What to Expect on Militarism, Conflict and Climate at COP28

Nov 30, 2023 | Ellie Kinney
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In June, the UAE announced that COP28 would host a special themed day on ‘Relief, Recovery, and Peace’ for the first time. The decision was met with enthusiasm by civil society, who recognise the relationship between peace and the climate crisis. However, the declaration fails to acknowledge the bidirectional relationship between conflicts and the climate crisis. The climate crisis is exacerbating fragility and conflicts across the world but wars are currently emitting the equivalent of whole countries, with alarming consequences for global climate action.

No country is obliged to report the emissions from its military activities, thanks to an historic exemption lobbied for by the US. As with last year, the countries that do report tend to provide only mobile military fuel use data, which we know is nowhere near the full scale of military emissions, and out of these countries, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, United Kingdom and the United States all reported an increase in military emissions.