Workshop: Environment and Security Science and the U.S. National Security Community

Ohio University, Athens OH

Investigators

Abstract

U.S. national security institutions increasingly incorporate environmental change considerations into assessment, preparation, and operational dimensions. The scope of environmentally-related national security questions has broadened from a near exclusive focus on causality and violent conflict onset in developing countries to include the use of environmental assessment and cooperation to build trust and confidence in their areas of operation and as a means of better understanding of risks in a wide range of foreign and security policy arenas. However, national security practitioners typically do not have the structures, opportunities, or clear incentives to have longer-term engagement with a broad range of research agendas and findings. The national security community typically engages with environmental scholars through commissioned applied research targeted at specific ongoing problems and the findings of this work are often proprietary. Therefore, both environmental researchers and national security practitioners have limited understandings of the connections between their domains. This workshop and engagement effort builds on a nearly thirty-year history of U.S. environment and security research and practitioner efforts, that are diverse yet relatively limited, to expand the dialogue between researchers and practitioners and to identify key environmental science questions in this area. This workshop will bring together scholars who conduct research on environmental security topics, environmental researchers from across the spectrum of relevant sciences, and national security practitioners. The planned structured dialogue will 1) develop a wider set of environment and security researcher-practitioner connections, 2) expand the number of scholars and practitioners with greater knowledge of the key actors and tools across both the research and practice, 3) build a shared understanding of the state of environment and security research, 4) identify key environmental science questions relevant to security considerations, and 5) identify specific research opportunities and challenges. The workshop will facilitate greater understanding of questions, methods, and research between members of the environmental science and engineering research community and U.S. national security community. Workshop participants will identify promising lines of scientific inquiry likely to contribute to advancing the national welfare and securing the national defense. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.