 Good afternoon. My name is Alex Reich and I'm pleased to welcome you to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and to the sixth event of our monthly webinar series, Climate Conversations, Pathways to Action. The National Academies provide independent objective advice to inform policy with evidence, spark progress and innovation, and confront challenging issues for the benefit of society. In keeping with this mission, we're excited to host these conversations about issues relevant to national policy action on climate change. Our conversation today will be recorded and made available on this webpage tomorrow. If you'd like to ask questions, please submit them in the box below the video at any time, and we'll get to as many of them as possible in a dedicated question and answer period during the final 20 minutes of the event. We'd also appreciate your feedback on today's event and your ideas for future conversations, which I invite you to share after the event in the survey linked above the video. We won't be holding a climate conversations webinar in August, but we'll be back in September, and if you want to be notified about upcoming climate conversations, as well as other climate related activities at the academies, you can sign up for our newsletter, which is also linked above. Today, we're going to talk about how climate change is impacting and exacerbating risks to security at home and abroad. And while there are many forms of security and many ways climate intersects with those forms, today's conversation will largely focus on how climate intersects with national security and international security. We're honored to be joined by Lisa Friedman, a veteran reporter on the New York Times climate desk, who focuses on climate and environmental policy in Washington DC, and who has covered nine international climate talks. Lisa will introduce our conversationalists and moderate the event. Thank you again for joining the National Academies for Climate Conversations. Lisa, it's all yours. Thank you, Alex. And thank you all of you for joining us today. I'm incredibly honored to moderate this panel on this important topic of climate insecurity. President Biden, who has made climate change a core part of his agenda, has said climate change should be considered a key national security priority. Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, recently told the UN Security Council that climate change is a crisis multiplier that has profound implications for international peace and stability. But what is this concept of climate security? What does it really mean? What does studying it and creating policy to address it look like? How do we build capacity in the federal government and in academia and beyond to research in this area? And how do we work with other countries to integrate climate change and security policy and responses? I am lucky to have with me two of the smartest people in this space to answer some of these questions and to discuss this issue at large, Swathi Virvali and Aaron Sikorsky. I'll just do brief biointroductions for the both of them. Aaron Sikorsky is the deputy director of the Center for Climate and Security. She's also the director of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. Previously, she served as the deputy director of the Strategic Futures Group on the National Intelligence Council in the U.S., where she co-authored the Quadrennial Global Trends Report, and also led the U.S. Intelligence Community's Environmental and Climate Security Analysis. She's the founding chair of the Climate Security Advisory Council, a congressionally mandated group designated to facilitate coordination between the intelligence community and the U.S. government scientific agencies. Swathi Virvali is a Foreign Affairs Specialist at the United States Africa Command. She is speaking with us today in her personal capacity and not on behalf of U.S. Africa Command. Her background is in interdisciplinary research science with expertise in developing capabilities to assess how compound climate fragility risks threaten both the United States and global security. So let me just offer a brief reminder first, if you're joining us a little late, that we are reserving the last 20 minutes or so for your questions, so please feel free to send them in as we're having our conversation, and we look forward to getting to your questions as well. Aaron Swathi, we have a large audience today, and I don't want to assume that everyone is conversant in first the basic concept of climate security. When we're asked to conceptualize security, we tend to think of armed conflict, maybe cyber threats, Kim Jong-un, Putin, or the faces of security threats. What do we mean by climate security? Swathi, can I start with you? Yeah, thank you for the question. I think that's a great framing question to begin our conversation. So, from my understanding, how I view climate security is I'd like to frame it in sort of three different considerations, four different considerations. First, we have these overall trends that are occurring in the world right now. We have empirical evidence on how the earth is holding significantly more heat than before. Sadly, parts of the Amazon are no longer carbon sink, and they're actually a carbon net emitter, which is really drastic. We have across more than half of the earth's planet, over half of the earth's land surface, the average annual temperature at night was at least a quarter of a degree more than that of days. So, these trends are concerning and alarming. So, the second way I like to sort of unpack climate security is what you really are talking about the intersection of risks and opportunities associated with these trends. So, we have these trends, but we also have these risks and opportunities associated with these trends and different spatial and temporal scales. And what we're really concerned with are how do humans interact with their environment? How do humans interact with food, land, water at those specific scales? And you really need a systems approach to be able to understand this. Thirdly, you really need to quantify and qualify what the unit of scale is. I think often when we're talking about climate security, there's an overall assumption that we're talking from a nation-state perspective, but it's really imperative to remember that we're also talking about humans, so we're sort of at the very local level, and we're also talking about sort of global security. So, we really need to be clear about what the referent object of security is. And we really need to use all three of those, I think, scales. And finally, I think from a climate security perspective, it really means that we need to fundamentally change behavior now so that we can maximize opportunities and mitigate sort of future areas of risk in the future. And we need to reframe sort of how climate change is actually being accelerated by political choices that we take today and how those subsequently cause conflict. So, I think there's another assumption