DEBORAH BURTON PRESENTATION

PONTEVEDRA DEGROWTH CONFERENCE  JUNE 19TH 2024

Thank you.

The global military is a major – HIDDEN – driver of climate change. At UN level it is exempt from compulsorily reporting its carbon emissions despite some countries’ militaries being among the largest consumers of fossil fuels in the world.

Military emissions are a direct result of runaway global military spending since the former cannot happen without the latter. Combined, they ensure that all human development is harmed in myriad ways.

Our organisation Tipping Point North South has its roots in economic justice campaigns – debt cancellation, trade and tax justice. We brought that experience to our current primary policy/advocacy project: It is something we call:

Transform Defence for Sustainable Human Safety.

We make the case that unless we transform foreign and defence policy thinking, the urgent economic transformation we so desperately need, will only EVER be a partial solution.

Why? Because if we can’t raise the bar and make our international relations far more co-operative than at present, how on earth can we fully work together to address the climate emergency?

We meet as Russia’s invasion passes its 2nd year and we are witnessing genocide in Gaza. This on top of Sudan, Congo, Yemen and other ongoing conflicts ((with threats of more always present??)).

At the heart of much – failed and failing – foreign and defence policy planning, is of course, the military.

A few stats for context.  Global military carbon footprint are estimated to be responsible for 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions – before conflict and post-conflict reconstruction is taken into account. And this is on incomplete data since countries are not transparent about reporting military emissions, let alone including them in NDCS and routes to decarbonisation.

Annual military spending $2.4tr and the top 20 spenders alone account for 85%.

And$2.4 trillion is what the High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimates is needed every year to invest in renewable energy, adaptation, and other climate-related issues in developing countries, excluding China.

The authors of 2022 IPCC Mitigation of Climate Change report pled for “prioritizing human well-being and the environment over economic growth.” We have to completely transform our economic system to “prosper without growth.” We need to transition to a “post-growth economy” that is zero-carbon and well-being oriented. “Prioritizing people and planet over profits means that regardless how lucrative an activity is, its raison d’être should systematically be evaluated based on its social utility and ecological sustainability.”

This demands we re-evaluate every aspect of modern life.

This has to include the military and the arms industry.

Military spending is the least efficient way to create jobs. Spending on health care, education, clean energy, and infrastructure instead of waging the ‘War on Terror’ (Iraq and Afghanistan) would have created a net increase of 1.3 million jobs in the United States. $1 billion invested in education will create over twice as many jobs as $1 billion spent on the Pentagon.

Degrowth applied to the big military spending nations mean less cash for their big-ticket hardware, overseas bases and war and by extension, we will see much reduced military emissions.

The world’s militaries are the biggest institutional users of oil vital for their day-to-day operations as well as waging war. And there is a strong positive correlation between military spending and carbon emissions, especially for top military spenders. This is to be expected since higher spending reflects larger proportion of big-ticket purchase, such as F-35, J-20 or Su-57 fighter jets, that are all massive gas-guzzlers. Therefore, higher global military spending means higher greenhouse gases emissions.

Just as we have to challenge the dogma of “economic growth” to create a post-growth future, so that future will be incomplete if we do not also challenge the dogma of “national security”.

To close, military spending has been central to re-enforcing power, poverty, unjust distribution of resources, economic and environmental collapse. To place the military in this frame is to see clearly why we must also include it in the climate justice and reparation frame. As Jason Hickel explains, “Degrowth has roots in the anti-colonial movements, going back to key leaders and thinkers such as Gandhi, Franz Fanon, and Thomas Sankara. They recognised that the growth of the North depended on the plunder of Southern resources and labour, as it still does today. From as early as the 1930s, their position has always been to refuse to be exploited by the North. Degrowth is about demolishing the imperial arrangement.”

To apply degrowth to the military is to recognising its enabling role in this exploitation and to raise necessary if difficult questions about defence in this climate changed era.  But to cut military budgets in order to divert excessive military spending to the multiple essential activities in need of funds and which are ALL about the protection of all life on earth is – to our mind – a legitimate (tax-payers’) demand.

Thank you.