The Climate Geopolitics: Why ecological collapse is the ultimate threat to global security

We have always told ourselves stories of security. They are grand narratives of walls, armies, and treaties, of sovereign lines drawn firmly on maps, defending "us" from "them." These tales can be comfortin to some, suggesting that safety was a matter of containment and control. But today, a different, more chilling story is unfolding, one written in drought-scorched earth and tempest-tossed seas. This new narrative reveals that the walls we built to protect ourselves are tragically useless against a threat that respects no border: a dying natural world.

As Andrew Zolli wisely observes, national security and natural security are quite enmeshed. We are finally realizing, with a collective, sickening lurch, that our entire human society, our ability to feed ourselves, to keep our people housed, to maintain a semblance of peace, is merely a subset of the larger planet. When nature falters, everything falters.  

The Cracks in the Global Order: A Security Built on Domination
 

For centuries, our dominant global culture, driven by patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism, has operated on a deadly premise: that nature is an object to be conquered, exploited, and controlled, and that certain people are more disposable than others, while a very small percentage (yes, I am talking about billionnaires) is worthy of everything. This same rigid, hierarchical mindset that justifies extractivism is the one that enforces narrow, oppressive social binaries: man over woman, straight over queer, cis over transgender, and human over nature.

This is where the wisdom of Queer Ecofeminism breaks through the noise. It doesn't just see the environmental crisis; it sees the root sickness: the logic of domination. It tells us that the systems that allow a corporation to poison a river for profit are the very same systems that deny a transgender refugee safety or sideline a woman in local governance. The domination of Earth and the oppression of marginalized people are two sides of the same tarnished coin.

When a massive climate shock hits, like the devastating floods and heatwaves of South Asia in 2023 and 2024 that displaced millions, who pays the highest price? It's not the corporate entities who contributed most to the emissions. It's the rice farmer whose land is now salty and barren, the impoverished coastal family whose home vanished, and crucially, the queer or trans person who is most likely excluded from traditional, heteronormative support networks and faces heightened violence in the chaos of a refugee camp. Their vulnerability is not a geographic accident; it is a political wound inflicted by a world that values power over care.

The Domino Effect: Connected Shocks and Geopolitical Strain
 

The illusion of contained disaster has shattered. Zolli captured this dynamic perfectly: a crisis in the food system quickly begets a "crisis" of migration, which then explodes into a security crisis. It's a chain reaction of human misery that directly strains geopolitical stability.

Think of the devastating multi-year drought across the Horn of Africa. The failure of the rains, a direct consequence of a warming planet, didn't only kill livestock but also dried up the very possibility of peace. It intensified long-standing, low-level conflicts between farming and nomadic communities forced to compete fiercely over the last, shrinking pools of water. These resource conflicts are the new front lines of insecurity, showing us that when people are hungry and desperate, they become "restless" and "disgruntled," destabilizing entire regions and providing fertile ground for armed groups and radicalization.

The security threat isn't just "over there," either. The record-shattering wildfires and heat domes across North America and Europe in 2023 and 2024 weren't just spectacular disasters; they were attacks on domestic resilience. They shut down critical infrastructure, crippled supply chains, and forced governments to divert military and civilian resources away from traditional defense to continuous, exhausting domestic disaster response. A solvable problem yesterday becomes a major global crisis tomorrow because our vast, growing populations amplify every single shock. The economic losses, running into the hundreds of billions, destabilize financial markets and threaten political cohesion within the most powerful nations. 

Security through solidarity and ecological policy
 

To escape this "filmstrip of doom," we need more than better technology; we need a radical, emotional shift in how we define security. You can't shoot a missile at climate change, and you can't invade a storm, but you can nourish the bonds that hold humanity and nature together.

The tools of transparency, like the satellites monitoring every act of deforestation and every shift in crop growth, are essential. They allow the world to watch, and when people know they are being watched, their behavior changes. But this accountability must go deeper, used not just to track carbon, but to track and protect the most vulnerable in the wake of disaster, to ensure aid reaches the marginalized and to prevent the systemic abuses that thrive in chaos.

The final, essential step is to embrace the ecological interdependence that is our true security. Queer ecofeminism shows us the way forward: to build solidarity between people and the ecosystems they tend. Our goal is not just to survive shocks, but to prosper by prioritizing the health of the entire web of life. When we invest in ecosystem restoration, we are investing in peace. When we craft climate policies that center the needs of those historically marginalized, the Indigenous, the poor, the queer and trans people, we are building a system that is fundamentally more just, resilient, and safe for everyone.

This is the challenging, hopeful story we must tell now: true, lasting global security is not achieved through isolation and domination, but through collective care and shared flourishing. It is a security found in the radical act of believing that our fates, and the fate of the planet, are one.