Military spending puts sustainable development choices under pressure
Military spending puts sustainable development choices under pressure | Photo: Rama Laksono
Published on 5 October 2026 at 03:07 GMT
By Editorial Team SDG13
Global military spending reached an estimated US$2.887 trillion in 2025 at current prices and exchange rates, while climate adaptation, healthcare, education and humanitarian assistance faced extensive unmet needs. The parallel pressures raise a question that cannot be answered by comparing totals alone: how can governments protect populations against armed threats while sustaining the social and environmental investments on which everyday security also depends?
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recorded an eleventh consecutive annual increase in military expenditure. Spending grew by 2.9 per cent in real terms in 2025, following a 9.7 per cent rise in 2024, and was 41 per cent higher than in 2016. The latest increase was slower, but it extended a decade of expanding military budgets rather than reversing it.
That global trajectory was uneven. European spending rose by 14 per cent and spending in Asia and Oceania by 8.1 per cent in real terms in 2025, while US spending fell. A world total therefore conceals different national decisions and security environments. It also cannot establish that a particular hospital, school or flood-protection project lost funding because defence expenditure increased.
Security concerns behind the budgets
For a country facing invasion, defence expenditure concerns territorial survival and the protection of civilians, as well as the operation of public institutions. Elsewhere, governments frame military investment around deterrence, alliance commitments and preparedness for attacks. These concerns complicate any assumption that spending on armed forces is available for immediate transfer to other purposes.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) set out its position in the June 2025 Hague Summit Declaration. Citing the long-term threat from Russia and persistent terrorism, allies committed to spending 5 per cent of GDP annually on defence and related security investment by 2035. At least 3.5 per cent of GDP is intended for core defence requirements; up to 1.5 per cent of GDP covers areas including infrastructure, networks and civil preparedness. The declaration provides for a review in 2029.
This is an alliance commitment to a future spending trajectory, rather than a measure of expenditure already delivered. Nor is its wider security category interchangeable with the military expenditure total compiled by SIPRI. Different definitions affect comparisons, especially where civilian infrastructure appears in security budgets.
Development shortfalls beyond the headline totals
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that developing countries' annual adaptation financing needs will reach US$310 billion in 2035 using modelled costs, or US$365 billion using extrapolated national plans. International public adaptation finance flows to developing countries were US$26 billion in 2023, down from US$28 billion in 2022.
Those figures describe a future estimate and an earlier, narrower financing flow. They do not measure all adaptation spending, and subtracting one from the other would not produce a like-for-like current budget gap. Nevertheless, their scale illustrates the financing pressure surrounding protection against climate impacts. Climate adaptation connects directly to SDG 13 (Climate Action), including resilience to climate-related hazards.
Health and education indicators reveal another dimension of unmet needs. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025 records approximately 260,000 maternal deaths and 4.8 million deaths among children under five in 2023. It also reports that 272 million children and young people were out of school that year. These are measures of human outcomes and exclusion, rather than estimates of the sums required to eliminate them.
Money alone does not explain these outcomes. Service access, staffing, infrastructure and the conditions in which public services operate matter too. A larger allocation can finance delivery, but the relationship between expenditure and results is not automatic. The distinction matters when a spending comparison is used to imply that a financial transfer would resolve an entire development problem.
Humanitarian organisations describe more immediate consequences of financing constraints. In a statement dated 8 December 2025, Concern Worldwide chief executive Dominic Crowley said funding reductions were forcing organisations to reduce or suspend emergency food, healthcare, water, sanitation and protection programmes. The statement warned that stricter prioritisation was excluding people from assistance. These are the organisation's reported concerns about the response to funding cuts, rather than proof that military budgets caused those cuts.
What opportunity cost means in practice
The opportunity cost of public expenditure is the value of alternatives forgone. With a fixed budget, an additional allocation to defence leaves less available elsewhere. Governments can also change taxation, borrowing and other expenditure, so a rise in military spending does not mechanically imply an equal reduction in social investment. Each financing choice distributes costs differently across households, sectors and time.
There is also no single global treasury from which a military allocation can be moved into a development programme. Much defence expenditure is domestic, whereas international adaptation and humanitarian finance depend on transfers across borders. A national saving becomes international support only through an additional political and budgetary decision. Comparing global totals establishes scale, but not a mechanism for redistribution.
The timing of expenditure adds another complication. A reduction in a procurement programme may release less cash immediately than its headline value suggests, particularly when contracts, maintenance and staffing commitments continue. Conversely, a new military purchase can create operating costs beyond the year in which it is announced. Hospitals, schools and adaptation infrastructure also entail continuing expenditure after construction.
Reconciling different forms of protection
Some investments cross the boundary between defence and civilian resilience. NATO explicitly includes critical infrastructure, network protection and civil preparedness within its wider spending category. A project serving both purposes may offer overlapping benefits, but its classification alone does not establish how much protection it delivers or whether civilian access improves. The beneficiaries and the additional resources involved remain separate questions.
The reconciliation of security and development therefore involves more than choosing between two totals. How much military capability addresses an identified threat? Which social or environmental investments are delayed under the financing plan? Do reported increases represent additional capacity, higher costs or the reclassification of existing expenditure? These questions concern the content of budgets and their consequences, rather than a universal spending ratio.
The evidence presents governments with simultaneous demands. Military expenditure has expanded over a decade, while documented gaps persist in climate finance, public services and humanitarian provision. The unresolved issue is how societies assess protection against armed threats alongside protection against disease, exclusion and environmental harm, and how those choices are reflected in resources available over the long term.
Written by a human author, edited with AI assistance.
Further information:
SIPRI, Trends in World Military Expenditure 2025 provides the global and regional spending estimates and real-terms comparisons.
NATO, The Hague Summit Declaration sets out the 2035 spending commitment, its categories and the stated security rationale.
UNEP, Adaptation Gap Report 2025 distinguishes estimated future adaptation needs from international public finance flows.
United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025 key findings supplies the cited health and education indicators.
Concern Worldwide, its December 2025 statement documents the organisation's warnings about funding cuts and reduced humanitarian services.
