Sustainability for Resilience

At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, allies agreed to spend a total of 5% of GDP on defence by 2035, with 3.5% allocated to core military expenditures and 1.5% to security-related spending, including civil preparedness and resilience. Increased Russian hybrid aggression towards Europe, climate change and threats to hydrocarbon supply chains have exposed economic, societal and infrastructure vulnerabilities, which are driving an increased focus on resilience.

While NATO has mature governance and processes to manage the 3.5%, the definition of what counts towards the 1.5% is opaque, with greater clarity expected in 2026 to ensure standardisation, accountability and transparency. As European NATO members face severe political and economic pressures, they cannot risk inefficiencies.

Therefore, there is an incentive to spend the 1.5% on policies and projects that deliver benefits across multiple government portfolios by identifying areas of common interest. If well directed, increased funding could be channelled into infrastructure, resilience and nature restoration projects that could both support NATO’s three core tasks and mitigate rising emissions and biodiversity loss.

Greater capacity for public transport, particularly rail, is required for military mobility and credible deterrence. Adaptable, decentralised energy systems making use of renewable generation and energy storage can enhance ‘energy sovereignty’ and make grids more resilient to physical attack. Decentralised electricity is most efficient and resilient when linked by high-capacity transmission interconnections and grid reinforcement, which is also required to facilitate the expansion of NATO defence industries.

Decarbonised technologies have defence applications and share dependencies on vulnerable mineral supply chains. Diversifying these supply chains and boosting R&D will improve both the resilience of defence and clean energy industries, and the competitiveness of the industrial base in NATO countries, while simultaneously supporting multinational industrial partnerships within the Alliance.

Finally, biodiversity loss is a threat to agriculture and ecosystem collapse and can have unpredictable consequences. Wetlands, marshlands and woodlands are important natural defences, which can be exploited to enhance NATO regional plans.

To ensure that this is delivered, NATO and European countries need to quickly define how best to allocate, monitor and coordinate these funds while building on NATO’s existing processes and planning.

For more information, please contact Anton Möller.
For press and media requests, please contact Joan Lanfranco.