As 2025 came to an
end, a climate report released by the Council on Strategic Risks outlined how climate change could threaten both Hawaii’s civilian and military communities, and how cuts to programs that monitor weather and other environmental threats could leave both more vulnerable.
The report by CSR — a non-partisan security policy institute based in Washington, D.C. — warns that “with its diverse landscapes and geographic isolation, Hawai‘i is exceptionally vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Shifting rainfall and seasonal patterns affect local food security and biodiversity; heat and drought stress water supplies, impacting human health and increasing wildfire risk; and coastal flooding and inundation threaten economic security, including infrastructure, agriculture, and tourism.”
The report noted that under a high-emissions scenario in which the world does nothing to reduce current green gas emissions, coral reef loss in the islands is projected to result in an economic loss of up to $1.3 billion per year by 2050. It also noted that Hawaii is the third-most vulnerable U.S. state to temperature-related deaths, and that greater heat wave intensity is straining energy and water infrastructure across the islands.
Rainfall and stream flow have declined across Hawaii since the 1990s, with 90% of the state receiving less rainfall than it did a century ago.
Over the last three decades military leaders in
Hawaii, which is the nerve center for military operations across the Pacific, have tracked how changing climate is altering the strategic landscape of the region, calling it a potential “threat multiplier.”
Security analysts have warned that droughts, sea level rise and other changes risk fueling displacement of communities and competition over resources, potentially destabilizing countries or entire regions. More recently, melting arctic ice caps have been opening up new waterways that China and Russia seek to take advantage of, while strategic U.S. facilities on Guam and in the Marshall islands have been hit by storms and rogue waves that have disrupted operations.
But in the White House’s National Security Strategy released last month, the administration of President Donald Trump said it “reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.” The document also said the administration considers “restoring American energy dominance” with oil, gas and coal to be a top priority in order to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence and data centers.
At the same time, the administration also has sought deep cuts to environmental monitoring and research programs, including partnerships in Hawaii. Hawaii has made plans for $6 billion in climate adaptation projects to compensate for sea level rise, including port renovations, dredging and wetland restoration.
“I think every administration gets to set its priorities, but they don’t always match what states want,” said Jessica Kehaulani Wong, a fellow at the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center who authored the CSR’s study.
“Local governments and communities want to address climate hazards that are not just theoretical, but are from lived experiences. So I think federal funding cuts have spurred conversations around diversifying funding sources for local adaptation projects.”
Among the programs the Trump administration is looking to eliminate is the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System, which provides real-time observations of wave height, current strength, wind speed, shoreline inundation and other ocean conditions. In Hawaii that data is used by commerical freighters and other civilian mariners as well as the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard to plot courses around storms and safely navigate harbors.
That’s part of a $1.3 billion reduction in the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the CSR report said would “would also dismantle regional climate adaptation partnerships that help Hawai‘i plan for rising sea levels, and reduce the accuracy of hurricane forecasting by limiting investments in satellite data.”
There is also a $558 million — or 38% — reduction in funding across the U.S. Geological Survey, which the report said “would impact its ability to provide scientific information that supports the management of water, ecosystems, and land resources in Hawai’i and mitigate risks from natural hazards. It could end collaborations in Hawai‘i that monitor invasive species, sea level rise, and wildfire risks.”
Fire-prone invasive grasses and other vegetation have become prevalent throughout the islands and played a central role in the deadly 2023 Lahaina wildfire, Hawaii’s deadliest disaster. These plants thrive in hot, dry environments, crowding out and replacing native species and spreading further.
These grasses and other invasive species have spread across military bases, already impacting operations. Fires have disrupted training, and in some cases been caused by military training. Wong said “let’s say that a wildfire reaches infrastructure where weapons caches or explosive are stored, that would not be good.”
“Military installations and service members, they don’t exist in a vacuum, they pull from the same resources — food, water, energy — as the communities that they’re in,” Wong said. “And so any climate or ecological hazards that impact communities are also going to impact service members and national security
operations.”
A Pentagon study in 2018 — during the first Trump
administration — found that nearly half of all U.S. military sites were threatened by weather linked to climate change, especially coastal bases in Hawaii like Pearl Harbor, Marine Corps Base Kaneohe and the Pacific
Missile Range Facility.
But current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that he intends to put an end to “climate change worship” in the military. He has aggressively worked to shut down environmental programs and his team has largely prohibited military personnel from discussing the possibility that climate change could impact their operations.
In April, Navy Secretary John Phelan scrapped the service’s climate action program, declaring in a video posted to the social media platform X that “we need to focus on having a lethal and ready naval force, unimpeded by ideologically motivated regulations.”
“If these projects aren’t able to continue due to loss of funding, simply put, it will leave us all unprepared — governments, local communities and military — for the climate hazards that will come if global cooperation to reduce emissions is not achieved,” Wong said. “And there’s a cost whether you pay for it upfront before a natural disaster hits, or you pay for it after to recover from it. And post disaster recovery usually costs a lot more.”
