A Climate for Change in the UN Security Council? Member States' Approaches to the Climate-Security Nexus

This research report is the first to systematically engage with the growing political agenda of the climate-security nexus and to place a particular focus on the relationship between the state and the only international organ with a mandate to maintain international peace and security: the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Discussions that have been ongoing since 2007, scattered governmental positions and the difficulty of achieving an overview of the various understandings, topics, concerns and responses of the UNSC member states in relation to the climate-security nexus all indicate a need to address this topic. This report therefore assesses and maps if and how the UNSC members acknowledge the linkages between climate change and security and how they position themselves with respect to these debates in the UNSC. With a large international network of interdisciplinary and country-specialized partner scientists, the analysis relies on an extensive spectrum of official primary sources from member state governments, various ministry strategies (such as those addressing security and climate change), UNSC documents and interdisciplinary academic literature on the climate-security nexus. It is located in the context of substantiated planetary climate emergencies and existential threats as well as urgent calls for action from the UN and member state representatives, scientific networks in Earth System Sciences and youth protests. Based on broad empirical research findings, this report concludes that all 15 current UNSC member states acknowledge the climate-security nexus in complex, changing and partly country-dependent ways. The report formulates an outlook and recommendations for decision-makers and scholars with a particular focus on strengthening the science-policy interface and dialogue and emphasizing the urgent need for institutional, multilateral and scientifically informed change. It also illustrates how essential it is for the UNSC to recognize and adapt institutional working methods to the interrelations of climate change and security and their effects as a cross-cutting issue

On the Peace and Security Implications of Cybercrime: A Call for an Integrated Perspective

Criminal cyberattacks have skyrocketed in the past decade, with ransomware attacks during the pandemic being a prime example. While private corporations remain the main targets and headlines are often dominated by the financial cost, public institutions and services are increasingly affected. Governments across the globe are working on combatting cybercrime. However, they often do not see eye-to-eye, with geopolitical tensions complicating the search for effective multilateral remedies further. In this research report, we focus on the threat that cybercrime poses to peace and security, which is rarely addressed. We examine the potential of cybercrime to exacerbate state-internal conflicts, for example by fuelling war economies or by weakening social coherence and stability. Various actors sharing similar, possibly even identical, approaches to compromising adversarial computer systems is another threat that we assess, as it has the potential to cause unintended escalation. Similarly, cyber vigilantism and hack-backs, whether conducted by private actors or corporate entities, can also endanger state agency and the rule of law. While an international treaty, as for example currently being discussed at the UN, could be a valuable step toward curbing cybercriminal behaviour, we also reflect on possible negative side effects - from increased domestic surveillance to repression of opposition. Lastly, we argue for an integrated perspective, combining various knowledge bases and research methodologies to counter direct and indirect limitations of research, particularly pertaining to data availability but also analytical concepts

Violent Climate Imaginaries: Science-Fiction-Politics

There are many ways in which climate futures can be envisioned, such as global and regional climate models, scenarios of future emission trajectories, or pathways and visions of societal transformation. All these anticipatory practices aim to make the climatic future knowable in the present. In so doing, they quite often envision a climatic future that is inherently violent: a future marked by disasters, wars, mass migration, turmoil, and terror. This working paper seeks to explain the popularity and tenacity of such violent imaginaries of (future) climate change in scientific research, popular culture, and political discourse. For this, it asks two interrelated questions: First, how do violent imaginaries of future climate change come about? Second, why and how do these imaginaries circulate and proliferate? To answer these questions, the paper provides a discussion of the concept of “violence” and elaborates how different forms of it are featured in imaginaries of future climate change. On this basis, the paper then traces three different modes of future-making that together produce and reproduce violent climate imaginaries: modeling the future, writing the future, and visualizing the future. Finally, the paper proposes and discusses several factors that could help explaining the circulation of violent climate imaginaries between the fields of science, fiction, and politics. These factors include the existence of an interdiscourse that bridges different specialized discourses, the broader political economy of imaginaries, interpersonal relations between actors in different fields, and the coproduction of dominant imaginaries with broader technological developments

Trilateral Arms Control? Perspectives from Washington, Moscow, and Beijing

With the end of the INF Treaty in 2019, trilateral arms control - meaning arms control between the United States, Russia, and China - has gained center stage. Only shortly after the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. President Trump declared that he wants a new nuclear pact to be signed by both Russia and China. Other U.S. administration officials have set the goal of including China in a future follow-on framework to the New START agreement, which expires in February 2021. Then again, could trilateral arms control be possible at all? What would be necessary conditions? Why should Washington, Moscow, and Beijing engage in an uncertain endeavor that promises to significantly affect their strategic relationships? The authors of this study address those and other questions

Violent Climate Imaginaries: Science-Fiction-Politics

There are many ways in which climate futures can be envisioned, such as global and regional climate models, scenarios of future emission trajectories, or pathways and visions of societal transformation. All these anticipatory practices aim to make the climatic future knowable in the present. In so doing, they quite often envision a climatic future that is inherently violent: a future marked by disasters, wars, mass migration, turmoil, and terror. This working paper seeks to explain the popularity and tenacity of such violent imaginaries of (future) climate change in scientific research, popular culture, and political discourse. For this, it asks two interrelated questions: First, how do violent imaginaries of future climate change come about? Second, why and how do these imaginaries circulate and proliferate? To answer these questions, the paper provides a discussion of the concept of “violence” and elaborates how different forms of it are featured in imaginaries of future climate change. On this basis, the paper then traces three different modes of future-making that together produce and reproduce violent climate imaginaries: modeling the future, writing the future, and visualizing the future. Finally, the paper proposes and discusses several factors that could help explaining the circulation of violent climate imaginaries between the fields of science, fiction, and politics. These factors include the existence of an interdiscourse that bridges different specialized discourses, the broader political economy of imaginaries, interpersonal relations between actors in different fields, and the coproduction of dominant imaginaries with broader technological developments

