Selin and Najam to Lead USIP-Funded Study on Climate and Security
Professor Henrik Selin and Dean Adil Najam of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University will lead a research study funded by the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) to investigate expert perceptions in Pakistan on the links between climate change and security.
Applying both a national security and a human security lens, this research project will explore how climate change is contextualized (or not) as a security issue in a developing country like Pakistan which is highly vulnerable to global climate change and also a front-line security state with multiple immediate internal and external security challenges. The research project will do so by focusing on expert views on climate change and current and future security issue in Pakistan. Exploring such experts views are important because they help shape both the public discourse and policy decisions.
The research project builds on prior work by both project leaders, including work that has previously examined climate change and security issues in South Asia. It will bring together an updated review of the policy findings from the academic literature with the results of a structured expert survey and focus groups, conducted in Pakistan. The resulting analysis will highlight conceptual lessons for the broader literature on climate and security, particularly in developing countries, and policy lessons for Pakistan as well as South Asia. These will be presented in a report to USIP to be completed within 2018.
The United States Institute for Peace (USIP) is an independent national institute, founded by the U.S. Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical, and essential for U.S. and global security. The Institute provides training, analysis, and other resources to people, organizations, and governments working to build peace.
Henrik Selin is Associate Professor of international relations at the Pardee School. He conducts research and teaches classes on global and regional politics and policy making on environment and sustainable development. His most recent book is EU and Environmental Governance, by Routledge Press, and is also the author of Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals: Challenges of Multilevel Management by MIT Press.
Adil Najam is the inaugural Dean of the Pardee School and Professor of international relations and of earth and environment at Boston University. Earlier he served as the Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan, and before that as the director of the Boston University Pardee Center. Amongst other works, he is editor of the 2003 book Environment, Development and Human Security: Perspectives from South Asia.