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What Better Looks Like: Breaking the Critical Minerals Resource Curse
›In recent years, the urgency of climate action has brought fresh attention to the critical minerals sector. Growing renewable energy investments are driving up demand for resources like lithium, cobalt, and copper, which form the mineral backbone of green technologies. But there are substantial concerns to navigate when it comes to sourcing green energy minerals.
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Protecting Human Rights in DRC Cobalt Mines: A U.S. Priority in a Green Transition
›Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken recently reaffirmed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—a nation located in Africa’s heart—as a “geostrategic player and critical partner” for the United States. It is a country that features prominently in climate change discussions, not only because of its vast natural resources (including mineral wealth estimated to be the largest in the world, as well as possession of a forest cover second only to the Amazon Basin), but especially due to its cobalt reserves.
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Climate Security at USAID: (Re)defining an Integrative Issue
›Climate security is an essential conceptual framework to understand the global interplay of biophysical and socioeconomic forces that threaten our planet. Indeed, it is so important that new currents of science, politics, and advocacy make refining definitions a necessity.
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Creating an Environment of Peace Means Avoiding Backdraft
›The much-needed transition to a zero carbon, green economy offers opportunities to contribute to peace, but only if the conflict risks of transition are understood and managed to produce a just and peaceful transition. That means minimizing “backdraft”—the unintended negative impacts of transition that are a key obstacle to that goal.
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Beyond a “Threat Multiplier”: Exploring Links Between Climate Change and Security
›Ever since the CNA’s Military Advisory Board—composed of former U.S. military personnel—named climate change as a “threat multiplier” in a 2007 report, the term has gained widespread currency both in environmental and national security circles. It also has propelled the need to assess and address climate-related security risks higher up overall policy agendas.
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Climate Finance: Can Integrity and Transparency Prevent Environmental Catastrophe?
›Earlier this year, the IPPC published yet another report underscoring the fact that rapid climate action is needed to limit global warming and avoid further irreversible, devasting environmental impacts. Over the next decade, the report calls for urgent, unprecedented social and economic transitions to reduce emissions and enable climate resilient development for vulnerable people.
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Transformative Climate Security: A Conversation with Josh Busby
›Why does climate change lead to especially bad security outcomes in some places but not others? In this week’s New Security Broadcast, Josh Busby, Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin, discusses the latest thinking on this essential question as laid out in his new book, States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security, with ECSP Program Associate, Amanda King, and ECSP Senior Fellow, Sherri Goodman.
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Water Diplomacy can Learn from Realist Ideas
›Guest Contributor // Water Security for a Resilient World // July 19, 2022 // By Sumit Vij, Jeroen Warner, Mark Zeitoun & Christian BréthautAs Russia’s war in Ukraine continues and nations are returning to behaviors best explained by realism, we are wrestling with these trends’ longer-term implications on water diplomacy. States are becoming inward-looking and prioritizing national sovereignty. Debates about water and climate are resurfacing, and we should better understand how hard power and inward-looking approaches can impact water diplomacy and cooperation. To inform policymakers about power sensitivities and power games played in diplomacy, water diplomats must rethink the future of water security and peace. They should reexamine leadership styles, cultural sensitivities, and knowledge exchange from the lens of realism.
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