How have the political discourses about climate change influenced security policies? This report investigates the emerging international landscape on ‘climatising’ security policies that Denmark must navigate. The study maps the current state and the emerging developments at the crossroads of global climate change governance efforts and national and international security policies. The report develops a taxonomy of various state and interstate profiles to tackle the global challenge of climate change as part of the actors’ security and defence policies along their declared intentions, levels of ambition and delivery in practice. The analysis covers NATO and the EU, along with the important states from the Danish security policy perspective (i.e. USA, Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, the Nordic countries). Methodical stock-taking of the emerging trends in climate change management through security policies globally, regionally, and nationally provides a basis for forward thinking in the Euro-Atlantic area, helping to set the parameters of security policy planning and action for Denmark.

The emerging typology of state and international actor profiles on the climate change‒security connection offers insights into the readiness of various global and regional security actors to ‘green’ their security and defence sectors (e.g., by limiting emissions) and to treat climate change as a security issue more generally (e.g., changing their planning of missions, intervening in climate-induced conflicts). The report demonstrates how the integration of climate change into security strategies and action plans is widespread yet often generic and declaratory. Many actors have explicit leadership ambitions regionally and/or globally (e.g., NATO as an aspirational mitigator, the EU as an exemplary leader, the US as yet another aspirational global leader, the UK as a global trailblazer, France as an environmental security pioneer, the Nordics as global frontrunners). Others, such as Germany, are more emphatically committed to advancing climate diplomacy internationally instead of setting concrete climate change-related domestic targets in their defence planning and policy. Yet others, notably Russia (as a climate sovereign) and China (as a voice for an ecological civilisation), oppose addressing climate change through the lens of security politics, staunchly resisting attempts to address the issue as a matter of international peace and security via the UN Security Council.