Negative Multiplicity: Forecasting the Future Impact of Emerging Technologies on International Stability and Human Security

We asked 30 experts to forecast the developmental trajectories of twelve emerging technologies in the United States, Russia, and China until 2040 and to score their possible future impact on arms race stability, crisis stability, and humanitarian principles. The results reveal that, on average, their impact is expected to be negative, with some technologies negatively affecting all three dependent variables. We used a machine learning algorithm to cluster the technologies according to their anticipated impact. This process identified technology clusters comprised of diverse high-impact technologies that share key impact characteristics but do not necessarily share technical characteristics. We refer to these combined effects as ‘negative multiplicity’, reflecting the predominantly negative, concurrent, and in some cases similar, first- and second-order effects that emerging technologies are expected to have on international stability and human security. The expected alignment of the technology development trajectories of the United States, Russia, and China by 2040, in combination with the negative environment created by geopolitical competition, points to a nascent technological arms race that threatens to seriously impede international arms control efforts to regulate emerging technologies

A Climate for Change in the UN Security Council? Member States' Approaches to the Climate-Security Nexus

This research report is the first to systematically engage with the growing political agenda of the climate-security nexus and to place a particular focus on the relationship between the state and the only international organ with a mandate to maintain international peace and security: the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Discussions that have been ongoing since 2007, scattered governmental positions and the difficulty of achieving an overview of the various understandings, topics, concerns and responses of the UNSC member states in relation to the climate-security nexus all indicate a need to address this topic. This report therefore assesses and maps if and how the UNSC members acknowledge the linkages between climate change and security and how they position themselves with respect to these debates in the UNSC. With a large international network of interdisciplinary and country-specialized partner scientists, the analysis relies on an extensive spectrum of official primary sources from member state governments, various ministry strategies (such as those addressing security and climate change), UNSC documents and interdisciplinary academic literature on the climate-security nexus. It is located in the context of substantiated planetary climate emergencies and existential threats as well as urgent calls for action from the UN and member state representatives, scientific networks in Earth System Sciences and youth protests. Based on broad empirical research findings, this report concludes that all 15 current UNSC member states acknowledge the climate-security nexus in complex, changing and partly country-dependent ways. The report formulates an outlook and recommendations for decision-makers and scholars with a particular focus on strengthening the science-policy interface and dialogue and emphasizing the urgent need for institutional, multilateral and scientifically informed change. It also illustrates how essential it is for the UNSC to recognize and adapt institutional working methods to the interrelations of climate change and security and their effects as a cross-cutting issue

Rural Research and Development Corporations

Through the Rural Research and Development Corporations (RDCs), rural industries and the Australian Government together invest some $490 million a year in R&D. This co-investment model has important strengths, including: helping to ensure that public money is not spent on research of little practical value; and facilitating greater and faster uptake of research outputs. However, as currently configured, the model has some significant shortcomings:◦it does not cater well for broader rural R&D needs; the overall level of public support for industry-focused research is too high given the sound financial reasons that producers or industries would have to fully fund much of this research themselves; the basis for the Government's matching contribution to RDCs provides no incentive for producers to increase their investments in the model over time. While the broad model should be retained, significant changes to the way in which the Government contributes its funding are therefore called for. Specifically: the current cap on dollar for dollar matching of industry contributions by the Government should be halved over a ten-year period; a new, uncapped, subsidy at the rate of 20 cents in the dollar should be immediately introduced for industry contributions above the level that attracts dollar for dollar matching; a new, government-funded, RDC - Rural Research Australia (RRA) - should be created to sponsor broader rural research. With RRA in place, the other RDCs (except for the Fisheries RDC) should be left to focus predominantly on funding research of direct benefit to their industry constituents. These new arrangements would result in a modest reduction in total government funding for the RDC model - though with a similarly modest increase in private contributions, the overall amount of funding available to the RDCs could increase. More importantly, the redistribution of some public money to broader research would deliver better value for the community from its investment in the model. Some more specific changes can be viewed in the report.rural research; rural research and development; RDCs; rural research and development corporations; R&D

Professional boundaries: research report

In 2008 the General Social Care Council (GSCC) published Raising standards: Social work conduct in England 2003-2008. This constituted the GSCC’s first report covering the work undertaken to uphold standards and protect people who use social care services. The GSCC’s analysis revealed that a considerable proportion of conduct cases, some 40%, involved allegations of 'inappropriate relations'. In the light of this finding, and the release by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) of sexual boundaries guidance for healthcare workers at the beginning of this year (Halter et al, 2009), the GSCC committed itself to exploring the possibility of producing professional boundaries guidance for social workers. To begin this exploration, the GSCC commissioned a study in early 2009.This is the report of that study. There were two main purposes. First, to establish what professional boundaries1 guidance currently exists for social workers, or for sections of the workforce that includes social workers in the United Kingdom, and the content of any such guidance. Secondly, to identify and discuss a number of other examples of professional boundaries guidance to act as points of reference for the GSCC’s project. The aim was to identify and discuss examples relevant to the GSCC’s project

Skills Academy research report

"This research was commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government in July 2009 in order to review the development, operation and sustainability of Skills Academy networks across the UK and other relevant countries, to determine the strengths and weaknesses of such networks and to make recommendations to support the policy development of a Skills Academy network in Wales." - overview