Discussion paper: Climate and security

Climate risks challenge traditional security paradigms focused on military threats against the backdrop of a stable environment. They can create cascading impacts extending into a host of domains, from economic stability and food security through to health and even international and domestic political stability. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of tipping points: severe and irreversible shifts in the environmental system which have the potential to rupture all aspects of daily life and order.

A new climate reality requires a more expansive and adaptive approach to security that can adequately respond to these interconnected risks. Finland’s Comprehensive Security Model (CSM) offers a unique, holistic framework that can provide lessons on what such an approach could look like. The model relies on cooperation across authorities, businesses, civil society, and individuals, and emphasises preparedness for a broad spectrum of threats, from natural disasters to hybrid threats, integrating security into the fabric of daily life.

This discussion paper details the Finnish approach to national security before contextualising it in the dual cases of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It then derives a number of lessons which can be applied to developing a new institutional paradigm around climate security. These are:

• Creating and embedding an expanded, democratised concept of what security is and what it requires;
• Building shared analysis as a source of legitimacy;
• Combining democratic decentralisation and cooperation with central support to enable agile threat response; and
• The need to address the political as well as institutional demands of crisis response.

Climate change poses potentially catastrophic threats to our security. If we are to learn the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic, we cannot let ourselves be caught unprepared. Security institutions must be developed to integrate resilience into all levels of governance and society. This institutional innovation is not optional. It is an essential adaptation to a volatile and uncertain future.

Disclaimer: The paper does not reflect Demos Helsinki’s research or positioning on the topic. This paper was prepared as a discussion prompt for “Climate Resilience and Security: Reflections from the UK and Finland” — an event we hosted in partnership with Strategic Climate Risk Initiative, on the 20th of March, 2025, in London. Most of the writing took place before the release of Finland’s 2025 Security Strategy for Society, so the paper references the former 2017 iteration. However, given the update has not led to hugely significant changes, we are confident the overall analysis still stands.