The Right Honorable Hilary Benn MP, UK State Secretary for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, joined a small group of experts for a discussion on climate change and security on May 13, 2008, at the Wilson Center. [...] Benn has been outspoken on the need to address climate change's challenges. In an April 2008 address to the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, Benn argued that climate change and development "are bound together so tightly that we must either succeed in meeting both or we will fail to in both."



By many measures, the UK government has been at the forefront of the discussion on emerging climate security issues. In April 2007, then-UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett chaired the UN Security Council's first session devoted to climate change and security. The now-famous Stern Report, commissioned by the UK government in 2005, was a major impetus for ramping up attention to climate change, including consideration of its security dimensions.



Earlier this year, the United Kingdom published its first National Security Strategy, highlighting the importance of addressing climate change for national and global security:

Climate change is potentially the greatest challenge to global stability and security, and therefore to national security. Tackling its causes, mitigating its risks and preparing for and dealing with its consequences are critical to our future security, as well as protecting global prosperity and avoiding humanitarian disaster.



Observers outside the UK government have also weighed in on the debate, such as the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), which released a report by Nick Mabey on climate change and security in April 2008. In the coming months, the Environmental Change and Security Program will continue to convene transatlantic discussions on the links between climate change, security, and foreign policy. (Karin Bencala & Geoff Dabelko, Environmental Change and Security Program Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)



For future events at the Wilson Center, please see:

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.welcome

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, August 2008