Understanding climate security: A conversation with Professor Geoff Dabelko

Dr. Geoff Dabelko brings attention to an ever-present, but often overlooked issue: climate security.

As a professor of environmental studies at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service at Ohio University, he has spent decades researching the indelible connection between climate change and national security.  

“Climate security is a focus on two areas that typically haven’t been considered together,” Dabelko said.  

Climate security considers the link that security has to areas such as the environment, natural resources and climate change. However, to understand climate security, one must understand how climate and security connect, and the individual importance of both.

“Security is traditionally, and typically, a focus on traditional threats to the homeland, to state security and issues of war and peace,” Dabelko explained. “That has expanded over time, particularly after the end of the Cold War, which is how I got into this.”

Dabelko began working in Washington, D.C. in the early 1990s, after the Cold War ended. At the time there was a surge of interest in international affairs, and a space to “discuss new issues that were new to security, but not new issues themselves,” regarding the environment, according to Dabelko.

But the interest in climate change within the growing environment and security field did not begin until 2007. According to Dabelko, “the upsurge in attention was driven by a combination of factors: new scientific understanding that the challenges were manifesting today rather than in some distant future; dramatic extreme weather events that captured wider attention; and a growing suspicion that climate impacts could be part of underlying conditions contributing to high-profile violent conflicts.”  

Pakistan is one country facing the brunt of security challenges posed by climate change. Despite ranking among the top 10 global military powers by Global Firepower, the country of over 240 million faces constant threat of climate-related disaster.  

“Pakistan happens to be very vulnerable to climate change and extreme flooding that has the propensity to wipe out large proportions of this year's agricultural crops and rural livelihoods,” Dabelko said.  

In August 2022, one-third of Pakistan was submerged by floods, affecting 33 million residents and claiming the lives of 1,730 people. Inflation rose to 38% and over 12 million people were displaced, escalating an already poor political and economic situation.  

The competition for available resources in climate change impacted regions can create tensions and contribute to conflict, while conflict can exacerbate the effects of climate change.  

“By talking about climate security, we're talking about how it can serve as a threat multiplier of these underlying challenges that exist around governance, poverty and difficult livelihoods,” Dabelko said. “At the heart of [climate security] is trying to bring together topics that haven't traditionally been understood in the security realm.” 

Dabelko directed the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program from 1997 to 2012. He continues to serve the Center as an advisor. As director, he facilitated dialogues between individuals and groups working in the environment, security, the United States government and the United Nations.

“Our hypothesis in the 1990s was, if you structure those environmental interactions in ways that address the environmental problems, but also build trust through the habit of interaction, that can be a force for building trust and ultimately peace,” he said.

Dabelko went on to co-edit a 2002 book titled “Environmental Peacemaking” that featured case studies from around the world to make the case for this approach that moved beyond focusing on just environment and conflict links. Dabelko described these peacebuilding dimensions of environmental cooperation along a “conflict continuum,” where opposing groups, not yet engaged in conflict, can find a common ground through environmental matters.  

One famous example he provided was the "Picnic Table Talks” between Jordan and Israel. During a formal state of war, representatives from each country met to share data and manage the use of water from the Jordan River Basin. Over time, Jordan and Israel built trust with one another and contributed to a foundation for communication between the countries.  

“It’s humanizing [each]other around a shared vulnerability where one cannot be safe without the actions of the other,” Dabelko said. "It is not solving the horrific challenges that we have, but there are small wins that we see at the community level, that will be essential to build back. There will be avenues on the ground, [and a] logic of interdependence that allows us to do it.”

Climate change impacts national security for nations around the world and has broader implications for Earth as a collective. Dabelko’s work addressing these issues fills a gap in research that is often overlooked.  

“You will find a myriad of adjectives in front of security,” Dabelko said. “Climate change is one that we feel has lots of resonance because of how wide-ranging the impacts are on health, food security, where we live, how we move around, temperature, extreme weather events and infectious diseases changes. It is fundamentally connected to a broader and more inclusive notion of security that [goes] beyond just our borders, to understanding what the impacts are for individuals, communities and human well-being.”  

On Oct. 17, Dabelko’s newest article “The international (in)security order and the climate-conflict-security nexus” was published in Environment and Security and is available to read online here.