Center for a New American Security

In this working paper, CNAS Bacevich Fellow Christine Parthemore synthesizes how the maritime services are thinking about climate change and assesses potential policy implications.

In this working paper, CNAS Bacevich Fellow Christine Parthemore and Research Assistant Will Rogers provide observations about how the Department of Defense incorporated climate change into the QDR process in order to meet its congressional requirement and some potential outcomes of that process.

In the 21st century, the security of nations will increasingly depend on the security of natural resources, or “natural security.”  This concept paper outlines a new program of study at the Center for a New American Security to look at emerging natural resources challenges in six key areas of consumption and consequences – energy, minerals, water, land, climate change, and biodiversity – as well as the ways in which these challenges are linked together.

Global climate change poses not only environmental hazards but profound risks to planetary peace and stability as well. For the past year, CNAS and CSIS convened a diverse group of experts on climate science, oceanography, history, political science, foreign policy, and national security to take the measure of these risks. The contributors developed three scenarios of what the future may hold and then analyze the security implications of these scenarios, which at a minimum include increased disease proliferation; tensions caused by large-scale migration; and conflict sparked by resource scarcity, particularly in Africa. They consider what we can learn from the experience of early civilizations confronted with natural disaster, and they ask what the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases – the United States, the European Union, and China – can do to reduce and manage future risks.