Environment & Climate Change

The Spring 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

"On January 20, you will inherit a legacy of trouble: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, North Korea for starters. Failure to manage any one of them could mire your presidency and sap your political support—and threaten the country’s future. At the same time, you must not let these inherited problems define your foreign policy. You need to put them in a larger context and create your own vision of how Americans should deal with the world."

Perry and Cohen support CAFTA in this Wall Street Journal op-ed

"After 10 years of multisectoral, multidisciplinary cross-pollination, where are we now? What are the key questions and themes for the next decade? For this 10th issue of the ECSP Report, we asked six scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to offer their recommendations for the future of environmental security."

This short paper explores the security implications of climate change, focusing on the impacts on developing countries, particularly weak states. Security risks related to climate change will not be evenly distributed globally and will affect some kinds of governments more than others. While local and regional consequences of climate change remain very difficult to predict, three types of nations seem particularly vulnerable to the security risks of climate change: least-developed nations, weak states, and undemocratic states. Poor developing countries are the perhaps the most likely to suffer from climate change. These states lack the economic, governance, or technical capabilities to adapt to climate change. Failed and failing states—those with weak institutions of government, poor control over their borders, repressed populations, or marginal economies—stand a higher risk of being destabilized by climate change. The paper recommends a renewed emphasis on risk reduction and disaster preparedness with early warning systems that integrate meteorological risk with political risk.

A paper by the National Security Advisory Group

"The terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon triggered the most rapid and dramatic change in the history of U.S. foreign policy."

Book by Ashton Carter, Desmond Ball, Hans Bethe, Bruce Blair, Paul Bracken, Hillman Dickinson, Richard Garwin, Kurt Gottfried, David Holloway, Henry Kendall, Lloyd Leavitt, Jr., Richard Ned Debow, Condoleezza Rice, Peter Stein, John Steinbruner, Lucja Swiatkowski, and Paul Tomb.

"The most important book by any ex-Clinton official."



-Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times (April 16, 1999)