INSIGHTS

 

 

How is climate change redefining security narratives? Listen to Jason Mitchell discuss with General Tom Middendorp, former Chief of Defence for the Netherlands and author of Climate General, about what’s at stake when we talk about climate security; how the defence sector is evolving to address climate risk, from net zero paths to disaster relief missions; and why the military’s level of readiness, resilience and redundancy offers compelling lessons for how to tackle climate change.

Recording date: 20 March 2023

General Tom Middendorp

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp was the Chief of Defence for the Netherlands from 2012 to 2017 in a military career spanning 38 years, and the author of a new book, Climate General. He commanded soldiers on all levels, led a large multinational taskforce in the south of Afghanistan and was involved in over twenty different military missions as the Director of Operations. As the Chief of Defence for the Netherlands, General Middendorp led the Defence organisation through an intense period of transition and international cooperation. He joined the Clingendael Institute as a Senior Research Associate and is Chairman of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. He is also the Netherlands’ Special Envoy on European Defence Cooperation and a Senior Advisor in the areas of security, defence and strategic leadership.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcription was generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers and may contain errors. As a part of this process, this transcript has also been edited for clarity.

Jason Mitchell:

Welcome to the podcast, General Tom Middendorp. It’s great to have you here, and thank you for taking the time today.

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, thank you for inviting me, and I’m looking forward to the discussion.

Jason Mitchell:

Excellent. So am I. I’d like to start off with the book that you recently published, titled Climate General. It obviously came out in the Netherlands and we are eagerly awaiting for it in the English version, but can you lift the text off that book to summarize its thesis around climate security?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, I wrote that book to show the nexus between climate and security to a broader public, using many, many examples from personal experience and experiences from others. And the first half of the book is about how climate change is already affecting our security environment from different angles. And the key message there is climate change acts as a risk multiplier and that makes climate change also a matter of national security.

And the second half of the book is about solutions and about hope and perspective. It shows how the security sector has a role to play as part of a wider whole of government effort. It also showed what kind of roles that can be, how climate change, sorry, how the security sector can support forecasting early warning and can help security proof climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Jason Mitchell:

And from your experience seeing this in action, what is really at stake when we talk about climate security?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, I think I increasingly became aware that climate change is probably the biggest game changer of this century. It not only affects our ecology, it also affects our economies and our security. And we need to see this in the context of two other game changers, and one is the increasing gap between demand and supply. We have resource scarcity on the one hand, that’s only increasing, and we have population growth on the other hand. So demand is going up, supply’s going down, which creates geopolitical competition, and climate change kind of widens that gap.

And the third trend for this century is the geopolitical side, where we move from a globalizing world to a fragmenting world, making it harder and harder to come to global solutions. And these three global trends interact with each other and climate change acts as a risk multiplier, fueling many of the already existing risks and sometimes even working as a root cause of conflict. And it’s good to see that this recognition is now being established and is growing, that climate change can indeed pose a significant national security threat.

Jason Mitchell:

Do you mind for a second, can we go back in time? And I’m just wondering when the notion of climate security first entered your vocabulary, when you were chief of defense for the Netherlands, and can you trace it back how it’s emerged to represent the phrase you said, a risk or threat multiplier?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, I think when I go back in time, and at that moment I didn’t make that link with climate change, but the first real connection is in Afghanistan, where I saw how water scarcity created all kinds of frictions in the village. We had a village where we had been fighting for days to get the Taliban out of that village, and in the end we succeeded, but the Taliban could return any moment because the frictions in that village remained.

And it took us a while to find out that these frictions were all about water scarcity and access to water. They just couldn’t agree on who had access to what part of the water. And once we recognized that problem and negotiated a solution, these tensions disappeared and the Taliban could not return anymore. So for me at that moment, it became obvious that we need to look further than just the threat angle. We also need to look at what drives the insecurity in this region.

And I saw the same thing happening in Somalia, where we were fighting the piracy. Also here, we were fighting poor farmers and fishermen who had been driven away from their homelands and the fishing grounds because of climate change. So also there we were fighting symptoms, instead of addressing the root causes. And that’s where I think the first connections were made. But I made a connection with climate change later in my career, when I was chief of defense and was looking at the future of defense. So how should our future force, what should it look like? And here we define several drivers of change for our future force, and one of them was climate change. So it took me a while to really recognize the importance of that nexus.

