Implications of Climate Change and Disasters on Military Activities ― Building Resiliency and Mitigating Vulnerability in the Balkan Region

This volume provides preliminary recommendations on ways to educate and develop experience-based expertise among disaster response, security and other professionals from diverse backgrounds, whose current and future interests relate to crisis management.

The book takes a multidisciplinary approach to improving regional security cooperation and to addressing the complex issues of climate change and disasters on military activities.

The main aims of this proceedings volume are: 

-to identify broad issues on climate change and disasters, particularly those with the highest importance and relevance to regional security.

The Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence (CMDR COE) conducted an Advanced Research Workshop “Climate Change Implications on Military Activities in the Balkans Region” between 05-07 July, 2016. The event was supported by the NATO Science for Peace (SPS) Program and gathered distinguished experts from various international organizations and civil-military agencies.

The Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence (CMDR COE) was built by virtue of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Defence Ministries of Bulgaria, Greece and Poland and the Allied Command Transformation (ACT), signed on 28 August 2013 Norfolk, USA. Following a decision of the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the Centre has earned status as the 21st NATO`s Centre of Excellence and has been activated since March 31, 2015 as a NATO Military Body with a granted international status under the Paris Protocols.

In present strategic environment, the Centre takes on the important task to build capacity of NATO capabilities in crisis management and disaster response. As part of NATO Smart Defence initiative, it will contribute to enhance the interoperability through research, analyzes, lessons learned, and, sharing of information in the aspects of crisis management and disaster response. The Centre has continuously developed and, in some cases expanded the expertise in order to meet the needs of NATO capabilities in the field of crisis management and disaster response. The CMDR COE has provided robust training and has been a home for many workshops, experiments and seminars.Since its accreditation, Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre Excellence (CMDR COE) has developed four NATO Selected courses annually.