In January 2026, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences convened a virtual roundtable in partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment to examine whether climate change is a driver of global conflict and instability. Scholars of international relations, atmospheric science, and public policy met virtually to discuss evidence linking climate change and geopolitical risk, and to discuss where the evidence is lacking.
The topic is increasingly important. As climate-driven extreme weather events continue to impact communities around the globe, researchers and policymakers are increasingly interested in predicting and managing potential instability. However, experts debate the degree to which climate change contributes to conflict. This virtual event welcomed contrasting opinions and produced the following points of agreement, areas of caution, and topics for future exploration.
Areas of Agreement and Advisement:
View climate change is a “risk multiplier” that can amplify existing socioeconomic and political stressors. Environmental catastrophes like drought or extreme rainfall can interact with governance challenges, economic pressures, and social tensions in ways that can intensify instability. Prolonged drought in Syria, for example, worsened existing sociopolitical unrest and governance failures in the years prior to the Syrian Civil War.1
Avoid simple climate-conflict narratives. Attributing conflicts or their causes directly to climate change can obscure more complex social and political drivers. In the case of Syria, water scarcity was driven in large part by unfavorable agricultural policies, not climate change.
Reject false binaries to move beyond rigid frameworks that portray climate change either as a direct cause of conflict or irrelevant to security. The climate-conflict relationship is context-dependent and varies across regions and political contexts. For instance, Europe’s transition from Russian oil to renewable energy will weaken Russia’s relative geopolitical leverage. It will also introduce new questions, like how to create backup energy systems during extreme weather events, when energy demands exceed electrical grid capacity.2 New policies create potential landscapes where conflict can emerge, but do not themselves create conflict.
Differentiate securitization and militarization. Securitization involves framing a risk as an existential threat to people, communities, or nations. Militarization calls on militaries to address those threats. Understanding and tackling climate-related challenges requires civilian leadership, interdisciplinary expertise, and long-term policy planning rather than military solutions alone.
Areas of Caution and Concern:
Existing evidence is short-term and highly localized. Our current empirical research focuses on specific communities, countries, or regions over short time frames. These studies share important insights but provide little guidance for understanding long-term global dynamics.
Oversimplified narratives can distort policy responses. Climate explanations of crises can downplay the roles of governance failures, economic policies, or social inequalities in causing and exacerbating conflicts. This can also lead to incomplete diagnoses or crises and ineffective policy solutions.
Militarized solutions distract from alternative approaches. Thinking about climate change as a security threat to be addressed by militarized responses privileges militarized institutions and policy tools, overlooking more effective civilian-led approaches focused on resilience, governance, and long-term adaptation.
Areas for Additional Research:
The economic transitions resulting from decarbonization will have security implications. Efforts to transition away from fossil fuels toward renewables will have major geopolitical consequences, particularly for economies heavily dependent on fossil fuel revenues. The growing renewable energy sector will also increase demand for critical minerals, raising questions about supply chains, governance, and geopolitical competition.
The long-term impacts of climate change have not been fully examined in existing literature. Rising sea levels, agricultural disruption, and climate-driven economic policy shifts are difficult to analyze using current datasets and methods.
Participants emphasized that climate change does matter for global security, but usually in ways that are context-specific and difficult to predict. Understanding these issues will require interdisciplinary collaboration, new and improved data, and institutions capable of creating and adapting policies as new evidence emerges.