The National Security – Climate Adaptation Nexus | Briefing

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing on the impacts of climate change on U.S. national security. Climate change impacts—from extreme heat to wildfires and flooding—affect people’s homes and communities, as well as supply chains, the electric grid, military installations, and other critical infrastructure across the country. Effective adaptation actions can help address these widespread and costly vulnerabilities.

Panelists discussed climate adaptation already happening at the local level around the country and the range of federal programs designed to support these efforts. They also highlighted ways that federal policy can advance national-level coordination on adaptation to safeguard critical infrastructure, and protect and improve people’s lives.

Highlights

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In 2023, there were 28 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States, which together accounted for $93 billion in damage.
Climate adaptation is an ongoing process, so assessments and programs need to be continually updated as conditions change. Military bases can choose to include community vulnerability in their assessments, providing a more complete picture and opening up the potential for resilience partnerships.
Resource scarcity, increased natural disasters and their inequitable outcomes, vulnerability of critical infrastructure, geopolitical instability, and environmental justice issues all decrease national security and impact vulnerable communities. These issues will only grow without a commitment to climate adaptation.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-169) made progress towards creating an enabling environment for climate adaptation by funding initiatives like the Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Change Grants that address climate impacts and improve governance for the inclusion of environmental justice communities.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s National Climate Resilience Framework provides society-wide objectives and opportunities for actions that cut across all federal agency domains, climate impacts, and economic sectors.

Adam Smith, Applied Climatologist, National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

In 2023, there were 28 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States, surpassing the previous annual record of 22 billion-dollar events set in 2020. The 28 events included 17 severe storms, four floods, two cyclones, two tornadoes, one winter storm, one wildfire event, and one drought.
Altogether, the 28 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters caused approximately $93 billion in damage. The southern and midwestern drought was the costliest event of the year, with losses exceeding $14.5 billion largely due to agriculture sector impacts.
In recent years, the United States has been hit by a billion-dollar disaster every three weeks on average. In the 1980s, there were about three months between each billion-dollar disaster. Shorter time intervals between disasters mean there is less time and fewer resources available to respond to, recover from, and prepare for future events.
Since 2017, the frequency, diversity, and cost of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have been at historic highs for different hazard types, including hurricanes, wildfires, extreme rainfall, severe storms, droughts, and heatwaves.
The total direct costs from U.S. billion-dollar disasters over the last seven years exceeds $1.1 trillion.
The compounding impacts of climate change increase vulnerability to drought and wildfire season, enhance the potential for heavy rainfall, worsen hurricane storm surge flooding, and increase the potential for hurricanes to rapidly intensify.

Susanne Torriente, Global Principal, City Resilience, Jacobs

Climate change is a threat to both communities and national security, but proactively taking steps to understand risk and vulnerability and invest in adaptive capacity can limit damage.
Many military installations rely on local governments for utilities like electricity and water. Rising global temperatures put added stress on aging infrastructure, endangering the ability to deliver these resources to installations.
Many Florida municipalities are adopting stronger building codes to limit damage from increasingly common and severe hurricanes. Coastal flooding is also a concern, and can be addressed through intensive stormwater management. Military installations can follow local building codes in cases where they are stricter than national standards to increase their resilience.
Assessing and managing climate-related risks and implementing comprehensive programs and policies to address them are essential to maintain the security of military installations. Adaptation is an ongoing process, so assessments and programs need to be continually updated as conditions change.
Climate challenges cannot generally be resolved all at once, but bundling smaller actions into a comprehensive program can make it possible to address major issues over time. These programs need to take all community members’ needs into account and build partnerships within the community and outside it in order to maximize effectiveness.
Organizations like the South Florida Defense Alliance, which is made up of former military personnel advocating for service members on bases, and the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation, which provides technical and financial assistance to communities supporting military installations, can provide valuable support in achieving climate resilience goals.
Standard military vulnerability assessments focus exclusively on military assets, but military bases can choose to include community vulnerability in their assessments, providing a more complete picture and opening up the potential for resilience partnerships.

