Why the Defense Department attended COP28
Climate change threatens our national security. We’ll face the challenge with allies and partners.
BRENDAN OWENS, MEREDITH BERGER, RACHEL JACOBSON, RAVI CHAUDHARY and IRIS A. FERGUSON | DECEMBER 20, 2023
We recently represented the Defense Department as part of the U.S. delegation to the 28th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), the global climate conference held this year in Dubai, UAE. Our delegation—the department’s second to COP in as many years—attended to discuss security implications of climate change and the energy transition.
Acknowledging the risks to national security posed by climate change isn’t new for DOD. The link between climate change and national security has been discussed in the Pentagon’s strategic guidance documents since the George H.W. Bush administration 30 years ago. But under the Biden Administration, the Department has sharpened its focus on this challenge—and with good reason.
DOD’s highest-level policy documents, the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS) and the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS), explicitly address the national-security threat posed by climate change. The NSS labels this as the “decisive decade” for action and calls the climate crisis “the existential challenge of our time,” for it puts at risk food and water supplies, public health, and infrastructure. The NDS describes how climate change transforms the context in which our military must operate, creates new geopolitical threats, and increases demands on the force while straining our bases, equipment, and readiness.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2023/12/why-defense-department-attended-cop28/392924/
