As news turns to the 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), Erin Sikorsky and Brigitte Hugh from the Center for Climate and Security a non-partisan institute of the Council on Strategic Risks, consider how climate discussions connect to or impact security and offer reading suggestions for deeper knowledge on the topics:
- Climate Change & National Security – The Basics
Why should the national security community care about climate change? What are national security actors already doing to tackle climate risks?
- A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change
- Challenge Accepted: A Progress Report on the Climate Security Plan for America and Recommendations for the Way Ahead
- Summer Heatwave Underscores Importance of NATO’s Climate Security Focus
- Climate Change and Terrorism: Three Risk Pathways to Consider
- Climate Change & Geopolitics
Negotiations at COP27 will occur against a highly charged geopolitical landscape, given the Russian invasion of Ukraine and heightened competition between the United States and China.
- Yellow Card: Global Food Crisis Underscores Need for Systemic Security
- Climate, Ecological Security and the Ukraine Crisis: Four Issues to Consider
- Climate Change, Security and Political Coherence in the South and East China Seas
- Adaptation – Preparing for Existing Threats
As the heatwaves, droughts and floods of summer 2022 brought into sharp relief, climate impacts are already here and shaping security risks. Investments in adaptation and resilience capacities are critical to managing existing threats.
- New IPCC Report Calls for Adapting Today to Ensure Tomorrow’s Climate Security
- The World’s Militaries Aren’t Ready for Climate Change
- Moving towards security: preparing NATO for climate-related migration
- State and Trends in Adaptation Report 2022: Security
- Mitigation – Cutting Emissions
In the latest assessments, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made clear that the world is not doing enough to prevent further warming. Given the way current levels of warming are shaping security risks, preventing further warming is just as important as adapting.
- Decarbonized Defense: the Need for Clean Military Power in the Age of Climate Change
- Climate Security Implications of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act
- The Defense Department’s Role in the New Sustainability Executive Order
- No Time for Half Measures: A Security Perspective on the New IPCC Report on Mitigation
- Climate Finance
A key agenda item at COP27 will be the fact that the countries being hit hardest by climate impacts today are those that bear the least responsibility for emitting carbon. Climate finance is a tool that can help the hardest hit countries adapt and prepare for a climate changed world, while providing security benefits by building stability and conflict resilience.
- For national security, climate finance must be made ‘conflict-proof’
- BRIEFER: The Security Implications of the Pakistan Floods
This post was originally published at the Center for Climate and Security
