On the Verge

In this episode, Andrea Rezzonico, Deputy Director of the Converging Risks Lab at the Council on Strategic Risks, interviews Johan Berganas, Senior Vice President of Oceans at WWF-US. They discuss the geopolitical concept of ‘fishwars’, and how it centers on a converging nexus of climate change, IUU fishing, ocean health, and more.

As Senior Vice President of Oceans, Johan leads global programming at the intersection of ocean health, climate resilience, private markets, blue finance, and environmental security. Prior to joining WWF, Johan worked for Paul Allen’s Vulcan, was the co-founder and CEO of a technology start-up, and held positions with the Stimson Center, Monterey Institute, Oxfam America, and Linkoping University.

This episode is part of a series spotlighting the security implications of global ecological disruption. To learn more about our work on ecological security issues, please read CSR’s landmark ecological security report The Security Threat That Binds Us, check out our other podcast episodes, and stay tuned for upcoming releases.

In this episode, Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director of the Converging Risks Lab (CRL) and Andrea Rezzonico, Deputy to the CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks and Deputy Director of CRL, co-host an interview with the Hon. Dan Poneman, who currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Council on Strategic Risks. 

We discuss the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for nuclear energy and talk about how the U.S. could reinvigorate its leadership role on providing nuclear fuel and technology to countries interested in off-setting carbon emissions by generating electricity with nuclear power.

In addition to his role on the CSR Board, Mr. Poneman is president and chief executive officer of Centrus Energy Corp. He has had a distinguished career with the U.S. government, serving from 2009 to 2014 as the Deputy Secretary of Energy and chief operating officer of the U.S. Department of Energy. His responsibilities spanned the range of U.S. energy policies and programs – hydrocarbons, renewables, nuclear, and efficiency – including cybersecurity, project management, national security, and international cooperation. Mr. Poneman has published widely on national security issues. His most recent book, Double Jeopardy: Combating Nuclear Terror and Climate Change, was released by the MIT Press in May 2019.

This interview with the Hon. Dan Poneman is part of a series of pioneering work by CSR’s Converging Risks Lab that began in 2017. Between 2017 and 2020, CRL took on its first project, the Climate-Nuclear-Security Project (CNSP), which brought together the experience and expertise housed within the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) and the Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons (The Nolan Center), as well as the broader climate security and nuclear security policy communities. The CNSP recognizes that climate and nuclear risks are growing more complex and interconnected, and are beginning to converge in new ways. Understanding and managing this risk landscape requires climate, nuclear and security experts to break down issue sector barriers and develop joint solutions.

In 2022, CRL is thrilled to begin a new, related line of work which builds upon the previous project to help reinvigorate U.S. leadership on nuclear energy issues, with a view toward improving nuclear safety, security and nonproliferation.

In this episode, Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director of the Converging Risks Lab, interviews Dr. David Maher who has more than three decades of experience in secure computing and currently serves as Chief Technical Officer of Intertrust. 

Before joining his current company in 1999, Maher was chief scientist for AT&T Secure Communications Systems, Head of the Secure Systems Research Department, and security architect for AT&T’s Internet services platform. Maher holds dozens of patents in secure computing; has published papers in the fields of mathematics and computer science; and has consulted with the National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Maher holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Lehigh University. 

They discuss the intersection of data and national security, explore the challenges of data authentication, provenance, and disinformation, and examine technical solutions such as blockchain.

This podcast builds upon work undertaken by the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) in collaboration with the European Leadership Network (ELN) to explore the impact of emerging technologies on nuclear decision-making and new approaches for mitigating risks.

To read more about our work, please visit CSR’s website. 

In this episode, Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director of the Converging Risks Lab, moderates a discussion about environmental crime and wildlife trafficking and their connection to security. The discussants are Dr. Rod Schoonover, Head of the Council on Strategic Risks’s Ecological Security Program, and Dr. Tanya Wyatt, Professor of Criminology at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. This is part of a series of discussions about the concept of ecological security.

Dr. Wyatt’s research focuses on green criminology with a specialty in wildlife crime and trafficking, non-human animal abuse and welfare, and their intersections with organized crime, corporate crime, and corruption. Professor Wyatt also researches crimes of the powerful, particularly industrial agriculture and wider issues of pollution.

Before coming to CSR, Dr. Schoonover served a decade in the U.S. intelligence community, first at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and later at the National Intelligence Council, working on the national security and foreign policy implications of environmental and ecological change.

