The Making of a Climate General: An Interview with IMCCS Chair, Retired General Tom Middendorp

By Elsa Barron

The chair of the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), Gen. Tom Middendorp (Ret.) recently published a book titled Klimaatgeneraal, or “Climate General.” The book builds on his tenure as the Chief of Defense of the Netherlands to illustrate the relationship between climate change and security risks, before turning to positive solutions to address these interconnected challenges. CCS Research Fellow Elsa Barron spoke with Gen. Middendorp about his identity as a “climate general,” the evolution of the climate security field, and opportunities for climate adaptation and mitigation in the security sector. 

Elsa Barron: As the Chief of Defense of the Netherlands, how did you initially become concerned about the security impacts of climate change?

General Tom Middendorp (Ret.): Like all militaries in the world, in the Netherlands, we feel the impact of climate change in all of our missions. Impacts such as high temperatures and drought are affecting our work and the terrain we navigate. In all of my missions, I also saw how climate change is affecting our security environment and how it is related to the root cause of conflict. That made me more aware of the impact of climate on our operations, but even then, I didn’t initially make the connection to climate change. That connection came later when I was the Chief of Defense and I conducted strategic sessions on the future of defense and considered major drivers of change. That’s when I realized that climate change might be the biggest driver of the century shaping security risks.

Barron: Are there any on-the-ground experiences from your career that illustrate the interlinkages between climate change, insecurity, and conflict risks?

Gen. Middendorp (Ret.): I’ll start with Afghanistan because I’ve been deployed there several times. The last time I was there, I was a task force commander in the south of the country and there I saw how climate change impacted local security. There was a town that had been flooded by the Taliban, which we had been fighting for days to remove. Eventually, we succeeded, but only to find out that the Taliban could return at any moment because of tensions in the village that they exploited for influence. We ultimately discovered that those tensions were caused by disputes over how to divide the water resources in the province. 

Once we mediated a solution regarding the division of water resources, the village suddenly became a quiet area and the Taliban couldn’t regain their influence. The success became tangible a year later when I visited that same town with our [the Netherlands’] current king and we could walk through the main street with limited protection. It illustrates how the security situation can change by addressing a root cause that was, in this case, climate-related. 

For me, Afghanistan was a wake-up call. And I saw the same thing happening in other mission areas. In Somalia, we were fighting piracy on the seas, but in fact, we were fighting farmers and fishermen who had been pushed away from their homelands by droughts and cattle failure and needed to sustain their families. They couldn’t find any work, and then they got into the hands of organized crime and extremist organizations. Fighting these farmers and fishermen is like fighting symptoms of a deeper cause, and that deeper cause was climate change. So, if we really want to build security in any region of the world, we need to also look at the deeper root causes beyond conflict. 

Barron: After witnessing these interlinkages, what drove you to start speaking out about climate security risks and ultimately gain the title, “Climate General,” which is also the title of your recent book (Klimaatgeneraal)?

Gen. Middendorp (Ret.): It was during my period as Chief of Defense, when we were conducting strategic planning that I came to the realization that climate change was probably one of the biggest challenges of the century and as such also a driver of change for our Defense organization. During that period, I was invited to the Halifax conference in Canada to talk about climate insecurity, not necessarily because I was known for that subject but because I come from the Netherlands where 50% of our population lives below sea level. The conference occurred in the runup to the U.S. elections in 2016 and one of the candidates had just announced that he would step out of the Paris agreement. Suddenly, my topic became a very political one and attracted a lot of attention. 

That attention triggered another invitation to speak to the Planetary Security Conference in the Hague. There, I also explained the nexus between climate change and security and it exploded in the Dutch media. Environmental organizations accused me of securitizing their issue. Politicians, especially right-wing politicians, were surprised that a general was addressing a topic like climate change. Others said I should stick to my own business and not interfere with this issue. There was a lot of turmoil. Interestingly, within the military, there was hardly any reaction because most of the soldiers understood this concept and had already experienced how climate change impacted their work. 

