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World Economic Forum: The Rise of Regional Institutions and Climate Change
The World Economic Forum’s recent report, “Global Agenda Council on Geopolitical Risk” highlights one of the major developments in global governance – the rise of regional institutions – and calls for a better integration of these regional groupings into our current system of global governance. This is an important objective for a whole host of issues, but is especially critical for addressing the threat of climate change. (more…)
Thailand Forecast: Floods, Droughts and Political Instability
The devastation caused by Thailand’s recent floods is vast. Two million people across 26 provinces were affected by the event, at least 527 people were killed, and a quarter of the country’s important rice crop may have been decimated. But beyond these headlines, the flood waters present a very harsh lesson in resilience. Climate change, weather, geography and politics all conspired to teach this lesson – but not just to Thailand. It is a warning to a world facing myriad risks in the ecological landscape – risks that are exacerbated by the volatility of political institutions, and the uncertainties that come with them. The challenge, for Thailand and the globe, will be to make the task of managing these risks impervious to the politics of the day, and responsive to the challenges of the future. (more…)
If Climate Change is a Security Threat, Who’s Qualified to Fight It? Hint: Everyone
A recent piece in AlertNet raises some fair questions about the “securitisation of climate change,” including the dangers of fear-based sensationalist messages and the need for additional research into the links between climate change and violent conflict. It also goes on to make a debatable assertion about the risks of linking climate change to security – one which assumes that framing climate change as a security issue risks overshadowing important social and environmental concerns. (more…)
Matching Resources to Security Risk: the Climate Change Anomaly
Our piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, written with Christine Parthemore of the Center for a New American Security, addresses the discrepancy between U.S. financial and political capital spent on combating three security risks (WMDs, terrorism and economic crisis) and the financial and political capital spent on combating the security risk of climate change. It makes the point that the U.S. national security establishment has recognized the threat of climate change as comparable to other security risks, but U.S. policy-makers have not responded accordingly. See the full article here, and cross-posted below: