Key Points

• Climate change is now a major security driver, intensifying geopolitical tensions, destabilizing fragile regions, and reshaping strategic interests.
• Environmental pressures are amplifying violence, crime, and social instability, with research showing clear links between extreme weather, extremist recruitment, civil conflict, rising aggression, and deteriorating mental health.
• Businesses must integrate climate related security risks into resilience planning, as private security services become increasingly essential for protecting people, facilities, and operations in a rapidly warming and more volatile world.

Climate change is immediately recognizable in tragic images of flooded cities or scorched farmland, but its influence can also be seen in rising geopolitical tensions and strategic competition. U.S. President Donald Trump’s startling comments about Greenland is a case in point, suggestive of how a warming world — that can change perceptions of strategic value — is likely to spark new or renewed conflict.

These developments sit alongside the instability emerging from climate stressed regions, from deadly heatwaves that have intensified unrest in South Asia to the climate driven displacement fueling tensions in the Sahel, the boundary in Africa between arid desert and tropical, fertile land. While climate change is rarely the sole cause of political violence, it is increasingly impossible to separate environmental stress from security crises unfolding around the world.

The accelerating impacts of a warming planet are reshaping the global security landscape, and the consequences are already cascading across borders, economies, and communities. For governments, businesses, and societies, this means that climate change is not only an environmental challenge — it is a security challenge. And as these pressures grow, private security services will play an increasingly central role in helping organizations manage the fallout.

Terrorism and Political Violence

Climate change does not create terrorism or political violence outright, but it amplifies the conditions in which they thrive. Recent research continues to reinforce this point. A 2023 analysis by the United Nations Development Programme found that extremist groups in the Sahel are increasingly exploiting climate related grievances, including competition over land, water, and grazing routes. As rainfall becomes more erratic and arable land shrinks, communities face heightened tensions — and violent groups step into the vacuum (Climate, Peace and Security in Stabilization contexts in the Sahel, UNDP, 2025).

Similarly, the Institute for Economics & Peace’s 2024 Global Terrorism Index highlights how climate exposed regions are experiencing faster growth in extremist recruitment, particularly where livelihoods depend on climate sensitive sectors like agriculture. When climate shocks undermine economic survival, individuals become more vulnerable to coercion, recruitment, and radicalization.

Academic research provides a growing body of evidence linking droughts, heatwaves, and crop failures to heightened risks of civil conflict, displacement, and political instability. “As extreme weather events become more frequent, the risk of conflict is likely to rise, driven by their effects on economic stability, agriculture, and migration,” concludes the 2025 report by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, The Impact of Climate Change on Conflict.

Across Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America, non-state armed groups are leveraging climate impacts to expand influence — from controlling water points to taxing displaced populations to exploiting weakened state capacity. Such risks, which have long been theorized, are now visible in real time.

Crime, Civility, and Behavioral Health

Climate change is also reshaping everyday security risks in ways that affect businesses, workers, and communities.

A growing body of research shows that higher temperatures correlate with increases in violent crime, including assaults, homicides, and domestic violence. One recent study found that heatwaves significantly increase aggression and interpersonal violence across multiple regions. (Climate change and lethal violence: a global analysis, International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, May 2025). Similar findings have emerged from studies in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

Beyond crime, extreme temperatures appear to influence civility and social behavior. Research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, analyzing billions of online posts, found that both extreme heat and extreme cold increase aggressive online behavior and hate speech (Temperature effects on hate speech online, The Lancet, 2022). These patterns reflect broader concerns about how climate stressors may erode social cohesion.

Mental health impacts are also becoming more pronounced. The American Psychological Association and the World Health Organization have both warned that climate related stress, displacement, and disaster exposure are contributing to rising levels of anxiety, depression, trauma, and burnout. These pressures can manifest in the workplace as increased conflict, reduced tolerance, and heightened behavioral risks — all of which have implications for employee safety and organizational resilience.

Building Comprehensive Resilience

With climate related security impacts already unfolding, organizations must build resilience that accounts for both environmental and security dimensions of climate change.

For example, deteriorating societal behavior requires may call for expanding employee training for dealing with difficult individuals; the need to respond quickly changing security conditions may suggest the importance of partnering with security firms that can provide the capacity to timely respond to emerging threats; and evolving risks indicate the importance of enhancing threat monitoring processes.

Many organizations already assess the impact of extreme weather on logistics and infrastructure; now they must also consider how climate change affects crime patterns, workplace aggression, political instability, and extremism.

Researchers writing in Current Climate Change Reports note that climate change:

• has already played a measurable role in violent behavior at both individual and group levels;
• will play an increasingly significant role as impacts intensify; and
• amplifies existing political, social, and economic risk factors

For global companies, this means that climate related security risks must be integrated into the same resilience frameworks used for supply chains, business continuity, and operational planning. Many organizations already assess the impact of extreme weather on logistics and infrastructure; now they must also consider how climate change affects crime patterns, workplace aggression, political instability, and extremism.

Private security services will be essential partners in this effort. As climate impacts deepen, security providers will be called upon to:

• support risk assessments that incorporate climate related instability;
• protect facilities and personnel during extreme weather events;
• protect facilities and personnel during extreme weather events;
• manage rising behavioral and mental health related risks in workplaces;
• help organizations navigate environments where political violence or crime is exacerbated by climate stress; and
• provide surge capacity during disruptions, evacuations, or crisis events.

Climate change is reshaping the security landscape in ways that are complex, interconnected, and accelerating. Preparing for this reality requires a holistic approach — one that recognizes climate change not only as an environmental challenge, but as a profound and growing security challenge for societies and businesses alike.