At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s recent Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Montréal, officials from the allied states welcomed the establishment of the new Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence (CCASCOE) in the city. CCASCOE is one of NATO’s 30 centres of excellence and is the first to be hosted by Canada. However, the new centre should be seen as a cynical ploy by NATO and the Canadian government to greenwash the world’s biggest, most carbon intensive military alliance.

CCASCOE was formally accredited earlier this year by the Allied Command Transformation (ACT), which is NATO’s Strategic Warfare Development Command responsible for the centres of excellence. The Command defines a centre of excellence as an “international military organization” that provides research and education to allies to improve their interoperability and capabilities for ACT’s mission of maintaining a “warfighting edge.” CCASCOE will enhance NATO operations while global warming worsens.

At the Parliamentary Assembly, CCASCOE set up a booth to showcase its nascent work. The new centre’s objective is to “support the implementation of the NATO Climate Change and Security Action Plan and contribute to NATO’s overall military readiness, deterrence and defence posture.”

Live from Montréal: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends the 70th Annual Session of the @NATO Parliamentary Assembly and delivers remarks highlighting Canada’s unwavering commitment to transatlantic unity and global security. Tune in: https://t.co/M1zXhLov6L pic.twitter.com/F7tl8jKAYC

— CanadianPM (@CanadianPM) November 25, 2024

The Euro-Atlantic alliance launched its first Climate Change and Security Action Plan at the NATO Summit in Brussels in 2021. The short, insubstantial plan stated that “climate change makes it harder for militaries to carry out their tasks.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada’s intention to host a centre of excellence on climate change and security to implement the action plan. Thirty years after the United Nations Framework on Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), NATO’s action on climate and security could only be described as very little, very late.

NATO is more concerned about how extreme weather events are impairing its installations and operations and less about its climate impacts. Across allied countries, naval bases are flooding, wildfires are preventing military exercises, drier conditions and sand storms are jamming weapons systems, and high heat is slowing down soldiers. For the alliance, adaptation is the priority, not mitigation, which requires reducing greenhouse gases that are driving the climate crisis.

This is evident in NATO’s Climate and Security Impact Assessment that was launched three years ago and states, “military effectiveness in carrying out NATO’s core tasks remains the number one priority, even if this objective may sometimes clash with mitigation goals.” Combat readiness is more important to allies than reducing carbon emissions. Yet, it is the military that is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuel and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the governments of the alliance.

Canada’s Department of National Defence accounts for approximately 60 percent of federal government emissions. The US Department of Defense accounts for at least 77 percent of federal energy consumption and spends over $11 billion on fuel, as the Congressional Research Service has reported. As Dr. Neta Crawford explained in her report, Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change and the Cost of War, the US military is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuel and the biggest carbon polluter in the world.

Yet, most NATO members like the US and Canada have a “national security exemption” that excludes the majority of military emissions from national GHG reduction plans. For example, DND’s first Defence Energy and Environment Strategy that was launched in 2017 noted, “given the unpredictable changes in operational tempo, the federal reduction target will not include emissions from military activities and operations.” DND’s second iteration of the strategy explained that the military will achieve net zero by 2050, but gave no credible plan to offset the emissions from all of its tactical vehicles and operations.

CCASCOE will supposedly contribute to the compendium of best practice for mitigation and adaptation in the military. The perspective of the compendium replicates the American military doctrine of “less fuel, more fight.” NATO allies want to green their bases, operations and weapons systems to maintain warfighting. Access to Information records reveal that CCASCOE worked closely with the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation to ensure that Canada’s concept note met NATO standards. The centre’s program of work on climate security will be advisory in nature and non-binding.

Last year, at the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Canada hosted a signing ceremony for the centre’s memorandum of understanding. Eleven allies signed the founding document: Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom.

At the ceremony, then Defence Minister Anita Anand stated without irony that “[Canada’s] Centre of Excellence will guide NATO’s work and protect our populations against climate change and extreme weather events.” Back in Canada, climate change was devastating communities. There were thousands of out-of-control forest fires raging across the country. Canadians were suffering from smoke, heat, drought and flooding.

That year, the hottest year on record, the defence minister also shamefully announced plans to buy new fossil fuel-powered weapons systems, $19 billion for F-35 fighter jets, $3.6 billion for strategic aerial refuelers, and $2.5 billion for armed drones to meet NATO’s demand for new interoperable capabilities. The alliance’s costly deterrence of conventional and strategic weapons cannot defend against natural disasters.

