Australia’s National Intelligence Community could substantially enhance Australia’s climate security response. It could do so by applying its surveillance resources to the task.
The 2024 Independent Intelligence Review lists transnational challenges—which includes climate change—as one of the ‘major trends shaping global affairs’. Despite noting that ‘climate change is a priority for intelligence agencies and is likely to require more [intelligence] collection’, the report doesn’t contain a chapter on climate, nor does it make any recommendations for addressing the challenge. Meanwhile, technology, as one of the other major trends listed, is given an entire chapter and 11 recommendations to ensure Australia is adequately ‘positioned for the future’.
This omission is consistent with the limited consideration that has been afforded to integrating climate security into intelligence establishments in Australia and beyond. Until the review’s release, the Australian government had officially and publicly raised climate change only in relation intelligence’s assessment functions. The Independent Intelligence Review is a step towards recognising the broader intelligence establishment’s relationship to climate security, but it must come with a considered and deliberate assessment as to what this might mean in practice.
The government has recognised that reducing emissions is ‘a fundamental part of protecting Australia’s national security’, but has overlooked what the broader intelligence establishment could do to assist climate change mitigation. This has not been for a lack of ideas: one notable case includes Louis Bruhnke’s 2013 master’s thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Bruhnke contended that, should a binding and enforceable international greenhouse gas limitation treaty be formed, the US intelligence community could assist the international monitoring, reporting, and verification of emissions.
This is an interesting idea, but a distant prospect. As such, Australia should consider how we could use our intelligence community’s capabilities to help reduce emissions now, not later.
Certain agencies within the Australian intelligence community are well-placed to contribute to monitoring regulatory breaches, specifically around the legislation on greenhouse gas reduction under the government’s Safeguard Mechanism.
The Safeguard Mechanism requires Australia’s largest greenhouse gas emitters—accounting for around 28 percent of national emissions—to keep their net emissions below a certain limit, with the default baseline set at 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. This baseline is set to decline at a rate of 4.9 percent each year until 2030.
Currently, however, the Safeguard Mechanism’s effectiveness is severely undermined by weak monitoring and surveillance. Factors such as self-reporting, lengthy audit warning times and selective testing are undermining the integrity of the scheme, so much so that, according to recent satellite imaging, several coal mines in Queensland were emitting emissions that were cumulatively as much as double the mines’ reported figures. Four of these mines were safeguard-covered facilities. These went undetected by the Australian government.
The existing authority, the Clean Energy Regulator could have its surveillance powers bolstered to enhance its monitoring effectiveness. However, this would be an unnecessary duplication of powers. The regulator would also be ill-equipped to navigate the associated sensitivities due to its lack of specialisation, experience and expertise. Not to mention it would also require significant investment—both in time and money—to successfully stand up these capabilities.
As such, it would be more efficient and effective for the regulator to collaborate with the National Intelligence Community when surveillance expertise and capabilities were required.
Of course, monitoring and information-sharing would require new enabling legislation. While this is no small task, it is a necessary step in advancing new thinking as to how our most powerful agencies could contribute to mitigating climate-related national security issues.
My research, published in 2024, found that the agencies best suited to this task were the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO), the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC).
AGO would already be able to support the regulator as it possesses specific functions that allow it to aid Commonwealth or state authorities in certain instances, including when assistance pertains to environmental protection. For ACIC and the AFP to support surveillance efforts, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 would need to be amended to include a criminal penalty to form a hybrid criminal/civil regime.
Government agencies currently rely on weak surveillance practices to regulate corporations. But the security implications of excessive emissions are not a standard consequence of corporate misconduct, and companies should be regulated accordingly. Doing so would serve public interest by helping to avoid, for example, the crossing of various tipping points, without harming the rights or freedoms of individuals, and treading carefully around the social licence extended to Australia’s intelligence agencies in their domestic operations.