As the Senate returns from recess, passing the annual National Defense Authorization Act will be one of its top priorities—and this year it could include a potentially controversial amendment directing the Pentagon to assess the impact of climate change on national security. In the House, the Langevin amendment surprisingly garnered enough Republican support to withstand a challenge in July. Since then, two more senior military appointees have testified to the importance of understanding the challenges climate change poses to national security. 

Organized crime, arms and drugs smuggling, and conflict often overlap with environmental crimes like illegal fishing. A new interactive database from the Stimson Center’s Environment Security program maps incidents of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing with the aim to “illuminate and educate on the geostrategic security implications of environmental crime; foster the creation of a new and expanding community of natural security stakeholders; and change the terms of the conversation on environment crime, leading to innovation policy solutions.”

The region at the base of the Himalayas faces difficult tradeoffs when allocating freshwater resources for energy production versus agricultural, industrial, and domestic uses. This is one of the most ecologically unstable areas on Earth, and weather patterns are becoming increasingly irregular. On one end of the spectrum, water shortages frequently disrupt energy production, which depends largely on water-intensive coal and hydropower plants. The opposite extreme is also a factor: Dozens of hydropower plants in the Himalayas have been damaged or destroyed by severe floods caused by unusually heavy rainfall in recent years. Construction of new power plants faces increasing resistance from local communities, resulting in social disruptions and instability. In order to ensure both energy security and water security for their countries, governments must look beyond hydropower and coal.

The Philippines faces a breadth of social and environmental challenges that threaten its economic and political stability. A long history of violent conflict stemming from ethnic, religious, and political tensions is further complicated by changing weather patterns that cause severe drought and damaging storms. Millions of people in Mindanao have been displaced by violence and extreme weather events, and their migration from rural areas leaves room for the expansion of terrorist groups that threaten regional stability. The United States currently has strong trade and cultural ties to the Philippines, and U.S. Pacific Command operates military facilities on the islands. This chapter examines the stakes for U.S. interests in Mindanao, and recommends a security approach that combines defense, diplomacy, and development efforts to promote improved governance, social stability, and climate resilience.

Earlier this month 46 House Republicans voted with Democrats to protect an amendment in the current National Defense Authorization Act that acknowledges that “climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States” and requires the secretary of defense to provide “a report on the vulnerability to military installations and combatant command requirements resulting from climate change over the next 20 years.”

U.S. prosperity and national security depend directly on the prosperity and stability of our partner countries and competing countries around the world. Today, water-driven stresses are, with increasing frequency, undermining economic productivity, weakening governance systems, and fraying social cohesion. Water scarcity has created a context of human and societal need wherein water stress has undermined the vitality of rural livelihoods, driven broad migratory movements, become a weapon of war, contributed to the growth of insurgencies and terrorist networks, and given rise to increased demand for U.S. development, humanitarian, and military assistance.

“There’s a long list of crises that can have a natural resource base,” said Anne C. Richard, former assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, at a Stimson Center panel on June 13, 2017, on the impacts of climate change on human security and mobility. The panelists included Kelly McFarland of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD), Rod Schoonover of the National Intelligence Council, and Sally Yozell, director of Stimson’s Environmental Security Program.

“There’s a lot you can do to mitigate risk once you acknowledge the risk exists,” said John Conger, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at a June 5th briefing on Capitol Hill. Convened by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Center for Climate and Security,  and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, the panel of former Department of Defense (DOD) officials and retired military officers included Sherri Goodman, senior fellow at the Wilson Center, and three members of the Military Advisory Board: Brigadier General Gerald Galloway, General Ron Keys, and Rear Admiral Ann C. Phillips.