The connection between climate and security is the focus of a new report entitled “National interdisciplinary climate risk assessment”, presented by leading German climate scientists, the country’s intelligence community, and military strategists.
In their first ever national climate risk estimate, these experts, with their diverse backgrounds, have come together to assess the climate risks for German and European national security, and global stability, based on the assumption that “we are already living in the climate crisis” (all quotes are taken from the report, if not stated otherwise).
The report’s experts all agree: the climate crisis constitutes an existential security threat. Their conclusion: Tackling the climate crisis is innately in our security interests. It means that “if we don’t cut emissions drastically now and global temperatures keep rising, it will literally be too hot for peace. More concretely: In a world with 2.7°C warming above the pre-industrial average, one third of the global population would live in regions too hot or too dry to survive by 2050.”
“Anyone thinking about security needs to think about climate as well.”
The head of the German intelligence service, or Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Dr Bruno Kahl, said: "The BND sees the consequences of climate change such as destabilisation and migration as one of the five major external threats to our country” [1].
For the authors of the report, the world will be a less secure place in 2040. They even see “the potential for political conflict within the EU”. For example, “land areas in the Mediterranean region in particular are warming 20% faster than the global average. This is resulting in a higher demand for water in this region, which already suffers from water shortages, while at the same time, owing to climate change, there is a decline in rainfall and an increase in wildfires.” There is no way round it, they highlight: Europe needs to be prepared for such evolving situations, as the climate crisis is already here, and as unequally distributed burdens could create tensions and may weaken the cohesion within the European Union.
Among the climate impacts that are increasing are the risk of large-scale crop failures, reinforcing existing resource scarcity and food insecurity, supply chain interruptions, as well as growing risks to human health, infrastructure and the economy.
Inequality might be exacerbated if no social compensation mechanisms are in place. Climate policy will only be successful if it is acceptable from a domestic policy perspective. At the same time, the authors of the report expect that “the climate crisis will worsen and absorb more and more political capital and financial resources”. In this context, “the cost of decarbonisation and its (perceived) unfair distribution are already fuelling climate sceptic positions and provide space for populism, right-wing and left-wing extremism, and disinformation campaigns”.
As part of Germany’s national security strategy, the Federal government commissioned the federal German intelligence service, or Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and leading scientific institutions with an analysis of the impact of the climate crisis on national security. For new perspectives, the BND teamed up with scientists from a number of renown institutions: the Metis Institute for Strategy and Foresight of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and adelphi research.
The report was presented in mid-February 2025. It outlines the risks to Germany’s national security resulting from climate change up until 2040.
The 68-page document – and its key statements – “deliberately reduce complexity and place emphasis on certain challenges”, which is designed to make reading more compelling.
For more information, visit the scrolling website of https://metis.unibw.de/nike, where a pdf file of the report can be found (in German and English).
The European Commission last year published a communication on managing climate risk in Europe (link below). It responded to the first ever European Climate Risk Assessment (second link below).
(Bridging the Preparedness Gap: Europe's Response to the Climate Crisis | UCP Knowledge Network).
Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks | European Environment Agency's home page.
[1] The other four major threats, according to Dr Kahl, are “an aggressively expansive Russia, China's global political ambitions, increasing cyber dangers, and international terrorism”.
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