Center for a New American Security

The 2008 Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense (DoD) to assess the impacts of climate change on DoD’s current and future missions and to integrate these concerns into its major strategic documents, beginning with the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Under this project, CNAS researches met with military and civilian experts in the Office of Secretary of Defense, individual military services, and regional combatant commands to discuss the state of scientific knowledge of climate change and its impacts, and to explore current thinking within DoD about how to articulate and incorporate climate change concerns in the QDR. We then studied what the implications of climate change could be for the services and combatant commands.

Read the Report: Broadening Horizons: Climate Change and the U.S. Armed Forces

Read the working papers:

• Commander Herbert E. Carmen, USN, Christine Parthemore and Will Rogers, On the Front Lines: Climate Change and the Combatant Commands (April 2010)
• Christine Parthemore, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and U.S. Ground Forces (April 2010)
• Will Rogers, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and America's Air Forces (April 2010)
• Christine Parthemore, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Maritime Services (March 2010)
• Christine Parthemore and Will Rogers, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Quadrennial Defense Review (January 2010)

Promoting the Dialogue Events:

• Read about our September 16, 2009 event, Climate Change, Energy, and Maritime Security: Promoting the Dialogue, here.
• Read about our April 28, 2010 release event, Natural Security: Navigating the Future Global Environment, here.

WAR GAME: CLOUT AND CLIMATE CHANGE

It was just a game, but some of the participants played for keeps.

In July 2008, the Center for a New American Security hosted an international climate change “war game” to explore the national security implications of global climate change. Elements of the game were featured in the ABC prime time documentary “Earth 2100” on June 2, 2009.

Military organizations and businesses around the world have long used such exercises to anticipate future developments and manage risk and uncertainty – and to test how plans, strategies, and ideas may hold up in a range of plausible futures. Generally, the lessons of these games have less to do with the “product” within the game than with the process of playing. So while the Climate Change War Game did not result in a fictitious international agreement that would cut greenhouse gases in China and transfer resources for adaptation from the United States to India, the debates and developments in the course of having such discussions were illuminating.

While some players left keenly disappointed that the event produced no breakthrough agreement or did not focus sufficiently on adaptation, those disappointments are, themselves, important lessons and exactly the reason organizations engage in such exercises.

To view summary findings from CNAS, click here. All of the game materials are posted on this page (scroll down below to 'Publications') – the pre-game briefing books for participants which include the background scenarios, the “moves” of the game, and materials generated in the course of the exercise – in addition to a policy brief of major findings. We encourage researchers and educational institutions to use these materials to stage similar games.