 I'm Tegan Blaine, and I serve as the Director of the Climate Environment and Conflict Program here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Today, we're going to be talking about how the U.S. government sees climate change impacting U.S. security. In 2021, the U.S. government came out with a report called the National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change and U.S. Security. The NIE focused on explaining the risks that the U.S. government sees to U.S. security from climate change over the next couple of decades. It focused on a couple of major issues. The first one is geopolitical tensions that are already beginning to crop up about how countries partner together to reduce the causes of climate change, to reduce the number of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change going into the atmosphere, and really who pays for that. The second part of the report focused heavily on the physical impacts of climate change, how climate change is going to impact the world that we experience and what that means for security issues. There were two sets of issues there that the report focused on. One was on geopolitical tensions around hotspots that are likely to crop up, like shared water sources is likely to cause tensions between countries. The other part was really focused heavily on the risks of instability and conflict and what the ramifications might be for the United States and for U.S. partners. What this section boils down to is whether countries have the ability to adapt to climate change. Adapting to climate change is a huge challenge and it's dependent on a few major things. One is how responsive governments are to the communities that they serve. When those communities are struggling with issues, does government listen to their concerns and kind of provide the services that those communities need? Another aspect is what the development level of the country is. As individuals, do people have the resources that they need to adapt to climate change or as communities? Do they have access to education? Do they have access to clean water and sanitation? Those kinds of basic issues really determine whether individuals or families or communities have some resources that they can use to adapt to climate change. The third area is really about how dependent the economy and the society is on natural resources because that's where we're going to feel climate change. Climate change is going to impact temperature, it's going to impact rainfall, it's going to impact sea level rise and all of these contribute to making people potentially less stable. It impacts food security, water security, energy security, even health security. When people don't feel as though they have control over their lives, that they don't have access to what they need to be safe and productive, then that has all sorts of long-term ramifications. When people are in those situations, when they're hungry and they don't have access to water, then it's easier for violent or extremist groups to recruit people to their cause because those people don't see another future for themselves. When people are dependent on the food that they grow on their land to feed their families and those crops fail, then oftentimes they are faced with hard choices about whether they stay where they are and strive to grow food in another year or whether they consider moving. But also these kinds of feelings of insecurity sometimes translate into political impacts. People revolt, they protest and make it clear to government that they are very concerned about their future and especially if that government is not responsive to those concerns, it can result in significant conflict as well. Countries have very local impacts. Some of these issues may be restricted to certain geographies or certain communities, but many of these impacts can bubble up and have ramifications for the partnerships we have with countries all around the world and eventually for the security of the United States. Climate change is going to demand resources on many different levels. It's going to demand investments to respond to disasters. It's going to demand different kinds of investments in development. It's going to demand different relationships between countries and different diplomatic approaches and ways of interacting with each other. And even the military may see that demands on the military may shift as military is called into respond to disasters or they suddenly face uprisings and other unrest in areas where they might not have expected it. Climate change is likely to shape our future for as long as our lives go on. It is a global challenge and it will have ramifications from very local levels to very global levels. And that is what USIP is beginning to work on now.