PARIS — Air force planes and helicopters are unable to take off due to rising temperatures, and naval ships are slowed by the build-up of microorganisms on their hulls caused by warming oceans.These are no longer science-fiction scenarios; the consequences of climate change will not spare military activities, and the stakes are high.
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“The normal functioning of equipment is disturbed, and the psychological capacities of soldiers are pushed to their limits,” says France’s Armed Forces General Staff.
If global temperatures rise by 3° C between now and 2100, greater water evaporation will increase the risk of icing for drones and small helicopters. In the oceans, this warming could transform the way waves propagate underwater, making it more difficult for soldiers to detect enemy submarines.
A wake-up call
Armed forces face the challenge of adapting their infrastructures and equipment to extreme temperatures, rising sea levels and the increasing number of natural disasters. Their awareness of this challenge dates back several years.
On September 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma swept across Saint Martin in the West Indies. With winds of more than 320 km/h (198 mph), Irma not only wrecked cars and tore off roofs but also killed 11 people and damaged 95% of the island’s buildings, becoming the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.
This memorable storm sent a wake-up call to France’s Armed Forces. Hampered by the violence of increasingly frequent extreme weather events, military operations must now adapt to climate change. Once relegated to the background, environmental security is now a priority in military policy. It has even become a strategic issue in the West.
Climate change is a risk amplifier, a catalyst for chaos.
In April 2022, France became the first European country to publish a “climate and defense” strategy, following in the footsteps of the United States, which had presented a similar document two months earlier. France’s 23-page document aims to anticipate the consequences of climate change for the missions of the country’s soldiers, based on scenarios developed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
These reflections on the future of military equipment, redesigned to withstand new weather conditions, are being carried out in collaboration by the French Geological Survey (BRGM) and the Defense Infrastructure Department. Both are working, for example, on the design of coatings to limit the accumulation of microorganisms on ship hulls.
Rethinking equipment
Some military sites, such as ports and airports, are under particular scrutiny and could well be relocated due to the threat of rising sea levels. A study has been launched to assess the exposure of military sites throughout France to climatic hazards.
“The aim is to target the most critical infrastructures, in terms of risk and function, and to improve resilience through long-term adaptation plans,” the French Armed Forces General Staff says. A study has also been started on the impact of climate change on weapon systems. The “climate-defense fresk,” a tool — modeled after The Climate Fresk has been created and deployed internally to raise awareness on these issues. An inter-service prospective study will serve as a basis for adaptation roadmaps for 2030 and 2050.
The army is also being urged to rethink military clothing. “Climate change obviously has an impact on soldiers and their health, particularly in very hot environments,” the General Staff says. In humid regions, rising temperatures will progressively block perspiration. This means that, unable to reduce their own heat, humans will only be able to survive for a few hours.
Anticipating tomorrow’s conflicts
But climate change not only alters the conditions under which armed forces operate, it also accelerates conflict.
“It’s a risk amplifier, a catalyst for chaos,” says the French Minister of Defense. “It fuels or aggravates tensions, by degrading the subsistence conditions of certain populations who depend directly on activities such as agriculture, fishing or livestock breeding.”
The increasing intensity of extreme weather phenomena foreshadows a rise in the number of interventions. “In the future, the armed forces will have to be ready to intervene in more and more conflicts linked to climate change, in a context where extreme weather events will be multiplied,” says a representative of the Ministry of the Armed Forces.
In 2022, a study by the Observatory of Defense and Climate, supervised by the Institute of international and strategic relations (IRIS), highlighted the geopolitical and security implications of climate change in the Caribbean and West Indies. HADR (Human Assistance & Disaster Relief) operations like those following Hurricane Irma in 2017 are likely to multiply in the upcoming years.
War is hardly compatible with the ecological transition.
In the Nile basin, access to water is causing increasing tensions between Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia. In the French West Indies, the intensification of hurricanes threatens to undermine the hold of and organization of local armies. In 2020, 30 million people were displaced by natural disasters. In the Arctic, international economic competition for mining and energy resources has recently been exacerbated by melting ice, leading to a surge in military capabilities in the region.
Today, several of the French Navy’s activities are dedicated to monitoring the effects of global warming on the oceans using aerial images, and to combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
“It is possible to adapt by making the right choices today, so as to maintain our ability to act tomorrow,” the General Staff says, stressing the need to adapt equipment, and to prevent and assess the vulnerability of holdings. “While we cannot predict conflicts, we can work on our ability to deal with them in the best possible conditions.”
Protecting nature
“The preservation of biodiversity is a major concern for the armed forces,” the ministry says. In 2021, then Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly presented a plan to improve biodiversity management on the 275,000 hectares under her responsibility.
The Armed Forces ministry is the largest landowner in the French state, and also the one with the highest carbon footprint. Today, 80% of military lands are part of remarkable biodiversity zones, and 44,000 hectares are classified as Natura 2000, a network of nature protection areas in the territory of the European Union.
French army has been focusing on the eco-designs of its instruments to limit the impact of weaponry.
“We recently renewed an agreement with the Natural History Museum, which will enable us to improve our real knowledge of biodiversity, but above all to understand how it evolves within the rights-of-way, the dynamics between species and spaces, and their reaction to military activity.” The Mailly camp, between Aube and Marne, was a pilot site for testing the effectiveness of sowing local plant species.
Since the 2020s, the French army has been focusing on the eco-designs of its instruments to limit the impact of weaponry. However, the French Department of Land, Property and the Environment (DTIE) acknowledges that there are obstacles: “Some polluted areas, particularly those resulting from bombings during the Second World War, are not accessible for security reasons, nor are they suitable for inventory or ecological management.”
Nevertheless, armies around the world will need to be able to reconcile multiple objectives in the future, in order to become more responsible, resilient and resistant to the hazards of climate change.
Lowering the carbon footprint
At the same time, military forces must increase their efforts to keep up with the ecological transition. And war is hardly compatible with it. In Ukraine, two and a half years after the Russian invasion, at least 900 protected areas have been affected by the conflict. This represents 30% of the country’s total protected areas, according to the Ukraine Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources.
In France, the Climate-Defense administration works hand-in-hand with scientific players to access climate data, raise awareness among the armed forces and act as a link between the military and research worlds.
The Armed Forces ministry is the largest landowner in the French state.
“1.2 billion euros have been earmarked for the ecological transition in the 2023 Military Programming Law,” the Armed Forces ministry representative says. “This will be used as much to finance the ecological transition as to invest in biodiversity or pursue the plan to phase out high-emission furnaces.”
“The idea is to reconcile operational gains with a reduced footprint, so as not to impair the efficiency of the military infrastructure, which remains a priority,” an official from the General Staff says. Since 2010, the French army has reduced the energy consumption of its buildings by 20%, and its greenhouse gas emissions by almost 30%.
