States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security

About

Speaker: Joshua W. Busby, Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin

Chair:  Dustin Tingley, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Climate Change. Professor of Government, Department of Government, Harvard University.

Joshua Busby will talk about his new book, States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge: 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, why drought contributed to civil war in Syria but not neighboring Lebanon in the 2000s, and why Myanmar experienced such widespread mortality after exposure to a severe cyclone but neighboring Bangladesh and India did not in recent years. He will explore how state capacity, political inclusion, and foreign aid intersect to lead to different dynamics in different contexts.

SPONSORED BY THE WEATHERHEAD RESEARCH CLUSTER ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Cosponsored by the International Security Program and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability

Contact

For more information, contact Sarah Banse at sarahbanse@wcfia.harvard.edu