According to the World Food Programme, almost one billion people in the world today are not getting enough food. This is at odds with the resource base; the world technically produces enough food right now to feed the global population. On the other hand, if current trends for population growth, consumer preferences, environmental degradation, freshwater availability, and climate change continue, there is a strong possibility of absolute food supply shortages in this century, and that presents serious security risks.
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January 31, 2010 - CNAS fellow Christine Parthemore discusses the Pentagon's consideration of climate change in the QDR, "The leadership of the Pentagon has very strongly indicated that they do consider climate change to be a national security issue...They are considering climate change on a par with the political and economic factors as the key drivers that are shaping the world."
| more |October 6, 2009 - CNAS Vice President for Natural Security Sharon Burke discusses the link between critical mineral availability and national security. "The U.S. sends many of its minerals overseas to be refined," she said, but "very few people are looking at this issue in a strategic sense, or at what it means for the dependencies created in the U.S. economy and the defense industry."
| more |July 22, 2009 - Bryan Bender of The Boston Globe discusses the congressional testimony of CNAS Vice President for Natural Security Sharon Burke. "The hearing was an important demonstration of the fact that global climate change is now taken seriously as a strategic challenge," said Burke.
| more |June 11, 2009 - The Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman blogs about the launch of the Natural Security project at CNAS's third annual conference and remarks by CNAS Vice President of Natural Security Sharon Burke.
| more |In this working paper, CNAS Bacevich Fellow Christine Parthemore synthesizes how the maritime services are thinking about climate change and assesses potential policy implications.
| more |In this working paper, CNAS Bacevich Fellow Christine Parthemore and Research Assistant Will Rogers provide observations about how the Department of Defense incorporated climate change into the QDR process in order to meet its congressional requirement and some potential outcomes of that process.
| more |In the 21st century, the security of nations will increasingly depend on the security of natural resources, or “natural security.” This concept paper outlines a new program of study at the Center for a New American Security to look at emerging natural resources challenges in six key areas of consumption and consequences – energy, minerals, water, land, climate change, and biodiversity – as well as the ways in which these challenges are linked together.
| more |Global climate change poses not only environmental hazards but profound risks to planetary peace and stability as well. For the past year, CNAS and CSIS convened a diverse group of experts on climate science, oceanography, history, political science, foreign policy, and national security to take the measure of these risks. The contributors developed three scenarios of what the future may hold and then analyze the security implications of these scenarios, which at a minimum include increased disease proliferation; tensions caused by large-scale migration; and conflict sparked by resource scarcity, particularly in Africa. They consider what we can learn from the experience of early civilizations confronted with natural disaster, and they ask what the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases – the United States, the European Union, and China – can do to reduce and manage future risks.
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WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 9, 2009 - CNAS has released several new reports and working papers for its third annual conference, “Striking a Balance: A New American Security" on Thursday, June 11. Topics include Iraq, Afghanistan-Pakistan, Natural Security, and combating violent extremism. Each report offers strong, principled and pragmatic recommendations on how to strike a balance between immediate and long-term national security challenges facing the United States.
| more |The Defense Attachés Association, in consultation with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), hosted their annual conference, Strategic Resources and Global Security Trends, on November 18, 2009, at the Embassy of New Zealand. This event, an effort led in part by Sharon Burke, vice president for Natural Security at CNAS, brought together defense attachés from over 40 countries, as well as U.S. military service personnel and civilian leaders at the Department of Defense, to discuss global security trends, including natural resource scarcity, energy security and climate change. Participants also included representatives from CNA, the New America Foundation, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
| more |Center for a New American Security's Vice President for Natural Security Sharon E. Burke will testify July 21, 2009 at a Senate hearing on climate change and global security. The hearing has been called by Senator John Kerry, D-MA, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The hearing will be streamed live here.
| more |Striking a Balance: A New American Security was an all-day CNAS conference highlighting the major foreign policy and national security challenges facing our nation in the critical time ahead.
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