States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security

Joshua W. Busby, Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin

Wednesday, November 13, 2024
12:30 PM (Pacific Time)

ABOUT THE WEBINAR

If you register for and attend a Burkle Center virtual event, you will not be seen or heard via video or audio. We will be live-streaming this event on the Burkle Center’s YouTube page. The YouTube livestream will be available below at the start of the event.

Joshua W. Busby will talk about his book States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and explore why climate change leads to negative security outcomes in some places and not others. He will draw from paired cases in his book, examining why drought led to famine in Somalia but not neighboring Ethiopia in the 2010s. He will explore how state capacity, political inclusion, and foreign aid intersect to lead to different dynamics in different contexts. Drawing from his own experience, he will discuss what role policy can play to prepare for a world of climate impacts.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Under what circumstances might climate change lead to negative security outcomes? Over the past fifteen years, a rapidly growing applied field and research community on climate security has emerged. While much progress has been made, we still don't have a clear understanding of why climate change might lead to violent conflict or humanitarian emergencies in some places and not others. Busby develops a novel argument – based on the combination of state capacity, political exclusion, and international assistance – to explain why climate change leads to especially bad security outcomes in some places but not others. This argument is then demonstrated through application to case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. This book will provide an informative resource for students and scholars of international relations and environmental studies, especially those working on security, conflict and climate change, on the emergent practice and study of this topic, and identifies where policy and research should be headed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joshua W. Busby is a Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed papers and think articles on climate change and security including his most recent book States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He has a PhD in Government from Georgetown University.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Margaret Peters is Associate Director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Chair of the Global Studies major at UCLA. She is also a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research on the political economy of migration. She is currently working on a book project on how the process of forced displacement affects migrants’ sense of dignity and how these dignity concerns affect decisions of whether to move from the crisis zone, where to move, and when to return. She is additionally writing a book on how dictators use migration, including forced migration, to remain in power. Her award-winning book, Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization, argues that the increased ability of firms to produce anywhere in the world combined with growing international competition due to lowered trade barriers has led to greater limits on immigration, as businesses no longer see a need to support open immigration at home.