Jason Mitchell:

So it seems like there’s certainly a linkage between sustainability and climate change and addressing security challenges, but national security and climate action are generally thought of as issues at polar opposite or at opposite ends of the political spectrum. How is this paradigm evolving over the years in your experience, and to what degree does tension still exist?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, it certainly still exists because we come from different worlds, that climate change in the military has never been seen as a military issue, and security, the security dimension of climate change, has never been recognized by the people dealing with climate change. So we come from very different worlds, we talk different languages, and we still find it hard to recognize and appreciate the nexus. But it is changing.

And I think when you look at the linkages, and I look at it from a security side, promoting sustainability can really help address security challenges, as I expressed in the example from Afghanistan I gave. Promoting sustainability can help prevent resource scarcity, can help reduce the impacts of climate change, and can bring more economic and social stability in a region, thereby reducing the risks of conflicts over shortages of resources.

But sustainability also has another link. Sustainability can also help the military become more effective. By using green technologies to become more self-sufficient, military forces can reduce the enormous logistical support they need, the footprint they have in conflict areas, but also can also enhance their operational endurance. So I think there is a lot of win-win here that we should further develop.

Jason Mitchell:

Yeah, I do wonder how the security community has reacted to climate change in a formal sense. Because when I think of militaries, I think sort of by definition militaries are built around resilience, readiness, redundancy. And so to what degree is climate security already an embedded capability of sorts, although it might not be called that, that flies underneath the radar under different language, like again, resilience or an awareness to risk multipliers?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, the security sector, it took quite a while to react to climate change. They’re quite slow, because it was too far away and out of scope and out of their comfort zone. But over time it increasingly became recognized, but it was already in 2007 that the UN Security Council passed a resolution acknowledging that climate change has an implication on international peace and security. And since then numerous studies and reports, also from military and intelligence organizations, have highlighted the nexus.

But still, it took a very, very long time to really appreciate this and translate that into policies and into what can we do about it. And there is a big difference between militaries in how they pick that up. Many countries have begun to incorporate climate considerations in the defense strategies, but there are also many countries who have completely ignored the relation. A good example is the US, where the Department of Defense has identified climate change as a significant threat to national security and has developed a climate change adaptation roadmap.

And also similarly in the UK, DOD has identified climate change as a major security threat. So in several countries this recognition is now underway, but they’re all struggling in how to put that into practice and how to walk that talk. But also NATO has realized the relevance of climate change for their future and has taken steps to develop strategies and policies on this that are indeed per definition built around [inaudible 00:12:10].

And every military operational analysis starts with an analysis of the impact of weather and terrain. Historically, we have learned to operate in different climate conditions, and we learned to value the impact that climate and terrain has on our possibilities, but also that it can bring a lot of restrictions in the way we operate. So our climate security may not always be explicitly referred to as such. Many military organizations have already embedded climate related capabilities in their operations and strategies.

In the Netherlands, for instance, the North Sea, the sea is our oldest friend, but also our oldest enemy. We have learned to defend our country against its dangers, and we have several civil military arrangements in place to provide military support in case of natural disasters, to help protect our vital infrastructure or to evacuate people from regions that are being threatened by floodings.

And also in the Caribbean area, many countries, like the UK, France, Netherlands, have contingency plans and conduct training exercises to prepare for extreme weather events or other climate related disasters. So there are many examples that it already exists, but there is still a long way to go.

Jason Mitchell:

Thank you, General, for that. I’m curious, what in your experience differentiates or distinguishes one country or state from another in terms of their receptiveness to climate security? Is it a cultural issue, is it a leadership issue, or as you mentioned, with exposure to the ocean, is it an environmental factor?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, for some countries it’s their history that they have felt the impact of climate, that they sooner understand the relevance of it, like the example I gave from my own country. In general, I think you see the western countries, the more Western member states also within NATO, adopt this relevance easier and more quick than the more Eastern member states who have other priorities on the mind. They really look at NATO as a security organization, providing security for them against the threat from the East. And climate change is of a much lower priority to them in general.

