Climate Change: Considerations for Geographic Combatant Commands PKSOI Paper | Page 18

in this paper to further develop country-by-country
risks within the Caribbean Basin, refining the IPCC’s
“high confidence” conclusion that key risks to “Small
Islands” are “major contributions” to changes in marine and terrestrial ecosystems and “minor contributions” to livelihoods, health and/or economics.29 All
GCC planners must take care not to assign overly specific predictions to localized areas through extrapolation of data collected elsewhere. In a latter section this
paper will expand on “what” a GCC can do to support
development of more robust predictive datasets and
regional-scaled modeling to inform more specific, i.e.
more useful, risk estimates.
Addressing Risks within the Theater Campaign
Plan
“One of the most critical steps in developing strategy is to conduct a thorough theater estimate, which is
“the process by which a theater commander assesses
the broad strategic factors that influence the theater
strategic environment, thus further determining the
missions, objectives, and courses of action throughout
their theaters.”30 The predicted increases in the intensity of Category 4/5 storms will in turn increase the
scale of the disaster relief efforts that SOUTHCOM
will find itself supporting. Beyond ensuring that the
GCC remains ready to execute the standing responsibilities of HA/DR, the GCC planners need to identify
specific elements of national security-related critical
infrastructure within their AOR. Examples of critical
infrastructure with projected impacts from sea level
rise within the Caribbean are port facilities at the Naval Station Guantanamo from a military perspective
and 28% of the Caribbean airports, 80% of commercial

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