are prepared for the influx of large waves of climate migrants, as the case study of the U.S.-Mexican border shows. In Mexico, droughts and desertification combined with extreme poverty in the most arid regions lead to the abandonment of 2,250 square kilometers of potentially productive farmlands annually, and are a major driver for emigration to the United States. Climate-related migration will likely aggravaterising illiberal, ethno-nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Atlantic that present a dangerous threat to the Alliance’s cohesion because they question the collective identity of the West and the liberal democratic values NATO is built on. This development may be favored by the destabilization of key economic sectors alongside increased social and regional inequalities within NATO resulting from global warming. As a consequence, NATO member states may not only resort to militarized responses similar to those displayed by U.S. border patrol this September, but Russia and China may also capitalize on the situation of the most vulnerable countries that are unable to meet basic human needs to gain influence through the provision of direct support, or weaponizing migrants as is currently happening at the Belarusian-Polish border. These repercussions increase the likelihood of the Alliance’s breakdown through outside attacks and internal turmoil.
To ensure its own survival and that of its members, NATO must firstly understand climate change’s effect on its missions, capabilities, and security environment. Secondly, the Alliance must realize that it has a responsibility to prepare and prevent the security implications of the climate crisis. As it currently stands, the member states are not sufficiently prepared for what is to come, and the Alliance’s window of opportunity to counter these climate security risks is narrowing. Efforts to build and foster resilience have never been more urgent. NATO as an institution should develop mitigation and adaptation policies alike, as goals agreed to such as the Paris climate accords will not be sufficient to save the Alliance from severe and catastrophic changes to its security environment. This should include not only the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but also the utilization of the Alliance’s profound predictive and analytical capabilities to develop forward-looking policies protecting humans, infrastructure, and ecosystems from climate change’s threatening fate. NATO’s extensive foresight capabilities put it in a unique position to contribute to a global governance framework on climate change that manages the risks threatening NATO’s very purpose: guaranteeing freedom and security.
[1] Meaning the organization as such, including military and civilian components for the purpose of this essay.
[2] As the National Security, Military, and Intelligence Panel on Climate Change (NSMIP) established in its report, it is already too late to prevent all impacts of climate change. However, more severe alterations predicted to happen under a 7.4°F warming scenario can still be prevented, which is necessary to avert catastrophic impacts. Ultimately, preparation for what cannot be averted anymore is needed simultaneously.
