THE EUROPEAN – SECURITY AND DEFENCE UNION
Global Earth Observation strategies for the reduction of climate-security threats Entering a new era
by Sinéad O’Sullivan, Research Fellow, Center for Climate and Security, Washington, D.C.
T
he last year has created ample evidence showing that the impacts of climate change and climate-related threats are in line with, or exceeding, projections of global physical change. Climate change has created consequences for threats that can no longer be contained by borders; an increasingly destabilized climate has moved beyond being just an environmental threat and now also poses dire economic and security challenges that infiltrate an already-fragile system. Globalization, with its increased interconnectivity and interdependence between human systems, has led to enormous volatility and increased competition within energy and resource distributions. Additionally, such disruptions have a ltered the underlying fabric of how communities and cultures exist and cooperate, with global changes posing economic and security risks in the local context. Earth observation (EO) by way of satellites and drones has been a core threat-mitigation strategy, by collecting crucial data about climate change for the benefit of national security with a focus on three types of climate change impacts. Since being able to measure threats is vital to being able to reduce them, the ability to collect imagery and non-visual data to monitor these global changes has in turn led to a global commitment and response to slow down and even reverse the
current climate trajectory. Primary climate effects include longterm changes that are easily observable over time and include phenomena such as melting glaciers, sea levels rising and desertification. Secondary effects largely focus on a) a global increase in natural disasters, both in count and severity and b) a reduction or change in available natural resources in a given geographic location. Tertiary effects of climate change are more difficult to measure through EO technologies, although satellites do play a vital role. In this instance, third level effects of resource insecurities and natural disasters are largely intertwined with the downstream effects of socio-economic and geopolitical stresses, which can inevitably lead to long-duration human and as such national security disasters.
Disruptive technology serving climate security To date, technological disruption has existed at the heart of the contemporary climate security mitigation strategy. A multiple-factor decrease in the cost to launch satellites to space via novel rocket launching startup capabilities such as with SpaceX and Rocket Lab has incentivized a wave of private sector actors to enter the satellite and EO space, increasing data availability and reducing the price of such data. With over 230 satellite startups in 20211, the race to model our changing Earth has become fiercely competitive, with 2020 investments in space startups topping $12.1 bn2. With the private space sector’s revenue forecast to grow by 30%3 in the coming years, space-enabled climate and security risk detection and monitoring is reaching commoditization as the technology and data enters the mainstream. Whereas the space domain is predominantly thought of as an offensive capability at the disposal of space-faring governments, the space sector must now be utilized as a core tool of national security defense against long-term tertiary effects of climate change. The private sector has shown
changing climate, which is a rapidly “The evolving and exponential risk, needs
to be addressed by time-optimizing iterations of experimental technologies.”
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