US and Australia Must Deepen Defence Cooperation on Climate Security

Jul 27, 2021 | Robert Glasser and Erin Sikorsky
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US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has just arrived in Singapore, where he’ll deliver a major address on Indo-Pacific security. He’s the first member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet to visit Southeast Asia. Not surprisingly, China is likely to feature prominently in his remarks, but so may climate change.

Though thousands of miles apart, Australia and the United States have shared unenviable climate-change-driven devastation in the past two years. The unprecedented drought, heatwaves and fires currently affecting the US and the 2019–20 Australian bushfires, which laid waste to an area larger than the State of Washington, are an indication of the challenges ahead in a warming climate.

As traumatic and deadly as these events have been for people in both countries, the impact of climate-driven disasters in the broader Indo-Pacific—a region at the core of both countries’ military planning and strategies—is likely to be even more devastating, with spillover effects on the security of both nations and their partners and allies.