The military has embraced climate change with its usual blah, blah, blah — both that it is in charge and ready, but also that it’s planning for the future. On the surface, it might all seem like a grab at relevance and political correctness (which it is), but behind the scenes, the Pentagon is approaching the challenge as part of its ‘we have contingency plans for everything.’ In other words, nothing, not even the end of the world, is going to stand in our way of waging war.
Perusing the FY 2024 budget request to Congress, I noticed some meat on the bones, as the Pentagon seeks “technically-relevant and operationally precise scenarios to incorporate into CONPLANs and OPLANs and ISR requirements related to climate change.” In English, take climate change into consideration in future operations plans (OPLANs), concept plans (CONPLANs), and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). This research program seeks to create models and then scenarios of the impact of climate change — not stopping it — on instability that might cause wars.
The Pentagon is most interested in understanding the instabilities that might result from climate and environmental change, how “actors” from China to al Qaeda might exploit the future conditions. Most interestingly, in the minds of war planners, is “understanding the sociocultural tensions in a given theater as a result of perceptions of disproportionate climate and environmental change impact.” I read this to mean instabilities that might arise in the island nations or Africa with regard to the changing environment.
The initial work is taking place now (in fiscal year 2023) and includes, according to the budget:
• Development of data-driven, spatially explicit forecasts of where climate and environmental change risks and opportunities exist now and will occur in the near future, their types, and the dynamics within each;
• Understanding the sociocultural tensions in a given theater as a result of perceptions of disproportionate climate and environmental change impacts, including shifts in opportunities and challenges;
• How socioeconomic interdependence and burden sharing to manage climate and environmental change challenges may affect the roles and relationships of DoD alliances and those of our competitors;
• Assessments of the ability of state and non-state groups to organize, mobilize, strategize, govern, and gain advantage in the face of climate and environmental change and the locations of where this may occur due to pre-existing instabilities and/or other existing risk factors;
• How climate and environmental change may be leveraged by specific actors in power competition and the emergence of critical threats in contested regions;
• How climate and environmental change may impact, influence, and interact with other compounding risk factors, including social, political, and economic dynamics;
• The development of integrated tools and data products (e.g., data-driven scenarios, social-ecological systems models, remote and in-situ observations, statistical guidance) to forecast the emergence of physical phenomenon at relevant time and spatial scales in the context of their sociocultural settings; and
• Using the aforementioned research topics to rapidly establish an end-user product for decision support and potential early warnings of threats (through precise indicators) so as to guide planning and/or response before such threat impacts defense effectiveness.
For Fiscal Year 2024 (beginning October 1, 2023), further work includes:
• Physical scientists evaluate recent climate modeling at the regional level and select appropriate data inputs for use in social science modeling in areas of geopolitical importance;
• Physical scientists/forecasters use knowledge and skills to provide insights for weather-climate predictability over a 12 to 18-month period;
• Physical scientists/forecasters create software or products by which the hazard forecast is communicated and provided to social scientists, including a range of probabilities;
• Social scientists determine what types of weather-climate hazards over a 12 to 18-month period serve as proxy for instability/conflict in areas of interest;
• Social scientists use the physical science environmental output and indicator information to weigh the risks of compounding threats that are likely to emerge or have already emerged within a year to several years;
• Social scientists apply weights and/or determine severity of instability/conflict due to multiplicative compound threats within a year to several years;
• Social scientists provide analysis of possible scenarios on timescale and in areas of interest to end users with relative probabilities and degrees of severity to help inform which areas require immediate planning actions, which need heightened surveillance, and which do not need further action at the current time; and
• End users receive a data product(s) that aids in decision making by the results of this cycle.