1️⃣ UN-held figures on direct emissions (Scope 1) would need to be increased by an average of 95% to match the government figures (based on data from the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia).

2️⃣ UN data captures on average <10% of a military’s full carbon footprint.

The bottom line: We cannot begin to address climate change while ignoring one of the most polluting sectors. Transparent, comprehensive military emissions reporting is not optional. It’s essential.

www.sgr.org.uk/resources/mo...

Report author Dr Stuart Parkinson said: “[...] As military spending spirals upwards, the UN reporting process urgently needs to be reformed, and governments need to come clean about the entirety of their military carbon footprints. This would be a key step in efforts to reduce these emissions.”

1️⃣ The UN should implement, as a matter of urgency, mandatory and explicit military emissions reporting within national inventories

2️⃣ High military spending nations should also publish full assessments of their military carbon footprints, following the example of Norway.

Militaries account for ~5.5% of emissions globally. Carbon footprinting is now standard practice for large organisation; it's time the world’s militaries caught up.

With global military spending set to increase rapidly over the next 10 years, our report makes several key recommendations:

A key reason for poor quality data is that the UN reporting system allows militaries to hide emissions in other categories or not report them at all, as is the case in international waters and airspace.

Research published by the Military Emissions Gap revealed that nearly half of 70 leading nations submit no military emissions data at all to the UN. As our findings demonstrate, even the data that is submitted is only the tip of the iceberg.

3️⃣ No nation reports emissions from actual war-fighting activities (Scope 3+).

We analysed i) UN-submitted national inventory data, and ii) annual government or defence ministry emissions reports. We found: