Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary at the Department of Defense and a 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, said DOD’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 will offer details on how the U.S. military will spend on efforts to mitigate climate change, Defense News reported Thursday.
“We are definitely looking at that both in our strategy development efforts, and in the fiscal year 2023-2027 [budget] review process,” Hicks said Wednesday of climate change-related spending.
“These are not ideological issues of climate versus war-fighting. This is about ensuring we are resilient and capable for the warfighter of the future, and we’ll be making those investments,” she added.
Defense officials are expected to introduce in Congress their FY 2023 budget proposal by spring.
Hicks said initiatives that would link defense companies’ responsibilities to policies on climate change mitigation are now underway.
“There are some executive order implications already out,” she said. “I would anticipate there will be more both regulatory, meaning, coming through statute — certainly at the state level we see plenty of that — and then again there may be more executive actions that have implications for our contractors.”
If you’re interested to know about the national security implications of climate change and how data analytics can inform agencies’ climate adaptation strategies, then check out the Potomac Officers Club’s Bolstering Climate Resilience for National Security Forum coming up on Sept. 14. To register for this forum and view other upcoming events, visit the POC Events page.
