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.

The post On the Verge – “Fishwars” – An Interview with Johan Bergenas on the Nexus of Ocean Health, Fisheries, Climate Change and Security first appeared on The Council on Strategic Risks.

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.

The post On the Verge – An Interview with Tanya Wyatt on Environmental and Wildlife Crime (018) first appeared on The Council on Strategic Risks.

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.

The post On The Verge – Interview with Chip Barber on Illegal Logging, Forestry Crime, and Forest Integrity (017) first appeared on The Council on Strategic Risks.

By Christine Parthemore

The United States has now tragically reached more than 210,000 people killed by COVID-19. These victims are among more than 7 million infected—including the President, many from the White House staff and Congress, and military leadership. Just as so many people across the country are working hard to bring down the transmission and mortality rates, many of us are working to understand what has led to the current situation in which the United States leads the world in total deaths and known cases.  

Understanding the situation will take time, but drawing lessons on what has worked in limiting the pandemic and what has worsened its trajectory must begin now—both in case it can save lives from the current COVID-19 pandemic and for preventing future biological threats from growing to pandemic scales.

One rich source of such lessons can be countries that have done relatively well in limiting the devastation from this pandemic. Japan is one of them. According to tracking by Johns Hopkins University, as of October 6th Japan had just over 1,600 known deaths and fewer than 87,000 known cases, despite the country’s large population and density of some of its major cities.

In recent months, I’ve spoken with friends and experts in Japan to try to learn more. Today, we’re sharing the first of two recorded podcast discussions on Japan’s response to COVID-19.

The discussion features Dr. Tomoya Saito, who is the director of the Department of Health Crisis Management at Japan’s National Institute of Public Health and has deep experience in emergency preparedness and response, health surveillance, and biosecurity; and Ambassador Nobuyasu Abe, who served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs and as a Commissioner of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, and who we are honored to have as a Senior Advisor at CSR.

They shared several factors involved in Japan’s response that appear to have contributed. Japan focused heavily on early detection. The country also worked early to understand clusters of COVID-19 and how focusing on them could help limit its transmission. We also discussed communications and transparency between the government and the public, including via Japan’s “Avoid the Three C’s” campaign to urge the public to avoid closed spaces, crowded places, and close contact. Straightforward steps like widespread wearing of masks have also been embraced in Japan.

Looking ahead, we also discussed the importance of creating pathogen early warning systems, and the danger of narratives that authoritarian regimes have handled COVID-19 best (evidence for which can be seen in democracies such as Japan being one of the world’s leading countries in containing the pandemic).

News outlets and other experts have provided additional ideas on what has contributed to far lower case and death rates in Japan. The nation has been using its Fugaku supercomputer (rated as the fastest in the world) for modeling how to minimize COVID-19 transmission in public places. Its high-quality, universal healthcare system is surely also an important factor.

As close allies, Japan and the United States have long collaborated to share lessons from crisis response experiences and work together to prepare for emergencies from all types of natural and manmade hazards. CSR will soon share a second conversation with Dr. Saito that explores Japan’s response in deeper detail. We hope these conversations are just the beginning of continuing dialogue between our countries to understand our different experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic in the hope of successfully halting future biological threats as they emerge.

Click play below to listen to our first podcast on lessons from Japan’s responses to COVID-19.

The post Lessons from Japan on Battling COVID-19: A CSR Podcast Episode first appeared on The Council on Strategic Risks.

Welcome to the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) Podcast Network! Here we speak with leading experts who are working to anticipate, analyze, and address core systemic risks to security in the 21st Century. Our fifth episode focuses on climate, nuclear, and security dynamics in Iran and Saudi Arabia. 

Saudi Arabia and Iran are geopolitical rivals that have been at the forefront of global security discourse for the last several years. In this episode, host Dr. Sweta Chakraborty speaks to David Michel, a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Climate and Security and a Research Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, and Christine Parthemore, CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks. 

Nuclear developments are a significant security concern in the Middle East and North Africa. This podcast explores the trends unfolding within Iran and Saudi Arabia. With the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an important mechanism intended to unite nations appears to be losing its power to taper back nuclear developments and contribute to global stability. Tehran announced that it is now actively enriching uranium, flouting JCPOA guidelines as European signatories attempt to curb these potentially destabilizing activities. Alongside these measures, the government is building more reactors, one of which is in direct partnership with Moscow. 

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is building a small nuclear research reactor and plans to construct at least two large nuclear energy plants. The United States and China, among others, have proposed partnerships to help launch a Saudi civilian nuclear program. Conversations with the United States have stalled due to disagreements with Riyadh over details of a 123 Agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation.

At the same time, Iran and Saudi Arabia are struggling with water and environmental security challenges. Both countries are characterized by arid landscapes, low precipitation rates, limited renewable water supplies, unsustainable agricultural practices, and high demographic pressures on natural resources. Climate change projections would exacerbate these issues. According to a MIT study, the unique features that characterize the Persian Gulf, such as its low elevations, shallow waters, and clear skies could result in temperatures that exceed 35℃ over extended periods of time by the end of the century. This would be intolerable for long-term human survival.

The episode highlights how the region is navigating these issues. For example, Saudi Arabia is considering using nuclear energy to power desalination plants to meet its growing freshwater demands.

CSR’s Podcast Network will regularly feature exclusive dialogues with leading security and international affairs experts. Stay tuned for cutting-edge discussions on the world’s existential and strategic risks, and the ways in which these challenges are converging. 

Subscribe to the CSR Podcast Network’s YouTube channel to never miss an episode! Or listen to the audio version on iTunes, and subscribe now to get real-time updates. If you’re one of those already subscribed on iTunes, we always welcome your ratings and reviews, as this helps us get the podcast out there to more listeners!

The post CSR Podcast Episode 5 with David Michel and Christine Parthemore first appeared on The Council on Strategic Risks.