Climate Change Must Be Tackled as a Global Security Risk

Payne Institute Fellow Joshua Busby, Director Morgan Bazilian, and Florian Krampe write about how when the United Nations put out emergency appeals for modest amounts of money to help Syria with the drought that preceded its civil war, they were dramatically underfunded—member states only provided a quarter of the amount requested in 2008, and a third in 2009. The United States did not contribute.  We live in an age of “actorless threats”—where challenges to peace and security come not only from agents intentionally trying to do us harm, but also from climate change and pandemics whose impacts are no less severe.  March 10, 2021.