Justice

Weather of Mass Destruction? Climate change and conflict in the 21st Century

By Pauline Bellam / 21 June 2007

To be held at Otago Polytechnic, Room G106

Oli Brown is a project manager and policy researcher for IISD where he heads their work on environmental change and security. With a background at Oxfam and the UNDP, his work now focuses on the root causes of political and economic instability and how the international community can prevent conflict more effectively. He is lead editor and co-author of a recently published book on trade and aid policy to fragile states (Earthscan, 2007). He has helped develop environmental security strategies for the European Union and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and has worked and written on a wide range of sustainable development topics.

Oli takes an objective view of the climate change debate and how it’s been recast a security issue in recent years. The talk focuses on what we know about climate change as a security threat – and also what we don’t. He looks at assimilation of climate change into ‘high politics’ – who is pushing it, why and with what success. He draws on recent work to identify the tangible security threat of climate change:

1. a study of environmental change and Canadian security for the Canadian government,

2. a background paper on climate migrants for the United Nation Development Programme’s 2007 Human Development Report,

3. a forthcoming article on climate change and security in Africa for the journal International Affairs.

Don’t miss his only public lecture in Dunedin!