A group of retired Defence leaders has said the National Defence Strategy has ignored the biggest threat to national security — climate change.
A new Australian Security Leaders Climate Group (ASLCG) report , Too hot to handle: The scorching reality of Australia’s climate – security failure, condemns the recent Defence Strategic Review for failing to account for the ways in which climate change will transform the national security environment.
The report points to the siloed thinking that characterises much of public administration as a key cause of this.
“Climate research in Australia is not planned or integrated in a manner that will deliver the information required for realistic risk assessment and government policymaking. As a result, Australia’s climate modelling is not as effective as it needs to be. The lack of coordination is worsened by bureaucratic silos and competing interests,” it says.
“Governments’ most notable risk-management failures have been due to ‘thinking in silos’ and not adopting a coordinated whole-of-government or whole-of-system approach to understanding risk.
“The need to integrate risk analysis, policies and action across federal government departments, and between all levels of government, cannot be overemphasised.”
The report points to the redistribution of Australia’s defence resources to the Northern Territory in response to the Defence Strategic Review as a significant example of this. Climate change is expected to make a significant area of the state extremely hostile to human habitation, exacerbating existing skill shortages.
The Office of National Intelligence delivered a report on climate risk to the government in 2022. Since then, the government has resisted pressure to release even a redacted copy of the report.
The ASLCG repeated their earlier calls for the report to be released and for more transparency around the ways climate change will change the strategic environment.
A key recommendation of their report is the creation of an Office of Climate Threat Intelligence, whose mandates would include delivering an annual declassified brief to parliament.
Former ADF chief Admiral Chris Barrie said more transparency around the advice the government was receiving on climate risk would help ensure resources were flowing to the greatest areas of national security risk.
“There are many places where one may choose to fight a war, but not wish to live or work or choose to locate large numbers of defence personnel in peacetime due to the harshness of conditions. Northern Australia in the future will be one of those places,” he said.
“It appears that the government either doesn’t understand what our scientists are telling them, or they are deliberately hiding the facts from the Australian community. Facing down the climate threat will require unprecedented global cooperation, not a new arms race.
“Currently, if Securing Australia was a movie in production, climate change would be no more than an extra without any speaking role. Climate deserves much more than a mere cameo role on the stage of global security.”
READ MORE:
Apocalypse soon? Reimagining Defence policy in the fight against catastrophe
