The Case for a Climate-First Maritime Reframing of the Indian Ocean Region

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Increasingly viewed as the biggest security threat in the Indian Ocean, climate change is already shaping the security landscape of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Rising sea levels, a rapidly warming ocean, and resulting extreme weather events are driving displacement, disrupting infrastructure, affecting livelihoods, and remain the biggest cause of human insecurity. The effects are most visible in coastal and island settings, but their security implications extend across state boundaries.

The Indian Ocean is one of the world’s most geopolitically significant regions. It links key economies across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. An estimated 2.7–2.9 billion people live in countries bordering the Indian Ocean (of which 340 million people are in coastal hazard zones). 80 per cent of global seaborne oil trade passes through its waters, via critical chokepoints.

And yet, it is also one of the fastest-warming oceans in the world, heating at an unprecedented rate, and is projected to experience near-permanent marine heatwave conditions in the coming decades, with dire consequences.

Integrating climate awareness in the IOR

States across the Indian Ocean Region and the broader Indo-Pacific already recognise that climate change is a serious concern. Many have developed national adaptation plans and committed to net-zero targets. Climate issues feature in high-level dialogues, including ASEAN ministerials, Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) declarations, and Indo-Pacific strategy documents. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have long advocated for stronger linkages between climate and security. For many SIDS states in the Indian Ocean, climate is not a theoretical concern. In the Maldives, over 80 per cent of critical infrastructure is within 100 metres of the coast. Seychelles has seen fish stock shifts tied to warming waters and coral bleaching, directly affecting food and income.

Larger states like India and Australia have also begun to acknowledge climate risks in more strategic terms. India’s SAGAR outlook integrates environment and sustainability in its maritime vision, and its leadership in the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure signals a growing climate focus. These smaller, issue-specific platforms could offer more productive avenues to advance climate–security cooperation. Similarly, Australia’s 2024 Defence Net Zero Strategy explicitly recognises climate change as a national security issue that poses risks to its strategic interests. Yet in both cases, there remains considerable scope for more systematic integration into naval strategies.

The question now for states is not whether climate matters, but how to embed it in regional security and maritime policy. Coherent, coordinated action remains a challenge.

Linking securities

There are structural reasons for this disconnect: Maritime security challenges are often ‘liminal’, i.e., shaped by what happens on land; they are transnational, governed by a mix of national, regional, and international laws; and they are cross-jurisdictional, falling between institutional and geographical boundaries. Adding a climate angle only deepens this complexity. Yet, these challenges could also present opportunities. The shared and transboundary nature of maritime risk has historically drawn coastal and island states into closer coordination.

Bridging the gap between recognition and response is where the maritime domain offers a compelling entry point. Climate risks in this space are inherently transboundary. A shared, climate-first maritime security framing, taken up by both regional and extra-regional actors, could offer a pathway to more inclusive ocean governance. It would allow for cooperation that reflects ecological change and human vulnerability, without relying solely on state-centric definitions of security.

The point is not to weigh state security against human security. Climate change impacts both at once and necessitates a reframing that treats them as inherently interlinked. In the Indian Ocean specifically, climate cannot be separated from human security and any serious maritime strategy must begin to reflect this overlap.

Measuring climate impacts through human (in)security

In the IOR, climate security must be viewed through a human security ‘lens’, asking how climate change affects people, communities and their livelihoods. Climate is the starting point, yet its impacts are most visible through the systems that sustain human security. Several examples from within the IOR show that rising seas and storms severely displace coastal populations. Shifting monsoon patterns affect agriculture, threatening food security. In urban areas, prolonged high temperatures and heat are emerging as serious public health risks where adaptation infrastructure is lacking. Floods repeatedly damage transport and critical infrastructure, disrupting daily life and slowing recovery.

Bringing a human‑security lens also highlights that these impacts are felt unequally. Women and marginalised groups face greater livelihood loss, limited access to aid and heightened risks of violence post‑disaster.

Many of the most severe climate impacts hit coastal areas first. This places them squarely within the maritime domain. When climate change threatens people’s safety, livelihoods, and infrastructure along the coast, it becomes both a human and maritime security concern, and hence why maritime security frameworks must be shaped by climate security considerations, and must account for human vulnerability.

Ways forward

There are three broad recommendations that emerge, building on existing solutions. First, all states engaged in the IOR should focus on integrating climate more strongly into maritime domain awareness (MDA). The IPMDA initiative under the Quad is a good example, but as mentioned earlier, there is a clear need to build specific Indian Ocean expertise around climate-linked risks. This can take the practical and low-effort form of intelligence sharing, which states are already doing to some extent.

Second, instead of trying to reform politically stagnant institutions like the Indian Ocean Rim Association, states should work within a mix of structured and unstructured frameworks. In this regard, the Blue Economy as a framework for cooperation offers a useful entry point: it is broad enough to bring in extra-regional actors like the EU, as well as a mix of state and non-state stakeholders, while remaining anchored in maritime collaboration.

Third, traditional security actors need to be more involved in climate adaptation and response. Continued Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) drills and disaster risk reduction exercises are one way forward, but HADR is not disconnected from existing socio-cultural realities. Disasters are not neutral—they affect communities differently, and responses must reflect that. An often-cited example is the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, in which women made up around 70 percent of all fatalities. The tsunami response was by no means a total failure. At the time, it brought together countries like India, Australia, Japan, and the US to coordinate efforts, ultimately leading to the first iteration of the Quad—an interesting case of a ‘traditional’ security dialogue emerging from a ‘non-traditional’ security issue. The deeper failure lay in the lack of attention to gender-differentiated impacts and responses.

Additionally, we are now seeing increasing civilian–military coordination in both HADR and climate disaster mitigation. There is already a baseline to build from: for instance, the recent oil spill simulation in the Western Indian Ocean demonstrated the potential for coordinated, cross-agency response to an environmental disaster.

These ways forward reflect what is both possible and necessary if the Indian Ocean is to be treated not just as a site of geopolitical competition and geoeconomic significance, but as a shared and increasingly vulnerable space that demands cooperative climate action.

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Aditi Mukund is a Humboldt Foundation German Chancellor Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin. Her research explores the intersection of climate and human security within maritime governance frameworks of the Indian Ocean Region. A key aspect of her research includes advancing gender-inclusive perspectives in foreign policy.