By Elsa Barron and Erin Sikorsky
Edited by Tom Ellison and Francesco Femia
Introduction
Conference Attendees Outside Swedish Defence University. (Andreas G. Warne)
On January 24-25 in Stockholm, Sweden, the International Military Council on Climate & Security partnered with the Swedish Defence University to host the inaugural conference, “Integrating Climate Change into Professional Military Education.” The conference brought together military educators and climate security experts to share best practices and lessons learned regarding climate security-related training, gaming, and curriculum development. Ms. Caroline Baxter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Force Education and Training for the US Department of Defense (DoD), provided keynote remarks about the efforts of her office to develop new force-wide guidance and programs on climate security topics.
Overall, the group was in strong agreement that the impact of climate change on security is a threat military education cannot afford to ignore. In the past eighteen months, militaries in nearly 70 countries have been deployed to respond to climate-related disasters. Participants around the table shared multiple concrete examples from their careers in which weather or climate-related hazards affected military readiness and operations. To prepare the future force and navigate the security environment of the coming decades, militaries need to embrace innovative educational approaches to climate security.