New Pentagon Inspector General Report on Climate Resilience in the Arctic: Key Takeaways

Apr 21, 2022 | Erin Sikorsky
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Last week, the Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General (IG) released a new report evaluating the climate resilience of US military bases in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic that provides a revealing glimpse of some of the challenges and opportunities facing the DoD as it works to implement climate security measures across its enterprise.

The IG report shows the yawning gap between what policymakers mandate in Washington, what tools the Pentagon creates, and what actually happens (or doesn’t happen) out in the field. The report found little to no action at the bases on climate resilience.

The requirements for base resilience assessments are from 2020, it’s now 2022 and the IG found, “most installation leaders at the six installations we visited in the Arctic and sub-Arctic region were unfamiliar with military installation resilience planning requirements.” Never mind that the person ultimately responsible for overseeing this line of effort for the military – the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment – was just nominated by the White House in March of this year and awaits confirmation.