DÉFENSE ZONE
In 2009, climate specialist Jean-Marc Jancovici estimated that a five-degree rise in the Earth’s average temperature could lead to a veritable “bloodbath”. Thirteen years later, almost all the world’s armed forces have built climate change into their defence strategy. As a source of destabilisation, climate change is upsetting the global geopolitical balance and exacerbating tensions. It is a “threat multiplier”, the Pentagon summed up in 2007. However, more and more official documents and research institute reports also point to the “structural threat” posed by climate change. Lack of resources, the risk of natural disasters and rising sea levels, to name just these three factors, have consequences at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. At the end of February 2022, Russian troops were marching on Kyiv along the old bed of the Irpin river when suddenly the water rose. The area quickly reverted to what it had looked like fifty years earlier: a vast, muddy marsh, which now stood between the Ukrainian capital and Putin’s army. This time, the flood was the work of a military strategist (who had the idea of blowing up a dam upstream). Tomorrow, this kind of strategic surprise could be caused by climate change. To take account of the changes to come, the Ministry of the Armed Forces and the Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) set up the Defence and Climate Observatory in 2016. Coordinated by Pascal Boniface’s research institute on behalf of the Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS) of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the work of the Defence and Climate Observatory led to the publication in April 2022 of France’s climate & defence strategy.
A “threat multiplier”
Climate change “is causing a rise in the level of potential conflict”, states a parliamentary report published in 2021. Territorial struggles, shortages of water and food, migration, rising waters… All factors that amplify tensions.
Access to water
Caused by human activity and aggravated by climate change, desertification is affecting many regions of the world...
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