And I have to be cautious generalizing too much. But I do think I see the tide changing and I see that more and more countries are picking this up, and the fact that now NATO is embracing this topic and has set a goal that all countries agreed on, to move to net zero, only shows that we are in a stage of transition.

Jason Mitchell:

Indeed. I wanted to dig deeper into some of the examples around climate change impacting your own security environment over the course of your military career, particularly in countries like Afghanistan and Somalia. How do you go about problem solving these issues? What were the outcomes?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, I think if you look at the problems that climate change poses, these are certainly not military problems, but they do have military impacts. They do have security impacts that the military has to deal with. Addressing those, the climate issues, demands a much wider effort. It demands efforts of almost all departments in a country. It demands a whole of government approach, of which the military is a part. We can play a supporting role in those wider efforts, but it requires large scale adaptation programs in especially the fragile regions. And these programs are not run by the military, but these programs do depend upon security. If there is no security, these programs will fail.

So you have to take into account the security dimension of the adaptation programs that you want to run in an area, and that requires the expertise that the military can bring to the table, that the military can also support in the wider forecasting and early warning efforts. If we want to understand what we are facing in relation to climate change, we really need to improve our forecasting, and the military can help to forecast the security implications of that change. So it’s always part of a wider effort and we are in a kind of supporting role in that wider effort.

Jason Mitchell:

Are there any parallels or lessons from the Russia-Ukraine conflict today, from a climate and security perspective? I’m thinking of issues like food security, for instance.

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, most of these effects we now witness in Ukraine are kind of indirect effects of a conflict. But of course there are some direct effects if the whole country is being, well, partly destroyed. Of course the impact on climate is quite negative and the pollution that comes out of it is huge. But that’s of course of a lower priority than the conflict itself.

But the indirect effects are interesting, and let me mention a few of them. First of all, this winter period in Ukraine, we saw that the cold weather conditions and the terrain didn’t allow military units to maneuver. They got tied down in kind of a trench warfare, and that’s a direct impact of the climate in that region. An indirect impact is of course how it affected food supply in the world, and food security, as you mentioned. Ukraine and Russia together are one of the main providers of grain in the world.

And if this supply chain is being disrupted as we saw happening during the last year, it has impacts on most continents in the world, and especially in Africa, these fragile countries are very susceptible to these kind of impacts. Only a few percent increase in costs is almost unaffordable for many of the people living there and will create more tensions.

Another effect we saw is that also dependencies on scarce resources can become a weapon in a conflict. And I think the Nord Stream pipeline is a good example of that. We depend upon, we depended upon Russian fossil fuels, and Russia used that as an instrument of power, creating an energy crisis in Europe. So as a result, the crisis boosted all over Europe, but it also boosted the energy transition effort in many countries, to speed up the process of becoming more energy independent. So there are many direct and indirect effects, although this whole conflict is of course not about climate.

Jason Mitchell:

That’s so interesting. I was going to say many in the security community point to this ring of instability around Europe. I’ve heard you talk about it in another form. It’s namely less politically stable regions like the Middle East and North Africa. How in your experience has climate security played a role in shaping these regional outcomes?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, these regions are especially vulnerable. And I called [inaudible 00:20:13] the Sahel region, I call the canary in the coal mine, because what we see happening there is what will also happen in other regions of the world. They are ahead of the rest and they are kind of an indicator of what we can expect.

And overall, what we see happening as a result of climate change is that we are being faced with longer periods, longer periods of droughts and increased temperatures, and shorter periods of increased and very intense rainfall, immediately resulting in floodings. I experienced that myself in Afghanistan, where in the springtime you had a few weeks of rainfall and melting water coming from the mountains creating enormous floodings. And a few weeks later, it was completely dry and there was a water shortage.

And this effect, it becomes more extreme, the differences, is an effect that we will witness all over the world. And the [inaudible 00:21:15] regions, many of these effects come together and they form kind of a toxic mixture of developments. These are already fragile regions, which means that they have limited economic power. Poor governance institutions often are confronted with internal, tribal, ethical, or religious tensions that are already there. So they are already on the edge of turning into a conflict area. These countries are also facing the largest population increase in the world. Percentage wise, the largest population increase will be in Africa and the Middle East. And at the same time, they are being hit hardest by the effects of climate change.

