Putting together the first climate change strategy in the British Army

Although the most ambitious elements of what the team proposed remain under consideration, the Army has publicly stated its intent to achieve net zero by 2045, and the MOD is about to unveil a far-reaching climate change and sustainability strategy. They explain how they went about this significant change.

What change were you aspiring to make? 

We wanted the most senior levels of the Army to take climate change seriously and make bold statements of intent to tackle one of the most preeminent threats to the nation. We wanted to get away from the perception in the Army that climate change is the domain of Extinction Rebellion and only an issue for activists. 

We found a real advocate and senior champion in General Richard Wardlaw, who was able to turn our loose aspiration into a concrete ask for the Army at the same time when the Prime Minister made the net zero emission commitment by 2050. 

The Army needed to take this seriously and consider what its exposure was in terms of risk. We felt that if we didn’t make change in this area, it’d be an abrogation of responsibility on our side because of the influence and position we had to alter the dial, so it went from being a ‘nice to have’ to an ‘essential’ part of our work. 

While the Army has flirted with climate change for many years as a global issue affecting instability, what we did was to ask the ‘so what?’ question in terms of our investment decisions. We were able convince the Army and then the wider Ministry of Defence to put a climate change strategy in place for the very first time. 

This led to the adoption of the first departmental net-zero targets, a comprehensive strategy for achieving these targets and the allocation of funds to projects that can be put in place with almost immediate effect to start the journey to meeting those targets. 

Multiple specific measures are already becoming a reality, most recently the ‘Prometheus’ project, a plan for the Army to be carbon neutral by 2045, introducing four solar farms, reducing costs and lowering net emissions. Climate change is now recognised not only as the biggest single threat to security but also as a key responsibility for us to tackle.

How did the idea for the change come about? 

[Hugo] While I was on the Forward Institute programme, I initially struggled to nail down what I could do for my change challenge. I toyed with the idea of doing something to address the mental health implications of financial anxieties as the Army’s one of the top users of payday loans in the country. 

While this was important, I realised my passion lay with addressing climate change, but I had no idea how to even begin because it seemed like such a huge subject to convince the Army it had to make change. 

The idea came to me when Kate Simpson spoke about systems change and she talked about changing the environment around who gets to speak on a subject. I wondered if we could get senior leadership in the Army to make public announcements about climate change to set the tone nationwide. 

Adam Corkery, another 2018 Fellow, joined me and suggested we use the power of the Forward Institute network. As he had more seniority than me, we were able to doorstep our way into General Richard’s office and share what we wanted to do. Coincidentally, the General was trying to get his head around what the Army could do on climate change, so the stars aligned. 

How did the Forward Institute programme enable you to make change? 

[Damian] As well as being on the Forward Institute programme together, Hugo and I were also on an Army development programme at the time. We were originally tasked with justifying the need for an environmental sustainability strategy in the Army, which rapidly morphed into drafting the skeleton of what that strategy could and should be. 

We combined some of the skills we were learning on the development programme with the amazing network of the Forward Institute, opening us up to connections we otherwise could only have wished for. In a short period of time, we were having discussions with sustainability experts in other government departments (DEFRA, BEIS), with influential corporate organisations (Unilever, BP, Tesco) and with academics (CISL). 

[Hugo] One of the key things the Forward Institute programme gave me was a sense that there’s a much bigger world out there than the Army. My horizons were expanded, I was given a professional opportunity, the impetus and confidence to push something that was personally important to me. It gave us bravery and networks, and we’ve drawn hard on those networks over the last nine months. 

[Damian] The Forward Institute programme is really effective at encouraging you to look at your own organisation through a different lens. Having joined the Army from university and served for 16 years to that point, I’d forgotten how unique the Army is – how different a life we lead to the rest of society. 

I’d normalised something that was, in many respects, completely abnormal. It’s good to be mindful of that. But in relation to climate change, that very abnormality tended to be seen as an excuse for inaction – the perception of a rigid dichotomy between environmental sustainability and military activity. 

In contrast, the more we investigated, the more it became apparent that the military was in a unique place to have a hugely positive impact. Our challenge was to marry the opportunity with the imperative. The Forward Institute offered us direct and indirect support to help land the proposition. 

Who was involved in the change? 

The network of Fellows was very helpful. George Davies put us in touch with an amazing guy at McKinsey. Because of the personal connection, he agreed to help us turn this from an exercise in generalities to one of specifics. We got the confidence that the issue we were facing wasn’t entirely unique and was probably entirely achievable. 

The Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership was also helpful with subject matter experts, elevating our level of discussion from the desk/worker level to the level of influence and decision-making. What they and others did was give us the confidence that even if we don’t have all the answers, we were heading in the right direction and had people to call on. 

There were two further standouts. One was the Forward Institute-Bank of England session in January 2020, which was enormously powerful. We brought in the Army’s Head of Strategy and the MOD Champion, General Richard Nugee. The session exposed these key interlocutors with the views and strategies of other, hugely credible organisations. 

The other event was when we briefed the Army’s executive board after we’d conducted a few months of research. The head of finance said we had presented the issue in such a way that the Army couldn’t afford not to do it. We’d made the financial, military and moral case at the same time as making a realistic proposition that the Army could lead the way. 

With the benefit of hindsight, without the Army Advanced Development Programme and without the Army being a key part of the Forward Institute – both events originally championed by the now Chief of Defence Staff (Gen Nick Carter) – it’s doubtful whether the Army and now the MOD would’ve arrived so soon at such an ambitious statement of intent. 

It sounds a grandiose statement, but there’s evidence to justify that. On the back of the Bank of England event and through Forward Institute fellows, General Nugee has had conversations with Mark Carney and Nigel Topping. There’s every possibility the military will be part of the discussion and feature on the agenda for COP26, when hitherto it hasn’t even featured on the radar. 

What were some of the key factors of success? 

Beyond the network and the confidence that gave us to commit to make change, data proved to be the key. Ironically, we were originally warned off paying too much attention to our carbon footprint at the risk of becoming consumed with detail – the steer we received was to focus on the intrinsic ‘good’ of a focus on environmental sustainability. 

Eschewing that advice, we pushed to know more about what the problem was – what were our carbon emissions, and where did they come from? We knew we needed data to make a compelling case and convince those in the military for whom ‘doing good’ would never be a strong enough rationale. 

Developing a carbon baseline was not a straightforward activity, especially considering our collective inexperience in the subject area. But by building a precise picture of what needed to be tackled, we were able to shift the narrative. We moved the conversation away from the ‘implausibility’ of electric tanks towards the reality of buildings, power generation, estate efficiency, rewilding and natural capital. 

Knowing where our emissions were highest – and how much this inefficiency was costing the Army – enabled us to calculate that by reducing emissions to net-zero, we could save billions of pounds over the next decade and that’s before one talks about the cost avoidance of the physical effects of climate change. 

The data underpinned the strategy, informing the decisions of what needed to be put into effect immediately and what would form part of the longer term, ‘far horizon’ work. The data shaped the narrative. And we talked of net zero not in terms of difficulty, but in terms of opportunity – how a focus on net zero could become our strategic advantage rather than a strategic burden. 

Were there any blockers? 

We applied an insurgency philosophy. We were putting ourselves in a position where we weren't necessarily the experts on climate change and exposing ourselves, and we were incredibly persistent to the point that prominent people couldn't say no. 

At one point when we were running into a few blockers within the Whitehall hierarchy, we sat ourselves down and asked ourselves whether we’d become ‘too domesticated’, whether we were confusing having a voice at the table with actual progress. We consulted with a couple of other Forward Institute Fellows, which served as a useful honesty check: we concluded that we needed to increase the agitation! 

Mark Stevenson, a friend of the Forward Institute, was in some of the meetings. Unbeknownst to us, he was also unsure whether his advice was resonating or not. We were able to both reassure him and help gain him greater access. He, in turn, pushed us to continue to ask awkward questions. 

What advice do you have to other Fellows who want to make change? 

It’s really important to make the change your day job, and have a compelling story underpinned by logical data. That makes engaging people much easier. 

And become accustomed to feeling uncomfortable. We’ve felt uncomfortable all the way through – at times due to our relative inexperience, at others due to the scale of change we were proposing, or the level at which the work was being briefed. 

You must have courage in your convictions – and having a logic/data underpinning helps! – but if you’re proposing change, then you’re anathema to the orthodoxy and that’ll feel uncomfortable. We took reassurance that, despite the radical nature of some of the proposals, through our wide and varied engagements on the subject we’d gained a real level of expertise. And it’s true what they say about the one-eyed man in the land of the blind! 

What’s next? 

We’ve now graduated from both the Army Advanced Development Programme and the Forward Institute programme and are deployed as unit commanders, but we’ve helped tee up this work with a dedicated team so the strategy can roll on under General Nugee. It’s tied into a governmental strategy and linked to the integrated review of the security strategy, which is also going on and has now been tied in with COP26. 

And in our own commands, we’ll continue to push both this issue and maybe try and apply change in other areas – there are many to choose from!