Somali maritime police are training to deal with oil spills somewhere in the Horn of Africa. Local prosecutors and NATO-affiliated personnel are inspecting industrial waste sites in Kosovo. EU advisors are assisting security forces in the Central African Republic in their efforts to combat illicit timber trafficking. These aren’t the kinds of operations that make headlines, and most people don’t associate defense with these kinds of operations. However, they are starting to play a larger role in defense, and this change is happening more quickly than the industry is willing to acknowledge.
For years, the term “climate security threat” has been used frequently enough in policy circles to lose its urgency and come across as bureaucratic. However, the current situation feels different. The first global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius was reached in 2024. In just Europe, the European Environment Agency identified 36 climate risks that could have serious repercussions. Over 55 million people worldwide were impacted by record droughts. These are no longer projections. These are the circumstances in which defense contractors, armies, and security forces are required to operate and make plans.
Historically, the defense sector’s response to climate change has been, at best, awkward. For military clients, safety, dependability, and raw performance have always been the top priorities; environmental factors have been at the bottom of the list. In a thorough analysis of the industry, Boston Consulting Group found that defense contractors have hardly started to address the 90 to 95 percent of their emissions that are not under direct operational control—that is, the gases that are embedded in supply chains and in the products themselves after they are sold and deployed. It’s possible that the industry is more aware of the scope of the issue than it is disclosing to the public, and that the speed of response is a reflection of actual technical difficulty rather than apathy. Decarbonizing military jet engines and naval propulsion systems is a real challenge. However, the pressure to close the emissions gap between the defense industry and other heavy industries is growing and is no longer limited to environmental advocates.
Corporate mission statements don’t fully account for the fact that investors are now paying close attention, which alters the calculation. By 2050, the 128 members of the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, who together oversee assets valued at approximately $43 trillion, have pledged to achieve net-zero portfolio emissions. Defense contractors are affected by this type of institutional weight, which eventually affects their ability to bid on contracts as well as their stock valuations and cost of capital. In the words of former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “no country can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis.” A sustainability report does not use such language. Operational doctrine is that.
The variety of missions that the climate-security convergence is producing is what makes it so fascinating—and somewhat unsettling. Conflicts motivated by the environment, such as disputes over access to water, arable land, fisheries, and forest resources, are drawing defense planners to mission profiles that would have seemed out of the ordinary ten years ago. Environmental advisors from Somalia to Ukraine are now integrated into EU crisis management missions. In Ghana, mediators backed by the EU have assisted in mediating disputes between farmers and herders over land access during seasonal migrations. These are not hypothetical geopolitical situations. These are real-world conflicts that are shaped by soil degradation and rainfall patterns.
Observing all of this, there’s a sense that the defense sector is navigating a true identity shift, one that the most adaptable contractors are viewing as a business opportunity while others are still holding out hope that it will work itself out. Safran has mandated that all of its business units treat emissions as a cost by implementing internal carbon pricing. Fuel-efficient aircraft technologies are being developed by BAE Systems. Several companies have been recruited by the US Army to investigate electric and hybrid tactical vehicles. The conflict between lowering emissions and preserving firepower is still unresolved in a practical sense, and none of this approaches a complete solution. When they disagree, combat effectiveness still prevails.
Given that R&D and deployment cycles in the defense sector frequently take decades, it is still unclear if the sector can actually decarbonize at the scale and pace that climate projections indicate is required. However, the more pressing question might be more straightforward: can businesses that disregard the link between conflict and environmental degradation continue to be relevant to clients who are already making plans around it? According to the data, windows are closing more quickly than most contractors anticipated.