To fill an urgent gap in understanding and addressing the security implications of global ecological disruption, the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) has significantly expanded its Ecological Security Program over the past months, with the help of a grant of close to $1 million from the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation. The program, housed within CSR’s Converging Risks Lab, addresses all elements of global ecological disruption, including biodiversity loss and beyond, caused by drivers such as habitat change, direct (and often illegal) exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and the spread of damaging invasive or otherwise destructive organisms. 

To read more about our work on ecological security issues, please read CSR’s landmark ecological security report The Security Threat That Binds Us and the programmatic and policy responses recommended in that report, as well as the recently-published report Societal and Security Implications of Ecosystem Service Declines, Part 1: Pollination and Seed Dispersal.

In this episode, Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director of the Converging Risks Lab, moderates a discussion about illegal logging, forestry crime, forest integrity and their connection to security. The discussants are Dr. Rod Schoonover, Head of the Council on Strategic Risks’s Ecological Security Program, and Dr. Charles Barber, Director of the Forest Legality Initiative and Senior Biodiversity Advisor at the World Resources Institute (WRI) This is the first in a series of discussions about the concept of ecological security.

Prior to WRI, Dr. Charles “Chip” Barber served as Forest Chief in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and as Environment Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development. He received his PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California at Berkeley.

Before coming to CSR, Dr. Schoonover served a decade in the U.S. intelligence community, first at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and later at the National Intelligence Council, working on the national security and foreign policy implications of environmental and ecological change.

To fill an urgent gap in understanding and addressing the security implications of global ecological disruption, the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) has significantly expanded its Ecological Security Program over the past months, with the help of a grant of close to $1 million from the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation. The program, housed within CSR’s Converging Risks Lab, addresses all elements of global ecological disruption, including biodiversity loss and beyond, caused by drivers such as habitat change, direct (and often illegal) exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and the spread of damaging invasive or otherwise destructive organisms. 

To read more about our work on ecological security issues, please read CSR’s landmark ecological security report The Security Threat That Binds Us and the programmatic and policy responses recommended in that report.

In this episode, Andrea Rezzonico, Deputy Director of the Converging Risks Lab, interviews Andrew Davis, Senior Researcher at Fundación PRISMA. PRISMA is a regional center for dialogue and research on development and the environment in Central America.

Andrea and Andrew discussed several threads including:

They conclude the conversation by spotlighting several actions the international community can focus on to ensure policy and development interventions succeed over the long run.  

This is part of CSR’s growing efforts to address the nexus of climate change, migration, and security.

By Evan Barnard

In this episode, which explores climate security and the energy transition in Asia, Evan Barnard, a research fellow at the Center for Climate and Security (CCS), discusses the current state and prescience of climate security risks with Sarang Shidore. Mr. Shidore is the Director of Studies at the Quincy Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR), where he has co-authored multiple CCS reports on South Asia. He is also a Senior Research Analyst at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. As a South Asia international security expert, Mr. Shidore focuses on geopolitical risk and its intersection with the global energy transition and climate change.

This episode examines two recent CCS reports. The first report, Climate Security and the Strategic Energy Pathway in South Asia, includes an overview of regional natural resources, rivalries, and insecurities in Southeast Asia with expert guidance for evaluating climate change and the energy transition in the region. The second report, Melting Mountains, Mountain Tensions, explores the hydrogeopolitics of glacial water access and use among India, China, and Pakistan with an added level of security complexity. Written as part of a joint collaboration with the CSR Converging Risks Lab (CRL) and the Woodwell Climate Research Center, the report is accompanied by an interactive story map.

According to Mr. Shidore, the lack of water cooperation in the region is geopolitically and geostrategically consequential. In a region that floods when the riverbanks overflow, more upstream dams are likely to result in more flooding. Also, no river treaty like the Indus Waters Treaty exists for the Brahmaputra River. Mr. Shidore encourages the upstream and downstream parties to conduct “data diplomacy,” sharing adequate data on adequate timescales to rebuild trust between the countries and reduce conflict risk. Sustained cooperation and dialogue may also open the possibility for joint humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) operations in the region.

Mr. Shidore suggests that we need greater forecasting, investment, and dialogue. Discrepancies in changes in micro-climates in South Asia can be large and challenging to forecast, but decreasing uncertainty in monsoon predictions could change South Asian agricultural livelihoods and potentially save lives. Making communities more resilient to climate change effects improves communities and the populations that live there, thus bolstering climate resilience in the region. Investment in early warning systems would also supplement the region’s climate resilience to minimize the effects of sudden events like flooding. In the inevitable cases of friction over the use of the Brahmaputra and Indus Rivers, avenues for dialogue to build trust and confidence can help resolve these conflicts.
For further reading, please check out the CCS Climate Security and the Strategic Energy Pathway in South Asia report, the CRL Melting Mountains, Mountain Tensions report, and the CRL Melting Mountains, Mountain Tensions story map.

