After several months of writing and editing, out now is a report I coauthored with Dan Smith, Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Titled Five Urgent Questions on Ecological Security, therein we call for the science, security, and policy communities to pay more attention to—and conduct/support more research on—a suite of ecological stressors that could dramatically undermine multiple dimensions of security in the near future.

As we say in the report:

Perturbations in the ecosphere carry significant—and probably harrowing—
consequences for people and societies; however, risk pathways from
there to human, national, and global insecurity need elucidation. This paper
poses five research questions that, if successfully addressed, would generate
a deeper understanding of the ecological security risks ahead.

The Questions

The Five Urgent Questions we pose are:

Q1: How will antimicrobial resistance be affected by ecological disruption, and with what societal consequences?

Q2: Do (or will) the physiological effects of pollution have sociological effects and, if so, with what security dimensions?

Q3: What are the social consequences as Nature’s Contributions to People’s well-being diminishes?

Q4: Is there a relationship between ecological tipping points and social change, political instability, and consequent insecurity?

Q5: What consequences arise from detrimental organisms and ecological processes that are strengthened as the ecosphere changes?

Report Background

As a bit of background, the idea for the report came rather quickly last Autumn. During August/September, I was a fortunate recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency Program. My chosen project was a deep dive into the intersection of antimicrobial resistance, ecological disruption, and climate change, although I  spent quite a bit of time expanding my thinking on the nexus between ecological disruption and security. In October, my friend and co-resident, the incredible Ilwad Elman, put me in touch with Dan and we soon undertook a series of engaging Zoom exchanges that formed the analytic and inspirational backbone of Five Urgent Questions.

I had explored some aspects of these questions in various works before. For example, Q3 hearkens back to Societal and Security Implications of Ecosystem Service Declines, Part 1: Pollination and Seed Dispersal, the first of an intended three-part series (and Parts 2 and 3 were to be focused on soil degradation and hazard regulation, but never transpired). At the 2021 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, I presented a talk called Bringing Ecological Regime Shifts into Security Analysis, whose central tenets are reflected in the new paper in Q3. The call for more ecological security research reflects a key recommendation we made in 2021’s The Security Threat that Binds Us.

Even though I’ve worked on ecological security topics for many years now, Dan Smith’s involvement simply took our discussions to another level. Not only did he bring a keen mind and long history of widening the security aperture to the effort, he greatly elevated the argumentation, analysis, and structure at every stage of the report.

Here’s hoping that it is oft-shared and well-received!