that climate is a linear sort of leap to conflict, but I think if we unpack that a little bit, we need to understand what the role of governance plays in that. And just to take a step back, and I'd like to do this for Erin too in a moment, but tell me a little bit about your background. Specifically, how did you come to this issue of sort of studying the nexus of climate change and security? Thank you. So, I actually grew up in Botswana, and when my family and I lived there, we lived there during sort of a 20-year drought. So, water was very sort of important to say the least. We grew up very close to the landscape. And unfortunately, I'm not an engineer, and so when I wanted to go to school, I knew I wanted to do something from an interdisciplinary perspective. And so, I actually was fortunate enough to find a master's that allowed me to examine water security from an interdisciplinary perspective. And then during my work for the federal government, you know, sort of now understanding how climate security specifically is the overarching framework by which all these other securities are sort of under the underpin. Well, that's a very personal underlying, you know, driving force to understand these issues. Thank you. Erin, tell us a little bit about how you view the issue of climate security, what it is, and what you focus on. Sure. Thanks so much, Lisa. And thanks to the National Academies for having us. I love that Swati used the word systems risk and systemic risk, because I think that's key to understanding how to think about climate security. As you said, Lisa, in the beginning, for a long time, national security is very focused on states, right? What are other states, what threats and risks do they pose to us here at home in the U.S.? And then post 9-11, we moved to a world where, okay, non-state actors are important to terrorist groups, extremist groups, cyber threats, as you mentioned. And now really looking at climate change and after the past year of the pandemic, we've moved to a world that some folks call aware we're really concerned about actorless risks, right? And that there's no one individual or one state that's really shaping this, but instead it's something that's fundamental to our entire environment. And I think the key here is in terms of how I think of it is that all of those intersect together, right? It's the actorless risks, it's the states, it's the non-state actors, and they're shaping the security environment. This is from the intelligence community where I led teams that were looking at security issues in the Middle East and East Africa. And time and again as we tried to unpack why security issues were such a problem in these regions, climate and environmental issues came up as a shaping force. And that to me led me to want to really focus on these issues more, not only in government, but then moving out of government and out of the intelligence community where you only usually study the problem, but get to a place where you can talk about solutions as well. So that's my background in terms of where I'm coming from on these topics. I think you've seen the mainstream security and intelligence community shift in how they think about climate change and the threats that it poses, the security threats that it poses. I think it's an ongoing evolution, right? And I think, you know, this has been a topic of conversation in national security for quite a while now, especially within the Defense Department in the U.S. And I want to focus for quite a while on the direct risks, right, that climate change poses to military and security forces, which I think are relatively straightforward. They're concerning, but they're easy to understand. It's the billions of dollars of damage at Air Force bases on the Gulf Coast when you have hurricanes or bases in California that have to be evacuated because of fires and attention turned from training missions to fighting those fires, for example. I think there is a growing recognition now. And as you mentioned at the beginning, you're seeing this in the Biden administration is it's it's not just those direct risks alone. It's how they intersect with other things and intersect with governance and corruption and instability and competition among states to really shape the environment and I do think you're seeing seeing a shift you saw DNI Haynes speak at the world leaders climate summit that Biden hosted you've seen other leaders like Secretary Austin. So I think the question now and the hard thing is how do you translate that leadership message on these issues down throughout the government to really change how we do business going forward. I think the phrase that a lot of us who cover these issues here over the years is climate is a threat multiplier right that climate change is not necessarily driving the problems but is exacerbating existing or underlying problems in in in many countries. I wonder if you could, could maybe walk us through how some threats fit into the broader security landscape if a country is suffering from drought or crop failure, or increasingly devastating wildfires what what is the ripple effect. I mean I think that is that is the question right so what what are the ripple effects and so and I think we have some empirical evidence that sort of we know at the, at the national. We have some evidence that sort of the sub national scale what things could happen. But we really need a better understanding of what's happening in various households and I get so at the very sort of at the local at the local level. I think there's assumptions of what we think could happen I know that water wars is a sort of a framing that people throw around a lot. And when you, when you look at the, when you look at the history actually there's no, you know, there's sort of no proof of water wars actually happening but that didn't happen in sort of the climate accelerated world that we live in today. And so I just wanted to underscore something else that that Aaron said, I think we have the from the Intel perspective or at least from the from the national security perspective we have a pretty good understanding what those risks might be right. And, but we now need to move on to sort of understanding what to do about it. And so that that sort of answers your the second your question more specifically Lisa what what is happening. And again we need we need social scientists to be able to tell us what is happening at you know we have climate models that tell us sort of what these trends are saying. And we need to couple those with sort of social scientists to be able to understand sort of from the human security perspective, what exactly is happening. And again sort of what do we do about it. And, and this you know I think for either of you I mean before we dig into what do we do about it. I'm curious to do other countries. Think about the implications of climate security, the same way that the United States is thinking about it in different ways what you know how how our, how are other countries, looking