In 2015, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) submitted a report to the United States Congress on a set of security risks facing the United States and her allies.\u00a0 The report was not centered around terror or cybersecurity threats, but instead discussed climate change.<\/p>\n
As stated in the report, DoD\u2019s strategy \u201cemphasizes three pillars: protect the homeland, build security globally, and project power and win decisively\u201d.\u00a0 DoD views climate change as a threat to its global security mission – a changing global climate serves as a threat multiplier<\/em> by exacerbating pre-existing threats to stability, such as low economic opportunity and failing institutions.\u00a0 DoD perceives Climate-Related Security Risks in four primary areas1<\/sup>: First, recurring weather events such as droughts, high temperatures, and flooding can reduce the productivity of local economies and create a strain on public health systems.\u00a0 Second, as these events become more extreme and frequent, DoD must commit more and more resources in support of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.\u00a0 Third, rising sea levels will damage ports, decrease the safety of navigation, and require military installations to be preventatively fortified, at cost.\u00a0 Fourth, the melting of Arctic ice will create increased human activity in the Arctic, leading to a higher possibility of maritime disasters, to which DoD must respond.\u00a0 All four axes of Climate-Related Security Risks impact DoD\u2019s supply chain by increasing the unpredictability of demand (process variability) of DoD readiness, with no possible buffers capable of absorbing these variations.\u00a0 This in turn increases the cost and complexity of supporting global DoD operations.<\/p>\n In response, DoD has taken mitigating actions in pursuit of three goals2<\/sup>: The first goal is to \u201cIdentify and assess the effects of climate change on the department\u201d.\u00a0 To this end, a tool was deployed in 2014 to assess the vulnerability of each DoD installation to climate change risks.\u00a0 The first wave of results from this assessment has been used to identify installations where a deeper evaluation of risk is needed.\u00a0 The second goal is to \u201cIntegrate climate change considerations across [DoD] and manage associated risks\u201d.\u00a0 In pursuit of this, DoD has sought to refine it\u2019s existing processes and reduce it’s supply chain\u2019s exposure to climate risk by increasing its strategic reserve (inventory) of critical components, modifying the maintenance plans of its weapons systems, and modifying transportation modes and routes.\u00a0 The third goal is to \u201cCollaborate with Internal and External Stakeholders on Climate Change Challenges\u201d.\u00a0 In addition to internal stakeholders such as the Coast Guard and other agencies, this also includes collaborating with Arctic Nations to ensure that the Arctic Circle remains peaceful as natural resources are made accessible by melting Arctic Ice, collaborating with foreign militaries to improve DoD\u2019s ability to adapt to climate threats, cooperating with our allies and global partners to enhance planning in the face of global climate threats, and collaborating with US State and local officials to integrate DoD\u2019s assets more effectively into responses to domestic extreme weather events.<\/p>\n In addition to the steps already taken, DoD should work to persuade members of both major US political parties, both inside and outside of Congress, of the relevance of a changing climate as a national security issue.\u00a0 The Current political dialogue around climate is so polarized among party lines that cooperation on issues of climate, even when National Security is concerned, becomes all but impossible.\u00a0 By creating a critical mass of thought leaders outside of Congress, DoD can leverage public opinion to apply pressure to Congress.\u00a0 This pressure can be combined with DoD\u2019s clear credibility on National Security issues to bring both parties to the table and foster a dialogue that will lead to the allocation of substantive Congressional funding.\u00a0 This funding can be used not only to mitigate the effects of climate change on DoD, but also to reduce DoD\u2019s contributions to a changing climate.\u00a0 This two-pronged approach will serve to increase strategic readiness in the short term, and proactively decrease the threat-multiplying effect of climate change in the long term.<\/p>\n DoD must answer key questions on this issue going forward: Will the mitigating actions taken be enough to prevent a changing global climate from crippling DoD\u2019s ability to respond to armed conflicts and international crises? What second and third order geopolitical effects of DoD\u2019s mitigation actions ought the United States and her Allies consider as the international footing around the issue of climate evolves?\u00a0 These and other key questions must be addressed by DoD in order to protect the strategic security concerns of the United States into the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n (751 words)<\/p>\n The United States Department of Defense considers climate change to be a National Security threat to the US and her allies, and is taking strategic steps to mitigate the effects of those risks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10189,"featured_media":26894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[3629,1777,1633],"class_list":["post-26748","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change-and-supply-chains","category-national-security","category-united-states","hck-taxonomy-organization-united-states-department-of-defense","hck-taxonomy-industry-public-administration","hck-taxonomy-country-united-states"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/assignment\/rc-tom-challenge-2017\/","yoast_head":"\nEndnotes<\/h1>\n
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