Security – sustainable and integrated: make environmental risks an integral element in security strategies

In its current situation report, the WBGU argues in favour of a multidimensional security architecture. The aim is not only to interlink the fight against environmental risks more closely with security-policy instruments, but also to integrate a range of other topic areas that are crucial in the national and international security context. Here, the WBGU draws on the concept of ‘integrated security’ as used in Germany’s National Security Strategy, but interprets its meaning much more broadly than in the current discourse. A new sense of insecurity has been spreading in German and European societies since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine four years ago. At the same time, the US government’s actions and territorial claims, some of which violate international law, underline the need for Europe to expand its own defence capabilities independently of the USA. However, limiting security-policy debates exclusively to present-day defence-policy issues and the expansion of military capacity ignores the considerable, ever-increasing risks to our life-support systems, our ability to act, our social cohesion and thus to a robust (wehrhaft) democracy – indeed, to sovereignty and reliable international relations.

The WBGU has therefore identified five key issues that need to be incorporated more vigorously into security-policy strategy of the Federal Government and especially of the National Security Council:

1. Protection against climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution to preserve the viability of humanity.
2. Social cohesion to promote resilient societies.
3. Information integrity to make democracy resilient (wehrhaft).
4. Balanced use of technologies and raw materials to reduce dependencies.
5. Strategic, rules-based and fair collaboration to support international cooperation.

“A future-oriented security policy should address the challenges involved in all these fields of action and integrate them into a multidimensional security architecture,” says Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Director of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability and Co-Chair of the WBGU. A “cooperative, long-term, resilient and sustainable” security strategy could be achieved in this way.
The WBGU has stimulated the security-policy debate further by developing specific recommendations for action in all five fields, for example on the topic of ‘security through climate protection’, on designing technological sovereignty, dealing with AI-generated misinformation and socially divisive communication, and on restructuring international cooperation. “The  WBGU is convinced that intergovernmental, rules-based cooperation remains essential for our security,” says Jörg Drewes, Chair of Urban Water Systems Engineering and head of the corresponding research centre at the Technical University of Munich, and Co-Chair of the WBGU. However, the current international institutions are in need of reform. “In this context, we should forge ahead to make progress in the environmental and climate field.”

The recommendations for action now published are by way of example and not exhaustive. In the coming months, the WBGU will publish more report sections on the various fields of action; these will supplement, flesh out and further explain the catalogue of recommendations. “Our aim in this is to offer a foundation for discussion in order to broaden and deepen the ongoing security-policy debates by adding essential factors,” says Drewes.