Germany's National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment
Publisher: Metis Institute for Strategy and Foresight, adelphi research, BND, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Date: 2025
Topics: Assessment, Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Disasters, Governance, Programming
Countries: Germany
This National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment outlines the risks to Germany’s national security resulting from climate change up until 2040. In accordance with the National Security Strategy (2023), the Metis Institute for Strategy and Foresight at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and adelphi research, together with the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service), prepared this analysis for the Federal Government. The Federal Government has set itself the task to “assess the impact of the climate crisis on our national security and then arrive at informed choices of action”. It is not in the mandate of the authors of the National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment to systematically point up opportunities or to develop concrete recommendations for action in the same way.
Ensuring national security means protecting the population, the territory and the free democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany. The National Security Strategy specifies peace, security, prosperity and stability, as well as a sustainable use of natural resources, as German interests. In this respect, climate change entails security risks.
This assessment is based on climate science as well as interdisciplinary knowledge from the social sciences. Thanks to large empirical databases and efficient models, climate researchers are now able to create forecasts and risk analyses that are backed by quantitative data. Strategic foresight, in contrast, involves imagining plausible future scenarios based on qualitative data. Both approaches are ways of “thinking ahead”, i.e. the systematic analysis of the genesis and implications of anticipated future scenarios in order to identify needs, alternatives and options for action.