This opinion article was written by GWSC Human-Environmental Analyst, Penny Beames.

On October 8-9, 2025, in Montreal, Canada, I had the pleasure of representing The University of Alabama’s Global Water Security Center at the Montreal Climate Security Summit. Organized by NATO’s Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence and the Conference of Defense Associations Institute, the three-day event brought together experts from around the world to discuss cutting edge topics around environmental systems change and how that affects national and international security.

Keynote speeches and working groups explored technical, scientific, and operational approaches to adapting armed forces to operate successfully in a changing environment.

One theme that emerged time and again was the need for resilience as a planning strategy rather than a reactive one. Panelists and workshops on strategic foresight covered horizon scanning, wargaming, and scenario building exercises to identify risks that might extend beyond historical experience and into new realms created by shifting environmental baselines.

I presented on a panel that focused on tools used to map these shifting baselines and locate places that are already experiencing compounding risks. My presentation focused on GWSC’s Pathways to Instability Framework, which brings together insights from science, academia, and the military to understand and project how water and other environmental disturbances might lead to conflict.

Though not a tool in the traditional sense, the framework helps users think through problems in new ways that connect our physical understanding of weather with our social understanding of how people react.

As panelists, we had an energizing discussion around the value of bringing together different tools because no single approach can deliver a complete picture of any situation. Our consensus was that collaboration is key when tackling vast problems like water and conflict or the impacts of environmental insecurity.