World
BRUSSELS – The European Union is moving to integrate its environmental mandates directly into its security architecture, framing ecological degradation and resource scarcity not merely as planetary crises but as primary threats to the bloc’s national defense.
Jessika Roswall, the European Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, has asserted that the EU’s environmental policy must now be viewed as a fundamental component of Europe’s broader defense strategy. This shift reflects an evolving geopolitical reality where climate volatility and biodiversity loss act as “threat multipliers,” destabilizing regions and creating vulnerabilities that traditional military deterrence cannot address.
The pivot comes as Brussels seeks to strengthen its “strategic autonomy,” a policy goal aimed at reducing the EU’s reliance on volatile external actors for energy, food, and critical minerals. By intertwining ecological restoration with border security and supply chain resilience, the Commission is attempting to shield the union from both the slow-onset disasters of climate change and the sudden shocks of geopolitical aggression. The approach builds on the European Green Deal’s effort to hard‑wire environmental objectives into the bloc’s economic and security model, and on emerging work inside the EU institutions on climate and security risk.
Nature as a Tactical Barrier
In a tangible fusion of ecology and military strategy, several EU member states on the eastern flank are utilizing landscape restoration as a defensive tool. Poland, Finland, and Lithuania are currently evaluating the re-flooding and restoration of drained peatlands along their borders in coordination with national defense authorities.
The objective is dual-purpose: sequestering carbon to meet climate targets while creating treacherous, boggy terrain that physically impedes the movement of heavy military hardware, such as main battle tanks. That would echo historic uses of terrain as a deterrent, but under a contemporary framework in which climate adaptation, nature restoration, and territorial defense are designed together rather than in separate policy silos.
“We see how you can turn wetlands into border controls, and make it more difficult […] for an invasion to pass,” Roswall said, noting that in Lithuania, the ministries of defense and environment are already coordinating their efforts.
This strategy leverages the unique geography of the Baltic and Nordic regions to enhance territorial integrity. However, Roswall emphasized that the utility of wetlands is only one facet of a larger security crisis.
“But the main concern is that biodiversity loss, crop loss, floods and droughts all pose a security threat,” she said, arguing that member states need to treat ecosystems as part of critical infrastructure rather than as a purely conservation issue.
Intelligence and Geopolitical Instability
The intersection of ecology and national security is increasingly being validated by intelligence communities and national risk assessments. Roswall highlighted a recent report from the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which reportedly incorporated findings from the security agencies MI5 and MI6.
The report identified natural degeneration as a primary threat to the United Kingdom’s national security, a conclusion that Roswall noted applies equally to the European continent. According to the report, the lack of “major intervention” regarding biodiversity loss risks triggering a cascade of systemic failures, including:
- Increased competition for dwindling natural resources.
- Heightened geopolitical instability and localized conflicts.
- Accelerated irregular migration driven by environmental collapse.
- Deepening economic insecurity.
Those risks are now being mirrored in EU‑level work on climate and security, where climate change is formally described as a “threat multiplier” that exacerbates conflict, governance fragility and pressure on critical systems.
“We need to understand that the risk of not investing in nature comes with an economic risk, but also with a security risk. And that’s why I think we don’t have a choice on whether to invest in our future; we need to do it.”
The Commissioner further linked these systemic risks to basic resource stability, specifically water. “There are a lot of examples. [Like] water, which is not only a resource. We need water for our daily lives; we need it for energy production; we need it for food production. And when water gets scarce, we are in trouble, and that eventually is also a security threat to us,” Roswall said, adding that on a global scale, water scarcity is already a driver of conflict.
Her comments dovetail with the Commission’s work on a European Water Resilience Strategy, which aims to bring water management into the core of EU climate, energy and food policy rather than treating it as a niche environmental file.
Strategic Autonomy and Resource Weaponization
The EU’s vulnerability is most acute in its dependence on global markets for agricultural inputs and raw materials. This fragility was underscored by the recent Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint that disrupted global agricultural supply chains and drove up fertilizer prices for European farmers.
Roswall argued that this dependency is a strategic liability, paralleling Europe’s reliance on non-EU nations for energy and critical raw materials used in the green transition. That debate has already reshaped EU industrial policy, including the Critical Raw Materials Act and new targets for domestic extraction, processing and recycling of strategic inputs.
“That again shows us that dependency comes with a cost,” Roswall said.
To mitigate these risks, the Commission is developing the Circular Economy Act, scheduled for proposal in late 2026. Framed as a flagship follow‑up to the existing Circular Economy Action Plan, the Act is designed to transform the EU into a “goldmine” of its own resources by maximizing the recovery of materials from waste, thereby reducing the need for virgin imports and supporting what Brussels calls “open strategic autonomy.”
The proposal seeks to establish a single market for secondary raw materials to make recycling economically competitive against cheaper, but more volatile, primary extractions. According to the Commission’s environment directorate, the forthcoming act is expected to set common rules and quality standards so that secondary materials can move across borders as easily as primary commodities, and to align product rules with the EU’s climate and biodiversity goals.[1]
“We need to make the business case for secondary materials, because virgin materials are cheaper today than secondary materials, but they are also scarce and being weaponised,” Roswall explained. “So we need to get rid of this dependency, and for this, consumers, policymakers and businesses need to have a change in mindset.”
The Circular Economy Act will specifically target the recovery of materials for electrical and electronic equipment to reduce the bloc’s exposure to external supply chain shocks. It is also expected to sit alongside existing EU climate and environmental law – including the European Climate Law and the broader European Green Deal framework – effectively binding resource efficiency, environmental protection and security of supply into a single legislative architecture that the European Commission presents as the backbone of Europe’s long‑term resilience.[2]