This was the first time in my tenure as Chief of Defense that I went viral on social media. That gave me the nickname the “Green General” and I decided to wear that name with honor. Later when I resigned from military service, I became more and more devoted to this subject. I met Sherri Goodman, and we decided to join forces and raise the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), a powerful global network combining the practical experience of senior military leaders around the world with the scientific research of our research institutes. That’s how it all started and that is why I named my book “Climate General”, which is running well in The Netherlands and which might be interesting to publish internationally. 

Barron: The defense sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in many countries and militaries rely on fossil fuels to ensure readiness and effectiveness. How can the defense sector contribute to mitigation efforts without affecting their readiness?

Gen. Middendorp (Ret.): Whether we like it or not, mitigation is underway in the civil sector and it will also happen in the military. The challenge for us is to pursue mitigation in a way that does not affect our readiness and our effectiveness. That can be done by starting with our peacetime infrastructure and peacetime equipment. The second level can focus on smaller, lighter capabilities such as unmanned vehicles, air systems, or space systems that hardly need big propulsion systems. The largest challenge is the heavier equipment such as naval vessels, fighter planes, or tanks. Currently, the technology is not developed enough to immediately transition to new propulsion systems. Here, we need to invest in research and development to create solutions for next-generation capabilities.

In addition to mitigating emissions, green technologies can even help us to improve our operational effectiveness. They can help us to become more self-supporting in our missions and provide us with more diversified energy sources, endurance, and operational effectiveness. They can help us reduce the logistical burden and the risks of vulnerable supply lines. And they can help us reduce the noise and heat signatures of our military capabilities. The military has always shown leadership in developing and adopting new technologies. We need to catch up and look at the energy transition as an opportunity to investigate the possibilities of new green technologies that can both mitigate emissions and also improve operational readiness, an argument we make in the latest World Climate and Security Report publication, Decarbonized Defense: The Need for Clean Military Power in the Age of Climate Change.

Barron: What are some key messages that you hope readers of Klimaatgeneraal will take away from your book?

Gen. Middendorp (Ret.): The first key message is that climate change is also a security problem and we need to depoliticize the issue. Security has always been seen as more of a right-wing issue and climate change has always been seen as a more left-wing issue. Yet, they are both very basic issues for the well-being of our societies, so it is most productive to depoliticize them and address them where needed. Secondly, I think it is important for people to become more aware of how climate change affects our security, and this book is about exactly that. It is about making people aware that climate change is affecting their security in their own homes. 

Thirdly, about the solutions side, it is important to notice that climate change is not a military problem specifically, it is a whole-of-society problem. In dealing with climate change, we (the Military) can bring part of the solution to the table but we need to develop our role as part of a wider effort with other agencies. The fourth lesson is that we can all contribute to change. Climate change is a very big, complex topic and we can hardly comprehend all of its impacts. People find it hard to understand and to see what they can do to address it. In this book, I give many examples of the difference that individuals can make because I do believe that together we can face this challenge and turn it around.

New Climate Security Report has Implications for NATO and COP26

By Danice Ball and Lily Feldman

Earlier this month, the Expert Group of the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS) released the World Climate and Security Report (WCSR) 2021, the second in an ongoing series of annual reports. The report dives into climate security risk assessments for a few hotspot regions, including Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, and also provides concrete tools to help policymakers address the growing unprecedented threats. A unique inclusion in this year’s report is a new Climate Security Risk Matrix and Methodology, which allows for evaluation of comparative climate risk among countries. In addition, the report features a Climate Security Risk Perception Survey, aggregating forecasts of climate risks from leading climate security experts in the world. These experts find climate security to be among the most pressing issues the world faces now, and a priority for future planning efforts. Between the Risk Matrix, the Survey, climate security case studies, and policy recommendations, the IMCCS Expert Group believes that policymakers will find the information needed to inform next steps in both preparing for and preventing climate security risks.

General Middendorp: Climate Warning Signs Are Flashing Red

In a recent speech to the European Parliament, General Tom Middendorp, Chief of Defence of the Netherlands (Ret), and Chair of the IMCCS, made a bold case for significant preventive and preparatory action on climate change. First, highlighting the threat, he noted:

IMCCS Engages EU Security Community on Climate Security

This article is a cross-post from the Planetary Security Initiative on May 16, 2019.

