Joshua Busby

Event

States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security

Why climate change may lead to violent conflict or humanitarian emergencies in some places but not others.

Join us for a discussion about climate security and why climate change may lead to violent conflict or humanitarian emergencies in some places but not others.

A webinar with

Joshua W. Busby
Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs,
University of Texas, Austin

Joshua W. Busby will talk about his book States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge University Press, 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. He will explore how state capacity, political inclusion, and foreign aid intersect to lead to different dynamics in different contexts. Drawing from his own experience, he will discuss what role policy can play to prepare for a world of climate impacts.

Learn more on the Burkle Center website


Book cover

About the book

Under what circumstances might climate change lead to negative security outcomes? Over the past fifteen years, a rapidly growing applied field and research community on climate security has emerged. While much progress has been made, we still don’t have a clear understanding of why climate change might lead to violent conflict or humanitarian emergencies in some places and not others. Busby develops a novel argument – based on the combination of state capacity, political exclusion, and international assistance – to explain why climate change leads to especially bad security outcomes in some places but not others. This argument is then demonstrated through application to case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. This book will provide an informative resource for students and scholars of international relations and environmental studies, especially those working on security, conflict and climate change, on the emergent practice and study of this topic, and identifies where policy and research should be headed.

This event is sponsored by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Political Science and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.