Report 55: “Transnational corporations, warmongering and the climate emergency”

In this paper, we specifically address how a “war” is being waged by the enriched Global North against the impoverished Global South, and how the environmental crisis leads to human insecurity which, in many cases, can end up multiplying the escalation of tensions and the outbreak of armed conflicts that affect so many people in many parts of the world. The authors also examine the close relationships between power networks (large transnational corporations) and the military-industrial complex, both of which are complicit as stakeholders in continuing their destructive economic growth.

This report also analyses how the armed forces are a determining factor in GHG emissions, since through missions, interventions or wars, armies are major emitters of CO2e, just like the development of weapons that consume strategic minerals. The chapter closes with an analysis of the security and defence documents from the Madrid 2022 NATO Summit, those of the EU and Spain, which justify that energy security is a factor that requires military defence against hybrid attacks. The paper concludes by summarising the key elements of the analysis, offering recommendations and observing that in the face of the critical situation for human survival, the priority is to preserve the nature world to which humans belong, with rational consumption that prevents the overexploitation of the planet’s resources and moving past militarism to allocate military spending to social development.

Authors: Xavier Bohigas, Pere Brunet, Teresa de Fortuny, Anna Montull Garcia and Pere Ortega

Read and download the executive summary in English, in Spanish and in Catalan, and the full report in English, in Spanish and in Catalan.