Climate Security Roundtable: Feb. 19, 2009

Invitation: Climate Security Roundtable: US and EU Research and Policy

Please join the Environmental Change and Security Program for Climate Security Roundtable: U.S. and EU Research and Policy

featuring

Nick Mabey, Chief Executive, E3G

Clionadh Raleigh, Lecturer, Trinity College Dublin

Sharon Burke, Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security

Thursday, February 19, 2009
12:00 noon - 2:00 p.m.
5th Floor Conference Room
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20004 Webcast live at www.wilsoncenter.org

Please RSVP to ecsp@wilsoncenter.org with your name and affiliation.

Climate change is now widely recognized as a potential security problem. Among other things, climate change is expected to affect water scarcity, agricultural productivity, and human migration. Such demographic and environmental factors have sometimes contributed to violent conflict in the past. However, the extent and distribution of these climatic changes is unknown, thus making it difficult to design policies that ensure national and global security. In this session, security experts from the United States and European Union share their efforts to assess and address the potential security impacts of the climate crisis.

Nick Mabey is a founding director and the chief executive of E3G. Until December 2005, he was a senior advisor in the UK prime minister’s Strategy Unit, leading work on a variety of policy areas, including energy, fisheries, unstable states, and organized crime. Mabey was previously head of sustainable development in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) environment policy department, and the FCO lead for the Johannesburg Summit, where he was responsible for establishing a number of innovative international partnerships, including the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership and the Travel Foundation. An economist and engineer by training, Mabey was head of economics and development at WWF-UK before he joined the government. Previously, he was involved in academic research at London Business School on the economics of climate change, published in the book Argument in the Greenhouse.

Clionadh Raleigh is a lecturer at the department of political science at Trinity College Dublin. Her work focuses on war and governance patterns in Africa; the social consequences of climate change; political ecology; and development. She has a Ph.D. in political geography from the University of Colorado, where she wrote her dissertation on the geography of conflict in central Africa. She is also a senior external researcher at the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. Her present work is on the political causes and consequences of climate change vulnerability in Africa. She directs the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, a record of the actors, locations, dates and types of conflict events in the developing world.

Sharon Burke is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to joining CNAS, she was the director of the National Security Project at Third Way, where she advised candidates for office and members of Congress on the full range of national security issues, including the Iraq War, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and America’s role in the 21st century world. Previously, she served as a high-level advisor in the U.S. government on the Middle East, South Asia, and strategic communications, including as a member of the policy planning staff at the Department of State; a country director in the Department of Defense’s Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs; and a speechwriter to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

If you are interested, but unable to attend the event, please tune into the live or archived webcast at www.wilsoncenter.org. The webcast will begin approximately 10 minutes after the posted meeting time. You will need Windows Media Player to watch the webcast. To download the free player, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download.

Location: Woodrow Wilson Center at the Ronald Reagan Building: 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW ("Federal Triangle" stop on Blue/Orange Line), 5th Floor Conference Room. A map to the Center is available at www.wilsoncenter.org/directions. Note: Photo identification is required to enter the building. Please allow additional time to pass through security.