at at this issue. You know it's a big question maybe we can sure country. Yeah, it's been interesting to see the evolution of other countries looking at at climate as a security risk just in the past few weeks actually you had the Russians release their national security strategy and for the first time it had climate mentioned nine times. So I thought that was an interesting development in Japan, this week released their defense white paper which included climate change as a security thread I believe for the first time, as well so there's a growing recognition in other countries. That that it's a security issue. There are some concerns though as well about what the so called securitization, I think of climate change and that making it a security issue makes it a defense issue and then that that's problematic as well. But what I would argue is that recognizing that there are security risks related to climate change. If I could just pause before you know, sir, sir, tell me why you know explain what this concern is why is there a concern about centering security on climate change. Sure, I think the concern and in some cases stems from the fact that there's worry that then it becomes the Defense Department or military's job to fix the problem. And that you securitize it in such a way that is not going to be helpful to a lot of local communities, and doesn't fully understand the range of justice issues that are related with with some of these these climate effects. I would argue that identifying it as a security risk doesn't mean that the answer is a security institution necessarily right and so you need all hands on deck to tackle these issues. And I think there are ways around that so that you're not creating it as only a problem for DoD for example in the US to solve. So can you perhaps share more about, you know, other countries that are experiencing climate insecurity and and are there countries that you know that we can look to that are addressing it in a meaningful way. Yeah, yeah, so I think Japan just released their national national defense strategy and a part of it included was it had a climate focus on it. I think globally I would say writ large there's a recognition that climate does sort of affect security and stability of those specific countries, and they're not wasting time on discussing the existential threat that it poses. And I think globally and I'm not giving you specific examples here yet but I think people are more worried about resourcing it and understandings again sort of, I'm going to have a foot something this. What do we do about it and I think that's the, that's the question that countries are more concerned with. I'm here in Germany and I think the EU just released a very ambitious sort of looking at decarbonization from from the whole EU perspective. And so I think the political will exist globally and I think resourcing is really the critical sort of next step. And if I can jump into on another example that I think is worth highlighting is NATO. So NATO just released climate agreed to a climate security action plan at their meeting in June. And it's a really ambitious document that lays out not only adaptation and resilient strategies, but also potential strategies around cutting emissions as well. And I think that's a good recognition by NATO that these risks will affect their missions right they will affect NATO Alliance members, whether it's an increase in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions, whether it's places where they have training missions like in Iraq, which faces sea level rise in Basra or drought and other parts of the country that will potentially lead to instability. And so NATO under the leadership of Secretary General Stoltenberg has really stepped up. And this isn't, you know, we shouldn't discount the fact that there are differences of opinion within the Alliance as well and some of the, there are some political challenges associated with with pushing a strong climate security agenda but they've really gone far in a way that I think other countries and other alliances and groupings of countries should look to. So this isn't to sort of academic a question but when we talk about climate security. Do we think about what's being secured for whom by whom at what cost what what what do some of those the you know research into those questions look like. Yeah, no I think I think that that's sort of what my what how I'd like to unpack climate security because if we don't understand the reference objective security then we don't really know what we're securing right or who we're securing it for. So I think it's a maybe a good time to sort of unpack what sort of what climate change means and what do what do climate patterns mean what are what are these sort of definitions and I think people talk about these. What climate security without understanding without an understanding of sort of the time scales. So when we're talking about climate we're talking about sort of an average of weather over about a 30 let's say at the decade Decadal perspective and so at about 30 years you've got a really good understanding of what weather is at what climate is at those at those specific scales. When you're talking about climate variability you're talking about how the weather fluctuates at a yearly below or or above average at those specific scales and so you're talking about seasons and then all the weather fluctuates up to five years. When you're talking about climate change you're talking about long term continuous change right and that's and that's expressed in sort of temperature precipitation, etc, wind strong wind. I think a professor of mine always used to say climate is what you want but whether is what is what you get and, and so when you're talking about the reference objective security I think it's important to go back to, you know you really need to talk about from the nation, to state perspective but you're also talking about humans and you're also talking about sort of global security. And if you're not coupling those three like them and using the systemics approach that you know Aaron brought up earlier then I think you're missing how how we can become climate secure. I also think it's why some of the old ways of defining security and national security are no longer make sense. Right. We often in the security community there's hard security issues and then there's soft security issues and climate has long been considered soft. But again, as we've seen with the pandemic and other things that's actually killing people are these are these risks and so that that that dichotomy doesn't doesn't make sense and at the end of the day the point of national security is keeping the people in your community safe. And I think when we think about climate security, we need to think about people as what he said not just the state level and, and, and keeping people in community safe by preventing conflict preventing these climate risks from spilling over into greater instability and conflict and that