WBGU SITUATION REPORT No. 1, 2026 — SECURITY
Situation report
Security – sustainable and integrated
Summary Climate and environmental policy is security policy. A society cannot defend itself without societal resilience. This is also recognized by the German government’s National Security Strategy with its ‘integrated security’ approach. In addition to the country’s resilience and ability to defend itself, it also places emphasis on preserving the natural life-support systems. However, the integrated operationalization and interlinked implementation of security and environmental policy have been inadequate up to now. Against this background, the WBGU turns its attention to the ongoing security policy debate at the federal level, the EU level, and in a multilateral and plurilateral context: it argues in favour of integrating the fight against environmental risks more into security-policy instruments, and considering them as part of the national and international security architecture – for example within the framework of strategic partnerships and security-relevant institutions. Here, the WBGU draws on the concept of ‘integrated security’ as used in Germany’s National Security Strategy, but interprets
its meaning much more broadly than in the current discourse and in Germany’s National Security Council. Shaping security policy as a policy for the future requires the sustained protection of our life-support systems and, in addition, the targeted promotion of social cohesion as the foundation of internal, external and economic security and democracy’s ability to act. Furthermore, it is important to guarantee information integrity as the basis for a robust (wehrhaft) democracy, to use technologies and raw materials in a balanced way and reduce one-sided dependencies, as well as to strengthen international relations. A future-oriented, integrated security policy should address the challenges associated with these fields of action – climate and environmental protection, social cohesion, information integrity, increased technological and raw-material sovereignty and international cooperation – and incorporate them into a multidimensional security architecture. This is how a co operative, long-term, resilient and sustainable security policy can be achieved.