A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

EU Parliament Suspends Rwandan Critical Mineral Pact Over Links to DRC Conflict (Mongabay)

Rwanda and the DRC both have large reserves of critical minerals essential to the clean energy transition. Yet the EU has voted to suspend a cooperation agreement on mineral extraction in the region after the Rwandan-backed rebel group M23 seized key areas in the DRC’s eastern provinces.

This year’s World Economic Forum called for greater urgency in discussing the impacts of climate change on human security and social, political, and economic stability. And a recognition of the destabilizing effects of climate change also has led the UN to emphasize the risks they pose to the most vulnerable populations, including poor, conflict-affected, and displaced persons.

Dr. Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University in Sweden and founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Environment and Security. An expert on environment, development, and security issues, Swain has long had an eye for recognizing emerging security challenges. In his new book, Climate Security, Swain explores climate change’s connection to some of the key issues driving today’s security discourse, including the role of misinformation in hindering climate action, climate’s role in the growing displacement crisis, and how climate-driven shifts in territory and resources are reshaping geopolitics. Swain gave us a sneak peak of the book’s key insights, including the potential for a new international governance framework to address climate-related security risks.

Islands are not found in abundance in the middle of the continental United States, but Fort Knox has set out to challenge this notion. Indeed, it has been described as the first and only energy-independent installation in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)—and thus exists on an “energy island.”

In recent weeks, users of the social network Bluesky were able to watch a compelling video featuring Jessica Newberry Le Vey—a Climate Change and Health Policy Fellow at Imperial College’s Climate Cares Centre. The video begins with Le Vey’s direct-to-camera assertion that the climate crisis is a health crisis affecting people around the world. Then Le Vey’s image disappears—yet we hear her (or someone who sounds eerily like her) speak over a compendium of combat footage that includes video of ATACAM missiles being fired and larger strategic missiles on the move. Climate is important, declares the speaker, but there are more serious problems that threaten our security.

It is widely recognized that oil states are rarely democratic, and often conflict-prone. As these governments wind down their dependence on this toxic resource as part of broader global efforts to decarbonize, one might imagine that the end of oil will spell a better future for the citizens of oil-producing countries. Sadly, a look at the cases of fragile fossil fuel producing states (FFFPs) suggests that this may not be the case.

Our present ecocrisis drives human insecurity. Single weather events killed hundreds in 2024, even in wealthy countries such as the United States or Spain. And beyond that staggering toll in human lives lurk staggering amounts of money required to repair and rebuild. In the United States alone, inflation-adjusted disaster-attributable costs have reached on average $153 billion each year. These factors and others make global environmental change a severe risk to human security.

“I think we need to approach climate security completely differently,” said Sharon Burke, Founder and President of Ecospherics and Wilson Center Global Fellow, at the recent 2024 Montreal Climate Security Summit. “It’s not just that climate change is an opportunity cost in combat power, or that it’s effecting our bases and operating environment, or that it is an accelerant to instability. It is itself the threat.”