that really needs to be the goal. This is this is great so we've touched on the ways that risks intersect and the importance of taking a systemic approach. I want to bring this into the implications for policy and planning. You know this is obviously a big issue now in the Biden administration I don't think that we can talk though about what's happening in the government now related to climate security, without discussing the last four years. You know, it is no secret that President Trump was antagonistic to science of climate change. His national security advisor will happen at one point was a prominent climate denialist who tried to censor congressional testimony on climate insecurity. He tried, there was, you know, not not able to set up a panel to challenge government findings that set out the very argument that climate change is a security threat. So, you know, maybe Aaron, we could start with you what, what are the consequences of those last four years did things happen behind the scenes quietly or was policy and study in the government on climate insecurity just at a standstill for four years. Where, and where are we now. Sure. No, those are those are good questions. I think a couple things I think that it's important to distinguish between the political appointees in the civil service right and I think civil service throughout multiple administrations continues their their work on the issue but even even prior to Trump there wasn't a ton of focus within the security community on really mainstreaming climate across all agencies and across all work. And so certainly the Trump administration didn't help in that in that case but they weren't starting from a very high level necessarily. Anyway, I also think, but I also think that Congress provided a nice push during the past four years on this issue where you saw bipartisan action on climate security, pushing the Defense and the intelligence community to continue taking those issues up. But I also think that one of the things that is challenging for the Biden administration is they have very high ambitions on these topics may tass a lot of things right out of the gate on climate change but you didn't have the the workforce necessarily in place to really go after everything right away. And so sustaining this for the long haul means building a workforce that is climate competent right from your GS 13 kind of middle mid junior level employee throughout the national security community and no matter what office you're working in I mean I've seen some reporter recently said that every reporter needs to be a climate reporter going forward because of how these issues are affecting everything. So I think every national security person within the government needs to be a climate person to a certain extent and in so far as they can bring that into the work and their expertise that they do otherwise. Thank you. That I think that this is this is a real problem for the climate security sector right which is really all of us to try and solve is really how to institutionalize it, because if you don't I mean we have the political will right and and as we saw with the administration's, you know that political will ebbs and ebbs and ways. And if you are sort of are held held suspect to that then you're not able to sort of create behavior change. And that's why I think I completely agree with Aaron like if you're not if you don't have the mid career if you don't have those individuals talking about climate security then you can't really motivate behavior change. You can't have the federal policy but again if you don't have that community of interest. You know that vertical and horizontal integration and so that that's sort of if you don't have the institutionalization of climate change climate security, then you have a real failure to be able to sort of adapt to what the future could could No, no, no, that's that's I mean I'd love to go in this direction how do you bake this in so that it doesn't fall to the whims of, you know, changing administrations I mean, it has to be more than just having the workforce right because if the priority of an incoming administration says this is not important then then that that message trickles down. Is there a good another good example in the government where something just, you know, ultimately became, you know, integrated and, you know, no matter, no matter the, no matter the politics of an incoming administration. Yeah, and so I think the pandemic is a great example of that because I think the pandemic was a great opportunity for us to sort of to really galvanize this this behavioral change. Right, we have an issue and we need an immediate response to it and there was not there was not I mean there was discussion sort of politically and whether or not we agree that it was was an issue globally but I think at the at the very core people understand how it how it is going to affect the world globally. And so people sort of understood the threats and they understood sort of, and then they try to figure out ways to deal with it and that was sort of as a collective whole. And I think what we're missing here is this people are too caught up in the politics of understanding of climate climate security. So, like Aaron mentioned earlier people are very much against securitization of climate, because because you know they don't want to involve a military solution. And I think we're wasting too much time as a society is a global society talking about sort of whether or not we agree that climate security is a threat, and less time sort of figuring out what to do about it and so. So I think the pandemic again was an opportunity where we all united to say, you know, we got this vaccine in record time right those those trials take a long, long time. And because of the cross cutting nature of the threat of the risk we saw it as an opportunity to create these vaccines and now I think mRNA is going to be used for other other diseases, right and so I think again we can apply some of those lessons learned to the climate security sector. That's great. And maybe could you and this is a question from a from one of our attendees to could you kind of walk us through some of the big things that federal agencies are currently doing whether it's at the Pentagon State Homeland Security. You know USA ID to address climate insecurity. Sure. Sure. So a lot of this came out of the the Biden administration's executive order in late January on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. But the big things that were in there for the security agencies first of all we're doing some research to understand the problems so they tasked a national intelligence estimate, which is the premier report from the intelligence agency and all 18 agencies come together to put out a report on topics that are most of most concerned to us national security. And so they're working on that. There's a risk assessment report that the Pentagon is doing as well. That then they are supposed to integrate into the national defense