Mary-Carson Stiff, Executive Director, Wetlands Watch

Sea level rise in Norfolk, Virginia, is the highest on the East Coast. Levels have risen about 18 inches over the last 100 years. The rate of sea level rise is expected to double, with three feet of sea level rise projected by 2065.
Virginia has seen the amount and intensity of rainfall increase by an average of 18% statewide since 2006.
In Virginia, coastal wetlands cannot grow vertically at the same pace as sea level rise, and as a consequence they are drowning. Virginia is projected to lose 89% of its tidal wetlands and 51% of its non-tidal wetland s by 2080. Wetlands are the most productive ecosystems in the world and losing them will have significant consequences for the health of the economy.
By 2080, 340,000 buildings and one million Virginia residents will be exposed to major flooding, and Virginia's annualized flood damages will have increased from $0.4 billion today to $5.1 billion. Five hundred miles of roadways are currently exposed to chronic coastal flooding. In 2080, 2,800 miles are expected to experience chronic flooding.
DOD spends more money in Virginia than in any other state—$62.7 billion, or 10% of Virginia's GDP in 2022. The Virginia economy is dependent on military investments. The spending is concentrated in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area.
Virginia is using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s intermediate-high forecast as the official sea level rise planning scenario. It set requirements that state-funded buildings must be built well above flood levels, and that new roads and bridges must be built under new state climate change-engineering design standards.
The Hampton Roads Planning District Commission has adopted short-, mid-, and long-term planning scenarios for sea level rise. The Commission is developing similar adaptive planning standards for rainfall and stormwater management. The Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission designed a comprehensive program called Fight the Flood that links property owners with private businesses that can help address shoreline erosion on private property.
Local governments are upsizing stormwater systems, planning for sea level rise, updating adaptation strategies in their comprehensive planning processes, using zoning ordinances and land use regulations to restrict development, and requiring specific standards in districts that experience unique risks. In some cases, military representatives are sitting on advisory committees related to this work.
The best way to build national security in Virginia is to support what is happening at the local level. Local governments and local organizations are developing and implementing solutions. Simplifying federal grants processes can help communities adapt in the face of climate change.

Antoine Richards, Chief of Staff, Institute for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management (I-DIEM)

Resource scarcity, increased natural disasters and their inequitable outcomes, vulnerability of critical infrastructure, geopolitical instability, and environmental justice issues all decrease national security and impact vulnerable communities throughout the United States. These issues will only grow without a commitment to climate adaptation.
Programs like I-DIEM’s Bridging Resources for Underserved and Indigenous Populations in Landfall Disasters, or BUILD, work with governments, communities, and individuals to provide access to the resources communities need in the wake of natural disasters.
Communities often know what resilience solutions are right for them, but their input is overlooked or ignored. Governments and emergency managers need to work from the bottom up to implement community-crafted resilience solutions.
Lack of awareness and inadequate funding create barriers to effective climate adaptation. Most climate funding goes to mitigation, with less funding directed specifically to adaptation and resilience, so new funding opportunities and community support mechanisms are needed.
It is essential to consider existing economic and political factors in climate adaptation. Funding needs to be directed to historically underserved communities and groups, not just in the short term but on a consistent basis. Climate change is a long-term issue, so climate adaptation needs to be as well.
U.S. climate adaptation efforts should not stop at the U.S. border. When other countries are unable to address climate change, people are forced to move elsewhere. Assisting with climate adaptation abroad increases U.S. national security and benefits everyone.
Community-focused funding, collaboration between organizations, and policymaker education are key priorities in order to successfully adapt to climate change and enhance U.S. national security.

Rachel Jacobson, Lead Researcher, State Climate Policy, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Federal opportunities to create an enabling environment for climate adaptation include providing funding for implementation of known actions and strategies and reforming existing policies to avoid maladaptation. The federal government has made strides on these fronts since 2021.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-169) made progress by funding initiatives like the Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Change Grants. These grants fund projects that address climate impacts and improve governance for the inclusion of environmental justice communities.
To serve the people who are impacted the most, the federal government needs to reform how climate adaptation and resilience money is distributed. For example, competitive grants are difficult for communities to access as application processes can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $75,000 and rarely have a return on investment.
To make federal funding more accessible to communities, states can streamline the permitting process for green infrastructure projects, provide technical assistance to increase local capacity, commit to matching funds for federal infrastructure investments, and prioritize equitable distribution of formula and block grant funding.
There is no credible, comprehensive estimate of the total national costs of climate adaptation. Developing an estimate would allow Congress to make more informed decisions on how much federal funding to allocate to existing and new programs.
The Justice40 Initiative provides a framework to account for how benefits are distributed and helps reform existing policies to avoid maladaptation or actions that may lead to increased climate risk. However, the United States does not have a framework to identify which communities are bearing adaptation burdens.
There are federal funds available for grid resilience and emergency preparedness in energy generation, but there is an uneven application of reforms at the state and local level to enable their use. States all have varying policies that need to be reformed and streamlined in order to enable the deployment of new grid technologies and make climate preparedness and disaster recovery funding more accessible and more equitable.
The federally-assisted, community-based relocation of threatened Alaska Native villages, funded through two $25-million grants and managed by the Denali Commission, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Federal Emergency Management A gency, demonstrates acknowledgment of the need for climate migration in certain cases. The complexity of the issue requires coordination across partners that may not have had to work together in the past.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s National Climate Resilience Framework provides society-wide objectives and opportunities for actions that cut across all federal agency domains, climate impacts, and economic sectors. The framework does not prioritize actions, direct responsible parties to implement actions, or acknowledge fossil fuels as the root cause of climate change.
The National Coordination on Adaptation and Resilience for Security Act (3261/H.R.6311) is an existing bipartisan bill that would require the United States to develop a national climate adaptation and resilience strategy and implementation plan that could form a foundation from which to build adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Q&A

