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Redirect military budgets to tackle climate change and pandemics

Governments should stop spending billions of dollars on weapons and protect citizens from the real threats they face.
  1. Denise Garcia

    1. Denise Garcia is associate professor of political science and international affairs at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. She is a vice-chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and a member of the International Panel for the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons. Her forthcoming book is When AI Kills: Ensuring Common Good Governance in the Age of Military Artificial Intelligence.

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A family with a young girl and bags stand in a road in Hasakeh province, Syria watching a military car with an American flag

People in Syria watch a US military vehicle. Credit: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty

Despite threats to human existence from climate change, biodiversity loss and a pandemic that’s devastating economies and paralysing societies, countries still spend recklessly on destructive weapons for wars they will never fight.

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Nature 584, 521-523 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02460-9

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