Can NATO Defense Be Sustainable?
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Climate Risks and Military Resilience in a New Security Landscape
War and climate change are two existential threats of our time, and they increasingly require overlapping solutions. That’s exactly what was discussed at the recent NATO gathering in The Hague: Can sustainability be integrated into military strategy? Surprisingly, the answer is yes—and it’s not a provocation.
Climate and Conflict: Two Sides of the Same Crisis
Rising global temperatures are fueling extreme events such as wildfires, floods, and droughts. In Europe, these disasters occur so frequently that governments increasingly call upon military forces for civilian relief and disaster management.
This is becoming the new normal.
NATO and its member states officially recognize climate change as a security risk—it threatens military infrastructure, complicates mission planning, and destabilizes regions around the globe.
Clean Technologies Enhance Military Resilience
Strikingly, technologies developed for civilian decarbonization are proving equally valuable in military contexts:
Renewably-powered military bases offer independence from public grids and greater resilience against attacks or outages.
Recycling military equipment reduces hazardous waste and foreign supply dependencies.
Cleaner logistics and equipment translate into lower greenhouse gas emissions and operational costs.
In this view, sustainability becomes a tool for operational efficiency, resilience, and strategic advantage.
Civil-Military Cooperation in Emergency Response
An important evolution is the increasing use of military forces in civilian crises. NATO is planning new training exercises—in September in Bulgaria, troops will simulate a major earthquake followed by extreme weather events.
The aim: to strengthen civil-military collaboration and improve joint response capabilities in climate-related emergencies.
Is Military Decarbonization Realistic?
While defense budgets typically don’t highlight climate-related efforts, military adaptation to climate change is already underway, albeit under different labels.
True, an armed weapon cannot be carbon neutral, but the lives saved and crises averted cannot be measured in CO₂ alone.
Christian Sansoni