strategy war gaming and regional security planning going forward. So the Department US aid Homeland Security are all supposed to be doing these things as well, making sure that I think the executive order had some language around any, any part of the government that operates abroad has to think about how climate change intersects and shapes what what they're doing abroad so every agency is doing that and you've seen a lot of work at the Defense Department in particular has hired some folks into key positions in the office of the secretary of defense, which I think is really important to have them there in that office as opposed to a separate office, right but they were, they report to the secretary and and speak on behalf of his office to lead this effort in DoD. And you've also got, you know, obviously the special envoy secretary Kerry, working on these issues as well I think the piece that Kerry seems most focused on is the mitigation, obviously the cutting emissions part which is important, obviously in the second half of the century in particular for security, but we also need to make sure we're focused on the adaptation and resilience I would argue, because even if you cut all emissions tomorrow we still security problems we've bought so I think there's more work to be done there Yeah, and I just want to read really briefly to that. I think we have, we have the federal policy right and that's coming down that's this trickling down but I think from my perspective we still are not obligating enough resources against it. I'm not just talking about financial capital I'm talking about sort of human resources. So, it's great that Secretary Kerry is the climate sort of global, our State Department's climate czar right that's his unofficial title. But again, like Aaron said we need those mid-career people to start talking about these issues and having some actual program descriptions, job descriptions, that are at our level so we can start sort of trickling those down. And I think that's when you start, if you do that then we can really successfully operationalize climate security and that's and what Yes, please. How do we get from, we have a lot of studies out there and these are critical, but like how do we turn this into operationalization? I don't have a great answer to that because I think I want to throw it back out to our listeners and throw it back to our federal researchers and other scientists and researchers out there because I think this is where we have a real opportunity to define what does operationalization mean. So, Aaron spoke about the NATO's national climate action plan and what I think what that what's missing in the action plan is sort of how do you operationalize so how do countries actually start beginning to plan for the effects of climate change. And I think that's a very important question and we don't really have a good understanding of that because it requires again like I'm coming back to obligating human resources obligating financial resources to this. Because at the end of the day, again, you're talking about behavior change and how do you get federal policy to motivate behavior change. I think, you know, I think that's where we're, that's the space that we're in now and that's what I think we want to be able to answer. Let me pause for a moment to just remind our audience that, you know, we're getting in a lot of great questions and encourage you to send in your questions and I've already incorporated a few and we're going to start bringing in more of your questions in just a few minutes. So thank you for for sending all of these and please keep them coming. Oh, you're fine I was just going to jump in on how do we how do we operationalize this and I think there are a few things we can we can look at here that might be helpful. One is the UN and the UN Security Council has now climate advisors positions within some missions abroad including in Somalia, for example they have someone whose job it is to be the climate security advisor there. So that's a model you can look at of like having a person on the ground with a team who's who's got that background and that experience. There's an effort by an organization we work with at the Center for Climate and Security Klingendal Institute in the Netherlands which did a study earlier this year on climate security practices. It was part of our world climate and security report this year and they evaluated interventions around the world that had a climate security focus. And that's why it's not called the best practices report it's just called the practices report, because it was just looking at these nascent interventions and I think that's something we can look at doing that research to kind of understand how these these practices work. And then the third thing I'll say, and I had a, I think there's, we need to give the work of the national security community the right tools to use in their day to day work, right to be able to integrate this hard science with the social science as Swati said and so, you know, there are there are great predictive capabilities associated with understanding climate change and climate effects and finding ways to get those tools in the hands of people who need to use them within the national security community I think would would help as well to institutionalize and build that culture. Right, it's about building culture and shaping the bureaucracy in such a way that it just becomes in ingrained into the work, going forward. I'm just curious, how would you describe the culture now and its attitude toward the intelligence community, the security community, and its attitude toward climate as a security threat. From, from my perspective, I think there's it's still very siloed right you still have the climate folks are separate from the regional folks, and you don't have that that systems integration that you would need. I think at some senior levels to you still have folks who are fairly skeptical that climate change is really a security problem that yeah maybe we should collect some secret information about what adversaries are going to bring to the negotiating table. But other than that, not leave it to the scientists. I, you think that's changing. I think you see a new generation of folks coming in who automatically understand just kind of intuitively why climate change is a security issue. But I think you need to make that that change to more senior levels of management and I will say again what I've seen from bni Hain so far she clearly gets it. And so I think that's really important but but there's it'll it'll take time. It's an evolution. So I think maybe given your role role with Africa. Where do you see the opportunities to advance climate security and what, you know, maybe you could speak a little more about some of the resources that that are needed and what allies and, and partners should we should we be working with. Yeah, that's a really great question and actually was spending some time forehand sort of thinking of how best to do that. My