2024 was recorded as the hottest year ever, and 2025 is 99% likely to break those records. Global Climate change has officially surpassed the political threshold established by the Paris climate treaty of limiting warming to 1.5 C. In 2024, most days of the year globally averaged 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. While 1.5 C could still be technically feasible, experts say this is no longer a political possibility. Reducing long-term global temperature averages would require lowering global carbon emissions immediately. Still, fossil fuel production and carbon emission numbers are expected to increase exponentially at a business-as-usual pace.
Facing potential economic and ecological collapse, the implications of an above 1.5C and warming world on international security are plentiful, and all roads lead to more conflict. Hotter temperatures alone can increase interpersonal and armed conflict, but the combined impacts on the environment and ecosystems magnify damage and even total collapse of human systems we rely on for our livelihoods and well-being. So, climate change mostly increases conflict through indirect pathways. Food system destabilization will rapidly intensify due to incremental warming through heat waves that kill crops, floods that destroy food supply, and droughts that render entire regions agriculturally barren. Essential resource scarcity over food and water will worsen living conditions for millions, spark mass migration, and increase civil and regional conflict. Climate change’s exacerbation and rising frequency of extreme weather events also cause damage to food systems and livelihoods and cause mass refugee crises and conflict. The Climate-Conflict matrix then becomes a vicious cycle, where conflict increases vulnerability to climate impacts, and climate impacts increase the probability and severity of conflict.
Armed conflicts will likely explode in the coming decades without immediate and meaningful reductions in emissions as CO2 in the atmosphere continues to warm up the earth at accelerating rates. Armed conflicts are already rising globally, entering the World Economic Forum’s top 5 security risks for humanity projection for 2025. In 2024, one in seven humans was exposed to armed conflict. Climate disasters and the effects of climate change are already responsible for magnifying, prolonging, and causing active armed conflicts such as South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These countries find themselves in regions predisposed to be more severely impacted by climate change, intersecting with their availability of critical minerals for renewable energies.
During armed conflict, armed non-state actors become central actors in local governance and crisis management to maintain control, protect economic sources, and boost legitimacy. Armed rebel groups are detrimental to the environment for many reasons, including the exploitation of natural resources and environmental destruction associated with war. However, climate impacts are increasingly forcing Armed non-state actors to engage in climate governance, mitigation, and adaptation efforts as concerns creep into the operation capacity of insurgents. As climate crises worsen, even armed rebel authorities are cornered to find solutions and partake in climate efforts to proactively fight the consequences and causes of climate change. The Polisario Front, an armed civil resistance movement of the Indigenous Sahrawi peoples in Morocco, has, for example, voluntarily produced a Climate action plan equal to those submitted by countries under the Paris Agreement. Furthermore, Somaliland, a separatist armed non-state authority, has increasingly partnered with international aid organizations and environmental NGOs to improve conservation and climate impacts.
Climate change’s impacts on global security are already showing devastating impacts, such as the proliferation of armed conflicts. In response, armed rebel groups facing climate consequences are adapting and implementing climate policies. However, this front-line response to climate impacts is more of a matter of survival and is unlikely to help impacted regions escape the Climate-Conflict trap.