John Conger and Alice Hill Call for a National Resilience Act
In a recent op-ed published in The Hill, the Center for Climate and Security’s Director, John Conger, and Board Member Alice Hill, call for a National Resilience Act requiring that all investments by the U.S. federal government be climate resilient. This would entail ensuring that such investments undergo a “climate resilience review.” In short, all federal investments should be built to stand up against current and projected climatic changes.
Conger and Hill state that this law should be envisioned as part of a comprehensive nationwide “Climate and Security Infrastructure Initiative” – the kind outlined in the Center for Climate and Security’s Climate Security Plan for America. (more…)
The New Water Development Report and Implications for Security
Climate change has and will continue to have both direct and indirect effects around the world. Changes in water will be one of the most visible direct effects, whether it is too little water, such as during prolonged droughts; too much, such as flooding caused by sea-level rise or tropical storms; or misaligned timing, such as when seasonal rains are early or late. Across numerous societies, the climate change-water interaction will be disruptive, but through mitigation and adaptation actions, this interaction can at least be ameliorated. However, these disruptions will also have significant security implications locally, regionally, and globally depending on their intensity, spatial extent, and longevity, and due to their disproportionate effects on different segments of societies. This deteriorating security environment is very likely to increase the vulnerability of affected populations, enhance inequities, and interfere with mitigation and adaptation actions, which will prolong instability. Thus, any security analysis must integrate the effects of climate change on water, and its attendant effects on the vulnerability of populations, to capture a true picture of the security environment. Resources like the newly-released World Water Development Report (WWDR), titled “Water and Climate Change,” should therefore be taken very seriously by the security community.
Climate Change Entails More Than Changing Temperatures: Disease and Security Implications
By Leah Emanuel
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Matthew Vollrath, a journalism Master’s student at Stanford, has created a podcast entitled “Life in the Coronaverse.” This five-part series explores the linkages between the coronavirus and climate change, how we respond to both, the partisan divides impacting action, and more. In the third episode, published on May 29, Vollrath spoke with Stanford physician Desiree LaBeaud and Center for Climate and Security’s Senior Strategist Sherri Goodman about the global health and security impacts that climate change can have. (more…)
Statement From The Council On Strategic Risks: Black Lives Matter
The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR), the parent organization of the Center for Climate and Security, recognizes the extraordinary strains on the U.S. democratic system today, which were laid bare viscerally and tragically by the murder of George Floyd, threats of the use of military force against American citizens, and other troubling developments. These strains on our society—driven by systemic racism and xenophobia, the legitimization of ethno-nationalist political views, rising authoritarianism, inequality, poverty, and other deep systemic phenomena that have long gone unresolved—will have increasingly dangerous human security consequences if allowed to continue and fester. In this context, CSR unequivocally affirms what should be a given: Black Lives Matter.
CSR’s mission is to analyze, anticipate and address core systemic risks in our society. Fundamental to this work is highlighting the plight of groups vulnerable to complex layers of endemic risks. This takes not just expressing solidarity, or highlighting injustice and inequality in the analysis and solutions we pose, but also committing as an organization to working with and elevating individuals with diverse backgrounds on, and direct experiences with, the issues of injustice being addressed. These are not commitments we take lightly—they are the heart of what we do and who we are. There is no peace, and there is no security, without justice. This core principle will continue to inform all of the CSR’s work now and in the future.