mentor is often fond of saying, you know, when you're talking about strategies and developing the correct right strategies, you want to do the right things there's doing the right things and then there's doing things right. And, and so there's some tension there I think in the federal government right now where we're not quite quite there yet. So, one of my, my former co workers and I were talking about sort of from the Department of Defense perspective, what does success look like how do you how do you know how do we get to how to become big climate secured and so one of the conversations revolved around dot malpf, which is, which is sort of a framing tool that the, the sort of joint doctrine uses to, to basically look at sort of from strategic perspective, what what are the issues that we need to better understand. And so if we have and dot malpf stands for doctrine to look my notes organization training material lead leadership and personnel as well as facilities. If we have climate security at each of those levels, then I think, you know, then there's some opportunities to really advance climate security, not just within the federal space but it's sort of in the, in the civil, in the civil sector. That's great. I'm going to turn to some questions from the audience and one question we have that I'm so glad to see is on climate migration. One audience member asks, isn't climate migration the most significant security risk potentially hundreds of millions, moving out of uninhabitable areas. I want to just add to that, you know, I understand that the President Biden has requested a study on on climate induced migration. The National Rights Group refugees international just this week came out with a report urging the United States to accept millions of what what they describe as refugees will be forced to flee the effects of climate change. So, you know, let's let's open this up at what point will the United States and other countries have to develop policies to specifically address people are displaced in part because of climate fuel disasters. Yeah, I can start on that I mean they should start developing those policies now, I think, but we have any. Yeah, well that was what the executive order was was going towards, right is to do the study and then and then implement some policies. But I want to take a step back to talk about how climate change shapes migration a little bit because I think that's important to the understanding and there are two primary pathways right there's the acute events right when you have a hurricane or a typhoon and it has to flee. And then there's the slow onset stresses as well where over time, land becomes environmentally degraded. So you can't grow crops there anymore, maybe your the river becomes land around it becomes salinated because of sea level rise, and over time it's it's much a slower process. Most climate migration that we see and we'll see will be within states, and not between states to begin, right it's people moving from rural areas to urban areas. And so, and, and that's I think important to understand and then obviously then there is the potential for movements outside of states across borders. And that's clearly what the United States and others are concerned about. But I think it's important to recognize that that's, it'll be a process that happens over a long period of time. And we, if we start planning and thinking about it now we have time to address the issues, but it's super complicated as well and it's not just climate change it's climate change mixing with a lot of other things that causes people to leave their countries eventually it's governance it's corruption it's other security issues. It's not just climate change alone. And am I right in understanding, both of you that, you know, to my understanding, the bulk of what we call climate induced migration is happening internally it's not it's not really so much. You know, people fleeing one country for another but fleeing the Shakira district of Bangladesh for example for DACA. How, you know, I see both of you nodding that I mean let's just say that that problem is gets a lot less attention. It's not as sexy right as Australia is going to be, you know, swarmed with people fleeing their homeland. How and it becomes a really localized problem how do you generate the needed attention for that as a security issue as a human security problem. Yeah, I don't like that question because I think people often rely upon this sort of, there's going to be mass migration because of climate climate security and that's sort of used as a sort of galvanizing, you know, sort of us versus them and I think my our friends over at USAD would remind us that migration requires access to resources and it's people of a certain socio economic level that are able to to get on that boat right or to get to to be able to get from rural to urban. And I think we actually need to be more concerned about the people who cannot migrate were forced to stay in a location, because they don't have adaptive capacity and adaptive capacities the ability to cope with change, because they don't have any money, right or access to resources. And so I think that that's, I think we need to be more concerned with sort of what is globally what is our adaptive capacity absorptive. The ability to change at various levels. We did some research, a couple of years ago and one of our researchers from South Africa found that when you're sort of comparing and contrasting the adaptive capacity of individuals from Mississippi and from a certain location in Sudan I can't remember the town that in Sudan actually you had a higher adaptive capacity because you know the people that they were talking about had access to weapons and they had you know their livestock. The people in Mississippi was sort of reliant on reliant upon. This is in Greenville reliant upon institutions to bail them out so there's a perception that sort of in the global north that these institutions are going to bail you out but you know you're there's sort of that time lag from when the disaster occurs whether it's slow or sudden to then actually getting you the ability to to sort of get out of that situation. I think that are actually more mobile maybe more adaptive right so I think we need more a better understanding of what what causes people to stay. That's fascinating so if I can stick with you for a moment, because this is related one of our, one of our audience members asks, you know, the impacts of climate change are highly localized but how do you make a meaningful connection between national level. You're up, you know, can we stick on that point for a moment. Yeah and I think that's what that's why we want to talk about sort of using a human security or human human security lens because it brings it back to the individual. And I think there's there's a very great definition of human security which I am not going to recall right now but it actually I think a part of the definition of all the word dignity. Right. And so, when you're