When world leaders gather in Antalya, Turkey, for COP31, they will discuss emissions targets, climate finance, renewable energy, and the destruction of the natural world.
One of the gravest assaults on creation, however, is likely to remain at the margins of those negotiations: war.
Pope Leo XIV has already provided a moral framework for addressing that silence. He has described the environmental crisis as “the ecological aspect of the contemporary socio-economic crisis” and warned that peace is threatened by “a lack of respect for creation, the plundering of natural resources and a progressive decline in the quality of life due to climate change.”
He has also called for stronger international cooperation and a just transition in which the common good takes precedence over profit.
At COP31, Pope Leo can bring these concerns together by urging governments to recognize that militarization, armed conflict, and preparations for war deepen the climate crisis.
Modern warfare consumes vast quantities of fuel. It destroys forests, farmland, wetlands, and coastal ecosystems. It contaminates water and soil, displaces communities, and leaves damage that can last long after the fighting ends.
Peacebuilding must therefore be understood as part of climate action.
The hidden emissions of war
Global militaries are estimated to account for about 5.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, or roughly 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, according to research by Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Conflict and Environment Observatory.
If the world’s armed forces were treated as a country, they would rank among the largest emitters.
Yet military emissions are still not fully or consistently reported under international climate mechanisms. Governments may withhold information on national security grounds, leaving a major source of emissions outside public scrutiny.
This allows countries to present themselves as making progress on decarbonization while expanding armed forces, increasing defense spending, and preparing for conflicts whose environmental costs are rarely reflected in climate commitments.
A global stocktake that does not adequately account for military emissions gives an incomplete picture of the crisis.
COP31 should press governments to include military and conflict-related emissions in their Nationally Determined Contributions. The United Nations climate process should also establish common standards for reporting emissions from armed forces, military industries, and conflict.
Without such transparency, the world cannot accurately measure the climate cost of militarization.
That cost goes far beyond fuel use. Bombings and explosions release toxic particles into the air. Military operations destroy ecosystems and wildlife habitats. Spilled fuel, chemicals, and heavy metals pollute rivers and groundwater. Landmines and unexploded ordnance make farms and forests dangerous long after a conflict has ended.
The effects fall most heavily on civilians. Farmers lose access to their land. Indigenous Peoples are displaced from ancestral territories. Families lose homes and livelihoods. Food systems break down, water becomes unsafe, and damaged public services leave communities less able to withstand climate disasters.
Reconstruction brings another environmental burden. Roads, bridges, power systems, and cities are often rebuilt with carbon-intensive cement and steel. In many cases, the rebuilding process restores the same dependence on fossil fuels that contributed to the climate crisis in the first place.
Postwar recovery should not reproduce the conditions that made communities vulnerable. It should restore ecosystems, expand renewable energy, and place the needs of affected people at the center of reconstruction.
War and the destruction of creation
The history of nuclear weapons shows how deeply militarization can damage the natural world.
More than 2,000 nuclear tests were conducted worldwide between 1945 and 1996, including more than 500 atmospheric tests. They released radioactive material and left lasting harm in the places where they were carried out.
Bikini Atoll and Mururoa remain symbols of the human and ecological costs of the nuclear arms race.
The danger continues. Missile and warhead testing release carbon dioxide, particulates, and chemicals into the atmosphere. Some rocket fuels produce compounds that can contribute to ozone depletion.
Scientific simulations also warn that a nuclear exchange could send large quantities of soot into the stratosphere, block sunlight, and disrupt global agriculture. The result could be widespread food insecurity on a scale far beyond the countries directly involved.
War is not only a political or moral failure. It threatens the climate, food systems, and the conditions needed for human survival.
The same contradiction is visible in government spending.
States often justify military expansion in the name of security, even as communities face rising seas, extreme heat, drought, floods, and worsening food shortages.
Military spending requires fuel, manufacturing, transport, infrastructure, and the production of weapons, aircraft, ships, and vehicles. It also draws public resources away from renewable energy, climate adaptation, health, education, and disaster preparedness.
These are not secondary concerns. They are the foundations of human security. A country may possess advanced weapons while leaving its people exposed to storms, crop failures, water scarcity, and climate-driven displacement.
COP31 should confront that contradiction. Governments cannot credibly promise a safer climate while investing heavily in systems capable of destroying communities and ecosystems.
Arms and aerospace industries should also be required to disclose emissions across their operations and supply chains and adopt reduction targets consistent with the Paris Agreement.
Pope Leo’s opportunity at COP31
The Apostle Paul writes that “all creation has been groaning in labour pains.”
Creation groans under extraction, pollution, and an economic system that treats nature as an unlimited resource. It also groans under bombs, missiles, and the machinery of war.
Pope Francis taught that the cry of the Earth cannot be separated from the cry of the poor. Pope Leo has carried this understanding forward by insisting that climate change must be addressed together with human dignity, social justice, and the common good.
He has warned that technical solutions will fail unless societies also confront the deeper social and ethical problems behind the environmental crisis. He has urged particular attention to the poorest and to those most vulnerable to environmental degradation.
Those concerns apply directly to war. The people who decide to wage war are rarely those who suffer its greatest consequences. Civilians are killed or displaced. Poor communities lose access to food, water, and shelter. Indigenous Peoples and rural communities see their lands occupied, contaminated, or destroyed.
A papal appeal on militarization and climate change would not represent a new direction. It would bring together principles Pope Leo has already emphasized: care for creation, peace, justice, solidarity, and responsibility toward the most vulnerable.
He can use COP31 to ask governments whether their climate commitments are honest while military emissions remain hidden and defense budgets continue to grow.
He can call for full reporting of military and conflict-related emissions, environmentally responsible reconstruction, and greater investment in climate adaptation and human development.
He can also remind the international community that preventing conflict protects people, ecosystems, and the resources needed for a just transition.
Climate diplomacy has long treated war as a separate issue. It is not. The world cannot claim to defend creation while preparing to destroy it. Peace is climate action.
Fr. Pedro Walpole, S.J. works in sustainable environment and community land management in Southeast Asia, with mainly local communities, universities, international organizations, and governments. He practices a people-focused approach to capacity building and seeks to promote more lasting partnerships through research, consultation, and policy building to support local populations and governments. He is the Research Director for the Environmental Science for Social Change and the Coordinator for the River Above Asia Oceania Ecclesial Network.
Pedro also directs the Apu Palamguwan Cultural Education Center, an upland basic education program and technical training for indigenous children in northern Mindanao that has its own culture-based curriculum and promotes multi-language education and the use of the mother tongue. He continues to live with the Pulangiyēn, an upland indigenous community in Mindanao.
