EU sounds alarm as climate change drives military, security risks

Climate change will dramatically escalate global conflict risks, quadrupling the likelihood of resource-driven wars, EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra has warned.

Hoekstra revealed that senior military officials had contacted him over the past year to “compare notes” on how environmental changes — including rising sea levels, wildfires, droughts, and floods — are already impacting military operations and potentially fueling geopolitical instability, Caliber.Az reports, citing foreign media.

“Climate change and its effects have crystal clear direct and indirect effects on geopolitics, on safety and security,” Hoekstra said ahead of his speech on climate and security at the European Policy Centre economic security forum. “Access to resources has always been part of conflict and warfare. But given the dramatic effects of climate change, this will quadruple the effect.”

His comments come as the Trump administration seeks to roll back NATO’s engagement with climate change, diverging sharply from former NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg’s efforts to elevate the issue. Trump maintains that climate change is neither man-made nor urgent.

Hoekstra, who is also pushing EU nations to uphold the bloc’s ambitious climate agenda, including the 2050 net-zero target, stressed that security and sustainability must go hand-in-hand. With climate-related disruptions already forcing military interventions — from wildfire response in Europe to operational strain in U S bases — the EU’s security posture must evolve.

The US Department of Defence has noted increased military demand due to climate impacts, while engineers warn that more than 60 per cent of Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, could be underwater from severe storms by mid-century. NATO also reported that extreme heat in Iraq has hindered its operations, grounding helicopters and reducing visibility due to dust storms.

“The military should become greener,” Hoekstra noted, “but it should never be at the expense of their fighting capabilities.”

Highlighting regional vulnerabilities, Hoekstra pointed to Europe’s unique location between the melting Arctic and the warming Sahel, stressing that resource scarcity, migration, and dependence on authoritarian states for commodities could inflame extremism and crime. “Athens, for example, had seen ‘a significant increase in burglaries and thefts’ during a drought,” he added.

“The flexibility to adapt is essential,” Hoekstra concluded.

By Vafa Guliyeva