talking about these long term effects, long longitudinal impacts of what changing climate patterns could have on societies. Understanding again what's happening in those households is going to be critical because people have the ability to deal with some some type of change right now, but again when you start overlaying sort of like in Yemen, agricultural issues along with water scarcity issues, the capacity to cope with the incremental incremental capacity to cope with change becomes a lot smaller. Aaron, you know, again from our audience over one of our audience members asks over the next decade. How should strategic planning within the military and intelligence communities integrate climate risk into the suite of risks that are considered like state actors, non state actors, China, Russia. What does that implementation, hopefully look like. Sure. Yeah, that's a that's a good question I think I mean, there's a couple things I would point to one I would point to the global trends report which I worked on when I was on the Nick and they released in in March I did a really nice job of laying out what they called kind of fundamental risks which climate was one of four. There was also a few other it's their technology economics and demography I think, and then. So those are the things that are fairly certain over the next 10 to 20 years you can project fairly carefully, or fairly fairly well what's going to happen but then it's what he said it's how humans interact with those trends right. And so, and that's where you get the uncertainty going forward and so I would I would argue that that how you how you integrate climate and then we've used this word a lot is a lens a climate lens on to whatever national security problem. You're looking at otherwise how does climate shape that how does it shape and another actors ability to operate in the environment how does it shape the decision making. I think China is a key example here so often, especially on Capitol Hill you see here this question of like well is it climate or is it China that's more important and we focus on climate we can't focus on China. And that's just the wrong question. A colleague of mine John Conger had a recent op ed and Defense one on this that was excellent, but it's, you need to bring climate into the China conversation you need to understand how climate change is shaping Chinese leaders decision making. And how it's shaping their ability to operate in the Indo Pacific, how it's shaping countries we want to ally and partner with in that region and what are their main concerns, and how do we help them with their climate concerns in such a way that perhaps helps us in competition with China I mean there's all these kinds of ways you can bring it in. And I think that's how it has to work going forward to make sure we don't miss things, because otherwise we're going to if we don't bring that climate lens you're totally going to miss key risks and the US. Yeah. This is a very specific question. So I think don't be don't be scared by the beginning of it if you haven't read the NATO climate change and security action plan because our audience member points to point four of that plan but the point for that plan. Our audience member notes. He mentions that it's expected that there will be a disproportionate impact on women and other populations can. Can you expand on what our audience member described as the differential impact how how is climate change affect the most vulnerable communities. Women and others in a disproportionate way and and how do we have to think about that in the climate security context. Yeah I think that's a great question and there's there's a lot of you know great research out there and so with without trying to do undue diligence to them I think right now, I would argue that women carry a lot of different burdens in the world and being pretty obtuse here. But when you're talking about sort of at the at the household level we were talking about before. There's sort of what the socioeconomic like you have the socioeconomic duties that you can write you have jobs and etc. But you also sort of the have the invisible chores right you have to manage sort of where where you're not you have to but women tend to be the managers of these invisible that what they call the invisible burden so has your child been vaccinated yet you have to schedule these doctors appointments. And so, so already I think women are pretty stressed, working in this sort of in this in this space. And then when you overlay these impacts of climate change in across the world. I think you're going to see again I agree with the question I think there's going to be an undue amount of an enormous amount of stress on women because they're already stressed right now. Yeah. Yeah. Here's here's an interesting question that that maybe maybe Aaron you can you can take. Do you have any potential concerns, for example, or examples that come to mind about state non actors leveraging information about projected climate resilience or vulnerability for strategic gains for example restricting access to resilient resilience building resources, or even limiting access to the information needed to build resilience between actors like withholding information about future impact projections to affect investments, etc. Is that is that a concern, Aaron. I would say non state actors, or does a non actors but I imagine this would, this would, you know, extend to state actors as well. Sure. I mean I think that could that could be a concern right that that that actors try and limit amounts of information, or not share how bad they might think things are with for themselves for example. That probably falls lower on my list of major concerns around climate security going forward but I do. It does relate a little bit to a, when I usually lay out my, my, my best gets of climate security risk I am concerned about I do worry a little bit sometimes about the risks of response to climate change creating security issues. And the, the simple one here is the energy transition right though they're going to be winners and losers as we move away from fossil fuels and that can create potential instability and unrest in places that have relied on on fossil fuels for their economy and social stability, but there are also concerns that some interventions in developing countries for example could be problematic around climate security and not understand actual players on the ground. You've also seen some governments, a little bit, you know, use, use climate change as an excuse for poor environmental practices, right or environmental degradation, oh it's not our fault that you don't have water it's, it's climate change which we didn't have anything to do with and, or I even worry a little bit, you know, having been someone who followed counter terrorism issues for a long time you saw many states try and use counter terrorism as a reason to partner with the US against groups they didn't like in their own country. Could the climate security lens be