Catholic leaders warn - climate action vital to avoid global conflict

This piece, written by Ben Wilson, SCIAF's Director of Public Engagement, first appeared in The National.

Switch on the news any evening and it feels like the whole world is marching towards war.

Defence budgets are climbing, bold military parades are back in fashion, and world leaders seem more comfortable rattling sabres than reaching for olive branches.

When the Prime Minister cut international aid to increase defence spending earlier this year, many Parliamentarians across Scotland were publicly drooling at the prospect of an economic boon for their local area – disregarding and disrespecting, in my view, of the millions who will have their lives turned upside down this year due to global aid cuts.

In parallel, every day we see the most flagrant disregard for international law being committed by UK “allies” in Gaza and in conflicts across the world, alongside a worrying trend towards a scramble for minerals, driving border violence from Ukraine to the DRC. The same international legal system that was set up to prevent wars and its worst horrors is being ignored, while tensions between nations heat up.

In a terrifying move, the US Government last week renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War — a stark sign of how far we in the West have drifted from the principle that war should be prevented, rather than treated as inevitable.

The brutal assassination during the week of Republican commentator Charlie Kirk – tragically ironic as he debated gun controls – will do nothing to calm the political hurricane that’s ripping through the (far from) United States.

Here at home, the simmering tensions feels to be bubbling over the surface, with national flags being weaponised across the UK to spread fear, hatred, and stoke division.

The unfortunate backdrop to all of this is a climate crisis that is not abating, and a political discourse which appears to be turning away from the consensus that a rapid green transition is necessary for people and planning.

We’ve just come through the hottest summer ever recorded in the UK. Wildfires raged across southern Europe, displacing tens of thousands. In Scotland, we’ve seen unprecedented flooding devastate homes and farmland. Across Africa and Asia, cyclones, droughts, and crop failures are driving hunger and displacement on a massive scale. The science is unambiguous: the world is heating, and with it the risks of conflict grow. The climate crisis and the crisis of global security are deeply intertwined.

I saw this first-hand earlier this year in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, where I visited projects supported by SCIAF. The conflict there has many causes, but the competition for scarce resources - fertile land, water, grazing rights - is undoubtedly sharpening the violence. Drought and desertification, driven by climate change, make that competition even fiercer and the stakes higher. This is the grim reality we face: climate breakdown will drive more wars, more mass displacement, more territorial disputes.

The link is clear: there can be no peace without climate justice, and no climate justice without peace. That’s the message of a powerful new joint statement, Pilgrims of Hope for a Just and Peaceful World, published this week by SCIAF’s international networks Caritas Internationalis, CIDSE and Pax Christi International. It comes at a moment when the Catholic Church, under Pope Leo XIV, is signalling that peace will be the hallmark of his papacy—while continuing Pope Francis’s ground-breaking work on climate change.

The statement makes a crucial point: the roots of war and the roots of climate destruction are the same. A system built on short-term profit, on exploitation of people and planet, on power hoarded by the few at the expense of the many, will keep producing both violence and environmental collapse.

The solutions, too, are shared. Dealing with climate change requires a rules-based international order, just as peace does. Protecting smaller nations from the overreach of powerful ones is essential to both. And in both cases, we need leaders prepared to take a long-term view - to act for the common good, for the poorest who suffer most today, and for the generations to come. What we cannot afford is leaders content to stoke division for short-term political gain.

Here in Scotland, that call should ring loudly. We must remember the horrors of war and double down on diplomacy and prevention. That means resisting the easy rhetoric of militarised growth, where boosting defence budgets is sold as economic progress. It is a false economy. There can be no prosperity on a dead planet.

Instead, our leaders must channel resources into action that genuinely safeguards the future: meeting climate targets, backing bold policy to build a greener economy, and protecting international aid budgets that reduce instability at source. Preventing conflict abroad through development, and preventing climate breakdown at home through transformation, are not separate tasks. They are one and the same mission.

The joint Catholic statement speaks of hope - and rightly so. A peaceful world is possible; a sustainable world is possible. But only if we confront the twin crises of war and climate together. 

At this crossroads, Scotland has a choice: to join the march towards militarisation, or to stand among the pilgrims of hope, insisting on diplomacy, solidarity, and climate action. The path we choose will define not just our security, but our humanity.