EU-NATO Policy Coordination on Cascading Climate Risks and Their Implications for European Critical Infrastructure Resilience

Sammanfattning

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the EU and NATO have strengthened resilience, preparedness, and critical infrastructure policies in response to evolving transboundary threats. However, cascading climate risks, defined as cross-border and cross-sectoral impacts intensified by climate change, have the potential to be insufficiently understood and integrated into EU and NATO frameworks. In the rush to prepare for war, cascading climate risks may be underestimated and de-prioritized. Due to their spatial and dynamic complexity, they present novel challenges to critical infrastructure systems, EU-NATO cooperation, and civil-military readiness. This thesis explores EU-NATO policy coordination on cascading climate risks and the implications for European critical infrastructure resilience. Using a mixed qualitative methodology, the study analyzes EU, NATO, and joint policy documents paired with semi-structured interviews with EU and NATO officials, national stakeholders, and key experts. It aims to ascertain how the EU and NATO address and frame cascading climate risks in existing policy domains and whether this is leading to shared responses, risk ownership, and implementation at the European-level. The main findings suggest that the EU and NATO possess strong awareness of cascading climate risks, but there is limited integration in preparedness, resilience, and critical infrastructure policies. Hence, shared responses and risk ownership remain ad-hoc through national-level approaches and issue-specific coalitions of the willing. To improve policy coherence, the EU and NATO need to further mainstream cascading climate risks across necessary domains and provide guidance to EU member states, NATO Allies, and the private sector.