NATO and climate change: Towards a joint understanding and response*

Abstract

A comprehensive overview of the thirty-two North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states’ national security and defence and climate change strategies finds significant disparities between NATO members’ climate change adaptation plans, despite the 2021 Climate Change and Security Action Plan (CCSAP) and the commitment to make NATO “the leading organization when it comes to understanding and adapting to the impact of climate change.” This raises questions about NATO's operational abilities, and ultimately about alliance cohesion and the potential emergence of a two-tier NATO. To arrive at a joint understanding of, and response to, climate change, NATO allies must address the operational consequences of what might be described as “adaptation gaps” and undergo an organisational culture change to overcome the root causes of these gaps.