“We need to devote our full attention to the relationship between water, climate, and security, increase understanding of the issue, and take urgent action,” said Carola van Rijnsoever, Director of Inclusive Green Growth at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a recent Hague roundtable on building a transatlantic coalition for climate action on water and security challenges in countries of risk.

“It’s time to move past the talking and develop practices, and put the practices into play,” said Sharon Burke, Senior Advisor and Director of the Resource Security group at New America. One way to achieve this is by expanding a community of practice that can show tangible results about how this partnership advances the security of our peoples, she said.

Now that climate and security issues are high on the agenda, we must ensure that our efforts continue to be collaborative, said Hinrich Thoelken, Climate Envoy of the German Foreign Office. As they gain attention, we should prevent these issues from becoming a political race instead of the necessary earnest discussions and meaningful actions to address them, said Thoelken.

Translating urgency into action requires capitalizing on everyone’s strengths. It requires strengthening synergies within development, diplomacy, defense, and disaster sectors, said Tom Middendorp, Chair of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. “Climate change is a whole-of-society problem, and it requires whole-of-society answers.” The security sector can play an enormous role in understanding the effects of climate change, forecasting these effects, and building resilience, especially by supporting climate change adaptation in fragile regions, he said.

A big part of the Biden administration’s first act on water and security is a climate risk analysis project at the Department of Defense, said Burke. “That’s meant to better understand all of these risks to peace, but also to incorporate them into the way that the United States plans for future security.” For Biden, addressing water and security “isn’t just about conflict and warfighting and being ready for those situations. It’s also about peacebuilding at home,” she said. It is about building resilience.

It is an exciting time for transatlantic cooperation on water and security because of increasing political momentum and a convergence across North America and Europe, said Benedetta Berti, Head of Policy Planning at NATO Office of Secretary-General. This is a generational challenge and we all have a role to play. We cannot exclude our militaries, she said. NATO recently agreed on a climate change security agenda that has concrete measures around three main areas: increasing situational awareness and growing NATO’s understanding of climate change; adapting military operations, planning, capabilities, and increasing climate resilience; and, mitigation and evaluating the military’s role in combatting climate change.

For its part, Germany commissioned an assessment, Weathering Risk, to inform policymaking by 2023 and help the governments understand the risks of climate change, water scarcity, and other risks, said Thoelken. The German Federal Foreign Office is also supporting several projects to build transatlantic cooperation on climate and security. This includes a focus on water diplomacy through a project in the Nile River Basin to support the use of empirical data to “inform the discussion on how to share the water—how to come to peaceful solutions on how to negotiate in an informed way,” said Thoelken.

Building an enabling environment of organizations, institutions, and capacities through partnerships and synergies will be critical to translating urgency into action. “We need to show that the transatlantic partnership is not only strong in spirit, but can deliver results,” said Burke.