Climate security and the link between climate and security more generally is increasingly gathering attention in East Asia. Extreme weather events and prolonged dry spells are more and more on the political agenda across the region, and their implications for water, health and food security are becoming clearer.

This Thematic Brief takes the perspective of security sector governance and reform, and maps out the many links between SSG/R and climate change. As the scope of security actors grappling with climate-induced security challenges keeps growing, there is ever more need to understand what challenges these actors are facing, what they are doing, and what we can learn from it.

The Brief includes several suggestions for practitioners and policymakers as well. 

There are two ways in which the security sector relates to climate change. The first concerns security institutions as dependent variables of climate change, affected by its various impacts [..]. The second involves security institutions as an independent variable, whereby they contribute to climate change, chiefly through fossil fuel emissions.