NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, 4 February, that climate change was going to be one of the Alliance’s priority issues in the coming years.
“I really hope—and I not only hope but I know that climate change will be on the top of the NATO agenda”, he explained during a discussion with young leaders and students about NATO after 2030. Mr Stoltenberg explained that the Alliance needed to address the security implications of climate change.
According to the secretary general, the matter will be discussed not only during NATO Leaders Meetings—the next expected to take place in 2021 to ‘welcome’ the new US president—but also in the new strategic concept that is currently being prepared. While the 2010 strategic concept only mentions climate change once, he believed, “in a new strategic concept for NATO, [...] climate change has to play a much more prominent and important role”.
“But it’s not enough only to talk and write about it; we need to do something concrete to reduce emissions”, warned Mr Stoltenberg, who was the United Nations special envoy on climate change in 2013 and intends to use this experience.
Military operations contribute to climate change. The secretary general reminded his audience that heavy battle tanks, naval ships, and jets fighters consumed a lot of fuel. “We do have to look into how we can reduce those emissions”, he stressed, highlighting the use of alternative fuels or solar panels. “That will be good for the climate—reduced emissions of greenhouse gases—but it will also increase the resilience of our troops”, he explained, pointing out that fuel supply was one of the vulnerabilities faced by armed forces on operations.
Mr Stoltenberg said the Alliance was working on various projects to make militaries “greener”.
In December 2020, Mr Stoltenberg and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen agreed to make climate change an area of cooperation between the EU and NATO (see EUROPE 12623/25). (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)