Climate-proofing Nordic security

Security has moved to the centre of politics across Europe. Budgets, mandates, and public expectations increasingly mention defence, continuity of services, and civil protection. Under that pressure, climate risk is often dismissed as slow-moving and technical, even as it already shapes the key pillars of national security, from traditional “hard” security considerations such as competition and violence through to factors such as infrastructure reliability, security of supply and health security.

Climate-proofing Nordic security treats the absence of climate risk from security planning as a shared challenge, and a practical chance to update how security is understood and governed. Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier”, amplifying an array of well-known risks and triggering new ones. The aim is not to compete with other security priorities, but to make clear that, without a climate lens, there will be consequential security blind spots, despite best efforts elsewhere.

The Nordic countries offer a useful example because “whole-of-society” security is already embedded in many institutions and routines. That strength also creates a clear next step: preparedness built for discrete incidents needs to be upgraded for:

(i) cascading disruption; that

(ii) crosses sectors and borders.

What is changing in the risk landscape

A power outage used to be managed as an energy incident. A heatwave used to be managed as a public health incident. Those distinctions still matter, but climate-driven hazards increasingly arrive as sequences that stress multiple systems at once, and last longer than standard playbooks assume.
Emergency management remains primarily designed for discrete crises, not for the overlapping, long-duration events that characterise a warming world. When roles and responsibilities across the state, private sector, and civil society are unclear, small disruptions can scale into multi-sector emergencies with significant economic and social consequences.

The same logic now applies across borders. Climate volatility in one place can spill over into serious impacts elsewhere through price and market dynamics, supply chains, public health dynamics, humanitarian pressures, and geopolitical friction.

For the Nordics, security planning cannot stay domestic when instability abroad can rebound through these connections. Declining overseas development assistance (ODA) and reduced international engagement can erode coping capacity in climate-vulnerable regions, increasing the likelihood that local shocks escalate into wider crises with knock-on effects for Nordic and European security. Arctic change adds another layer, as rapid environmental shifts open new routes and intensify competition for critical minerals, tightening the link between climate impacts and the regional security environment.

What the project will do

A shared map of risk is only useful if it changes how institutions act. The consortium will identify domestic and transboundary climate-security risks relevant to Nordic stability, with a focus on food and energy systems, critical infrastructure, supply chains, health risks, and Arctic geopolitics.

The lens for this work is governance. The project will assess how current Nordic and national structures are positioned to manage systemic climate-related security risks, including where coordination breaks down, where risk ownership is unclear across levels of government, and where cooperation can reduce exposure. The intent is to identify institutional blind spots while highlighting opportunities for peer learning and regional action.

A practical exercise will then turn analysis into lived decision-making. Scenario-based simulation offers a structured way for key actors to experience cascading risk challenges, mandates, information flows and cross-sector coordination. The point is to make future pressure visible early, when changes to practice are still possible.

Project overview

The work is delivered by a Nordic consortium: Stockholm Environment Institute, Halogen, and Demos Helsinki.

Funding is provided through an open call by the Nordic Climate and Air Programme.

The analysis covers Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, as well as the autonomous regions of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland.

Timeline and key moments in 2026

The project is built around four milestones:

• March 2026: an integrated analytical report and risk map, covering domestic and transboundary climate-security risks and the implications of declining ODA.
• June 2026: comparative analysis of policies, strategies, and institutions, including briefs on national gaps and Nordic cooperation opportunities.
• October 2026: a high-level simulation exercise and debrief roundtable, designed to test response pathways and strengthen cross-sector coordination.
• December 2026: a final learning report capturing what the exercise revealed about decision rights, coordination frictions, and practical next steps.

Get involved

If your work touches civil protection, critical infrastructure, security policy, climate adaptation, or Nordic cooperation, you can request a briefing on the project’s focus, timeline, and relevance to your responsibilities. A briefing can be more useful than a report when institutions are deciding what to prioritise next.

The October 2026 exercise is designed for stakeholders who need to act across mandates under pressure. If you want to express interest in participating, get in touch early so the consortium can plan a participant mix that reflects cross-sector reality.

Get in touch with:

Lara Best-Dunkley
lara.best-dunkley@demoshelsinki.fi

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