Integrating Climate Security into NATO’s Plans and Operations: Lessons learned and ways forward

art by Ed Oner (Morocco)

Swathi Veeravalli (USAFRICOM); Annica Waleij (Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI)

The mandate of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is to promote the freedom and security of its alliance members and partners through political and military means. Politically, it seeks to build trust and prevent conflict. If those efforts are unsuccessful, NATO will utilize military power to address the collective defence of the Alliance.i NATO’s ability to carry out its core mission is contingent upon its ability to successfully operationalize climate security.

Context

NATO first began to address environmental issues in 1969. Before the end of the Cold War and until the mid-90s, NATO considered the environment as an opportunity to engage with countries from the former Soviet Union. In 2003, NATO released its first Environmental Policy for NATO-led military activities. This policy focused on minimizing the military’s environmental footprint and was further formalized through several standardization agreements[i] and then later in 2014 through the Green Defence Framework. NATO’s involvement in the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC) demonstrated the shift from focusing solely on minimizing its environmental footprint to a more proactive stance, realizing the conflict prevention opportunities afforded by the environment.

What’s been done

Lessons from Afghanistan and Bulgaria

NATO, previously having developed an environmental management program, sought to facilitate environmental shuras (an Afghan word describing a meeting of elders).[ii]  Developed in conjunction with US Forces in Afghanistan, these shuras were intended to strengthen relationships, share progress and lessons learned, and create synergies within the environmental community in Afghanistan. It has been noted, however, that the potential of these initiatives was limited in scope and ineffective at best.[iii] NATO-led operations appeared to be more focused on the mission’s strategic, operational, and tactical military objectives, and less on the environment. NATO’s objectives of establishing a secure and stable environment for Afghans did not tangibly include the benefits of the environmental shuras, a missed opportunity for environmental peacebuilding. While there was an attempt to incorporate environmental considerations, the timing and intensity of the heightened and protracted conflict proved prohibitive for environmental peacebuilding. Conversely, if the relationship between conflict and the environment is not considered systematically and holistically, it will invariably inhibit peacebuilding as well as increase the human costs of war, as it did in Afghanistan.[iv]

The 2010 Strategic Concept outlined how key environmental and climate constraints will not only further shape the future security environment in areas of concern to NATO, but also significantly affect planning and operations. Six years later, NATO created a Centre of Excellence in Bulgaria focused on crisis management and disaster response to engage in civil preparedness and emergency response to environmental disasters.[v] Focused on providing education and training opportunities, these initiatives demonstrated a transition for NATO policy to start systematically anticipating the impacts that both the environment and climate and weather could have upon their mission. The effects of changing temperatures, coupled with environmental degradation, can compound other conflict drivers while also becoming an additional security risk in itself.[vi] Both of these issues undermine peacebuilding and conflict prevention.[vii] 

Looking ahead

While the combination of NATO’s policies to date have started to anticipate and identify the impacts that environment, climate, and other risks have on their mission, action has fallen short of mandating the Alliance to start developing climate-aware defence planning. It is prudent for NATO to take steps to prepare for the security implications of changing climate regimes.

The organization must be able to assess and understand the short- and long-term implications of changing climate regimes upon each country and upon the Alliance as a whole. To that effect, the forthcoming NATO Centre of Excellence for Climate and Security will facilitate not only more civil-military cooperation, but also more engagement with the scientific community. Such partnerships will yield more effective science-based decision-making capabilities for its members and partners.

NATO must incorporate the security implications of climate change into its plans, operations, exercises, and strategy. NATO should also operationalize climate security in each Alliance member’s National Defence Planning Process (NDPP) cycle. Achieving both acts will help ensure NATO’s operational readiness to the security implications of changing climate regimes.

In sum, NATO has been notably successful with its environmental peacebuilding activities and has started to develop climate security-based policy. In 2021, it even released a Climate Change and Security Action Plan and is updating its strategic concept in 2022. But if NATO is to “set the gold standard on understanding, adapting to, and mitigating the security impacts of climate change,” as stipulated by its own Secretary General, the organization must move beyond policy and operationalize climate security into strategy, plans, engagements, exercises, and operations.[viii]  Until then, NATO will not be adequately prepared, equipped, trained, or supported to achieve its own mission.[ix]

[i] Standardization agreements (STANAGs) address environmental issues, such as waste management, and petroleum handling in more detail.

[ii]Reference on file with authors.

[iii] San Miguel, S. (2016) Mission Accomplished? An evaluation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Environmental Protection Policies for NATO operations in Afghanistan, University of Guelph

[iv] Krampe, F. (2019) ‘Climate Change, Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace’, SIPRI Policy Brief, SIPRI (https://www.sipri.org/publications/2019/sipri-policy-briefs/climate-change-peacebuilding-and-sustaining-peace)

[v] NATO (2021) Crisis Management and Disaster Response About US, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Center for Excellence for Crisis Management and Disaster Response: Bulgaria

[vi] Mach, K.J., Kraan, C.M., Adger, W.N. et al. (2019) ‘Climate as a risk factor for armed conflict’, Nature 571:193–197. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1300-6

[vii] UN (2020) Climate Change Exacerbates Existing Conflict Risks, Likely to Create New Ones, Assistant Secretary-General Warns Security Council, United Nations: Geneva; and NATO (2010) Strategic Concept for the Defence and Security of The Members of the North Atlantic Treaty

Organisation, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation: Belgium

[viii] NATO (2021) Secretary General addresses global leaders on NATO’s response to climate change, North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Belgium

[ix] NATO NSO (2018) The NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP): An Overview, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Standardization Office: Belgium