By Lillian Parr

In this episode of CSR’s podcast On the Verge, Christine Parthemore, CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks, hosts a conversation with Andy Weber and Alexander Titus about bringing opportunities presented by biotechnology to the Department of Defense. Titus also speaks about the importance of good communication across the science and defense communities, and what steps can be taken toward effective public-private collaboration. 

Alexander Titus is a Strategic Business Executive at Google Cloud focused on the Global Public Sector—as well as a senior fellow with the CSR. Previously, Titus served as the inaugural Assistant Director for Biotechnology at the U.S. Department of Defense. He has worked across the public and private sectors and done unique work in the bio-AI intersection, and has been a leader in community-building and public communications regarding the promise of biotech for addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges.

By Evan Barnard

In this second episode exploring the 2021 World Climate and Security Report, Evan Barnard, a research fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, discusses the current state and prescience of climate security risks with Kate Guy. Ms. Guy is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Climate and Security (CCS), an Institute of the Council on Strategic Risks, where she also serves as Deputy Director of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. She was the lead author of the seminal 2020 CCS report, A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change, and has contributed to numerous other climate security research projects, including the 2021 World Climate and Security Report. She is currently pursuing a doctorate on climate change and global security at the University of Oxford.

This podcast episode takes a deep dive into the expert survey section of the 2021 World Climate and Security Report published this summer by the International Military Council on Climate and Security. This survey, now in its second year, represents an important barometer for determining climate security priorities, because the research field of climate security is still relatively young and the expert practitioner perspective uniquely highlights what practitioners consider the most pressing and prescient issues.

According to the survey, experts in the climate-security intersection deem all climate security threats to have at least a moderate level of risk to society, and even one decade out, many of the same threats could be at a high or potentially catastrophic level of risk. Risks assessed are expected to grow if not accelerate in severity over the next ten to twenty years. Ms. Guy found that experts believe the biggest climate security risks do not just threaten military operations but also society at large. Water security risks were the most interconnected risks, with cascading effects on other aspects of human and national security.

Based on the survey results, Ms. Guy suggests taking serious mitigation as well as adaptation efforts now. “We’re not just safe if we build toward the resilience of today,” says Ms. Guy. “We need to be building, and understanding, and putting ourselves in the shoes of humans 20 years down the road and the risks they’ll be facing.” The decisions of human societies made up to the present will most likely mean the next twenty years will be grim for climate security risks. “We need to be incorporating that understanding if we’re going to save lives and ensure security.”

For further reading and the survey methodology, please check out Ms. Guy’s blog post and the 2021 World Climate and Security Report.

By: Evan Barnard

In this episode, Evan Barnard, a research fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, discusses human migration and climate security with Amali Tower and Kayly Ober. Ms. Tower is the Executive Director at Climate Refugees as well as a member of the World Economic Forum and its Expert Network in Migration, Human Rights and Humanitarian Response. Ms. Tower has experience in promoting the rights and protection of refugees and forcibly displaced persons with UNHCR, various NGOs and the US Refugee Admissions Program throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the US. Ms. Ober is the Senior Advocate and Program Manager of the Climate Displacement Program at Refugees International. Prior to Refugees International, she worked as a Policy Specialist for the Asian Development Bank and as a Consultant at the World Bank, where she authored the flagship report Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration.

The podcast features a discussion of three recent migration reports. The Biden Administration’s U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America lays out its proposed course of action to address and mitigate Central American migration and its “root causes.” The Climate Refugees, Climate Change, Forced Displacement, and Peace & Security report investigates the international security perspective on climate change as a driver of human migration through a human rights lens. The report by the blue ribbon panel of Refugees International Task Force Report to the President on the Climate Crisis and Global Migration provides a human rights-centric discourse of the relationship between climate change and human migration.

In the conversation, Ms. Ober suggests reevaluating refugee status qualifications to include climate-related crises. She reasons that the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees should, by definition, cover persons fleeing from climate-related crises. The Biden Administration’s executive order Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs To Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration acknowledges climate change affects migration and calls for a forthcoming report on the relationship between climate and migration. Ms. Tower recommends greater prioritization of climate change in international multilateral institutions like the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Climate change affects all people, but it does not affect all people equally. According to Ms. Tower and Ms. Ober, a change in political will is needed to make substantial progress towards comprehensive human rights-based migration governance and creating more inclusive migration policies that incorporate climate change considerations. 

For further reading, please check out Ms. Tower’s blog post, Central American Climate Migration is a Human Security Crisis.