And that all comes together in these countries, which means that we can only expect these countries to suffer under the consequences, and that there is a big risk, an increased risk of these tensions turning into conflicts. And we already call it, as you said, the ring of instability around Europe. So I think we can only expect more instability coming from that region. That only makes it more important from a climate security perspective to help address the underlying root causes of those conflicts, to help those countries become more resilient against these changes. And I think that also NATO and the EU can and should play a role in there.

Jason Mitchell:

From an international relations perspective, we’re transitioning from a bipolar Cold War world to a multipolar world. How do you see climate security complicating the move towards multipolarity? What other rings of instability does climate security potentially activate? I’m thinking specifically the tensions around water security we’ve seen between India and China, for instance.

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, I think it will have many effects. Of course, we come from a globalizing world and in a globalizing world we were doing business with each other, but that also created all kinds of dependencies. And we now see a movement towards a more fragmenting world, which means that it can easily result in more geopolitical competition, especially around areas of scarcity.

And as I explained before, we are facing an increasing range of scarcities, moving from water to food to all kinds of rare minerals, and access to those resources will result in more competition, especially in a fragmenting world. So I’m afraid that this fragmentation will only fuel the possibilities of conflicts. And I’m also afraid that those countries who possess those rare minerals or scarce resources, that they could become the future battlegrounds of larger powers competing over access. So that’s kind of a troubling perspective.

And we also see other rings of instability appearing. For instance, in South Asia, if you look at the water supply, South Asia, almost all of the rivers from Pakistan to Korea come from the Tibetan Plateau, and the Tibetan Plateau, the Himalayan mountains are completely Chinese territory and China is building hundreds of dams in that region. They already have a lot of dams, but they have plans for an additional hundred dams to build there, which means that in the future, China kind of controls the flow of water to all those countries in South Asia, which of course can become an enormous instrument of power in that region. And that’s just one effect.

Another effect there is that also this ice is melting. The mass of snow on the Himalayan mountain is also decreasing, which means that water supply is at stake, water security is at stake in a more distant future, and this region is being confronted with a lot of flooding risks as a result of sea level rise and intensifying monsoon rains. And most of the megacities in the world are located in South Asia, along the coastlines and along the rivers.

So just imagine the impact of all these factors in that region and how that could destabilize a complete region in the future. So I’m quite concerned about how that will evolve. And for us, that’s also important because these are also the low wage countries where most of our products are being produced, which means that we can expect enormous disruptions in our supply systems.

Jason Mitchell:

General, you’ve made it clear that there’s a tremendous amount at stake. In the climate change world, there’s often the saying, “Global problems need global solutions.” In your experience, what does that mean from a defense perspective? How do we build towards more multilateral solutions around the problems that you’re describing?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, that will be very hard. Although I do hope that we can find commonalities, and I really urge everybody to do that. If the world is fragmenting into all kinds of power blocks, and if these power blocks don’t talk with each other anymore, they will only increase each other’s problems. So I think we should look at the win-win situations. We should agree to disagree. There are certain themes that we can argue about, that we can fight about, but there are also themes that are very common and that we all face that should unite us.

And climate change is one of these worldwide effects that affect everybody on what side you are. It doesn’t depend on what side you are. So this topic could be a topic or could become a topic where we could be united globally. So I hope we can make that distinction and build multilateral mechanisms around those topics that we all face, that we can easily agree on, so that we can disagree on other topics without affecting the need and the possibilities to address the more common issues.

Jason Mitchell:

Yeah, well said. I think we do need a lot more commonality. I guess in that perspective, I wanted to, I’d be curious to hear how you have tried to bridge a divide between climate security being received in the military potentially with some skepticism. On the other hand, I’ve heard you talk about how environmental NGOs have thought that you were quote securitizing climate change, and obviously politicians who were expressing surprise about a general addressing this. How have you managed to reconcile a lot of different perspectives from different stakeholders?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, in the beginning it was not easy because I was the first active serving general or chief of defense who addressed this publicly, who recognized the nexus and made that be heard publicly in the Halifax Conference in Canada, but also in the Planetary Security Conference in the Netherlands. And that created a lot of fuss, to be honest, especially in my own country. I could always say that hell broke loose.

