One sector of the global economy is conspicuously absent from countries’ efforts in developing a plan to halt climate change: the world’s militaries. War and climate change are often discussed as separate crises, but they are deeply interconnected. The military is one of the world’s largest institutional emitters of greenhouse gases, yet its role in global carbon emissions is rarely scrutinized. This is because the United Nations do not require members of the Paris climate agreement to report the carbon emissions from their armies. It’s up to individual governments to decide whether their armed forces must decarbonize. So in order to put serious efforts in tackling climate change, we must address the environmental impact of armed conflicts and military operations.
The military’s carbon footprint is incredibly high if we consider that military vehicles, aircraft, and naval fleets run on oil-intensive fuels, and global military exercises require vast energy resources: also, it has to be considered the CO2 emissions from the construction of military bases and the disposal of weapons infrastructures. Part of the problem is that voluntary reports often limit their estimates to only emissions from military bases or fuel use from equipment. They tend to leave out emissions associated with military supply chains and the global weapons industry, which most likely account for a large portion of any given nation’s military carbon footprint.
The emissions of military bases and their missions are part of the concern of the international community: the use of bombs and similar weapons hits without distinction cities, forests, water supplies, and alter in the long-term the ecosystem. Pollution of water, of air, of land, and increase desertification of the soil, those are all consequences of military operations.
U.S. military emissions are the largest globally, rivalling the entire annual carbon output of some smaller nations, like Norway or Sweden, considering both military operations and the maintenance of more than 700 U.S. military bases worldwide. Considering the US’s continuous affirmation of its fight against climate change, it should lead by example and implement a project of green technology, such as introducing biofuel, to revolutionize the military and cut global emissions.
The biggest issue still relies on the lack of enforcement mechanisms of the Paris Agreement: voluntary things are hardly made by countries’ representatives: until it becomes mandatory, data and reports are only estimations of the actual contribution of military in climate change. Despite the lack of a binding agreement of the UN, some organizations have started working on their own military emissions trackers. The Military Emissions Gap project, for example, is a partnership between the Conflict and Environment Observatory and the British consortium Concrete Impacts. It analyses the emissions data that countries voluntarily submitted to the UN, and attempts to compare it with independent estimates of their actual emissions to identify gaps or missing information.
Addressing the carbon footprint of war is not an optional component of climate action, it is a necessity. The military must be held accountable for its role in emissions and be required to participate in global climate solutions, being inserted by de facto in the global agenda. The decarbonization of military operations, shifting investments toward green technology, and cuts to the capital spent in military equipment to be ready for a climate-induced war, instead of preventing it, are all necessary changes global countries need to implement, sooner than later.
Resource:
- Harvey C., E&E News (2024) Warfare’s Climate Emissions Are Huge but Uncounted, published by Scientific American, available at: Warfare’s Climate Emissions Are Huge but Uncounted | Scientific American
By The European Institute for International Relations
