Remarks

Ian Lesser, Vice President of the German Marshall Fund:
Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us today. Also a very warm welcome to those who are joining us online. I am Ian Lesser, from GMF here in Brussels. GMF’s mission is very simply to strengthen transatlantic cooperation in the spirit of the Marshall Plan. The climate security Nexus, which is our theme today, affects all of us in profound ways, and it is front and center on our agenda. It is a particular pleasure to have with us an extraordinary group of leaders today from institutions, playing a key role on security, geopolitics, climate policy, the Nexus as we have described it. Josep Borrell, high representative of the European Union of foreign and security policy, John Kerry, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, France Timmermans, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, and Heather Gray, senior advisor at the Open Society Foundation who will moderate our conversation. Thank you, all of us for taking the time. Thank you from all of us for taking the time to be with us today. We look forward to the conversation up here but also in the room, and Heather, over to you. Thank you.

Heather Grabbe, Senior Adviser to the Open Society Foundations, Moderator:
Thank you very much and to German Marshall Fund for organizing this event. This is a historic moment when we have the representatives of four different institutions taking climate security very seriously. In the middle of a hot war in Europe. It shows long-term thinking, it also shows breadth of understanding that climate change is everything. So we have an opportunity both to hear them speak among themselves about where climate security is going in Europe, what the institutions of the EU, NATO and the United States can do about it and also to hear your feedback and questions about climate security: what is it and how can it be embedded in policies across the spectrum. So we are going to start with Secretary General Stoltenberg. You have been a pioneer on climate and security even before you began your NATO role and you have managed to put it at the heart of the NATO agenda, and now we have a war going on the European continent. So why is it so necessary for military security to have climate security?

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: 
I will answer that question in a moment but let me just start by thanking Ian Lesser, the German Marshall Fund and also you Heather for convening us and hosting this event because it is actually a special event. We have four men at their best age but representing very heavy and important institutions and addressing the future climate change, which is so important for our future, and I am glad we are here demonstrating that unity and that commitment. 
Yes, there is a hot war going on in Europe but NATO has to address climate change because NATO cannot remain a fossil fuel Alliance in the age of renewables. And the war in Ukraine has actually demonstrated how energy and climate change is linked or security, because President Putin used energy, the gas to try to coerce NATO Allies from providing support to Ukraine. So this demonstrates the link between energy and climate change and the security. Climate change matters for our security, therefore it matters for NATO and therefore we have put climate change much higher on the NATO agenda over the last couple of years. Then it is not enough not only to say that this is a problem, we try to do something with it. 
Let me just briefly mention three areas where we actually are now addressing climate change as NATO.
First, we need to mitigate, we need to reduce emissions because if you look at battle tanks, warships, the big bombers, there are many things but they are not very climate friendly. They consume a lot of over fossil fuels and they need a lot. So if we are going to reach global net zero, we need also to reduce the quite substantial emissions from military activities, which takes also a place in peacetime. I returned yesterday from the biggest ever air exercise in NATO, in Germany, and of course, we emitted a lot of co2 with all those planes flying in the air. So therefore, we need to develop the technology, we have an innovation fund and we have a center of excellence in Canada on climate change, Now Allies started to step up to find ways to reduce emissions without reducing the effectiveness of our military capabilities. Because if Allies are forced to choose between climate friendly green battle tank or a strong battle tank, they will choose the strong battle tank. So the only way to make this happen is to reconcile the need for climate friendly, but also with military effectiveness in the different capabilities. Things are moving in the right direction. We have some tools for investing more in technology. Secondly, to adapt because global warming changed our security environment. More competition over scarce resources: land, water, millions of people forced to flee but also the military, they operate outside, and more flooding, more extreme weather, more heat waves will affect everything from uniforms to doctrines to equipment. So we need to adjust. Rising sea levels affect a large portion of NATO naval bases. So we need to change the way we actually conduct military operations. And thirdly, we need to ensure that we don't create new vulnerabilities because we saw how vulnerable we were when we were to depend on Russian gas. Now we welcome the transition that the EU is leading on moving from Russian gas to other and more sustainable energy and resources, to solar to wind, to electricity, to batteries. The only problem is that we by doing that transition that we all support, risk [of] creating new vulnerabilities on rare earth minerals from China. So we should not make the same mistake once again, and therefore we need as Allies, as EU, as NATO to work on how to increase our own production of rare earth minerals, and how to find other technologies that doesn't make us to over dependent on Chinese rare earth minerals. 
The last thing is just to say that when we do this, when we implement the transition, we need to be green and we need to be together because if we end up that some Allies have electric battle tanks and others have fossil fuel, we will not be able to do what is one of NATO’s core task: interoperability, that we can charge and fuels across nations and Allies. So this is just highlighting the importance of NATO as a platform where we set the standards, as we have always done, ensure interchangeability and interoperability to then reconcile the need for a strong Alliance with a green and climate friendly Alliance and therefore, it's a great pleasure to work with United States, EU and all the others who are supporting these efforts. Thank you.

Heather Grabbe, Senior Adviser to the Open Society Foundations, Moderator:
Thank you. Thank you very much for that overview of why it matters for the military and future conflicts