Green Defence: Deconstructing NATO and EU Green Defence in a Changing Climate
I was fortunate to receive the UACES Microgrant, which provided additional support to attend the UACES 56th Annual Conference in Prague, hosted by Charles University. During the conference, I presented a paper titled Green Defence: Deconstructing NATO and EU Green Defence Policies in A Changing Climate, as part of the ‘Thinking about Resilience and Responsibility’ session.
The paper introduced the conceptual framework of my PhD and provided an overview of my early empirical findings, arguing that current attempts to green defence in NATO and the EU appear to reproduce assumptions that limit how environmental harm can be understood and addressed, as well as what kinds of action can be considered possible.
The Empirical Puzzle: Integrating Climate Into Defence
There is growing acknowledgement that, as the rest of the world transitions to greener technologies, defence has a carbon problem. However, the environmental harms of defence – its ‘bootprint’ – have gone largely overlooked and have avoided attention in high-level discussions.
The EU has attempted to address this oversight by publishing the Climate Change and Defence Roadmap in 2020, which recommends a series of concrete short-, medium-, and long-term measures to address climate change and the nexus between defence, climate, and security, committing the Union to making military operations greener. Similarly, NATO introduced its Climate Change and Security Action Plan in 2021, which aims to advance the Alliance’s climate agenda around awareness, adaptation, mitigation, and outreach.
These efforts signal a shift toward a more environmentally conscious policy approach and demonstrate a policy-level recognition that defence contributes to environmental harm. However, critics have labelled the integration of climate change into defence as greenwashing, with the defence sector often portraying itself as green while still contributing to environmental damage. This is often linked to the military-industrial complex, the prioritisation of military effectiveness over sustainability, and the way militarised knowledge can act as a barrier to systemic change.
These criticisms also apply to the Roadmap and Action Plan. However, the processes that produced these policy frameworks remain under-researched, and these decision-making processes are where ideas and assumptions about greening defence are perpetuated and institutionalised.
Presenting My Research: Starting to Deconstruct the Roadmap and Action Plan
To examine approaches to policymaking and the emergence of the Roadmap and Action Plan, I analyse three dimensions of the policymaking processes developed from my early empirical research and conceptual framework. I presented these three dimensions at the conference to demonstrate how they can be applied to the Roadmap and Action Plan:
1. Plurality and perspectivity:
To unpack who was involved in developing the Action Plan and Roadmap and assess whether established or dominant understandings of green defence took precedence.
2. Assumptions about predictability and linearity:
To question linear, rationalist approaches that assume political problems, in this case environmental ones, can be known, modelled and managed predictably.
3. The humans-nature relationship:
To analyse whether defence doctrines value ecosystems only insofar as they serve military and operational efficiency.
Presenting this research was a great experience, and I received insightful comments and feedback that will be valuable as I move into the next stage of the research and my PhD.
Overall: A Fantastic Week
The Annual Conference was a wonderful three days of thoughtful academic exchange, building new connections in European studies and, as a PhD researcher, a key opportunity to develop skills important for career development.
In addition to presenting my research, I attended the UACES Graduate Forum Doctoral Training Academy (DTA). The DTA was organised around topics tailored towards PhD researchers and early careers, such as publishing, EDI, leadership in academia, and career development. This was a great experience, where I had the opportunity to engage with experienced academics, meet other PhD researchers, and (most importantly) make new friends! The Graduate Forum also organised evening social events, which encouraged socialising, relaxing after the conference, and exploring Prague.
Overall, I had a fantastic week, and I’m very much looking forward to hopefully attending the UACES Annual Conference again in future!