applied that way right like oh we need your help to deal with this issue but we're going to exclude this group from it. So I mean, again, that's a concern but I think it's minimal compared to other other concerns. Okay, so, you know, obviously in addressing anything there's there's unintended consequences and maybe this falls into that basket or are there are there, you know, other unintended consequences of addressing climate security. So any that that are on your radar. I don't think I don't think so because I for me I see climate security is sort of the overarching sort of the umbrella of, you know, where you put the basket of risks and everything sort of trickles down from that so I think we did a study a while ago, looking at the return on investment on, you know, if you if you try to take action, you know, climate security action. What does that yield you in the future and I know that the building council in the US also did look at that and, you know, I think the numbers just are just, they don't lie. I mean you just you see a return on investment so you have sort of a dual, what you do now is going to yield sort of many positive effects in the future right so if you build climate resilient now that can withstand, you know, future disasters and and some of those some of those benefits you can't quantify all the time you need you need to qualify those and I think it's yeah you can't go wrong with that. And just to clarify, I think absolutely there are. Oh, sorry. That's okay we have five minutes left and I just I have a question that I love that I want to. So, say there's a student in social sciences and humanities who's thinking about joining government service, possibly in the intelligence community. Could each of you give some of the three biggest areas of climate change that that you'd recommend they study to prepare for you know it's duty to be environmentally informed in government service. I think I think in the government we need more science based policy and policy based science and I think Aaron and I talked about the needing a systemics approach or systems approach really and so and I think that you you if you can get a program that offers you sort of multi disciplinary or trans disciplinary look at some of these issues that we're talking about and then then I think you'll have great success because you know I've worked a lot with engineers and I worked a lot with social scientists and it's hard sometimes to marry or integrate those communities of interest together, but the great success was when we had researchers who had that sort of trans disciplinary background. The my former coworker was a she's a she was a teacher and then was a certified engineer and now as a social scientist and the perspectives that she brings to to the table are just phenomenal, you know and so that's what I would you know trying to get that try to get his money, try to get a holistic as a approach as a possible. No, absolutely I think interdisciplinary approaches I think people who can act as translators right that's what I think about it is someone who can bridge the gap between the scientific community and the social science community or the national security community and help the two kind of communicate and collaborate is is critical and so in terms of substantive areas to focus on I would focus on what you're most passionate and interested about but then think about how to how to build that ability to talk across groups and also the systemic risk and systems thinking any kind of course work or work you can do in that approach I think would be really useful as well. So as a final question from me. You know what is the one thing you would like our audience to take away from today's conversation. Aaron let's let's start with you. I think the thing I would say is that there's not a single current national security concern of the US that's not affected in some way by the climate crisis. I think that there are opportunities, however, to address these issues that will have co benefits right so if we address the climate issues we will also then address many of these national security concerns and so thinking about it from an opportunity perspective and not just a risk perspective is is critical in the in the years to come. Yeah, I think Aaron read my notes because that's really the same answer I had. I will add that I think there's a perception that there's you know the climate trends are dire but like Aaron said, we have opportunities to get this right. So can we look at the most marginalized communities now and get it right now for them so that in the future. They're they're more adaptive to future change so, and I think that people often you view vulnerability from a negative perspective right so if you're very vulnerable that's that's not a good thing but I think. Again, I think that's where you have the most opportunities to get things right. And when people talk about resilience I think people talk about as a sort of a finished concept so I am resilient and you sort of check the box and it's like okay well now I'm climate resilient. And that doesn't it doesn't take into the to the conversation that the dynamic nature of climate change right and so we don't want to be static we don't have the static responses or static answers and so that's why I think vulnerability is a better or more useful lens because you're constantly evolving and looking at different ways that you can make yourselves less vulnerable. Wonderful. sweaty Aaron I really want to thank both of you for an incredibly thoughtful conversation and I want to thank everybody who who attended and sent in questions for an absolutely terrific conversation. I'm going to turn this back over to Alex thank you. Thanks Lisa, and thank you for your fantastic moderation today, and for the depth of expertise and thoughtfulness you brought to your questions. I also want to thank sloppy and Aaron for sharing your expertise and your perspectives, and your time as well. And also thanks for your leadership in this area in general. Thank you again to all of you at home or at work for joining the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine for our sixth climate conversation, and for asking such excellent questions. The conversation was recorded and should be available for viewing on this same webpage starting tomorrow. Again, we'll be taking a break for August but we'll return with more climate conversations in the fall, and you can sign up for the climate at the National Academies newsletter above to get notified about upcoming climate conversations, as well as other events. As a final reminder to share your feedback on today's events or your ideas for future events, please see the survey link above. We really appreciate hearing from you. Lastly, thank you to the climate communications team at the National Academies and to everyone behind the scenes who supported today's events. We're excited to continue to communicate through future events like this, and I hope you have a good one. Thanks so much.