The Center for Climate and Security is partnering with Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative, the Security and Sustainability Forum, and a number of other promotion partner organizations, to launch the “Global Climate Security Series” – a series of webinars aimed at fleshing out the connection between climate change and sub-national, national and international security, as well as offering solutions for governments and civil society. The first in the series, titled “Peace, Conflict and the Scale of the Climate Risk Landscape,” includes a number of key experts, including the Center for Climate and Security’s Christine Parthemore, UT Austin’s Joshua Busby and Columbia University’s Marc Levy, and is designed to provide the “risk landscape” context for subsequent place-based and sector-based webinars in the series. It will be held on August 25 from 1:15-2:45pm EDT. To register, click the button below.

For more on the substance of the first webinar, and bios of the panelists, see below (from the webinar series website):

Peace, Conflict and the Scale of the Climate Risk Landscape
August 25, 2015
1:15 pm to 2:45 pm EDT – Register here

The opening webinar to the series will examine the security implications of climate risk to provide a context for the subsequent place-based and sector-based webinars. This session will address climate risk and security on all fronts, including from the risk assessment perspective (impacts on governance, economic vitality, national, regional and international security) as well as from a solutions perspective (risk management, policy, and technical).

Participants will hear from experts from the national intelligence and climate impact communities who will address the scale of the risks.  The opening webinar will be the set up for the rest of the webinars, which address how to respond in four areas (national & subnational, industry, defense and global policy) based on risk assessment and responses commensurate with the risk.  The intent is to examine steps to bridge the risk – policy analysis gap.

Meet the Panelists:

Moderator: Dr. Nadya T. Bliss is the Director of GSI at Arizona State University and was the founding Group Leader of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory’s Computing and Analytics Group. GSI serves as ASU’s university-wide hub focusing on addressing emerging global challenges characterized by complex interdependencies often presenting conflicting objectives, such as cyber security and digital identity, mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts, and human security, all of which require multi-disciplinary research and cross-mission collaboration among the defense, development and diplomacy communities.

Christine Parthemore is a Senior Research and Policy Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, where she focuses on climate change issues related to global health security and nuclear energy. In 2015 she became the director for climate and food security at the Center for American Progress and founded CLP Global, LLC to provide advice and research on international affairs to NGOs and government clients. She served as the Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs in the U.S. Department of Defense from 2011 to 2015. In that capacity, she advised and assisted in managing more than $3 billion per year in research and development, acquisition, treaty compliance, and international partnership programs. She managed major projects focused on the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions, including a multi-year effort contributing to the international mission to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. Since 2010, she has also served as an Adjunct Professor in the Global Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., where she designed and teaches a graduate course in Energy and Environmental Security. Prior to joining the Department of Defense, Parthemore was a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and an assistant to journalist Bob Woodward. She has testified before Congress, and lectured at universities in the United States, Vietnam, and China. Her academic background lies in international political economy and unconventional threats/nonproliferation, with degrees from The Ohio State University and Georgetown.

Dr. Joshua Busby is an Associate Professor of Public Affairs at UT Austin, a fellow in the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service and principal investigator on a new Minerva Initiative-funded research project on Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA). Josh is also the Crook Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law where he serves as a lead researcher in the Strauss Center project on Climate Change and African Political Stability and the author of several studies on climate change, national security, and energy policy for the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, the German Marshall Fund, and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He has also written on U.S.-China relations on climate change for CNAS and Resources for the Future.

Marc Levy is Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), a unit of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He teaches environmental security courses in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, directs a new educational initiative on Environment, Peace and Security and is a founding member of the Environmental Peacebuilding Academy. He is a political scientist specializing in the human dimensions of global change, known for his work on environmental security, global environmental governance, and sustainable development metrics. His research has been supported by a number of agencies, including the National Science Foundation, U.S. Agency for International Development, and NASA. He has provided expert testimony to the US Congress, was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee “Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on Social and Political Stresses,” and was a Lead Author on the IPCC AR5 chapter on Human Security. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Data Driven Development.

Subsequent webinars in the series will include:

• Webinar 2: Climate Risk Reduction at the National and Sub-National Scale
• Webinar 3: Decision Making and Climate Security for Business 
• Webinar 4: Climate Security and the 4Ds of Foreign Policy
  
• Webinar 5: Global Governance in the Face of Non-Traditional Risk