This year, 2019, marked a new nadir for the environment that may reflect an ominous trend in warfare: Environmentally sensitive targets are being weaponized and taken hostage. Farmland went up in flames and burning oil tankers dominated the headlines, serving as a stark reminder of conflict’s ripple effects.

“In 1959, he knew it was coming,” said Delbert Pungowiyi, a Yupik native of Savoonga, Alaska, on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea in an interview at the Wilson Center’s 8th Syymposium on the Impacts of an Ice-Diminishing Arctic on Naval and Maritime Operations. “He prepared me my whole life for this. It is a crisis.”

“We don’t have a world water crisis, we have a world water management crisis,” said Brigadier General Gerald Galloway (U.S. Army Ret.) at the 2nd National Drought Forum, hosted by the National Integrated Drought Information System and the National Drought Resilience Partnership at the United States Institute of Peace. The Forum brought together subject matter experts with federal and state leaders to discuss how to strengthen the state-federal relationship to improve U.S. drought readiness and resilience.

“We’re attempting to do something that’s never been done before in world history,” said Senator Angus King (I-ME). “The peaceful development of a major new physical asset.” He spoke of the Arctic Ocean at the 8^th Symposium on the Impacts of an Ice-Diminishing Arctic on Naval and Maritime Operations. The symposium was hosted by the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, in partnership with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, U.S. National Ice Center, Arctic Domain Awareness Center, Patuxent Partnership, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

How do we plan for disasters that have never occurred before? One million species are at risk of extinction in the near future from environmental changes. The frequency of historic tropical storms is increasing. The rapidly melting permafrost in the Arctic is placing unprecedented pressures on northern infrastructure. Given the overwhelming and unpredictable nature of new disaster risks, it is not clear what the appropriate responses should be. Our book, Disaster Security: Using Military and Intelligence Planning for Energy and Environmental Risks, addresses how to assess unique environmental hazards and disaster risks, based on tools used by the U.S. intelligence and military communities. The book draws on lessons learned from developing, applying, and translating scenarios and simulations (or wargames) to plan for future environmental security risks.

In 2018, California experienced its most destructive wildfires in history. Satellite imagery shared by NASA scientists helped firefighters track fires and map damage by comparing satellite images documenting changes to the Earth’s surface. These types of images existed for decades but were classified for military purposes until the government program MEDEA identified their potential benefit and advocated for public access in the 1990s. According to former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Chief Scientist and MEDEA member Richard Spinrad, “the systems that might be used for early detection of a missile launch may work equally well for detection of wildfires.”

The 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, released on January 29, mentions climate change as a threat that is “likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.” The report features new topics such as election interference and threats to economic competitiveness while still including continuing threats such as cyber espionage and attacks, terrorism, and climate change. As a statement from Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Daniel R. Coats, for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the assessment provides an overview of the national security threats facing the nation.

On January 22, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Daniel R. Coats released the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) for 2019, which represents a departure from the last such strategy. While the previous 2014 National Intelligence Strategy specifically noted that food, water, and energy resource insecurity contribute to instability, the 2019 NIS does not mention these concerns beyond a single reference to climate change and resource scarcity as “pressure points.”