We had big media headlines about the chief of defense predicting climate wars. We had politicians being shocked to hear a general talk about the importance of a left wing topic like climate change. We had environmental groups accusing me of hijacking and securitizing their topic in an effort to increase the defense budget. And it was the first time ever I went viral on social media. So it was a big shock for everybody.

Now what’s interesting here is that that shock disappeared within a few weeks because the fact checkers went over it, and yeah, they just couldn’t find a hole in it. And what’s also interesting is that it hardly gave any discussion within the military because the soldiers, they recognized the examples I gave because they also witnessed the impact of climate in the conflicts that they were involved in. So the discussion was especially outside defense, and it was kind of a first shock, maybe also because it was the election period and it kind of fueled the oppositions in our political system.

But what I found out is that by bringing this story from a security angle, other people start listening. What I think is very helpful, if you bring this from an economic perspective or from a security perspective or societal perspective, is that you can bridge that gap between the environmental groups and the rest of the community. And I think that’s what needs to be done. We need to depoliticize the topic. This topic is a game changer, and whether you are left or right, whatever political party you’re in, this will affect your future and the future of your voters. So let’s not make this a political issue, but let’s be united in addressing this.

Jason Mitchell:

That’s so interesting. Do you think, General, that one way in might be more visibility about the constructive role that militaries are playing in addressing climate change, the civilian military cooperation in areas like disaster relief? There have been recent examples of the Mexican Air Force seeding clouds with silver iodide and acetone to [inaudible 00:31:55] rainfall during a drought, the Swiss army airlifting water to livestock during a heat wave, in more than 10 European countries, militaries responding to the wildfires across Europe a number of years ago.

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, I think it’s important that the military shows at its value, that we can help understand the security effects of climate change. We can support forecasting, as I said earlier. We can help increase conflict sensitivity in adaptation planning and adaptation efforts. We can help build resilience in those fragile regions as part of wider climate security efforts. We can help reduce ecological footprints. We can act as a platform for green innovation that can also help our operational effectiveness, and we can support responders to severe weather incidents, as you mentioned.

So there are many, many roles we can play. And by demonstrating that, I think the gap between the military and other environmental players will disappear. Although I’ve already seen a discussion fading away. I’ve been involved in St. Martin in the Caribbean, where a hurricane wiped almost all of the infrastructure in that island away. And one half of that island is Dutch, the other half is French.

And we were kind of looking, okay, what can we do to help? The civil responders are per definition not adequate to deal with such a dimension of a disaster. They are also affected by it. So they need external help, and there is only one institution that can really help, and that’s the military. And so it makes it important for the military, I think, to further professionalize humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations that we are now doing in a more or less improvised way. But if we are being confronted with these disasters more frequently, and if they become more intense, then I think this task will only increase in importance.

Another example are the floodings in the Netherlands, which we are still confronted with regularly. And over time, we developed mechanisms for civil military corporation. So at this moment, we have a long list of capabilities, military capabilities, that can support civil authorities in addressing disasters like floodings within hours and days. And these arrangements make it very easy to cooperate. In all the regions in the Netherlands, we have military advisors connected to the civil authorities to advise them on the role that the military can play once they’re confronted with a disaster. And these kind of mechanisms are very, very helpful to not only understand from each other what we can bring to the table, but also to bridge that gap very rapidly.

So to me, it’s very important that we also from a military perspective, that we professionalize the help that we can offer, but also that we build regional mechanisms, civil military mechanisms to make that easier. Like we have in the Netherlands, we should also have such a mechanism, for instance, in the Caribbean, France, Netherlands, UK, US, they were all looking through their own straw to provide help to that disaster area. If we had that pre-planned and had made kind of a divisions in labor in advance, then I think we would’ve been much more effective in doing it. So also there, I think a further professionalization is needed.

Jason Mitchell:

You had mentioned net zero before. In my mind, the defense sector likely faces probably less pressure to decarbonize relative to global commitments to hit net zero. Do you see that changing? How can the defense sector contribute towards climate mitigation efforts without affecting effectively the readiness?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, there is a tension there. And especially now during the Ukraine crisis, everybody understands that defense serves a higher purpose and that their effectiveness is crucial. So you don’t want to force defense into all kinds of mitigation efforts that negatively affects their combat effectiveness. But that doesn’t mean that defense can be excluded. The defense is the largest polluter in any country. There’s no company polluting more than defense. We also are responsible for more than for 50% of all government emissions in any country.

