The Environment and National Security

24 Jun

This event will share and discuss new findings from Oxford’s ‘The Environment and National Security Project’. Convened by the Agile Initiative at the Oxford Martin School, this high-speed project is co-created with policy makers from across government to explore the urgent evidence needs and uses in response to the cascading climate and biosphere emergency and its implications for national security in and beyond the UK.

The event will feature a series of flash talks, followed by a panel and Q&A bringing together policy makers and members of the Oxford team.

Panellists

Dr Florence Benn is Head of Overseas Development Assistance, R&D and Nature Security R&D at Defra, where she leads the UK government’s emerging research agenda on the links between nature, climate and security. She has spent her career applying rigorous evidence to complex policy challenges across environmental policy, climate science and international development. At Defra she has worked across both domestic climate science and international biodiversity and climate policy, and previously served as Senior Technical Advisor at the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Brigadier Tim Symonds is Head Productivity and Sustainability in the British Army. Through his 28 years of service, he has undertaken helicopter handling operations in Macedonia, port activation in Iraq, and three tours of Afghanistan. In senior leadership roles across Army Headquarters and the Ministry of Defence, he has focused on driving organisational and cultural change.

Dr John Ingram is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College. His interests are in the conceptual framing of food systems; the interactions among the many food system actors and their varied activities; and the outcomes of their activities for nutrition and other aspects of food security, livelihoods and enterprise, and the environment. He has special interest in scenario planning for food system sustainability and resilience. In 2014 he established the Food Systems Transformation Research Group within Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, and the multi-university ‘Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning’ (IFSTAL) programme.

Dr Diogo Veríssimo is a behavioural scientist at the University of Oxford, where he leads the Biodiversity and Behavioural Science Team within the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with governments, NGOs, and international organisations to apply behavioural science to biodiversity conservation and environmental policy. His research focuses on how human behaviour influences environmental outcomes and how behavioural insights can be used to design more effective and durable policy interventions.

Dr Aslı Salihoğlu is a research affiliate at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society, where she completed her DPhil in Migration Studies. As a policy and research consultant in labor economics, forced migration and humanitarian diplomacy, she has advised the World Bank, British Red Cross, Mediation Group International and the United Nations Office for Project Services, among others.

Professor Paul Behrens (Chair)

Presenters

Dr Tim Clack is Associate Professor at the School of Anthropology and Director of the Climate Change & (In)Security Programme at the University of Oxford. His research interests centre on the drivers and aftermaths of conflict, in particular climate and environmental change, geopolitics and strategy, and identities and propaganda. Recent projects have focused on the UK, Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and the South Atlantic. Outside of academia, Tim spent 12 years in specialist UK government roles, including postings in the Cabinet Office and FCDO.

Alison Smith is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford, working across the Environmental Change Institute, Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Nature-based Solutions Initiative. With a background in climate and energy policy analysis, for the last 12 years she has been researching land-use, climate and biodiversity synergies and trade-offs. She works closely with partners in national and local government and the third sector to develop policy-support tools that deliver multiple benefits for nature and people.

Johannes Lumma

Ewan Archer Brown

Katrin Wilhelm