This week climate-related security issues were prominently discussed in Brussels. Luxembourg Minister of Defense François Bausch addressed the topic in a meeting with his counterparts in the Foreign Affairs Council. This Council, which is composed of Ministers from EU Member States, brought together Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense in a so-called joined session format. They were joined by their counterparts from the G5 Sahel and its Secretary General. The EU reiterated its commitment to the region and its willingness to increase its engagement in the future. Defense Minister Bausch stressed that the deployment of soldiers alone could not provide a durable solution and that other means of crisis management are necessary and have come rather short in the past. Later in the afternoon the minister briefed the Council about the catastrophic consequences of climate change and its implications for security and defense policy. The Sahel is a region which is highly vulnerable and security impacts related to climate change are already visible, as is also outlined in various PSI activities on Mali, Lake Chad and other parts of the Sahel. The Minister from Luxembourg proposed placing climate-security on the official agenda of the Defence Ministers meeting in the EU Council to consolidate the European commitment to this topic.

On the sidelines of the Council meeting François Bausch had a working meeting with the Netherlands Minister of Defense Ank Bijleveld and the Director of the European Defense Agency Jorge Domecq. They discussed to join forces in analysing what a Europese defence policy strategy on the security dimension of climate change should entail. Climate security is not a new topic for the European Union. Earlier this year, EU Foreign and Defense Ministers underscored that climate change acts as a global threat multiplier and increasingly as a threat in its own right, reacting to the stark findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report. The challenge now is to translate this to action in the field of early warning and geopolitical analysis, capabilities to respond to weather-related disasters, situational risks assessments during the implementation of missions, and the resource and carbon footprint of military activities.

The next day General Tom Middendorp (Ret.), Chair of the newly established International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), gave presentations on the security dimension of climate change in the EU Military Committee and the EU Political & Security Committee, in addition to meetings with some of the most senior military representatives based in Brussels. He outlined how climate change, compared with resource stress and population growth leads inter alia to humanitarian disasters, (local) resource disputes and additional migration. This calls for more and other intelligence on conflict risks and its root causes, an increased need to protect key infrastructures, additional calls for border protection and disaster relief. At the same time military organisations can make a huge contribution to addressing climate change and natural resource stress by innovation of technology and materials used at home and at mission, which is attractive to them since it often reduces the high costs and risks of logistics connected to military activities. He invited experts and officials from the EU institutions and EU member states to join the new international network that aims to anticipate, analyze and address the security dimension of climate change, and how military organisations can prepare for and respond to it. He was accompanied by Louise van Schaik, Head of Unit at the Clingendael Institute, who published earlier on how the EU could prepare for climate-related security risks and which instruments the EU could consider for the cases of Iraq and Mali.  

On the sidelines of the council meeting François Bausch had working interviews with the Netherlands Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld-Schouten and the Director of the European Defense Agency Jorge Domecq. The Minister again tackled the issue of climate change and the implications for security and defense policy. Climate security is not a new topic for the European Union. In light of the stark findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report EU Foreign and Defense Ministers underscored earlier this year, that climate change acts as a global threat multiplier and increasingly as a threat in its own right.

Middendorp Committee
Chairman of the IMCCS, General Tom Middendorp, Chief of Defence of the Netherlands (Ret), informs the EU Military Committee, and its Chairman, General Claudio Graziano, about climate change-related security issues, and invites experts and officials to join the IMCCS.

The afternoon before, during a meeting of the Brussels Dialogue on Climate Diplomacy at the Permanent Representation of the Netherlands to the European Union, General Middendorp was joined by Shiloh Fetzek and Tobias von Lossow in a panel moderated by Alexander Verbeek, Policy Director at EDRC. Ms. Fetzek spoke about her experiences with elevating Climate and Security in the work of policy makers in the U.S. Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Next week she will travel to Wellington, New Zealand to join the 2019 Pacific Environmental Security Forum co-hosted by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the theme: “Building Resilience in the Pacific”. Tobias von Lossow, Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute, addressed recent Climate and Security Developments in the PSI spotlight regions Iraq and Mali. He specifically focused on the relationship and inter-linkages of climate change adaptation measures, central to the defense sector, and the conflict and security situation in these cases. He gave an update of recent events in Iraq and Mali (see also our coverage here and here) which underlined how precarious the security situation is on the ground and illustrated their connection to natural resource stress in these countries.