Despite being a major global polluter, the military remains exempt from climate change reporting, creating a blind spot that threatens the entire COP30 roadmap.
Published November 20, 2025
COP30 negotiations in Belem have entered their final stages, with hopes that countries may finally agree on a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. This is a crucial breakthrough if we are serious about maintaining temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius. But even at this pivotal moment, one major highway remains missing from the roadmap, potentially undermining Brazil’s progress. It’s the military’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Under the Paris Agreement, governments are not required to report their military’s emissions, and most do not. A recent analysis by the Military Emissions Gap Project shows that what little data exists is patchy, inconsistent, or missing entirely. This “military emissions gap” is the gap between what governments say and the actual scale of military pollution. The results are clear. The military’s presence has been largely absent from the Belem negotiations, creating a dangerous blind spot in global climate action.
The size of that blind spot is surprising. The military accounts for an estimated 5.5% of global emissions. This share is expected to rise further as defense spending soars while society as a whole decarbonizes. If the military were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter on the planet, exceeding Russia’s 5%. However, only five countries follow the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) voluntary reporting guidelines on military emissions, and those guidelines only cover fuel use. The reality is much broader, ignoring fugitive emissions from munitions production and disposal, waste management, refrigeration, air conditioning, radar, and electrical equipment. And operations in international waters and airspace go unreported, leaving wide gaps in both responsibility and action on climate change.
The gap in military emissions widens even further when the climate impacts of armed conflicts are taken into account. As if the horrors and human suffering of war were not enough, war destroys ecosystems, leaves a harmful legacy on the land for decades afterward, and produces massive carbon emissions, such as those associated with the rebuilding of buildings and infrastructure after their destruction. But without an internationally agreed framework for measuring conflict emissions, these additional emissions risk going unreported, meaning we won’t know the extent to which war is setting back climate action.
But despite this, momentum is finally building for accountability. Ahead of COP30, nearly 100 organizations have signed the pledge for the Fight the Climate initiative, with protesters and civil society groups in Belém demanding the UNFCCC tackle this long-ignored source of pollution. Policy makers are also beginning to change. The European Union has taken steps towards transparent reporting and decarbonization in the defense sector, but this progress is now threatened by rapid rearmament. Combined with NATO’s new target for member states to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on military spending, these commitments could emit up to 200 million tonnes of CO2 and cause as much as $298 billion in annual climate damage, putting Europe’s own climate goals at risk.
International law reinforces the urgency and demands of responsibility. The International Court of Justice’s recent landmark Advisory Opinion reminded States of their obligations under the Climate Change Convention to assess, report and mitigate harm, including harm caused by armed conflict and military operations. Ignoring these emissions not only underestimates global warming; It would obscure the scale of the crisis and weaken the world’s ability to address its root causes.
The gap between current emissions reduction plans and what is needed to stay below the 1.5°C limit remains catastrophic. If COP30 negotiators agree on a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, what happens next will determine whether it brings real progress or remains symbolic. No sector can be exempted from climate action, and we cannot continue to hide military emissions.
Requiring all military emissions, from combat and training activities to long-term climate damage inflicted on local communities, to be reported to the UNFCCC is essential. That data must be incorporated into national climate plans and form a baseline for urgent, science-based reductions consistent with the 1.5°C limit.
Security cannot be achieved at the expense of climate. Tackling climate change is now essential to our collective security and the survival of our planet.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
