He emphasizes the importance of preventive actions and therefore the need to have better foresights analysis and political decision-making.

This interview was conducted at the Planetary Security Conference in The Hague, 5-6 December 2016.

"NATO is not a climate-security organization but as an organization which looks at security in a very broad sense, obviously, our operations could be impacted by climate change and before we launch operations in the future we need to know more about what is happening with climate change in certain parts of the world, how that could impact on our operations and what NATO forces can do while they are in a certain country to help mitigate the impacts of climate change, for example through engineering works, through roads and infrastructure, through things like counter-narcotics programmes as you saw in Afghanistan while we were there and defense capacity building and how we can help local forces with training and equipment and the equipment we leave behind when we leave, so that those local forces are better able to show resilience in the face of climate change shocks."