As we recently highlighted, a new issue of the academic journal Climatic Change titled “Climate and security: evidence, emerging risks, and a new agenda” has just been released. The lead editor of the report has also published an excellent summary on the New Security Beat, which includes a discussion of the four research challenges in this area of inquiry: understanding both conflict and peace potential, further developing explanatory models, re-embedding the issue of power into the discourse, and understanding the limitations of historical examples. This special issue helps to set the stage for the release of the IPCC’s new “human security” chapter on March 31.  Together, these reports will play an important role in highlighting where the current state of inquiry is on the topic today, and in providing a clarion call for more research. But this is not your father’s research agenda. There is a unique urgency associated with climate change risks, and major outstanding uncertainties regarding those risks that give such a research agenda a particular importance. That same urgency also underscores the need to immediately advance policies that manage those uncertainties, rather than waiting for certainty before acting. (more…)