Climate change threatens national security, U.S. agencies warn

WASHINGTON — Worsening conflict within and between nations. Increased dislocation and migration as people flee climate-fueled instability. Heightened military tension and uncertainty. Financial hazards.

The Biden administration released several reports Thursday on climate change and national security, laying out in stark terms the ways in which the warming world is beginning to significantly challenge stability worldwide.

The documents, issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Defense as well as the National Security Council and director of national intelligence, form the government's most thorough assessment yet of these and other challenges, as well as how it will address them.

The reports include warnings from the intelligence community about how climate change can sap the strength of a nation through multiple threats. For example, Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Algeria could be strained by a decline in revenue from fossil fuels, even as the region faces worsening heat and drought. The Pentagon warned that food shortages could lead to unrest, along with fights between countries over access to drinking water.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes the U.S. Coast Guard, warns that as ice melts in Arctic Ocean, competition will increase for fish, minerals and other resources. Another report warns that tens of millions of people are likely to be displaced by 2050 because of climate change — including as many as 143 million people in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

The national security warnings came on the same day that top financial regulators for the first time flagged climate change as "an emerging threat" to the U.S. economy. More frequent and destructive disasters, such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires, are resulting in property damage, lost income and business disruptions that threaten to change the way real estate and other assets are valued, according to a report released by a panel of federal and state regulators appointed by the president. As of Oct. 8, there have been 18 "weather/climate disaster events" this year costing more than $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The flurry of reports come as President Joe Biden prepares to attend a major United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, known as COP26. With his climate agenda stalled in Congress, Biden risks having little progress to point to in Glasgow, where the administration had hoped to reestablish United States leadership on addressing warming.

The documents released Thursday mark a new stage in U.S. policy — one which places climate change at the center of the country's security.

The notion that climate change is threat to national security is neither novel nor particularly controversial; the Obama administration said as much, and began pushing security agencies to account for the risks related to global warming. Some of that work continued under the Trump administration, especially at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, though senior officials called less attention to it.

The onus is now on security and intelligence agencies to make good on that acknowledgment, by staffing up with climate experts and incorporating the full range of climate-related risks into their planning decisions and actions.

Perhaps the broadest and most sweeping of the documents released was a National Intelligence Estimate, which is meant to collect and distill the views of the country's intelligence agencies about particular threats. The report, the first such document to look exclusively at the issue of climate, said that risks to American national security will grow in the years to come. After 2030, key countries will face growing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance, the report said.

The document makes three key judgments: Global tensions will rise as countries argue about how to accelerate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; climate change will exacerbate cross-border flash points and amplify strategic competition in the Arctic; and the effects of climate change will be felt most acutely in developing countries that are least equipped to adapt.

When it comes to the odds of countries around the world meeting the commitment made at the 2015 climate conference in Paris to keep the rise in average global temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels, the intelligence report said the chances were not good. The Earth has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius; if it exceeds the 2 degrees threshold, the planet will experience increasingly deadly floods, fires, storms as well as ecosystem collapse, scientists say.

"Given current government policies and trends in technology development, we judge that collectively countries are unlikely to meet the Paris goals," the report said. "High-emitting countries would have to make rapid progress toward decarbonizing their energy systems by transitioning away from fossil fuels within the next decade, whereas developing countries would need to rely on low-carbon energy sources for their economic development."

The scramble to respond to climate change could also benefit some countries, intelligence agencies added, especially those that become leaders in emerging renewable-energy technologies or the raw materials needed to produce them.

The report notes that China controls more than half the world's processing capacity for cobalt, lithium and other minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries, and rare earth minerals for wind turbines and electric vehicle motors.

Other countries, such as Norway and the United Kingdom, have an advantage in meeting the growing demand for removing carbon dioxide from the air, the report adds, because of government policies such as a price on carbon that support the development of that technology.

"The Department intends to prioritize funding DOD Components in support of exercises, war games, analyses, and studies of climate change impacts on DOD missions, operations, and global stability," according to its report. "In coordination with allies and partners, DOD will work to prevent, mitigate, account for, and respond to defense and security risks associated with climate change."

The department faces numerous climate risks. Its bases are vulnerable to flooding, fires, drought and rising sea levels. Flooding harmed the Navy Base Coronado during a particularly tough hurricane year, the Naval Air Station Key West was hit by severe drought several years ago and a wildfire in 2017 burned 380 acres on Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California, among myriad other examples.

Beyond harming its basic infrastructure, droughts, fires and flooding can harm the performance of the Pentagon's aircraft, the ability to do testing activities and a host of training exercises.

The report drew praise from experts for recognizing that climate change and national defense are increasingly linked.

"This is the most extensive report DOD has ever produced on climate risk, moving to directly integrate concept of climate change as a threat multiplier into all aspects of defense strategy, planning, force posture and budget," said Sherri Goodman, a former undersecretary of defense for environmental security and now Secretary-General for the International Military Council on Climate & Security.

"The Pentagon must bring a climate lens to its strategic assessment of Chinese foreign policy and behavior on the world stage," said Sikorsky, who is now director of the Center for Climate and Security. "Otherwise it will get answers to key questions about China's strength and strategy wrong."

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the country's main responder to natural disasters, said in a separate report that it is looking to future technologies and equipment that will be necessary to tackle the changing risks posed by extreme weather.

That could include investing in more energy efficient construction and electric vehicles. As the largest federal law enforcement agency, the department has a significant fleet of vehicles.

According to its strategy, the department will start making climate change a focus of its preparedness grants for state and local governments. It will also incorporate the changing science into the guidance it provides to the public and private sectors on how to manage risk, offering advice for specific communities, such as low-income neighborhoods that are often surrounded by crumbling infrastructure already at risk of weather-induced damage.

And part of the strategy includes hiring more employees with scientific expertise, including in its policymaking and public outreach divisions.

The department said climate change's effect on the Northwest Passage, the waters between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and through the Arctic Ocean, are already apparent. With the ice melting, the area has become easier to navigate and has opened it up to competition with Russia and China.

The country is already seeing the effects of climate change on migration, with deadly and destructive hurricanes driving migrants to leave their homes in Central America and flee to the United States through Mexico. This has overwhelmed border officials at times since 2014 and particularly during the past six months.

The National Security Council released its own report Thursday, looking at how climate change is already pushing people around the world to migrate, both within countries and between them. The report notes one forecast suggesting that climate change could lead to almost 3% of the populations of Latin America, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa moving within their countries by 2050 — more than 143 million people.

While the report focuses on climate migration overseas, it notes that some Americans are already moving because of the effects of climate change as well.

"Even in the United States, one extreme event can result in a relatively high degree of permanent relocation of low-income populations exposed to chronic and worsening conditions over time," the report says.

Of the world's 25 nations most vulnerable to climate change, more than a dozen are affected by conflict or civil unrest, according to an index developed by the University of Notre Dame. Afghanistan is one example.

In February, Biden signed an executive order directing the National Security Council to provide options for protecting and resettling people displaced by climate change, as well as how to identify them.

In response, the report released Thursday, which was supposed to be done by August, recommends that the White House "work with Congress to create a new legal pathway for individualized humanitarian protection in the United States for individuals facing serious threats to their life because of climate change."

The report also calls for setting up a group of staff across government agencies to coordinate U.S. policy on climate migration.

Experts in climate migration said the report could have gone further.

"Much of the carbon emissions driving climate change have come from rich nations but the consequences are being borne disproportionately by the poor," Garg said. As a result, wealthy countries have "an obligation to support climate refugees."