A new agenda on environmental security

Workshop organised by Dr Naho Mirumachi (King’s College London) with Dr François Gemenne (University of Liege, Sciences Po)

Monday 3 April 2017

Venue: K2.29 (Council Room), Strand Campus, King’s College London

Environmental security research is taking a new direction in the Anthropocene era where human activities shape environmental processes.  No longer is the debate only about the threats from the environment but also encompassing major global concerns that could impede stability and economic prosperity. This workshop intends to bring together academics, policy experts and professionals from the private sector to foster and shape a new agenda on environmental security.  The workshop aims to address key research questions, analytical lenses and data/information demands to understand environmental security.

In a context of non-stationarity, new questions emerge on the purpose of environmental security, for whom environmental security is relevant and opens up opportunities to critically engage with causal explanations of environmental and social change.  How do interventions to deal with climate and socio-economic uncertainty, whether in the form of infrastructure, technological innovation or adaptive governance processes, shape and facilitate environmental security?  To what extent should and can environmental security relate with human security?  How are risks to stability and economic growth understood within the narrative of environmental security?  Currently, what kinds of knowledge gaps exist to address practice environmental security—what role for sciences and interdisciplinary research?

This closed door workshop is part of the activities under the Environmental Security working group, Taskforce on Conceptual Foundations of Earth System Governance (ESG) with King’s College London http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/geography/people/academic/mirumachi/impact/index.aspx and  Environmental Diplomacy and Geopolitics (EDGE) http://labos.ulg.ac.be/edge/