Walk through the ESG disclosure of any major industrial or infrastructure organisation and you will find climate risk sections of increasing sophistication — net-zero pathways, physical risk scenarios, TCFD-aligned governance. What you will not find is any accounting for the relationship between geopolitical conflict and carbon emissions, or any assessment of how ongoing conflicts are affecting the organisation's climate trajectory. This is a material gap.

The Numbers That Are Not Being Counted

Global military expenditure exceeded $2.4 trillion in 2023 — the highest level ever recorded (SIPRI, 2024)
Conflict-related activities estimated to contribute 5.5% of global GHG emissions annually — excluded from national inventories under UNFCCC convention
A single major conflict generated an estimated 175 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent in its first 18 months (Initiative on GHG Accounting of War, 2023)

Armed conflict consumes extraordinary fossil fuel volumes. Infrastructure destruction — power plants, industrial facilities, transport networks — releases embodied carbon and forces energy-intensive reconstruction. Post-conflict rebuilding consistently prioritises speed over carbon efficiency. The emissions are real. They are simply not counted — excluded by international convention and absent from corporate supply chain accounting entirely.

The Supply Chain Exposure Most Organisations Are Not Measuring

For organisations operating in or sourcing from conflict-proximate regions across the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia, this creates an invisible Scope 3 exposure. Supply chains running through or adjacent to active conflict zones carry embedded emissions and social risk that standard ESG accounting does not capture.

Supply chain Scope 3 emissions average 26× a company's direct operational emissions — yet only 15% of disclosing corporates have set a Scope 3 target (BCG / CDP, 2024)

In conflict-affected supply chains, even that 15% are unlikely to have accounted for the conflict-related component.

The Security-ESG Intersection Neither Function Is Mapping

  • Conflict destroys climate adaptation infrastructure — flood defences, early warning systems, resilient energy grids — accelerating physical climate risk in affected regions
  • Climate stress amplifies conflict risk through resource scarcity, water insecurity, and displacement — the causal arrow runs in both directions
  • Transition plans that assume stable political environments for infrastructure investment are unrealistic in the current geopolitical period

Neither security risk assessments nor ESG climate frameworks routinely make this connection. Organisations exposed to both face compounded — not additive — risk. The 2024 ASIS Geopolitical Resilience research explicitly identifies this integration gap as one of the most significant blind spots in enterprise risk governance.

What Integrated Governance Looks Like

Leading organisations are beginning to connect these disciplines: climate risk committees including geopolitical scenario analysis; security functions feeding conflict intelligence into ESG materiality assessments; supply chain due diligence accounting for both human rights risk and climate risk in conflict-proximate geographies. Any organisation with significant supply chain exposure across MEA and Central Asia, or sustainability commitments that depend on stable governance environments, faces this intersection. The organisations that manage it best stop treating security risk and ESG risk as separate analytical exercises.

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