What are some examples of how military installations are working with communities to ensure things like the grid, hospitals, schools, and transportation systems are resilient?

Torriente

Much of the work of climate adaptation has been done by local governments in the past. Service members live in communities but may not know much about local conditions, so it is essential for all involved groups to build connections and work together to include all perspectives.
Different areas of the country face different risks, but the adaptation process—identifying those risks and taking action—is the same.
Any good planning process starts with a community vision. Resilience is about bouncing forward, not just bouncing back, so often the goal of adaptation efforts is to move beyond business as usual, but every community is different.

Stiff

In the development of Virginia’s statewide flood risk mitigation plan, the branches of the military were represented in stakeholder working groups and technical advisory committees so that the needs and interests of the military population and installations are included in coordinated planning efforts.

Richards

Including community members in the decision-making process and using community-crafted resilient solutions is the best way to ensure that adaptation strategies serve everyone.

Jacobson

Community readiness efforts need to consider what the ultimate goal is. Often, adaptation occurs without a clear idea of the desired end state of the community, so it is important to decide this in order to guide the process.

What are examples of policies or programs at DOD that helped support military installation resilience, especially programs that received bipartisan support?

Torriente

Military Installation Resilience Reviews, such as the one for South Florida, are funded by the DOD and benefit local communities.
There is a gap between planning grants and implementation grants. Planning grants should have some available funding at the end to bridge the gap to the actual implementation of the project.
The Military Installation Resilience Review Program could be improved if it worked across agencies, for example with the Department of Homeland Security, to make the work more comprehensive.

Jacobson

Communities need to better understand how funding can help them move from planning to the implementation process.
The National Coastal Resilience Fund has a good four-step process to help communities understand their grant funding and how to move from one phase to another.

What is being done to synchronize the planning processes and building codes of military installations and local communities?

Torriente

Synchronization is not currently happening, and there have been conflicts between the different building codes. If local building codes are stronger than those mandated for military installations, the installations can use the stronger codes to increase its resilience. In cases where the installation’s codes are stronger, the community could consider using them as well.

Are communities having conversations about moving military installations to insulate them from future climate impacts?

Stiff

Conversations about moving installations are happening behind closed doors. The conversations that involve communities revolve around small bases that could easily move their production and assets.
Moving large military bases seems impossible. Conversations must consider each base separately because each base is different.
In Virginia, the Hampton Roads area has strong lines of communication with nearby military installations. Climate impacts are so extreme and chronic that it forces communities to have conversations about retreat.
It would be beneficial to increase conversations between military groups and communities on this topic.

Torriente

Military installations are huge economic engines in communities. Bases are located where they are for geographic and strategic reasons. Bases are also interdependent on each other throughout the world. Before considering retreat, bases should try to adapt to the new conditions.
Bases can get on a path to adaptation, and use data science and technology to keep adapting over time instead of retreating.

To make communities more resilient, they need information in real time. What does data availability look like to inform this work?

Jacobson

There is more and more capacity being built at the federal level to make data available to the people who need it, but there are geographic gaps. U.S. territories and tribal lands are not served by the same climate services that the rest of the country is served by.
Lived experiences do not always match up with the available data. The integration of real-time and lived-experience information through social media and other technologies makes it possible to build a more complete picture of situations.

Richards

Data sets look at different things, so different vulnerability assessments will prioritize different factors.
Data often lacks a qualitative element which would allow for real understanding of affected communities. Both qualitative and quantitative perspectives are needed to develop truly inclusive resilience solutions.

Torriente

Effective resilience work needs to integrate data and vulnerability assessments with local community perspectives. Sharing collected data with the community and asking whether it is consistent with their experience can help combine the two into a more effective set of tools.

Stiff

There is a lot of data available, particularly in areas like Hampton Roads where studies have been conducted repeatedly. The challenge is using that data to make real decisions in cases where money is on the line. Involved parties need to compromise to reach a viable solution, and that process is difficult to accomplish successfully.

Compiled by Emily Phillips and Kylie Tugend and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.