Climate Change: Considerations for Geographic Combatant Commands PKSOI Paper | Page 4

FOREWORD
Global changes to the environment are having a
dire impact on the stability and security of nations and
regions within Geographic Combatant Commands.
GCCs must focus more attention on emerging threats
which impinge on U.S. interests and develop innovative approaches to assist partner nations in planning
preventing, and mitigating potential catastrophes.
Recent published documents such as the President’s 2015 National Security Strategy and DoD’s 2014
Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap provide GCCs
with initial broad climate change risk information and
mission effects assessment. Recent senior leader policy speeches such as former Defense Secretary Hagel’s
October 2014 address to the Conference of Defense
Ministers of the Americas and President Obama’s
May 2015 commencement address at the U.S. Coast
Guard Academy further amplify the national security
implications of climate change.
The imperative to address climate change risks
across a GCC’s area of operations provides an opportunity to embrace the interagency approach long seen
as crucial to stability operations. With the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID) already moving out on its Global Climate Change Initiative, GCCs
can support and expand these programmatic efforts to
use climate change adaptation as a point of dialogue
and cooperation with partner or prospective partner
nations. Climate change will only increase as part of
the U.S. Government’s mutually supporting “3Ds”
portfolio of defense, diplomacy and development.
As GCC’s anticipate receiving more directive DoD
guidance that builds upon the 2014 Adaptation Roadmap, this monograph provides a useful case-study

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