So I think defense also has a responsibility to take, and I believe that many parts of the military can make that transition to net zero without operational effects. If you look at all the barracks, all the civil equipment that we have, all the peacetime equipment that we have, we can easily make that completely energy neutral or carbon neutral without hampering any operational effectiveness.

But also here, we see the world around us changing. The whole automotive industry is moving to electrification, and the more heavy trucks will follow within five years after that, and the shipping is also following. So there is an enormous transition going on in the civil environment around this. And all these technologies can also be used within the military. It’s dual use. And so I think we can smartly use the enormous efforts that are now ongoing in the civil sector to also make a transition in the operational domain.

And we can also use these green technologies to improve our operational effectiveness. If you can become more energy neutral, for instance, emission areas, we don’t have these enormous supply convoys of fuel trucks moving through thousands of miles of very dangerous terrains, asking for a lot of protection, a lot of risks involved, a lot of costs involved. So it can help us to reduce our logistical footprint, thereby reducing costs and reducing risks.

And furthermore, electrification or hydrogen fuels can help us to change the signature of our capabilities. They become more silent. They don’t have any known heat signature, and that also has an operational benefit. So I think that the military should be very open-minded when looking at green technologies and looking at mitigation, and they should regard it as an opportunity to use this transition also in their advantage.

Jason Mitchell:

So it sounds like there are some pretty pragmatic ways to decarbonize the military, but if you were to look at NATO specifically, NATO’s made a commitment to achieve net zero by 2050, which means cutting its emissions by 45% by 2030. What kind of challenges does this pose for NATO, particularly considering its proximity to the Russia-Ukraine conflict now? How does NATO balance decarbonization with obviously its primary goal of safeguarding members’ freedoms?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, it’s a difficult question, but first of all, I’m very pleased to see NATO recognizing the climate security nexus and taking action on it. So I think that’s a very, very good move within NATO. I do want to downplay the goal of it because this net zero target of NATO is related to NATO owned facilities and capabilities, which is only a small part of the whole of NATO, because the defense organizations are no NATO assets. Defense organizations are national assets, and this goal is not about what all the nations will do. This goal is about what NATO will do with its own assets and its own infrastructure.

So it’s not as big as it sounds, but still, I think it’s a good step forward. And I think also that NATO, and they’re already doing it, needs to seek cooperation with the private sector in looking at what kind of win-win solutions we can find on the area of green innovations. There are many best practices available, and we can learn from them.

And the other way around, NATO can serve as a kind of an innovation platform for developing these innovations. For instance, NATO puts a lot of money in research and development of future naval vessels and future military capabilities. If we build in sustainability targets into that research and development, we can be that platform for innovation of technologies that also have a wide civil use.

So to me it’s a two-way street, but overall, I think it’s important for NATO to further build knowledge and understanding. And they are doing that by establishing a center of excellence within NATO on climate and security, also by creating all kinds of exchange mechanisms within NATO, between member states, to exchange best practices, et cetera. And they are developing a measuring and reporting system on emissions, which can further help to tailor and target future goals on emission reductions.

Jason Mitchell:

I want to change lanes a little bit. Climate change has the potential to completely reshape geopolitics around the Arctic, from commercial trade routes and resource development to international security concerns, particularly for the northern border of the NATO alliance. How do you see economic interests relative to military interests aligning going forward?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

The Arctic is going through an enormous change. Within 10 years, we don’t have an Arctic anymore. It’s an open area possessed by many countries, which also opens up access to those resources. So what we see, looking at it from a security perspective, is a new arena opening up. We see China, Russia, US, several European countries all claiming access to those resources, which of course also brings not only an economic potential to the table, but also a security dimension. This can easily result in all kinds of frictions and competition. So here, economic interests and military interests go hand in hand.

At the same time, opening up this area also opens up northern trading routes. Although if you look at the lines of communication to Europe, from for instance China and South Asia, they all have to go through the Suez Canal. And with the north opening up, we can open a new supply route that is much shorter, which is operational or economically very beneficial. But to a large part, it is through Russia territory. So also the trade routes that can go through big harbors in Europe, like [inaudible 00:43:36] Harbor in my own country, can bring security issues with it if we depend too much on it. Now, Russia can also use that route as a tool to put influence on the European table.

