The Militarization–Climate Nexus: Armed Conflict, Military Emissions, and the Governance Gap, 2020–2026

Abstract

This article aims to fill a void in the existing climate–security literature, by mapping the interplay between armed conflict, military activity, and geopolitical tension in shaping the climate and global sustainability in the 2020-2026 timeframe. It tackled three research questions: first, what is the immediate environmental impact of conflict, second, how energy transitions relate to conflict-related militarisation, and third, how strong the empirical evidence is for bi-directional climate– conflict, or the “threat multiplier”. The results demonstrate that the period of each of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza saw 230 million tonnes and estimated 47.7-61.4 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions respectively, largely concentrated in warfare activity and carbon-intensive reconstruction. Although there is expert-elicitation evidence on the impact of climate factors on conflict, the opposite pathway (conflict's impact on environmental governance) has been comparatively under-studied and only accounts for 3-20% of the sources of conflict risk. The discussion sets the results in the context of previous literature, sees a structural “military emissions gap” in the governance of the UNFCCC and suggests four possible reforms: compulsory reporting of military emissions, formal incorporation of the “conflict-emissions” methods into national inventories, expanded loss and damage mechanisms, and tying defence–climate finance transparency together. The study provides a policy analytical framework, which consolidates findings from various studies, often dispersed in unrelated literatures, which were necessary for the field to be analysed in a coherent manner.

Keywords: military emissions; armed conflict; climate security; energy transition; climate finance; UNFCCC governance; Ukraine; Gaza