Canada will host a NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence in Montreal to develop strategies to address the impacts of climate change. AFP/GETTY IMAGES
THE WATCH STAFF
A new NATO-aligned research, training and operational exercise center will open in Canada to generate and share expertise about how the changing climate affects defense and security for the alliance. The opening of the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence in Montreal is the result of a three-year effort by Canadian leaders to establish an innovation hub on the subject. When announcing Canada’s initiative at the June 2021 NATO summit, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country’s large Arctic territory makes understanding, adapting to and fostering resilience to climate change as key to a strong NATO defense.
The Montreal center will “enable Canada, NATO allies, and other global partners to understand and address the serious security implications of climate change, including in the Arctic … [and] … it will contribute to Montreal’s status as a global hub for international organizations,” Trudeau declared, according to theconversation.com, a defense and security news website.
“Climate impacts may test the resilience of military installations and equipment, create harsher or more complex operational conditions, and change the nature of the strategic environment, which poses unique challenges for military and security entities charged with maintaining our security,” according to a Canadian government news release explaining the center’s purpose. The center “will be a platform through which both military actors and civilians will develop, enhance, and share knowledge on climate change security impacts,” the release continued. This would include addressing climate-induced natural disasters and increasing interoperability among allied nations with related issues as diverse as refugee migration, drought- or flood-stricken regions and the resulting political instability. The Montreal center was created in 2022 and received formal approval from NATO at its 2023 summit in Vilnius, Estonia. The center is expected to open this year, according to report by msn.com.
NATO currently has 28 excellence centers situated across the alliance with missions that range from researching air operations to strategic communications. According to the conversation.com, the Montreal center could structure itself after a NATO Centre of Excellence in Estonia, which trains cyber defense experts to react in real time against cyberattacks using a joint initiative model that includes research, training and exercises. The NATO centers of excellence (COE) system provides a valuable network of expertise to support innovation, and to “assist in doctrine development, identify lessons learned, improve interoperability and capabilities, and test and validate concepts through experimentation,” according to the alliance’s website.
NATO codified its position on climate change at its March 2021 foreign ministers’ summit. The framework “provides a 360-degree approach and encompasses measures to increase both NATO’s and Allies’ awareness of the impact of climate change on security, along with developing clear adaptation and mitigation measures, and enhanced outreach, while ensuring a credible deterrence and defense posture and upholding the priorities of the safety of military personnel and operational and cost effectiveness,” NATO stated in its action plan.
Even with favorable emissions outcomes in coordinated efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, the Arctic will likely see its first ice-free September by the 2050s at the latest, opening shipping routes and potentially sparking attempts to disrupt a rules-based international consensus on Arctic development, Ryan Atkinson, a postdoctoral fellow in defense policy at Carleton University, wrote for The Conversation, a network of nonprofit media outlets. Atkinson added that this summer’s NATO summit will likely place a high priority on addressing climate change challenges for the alliance’s defense.
Canada seeks a leading role in developing future resilience strategies and security innovations with its allies, and the country’s defense policy explicitly states the need for further collaboration. “Climate change threatens to disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions around the world. It also presents us with an urgent call to innovate, to foster collective action, to work hand-in-hand with like-minded partners around the world to meet this threat and beat it, rather than stand passively by,” the 2019 policy states.