Furthermore, opening these routes also opens them for military convoys and military navies. And for Russia, it’s a completely new opportunity to build a large naval base in the north that can access the oceans more easily. At this moment, they largely depend upon the Black Sea and have to go through Turkey to access the Mediterranean, and through the Mediterranean to access the oceans. So for Russia, this is a huge opportunity to further develop their naval power.

Jason Mitchell:

So it sounds like an ice free Arctic potentially means it’s going to get much more crowded militarily and have the potential to be much more prone to confrontations. What does it mean for multilateral efforts? We’ve got the Arctic Council, which includes Canada, the US, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. But this has generally addressed regional climate effects for the last two decades in a way that is commercial. It hasn’t really touched military security issues. Do you think there could ever be a need for an Arctic version of NATO?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Well, that would be a one-sided approach. I really hope that we can evolve the Arctic Council in a way that they can keep the region stable and that we do not have to make this kind of a NATO issue. Of course, NATO will have to adapt, especially when the whole Russian fleet is realigning itself in the north. NATO will have to adapt to that. So the Arctic region does become of more strategic importance to NATO.

But at the same time, I hope that stability in the region does not depend on NATO because that would only fuel the fragmentation that’s already there. I really hope that the Arctic Council can further build its multilateral institution to also address the new emerging potential tensions in that region.

Jason Mitchell:

My final question is this. There’s a high correlation between countries most vulnerable to climate change and those experiencing violence, sadly, yet developed countries have not really fulfilled their pledge to mobilize the 100 billion of funding per year for climate action to developing countries, regions that are, again, most impacted by climate change. How would you frame the discussion with developed countries’ governments to leverage the security risks, risks that we just talked about posed by climate change, to increase the ambition around climate finance?

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Yeah, I think it would be important to recognize adaptation as a tool for conflict prevention. If these countries can adapt to climate change, that would prevent them from falling apart, from turning into conflict areas. It would prevent migration flows from occurring. The World Bank expects hundreds of millions of people having to move away from their areas if we don’t build that resilience. It would prevent them from becoming free havens for extremists and organized crime organizations.

So adaptation is a tool for conflict prevention and stability, but we do have to do it in a conflict sensitive way, or else we run the risk that through adaptation we only increase the tensions. If there is more money in the region, it can also create more tensions in the region and can also fuel those tensions. So it has to be done in a smart way, which means including the security dimension and making your adaptation plans more security proof.

In that regard, I cooperate with the Global Center of Adaptation, who are developing a billion dollar plan for all these regions. And they recognize that. They recognize that there is no adaptation without security, but at the same time, there is no security without adaptation. And this linkage is now being more and more accepted, which makes it easier to come up with more robust adaptation plans that are also aimed at avoiding unnecessary conflicts from occurring.

But we do need to see that adaptation has long been seen as a sign of weakness. Some saw adaptation as a signal that we would resign, that we would give up mitigation efforts, that mitigation, we would accept mitigation as a failure option, which is not the case. We have to mitigate as much as possible to minimize the effects of climate change. But at the same time, we do need to realize, as the IPCC told us, that we are passing tipping points and that there is some change that we cannot unchange, that will happen and that we will be faced with. So we also need to adapt, and that’s being more and more recognized and I do see the funding improving now for the adaptation side.

Jason Mitchell:

That’s a really good way to end the conversation. So it’s been fascinating to discuss what’s at stake when we talk about climate security, how the defense sector is evolving to address climate risk, from net zero commitments to disaster relief missions, and why the military’s level of readiness, resilience, and redundancy offers compelling lessons for how to tackle climate change.

So I’d really like to thank you for your time and insights. I’m Jason Mitchell, head of Responsible Investment Research at Man Group, here today with General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp, chairman of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. Many thanks for joining us on a sustainable future, and I hope you’ll join us on our next podcast episode. Thank you so much, General. This was a great conversation.

General (Ret.) Tom Middendorp:

Oh, you’re welcome. I enjoyed it.

Jason Mitchell:

I’m Jason Mitchell. Thanks for joining us. Special thanks to our guests, and of course everyone that helped produce this show. To check out more episodes of this podcast, please visit us at man.com/ri-podcast.

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