environmental security | geographical imaginations

I’ve been working away on a presentation that will – eventually! – turn into an essay on the militarization of nature and the nature(s) of war, and I stumbled across a conference on Rethinking climate change, conflict and security at the ever-creative University of Sussex next month (18-19 October 2012). Speakers include Halvard Buhaug, Simon Dalby and Mike Hume.

What are the conflict and security implications of global climate change? This question has received widespread attention from policy makers in recent years, with most concluding that climate change will in all likelihood become a significant ‘threat multiplier’ to existing patterns of insecurity and discord. Academic debate has tended to be more divided, yet despite differences in emphasis a common set of assumptions have come to dominate contemporary academic and policy discourse on climate change and security.

The guiding premise of this two-day international conference at the University of Sussex is that current academic and policy discourse on climate change, conflict and security is framed too narrowly and would benefit from both broadening and critique. Featuring many of the leading scholars of the links between climate change and security, the conference will both set out some of the most recent findings on likely conflict impacts and contest a range of prevailing orthodoxies. It will include a mix of case study and theoretical analyses, including panels on:

Theories of climate change and conflict

Sub-Saharan Africa

Critical discourse analysis and climate security

The links between water scarcities, climate change and conflict

Migration

Case studies from the Arctic to Pakistan

Peacemaking, cooperation and climate change

The conference will also feature two keynote addresses, plus a roundtable event featuring leading policymakers in the area of climate security.