In Vilnius, NATO’s Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană, added that “NATO as a military alliance must prepare for a future where our capabilities from fighter jets to tanks need to operate in a greener way without ever compromising on military effectiveness.” Yet, greening weapons and war are maladaptive measures that divert attention and resources away from decarbonization. Moreover, DND has admitted that there are no reliable, low-carbon fuels to power its main military capabilities.

Anand also disingenuously claimed that CCASCOE will “demonstrate Canada’s leadership in the fight against climate change.” Ottawa is not a leader on climate change as Canada’s carbon emissions continue to rise. According to the 2023 fall report by the federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Canada has failed to meet every target under the UNFCCC. Moreover, the Climate Action Tracker has also determined that Canada’s policies and actions are “highly insufficient.”

Canada, as the framework nation of CCASCOE, is providing $40 million for the first five years of the centre’s operation and then $7 million annually. The other allied sponsoring states are contributing financial resources and staff who will work on multi-year rotations at the centre’s office near the Dorval airport in Montréal. The federal government is spending more on NATO’s COE than on the UNFCCC’s loss and damage fund.

CCASCOE’s Director is Mathieu Bussières, a Canadian who has worked at DND and the NATO headquarters for two decades. The sponsoring nations have been given specific posts at the centre. German diplomat, Dr. Ulrich Seidenberger, holds the post of deputy director and French Colonel Francois Tinjod serves as chief of staff. Representatives of the other countries will head different branches of the organization. The male-dominated military leadership of CCASCOE has little to no real world experience in climate mitigation or adaptation.

In October, CCASCOE held its first Montréal Climate Security Summit and co-hosted it with the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) Institute. The by invitation only summit was sponsored by Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Thales, all manufacturers of petroleum-powered weapons systems.

The CDA Institute, a Canadian military think tank that is also funded by the same arms makers, is now a major partner of CCASCOE. Over the years, the CDA Institute has pushed the Canadian government to participate in deadly and destructive US and NATO wars, increase military spending, and buy more weapons.

In Montréal, at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Trudeau reaffirmed Ottawa’s plan to increase military spending to reach NATO’s two percent GDP target by 2032. According to the latest NATO Defence Expenditures report, over the past decade, Canada’s military spending has increased 100 percent from $20 billion in 2014 to $41 billion this year, which is 1.4 percent of GDP. To reach two percent will require a doubling of military spending.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently published a report showing that Canada’s military expenditures will have to rise to $81 billion over the next eight years to reach the NATO target. An additional $40 billion every year on the military means less funding for green affordable housing, renewable energy, public transit and climate-proofing communities.

This is a crucial period during which countries must rapidly reduce emissions to limit global mean temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Instead, Canada is ramping up military spending and munitions production for the alliance.

The same weekend NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly took place in Canada, the 29th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ended in failure in Azerbaijan over inadequate finance offered by the Global North to poor countries that are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

Allied nations that are the most responsible for global warming have not paid their fair share to address the problem and have never met their 2009 pledge to spend $100 billion annually to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, all 32 NATO members have collectively increased their military expenditures by over $200 billion annually from $896 billion to over $1.4 trillion per year.

At the closing of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Montréal, delegates adopted a policy document that prioritizes arming Ukraine instead of ending the war and taking decisive action on global warming. The policy referred to “Ukraine” 107 times but “climate change” only six times. The parliamentarians called for more fossil-fuelled weapons systems—such as drones, fighter jets and missile technologies—to be sent to the frontline in Ukraine, but did not mention negotiations for peace.

As a centre that supports the alliance’s warfighting doctrine and militarism that depends on excessive fossil fuel consumption, CCASCOE acts as a green smokescreen for NATO. More seriously, CCASCOE will further militarize climate change, impede the Paris Agreement, and undercut the leadership of the UNFCCC.

At our current rate of carbon emissions, the scientists of the International Panel on Climate Change explained in their sixth assessment report that humanity is faced with the risk of catastrophic warming of three to five degrees Celcius by 2100. This would threaten the survivability of human life on this planet.

If Canada and NATO were serious about preventing climate breakdown, they would scrap CCASCOE. They would cut military spending for climate action, end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, demilitarize to decarbonize, and put peace and cooperation at the centre of climate security.

Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, and a fellow with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.