Closing the Gap: Improving Early Warning for Climate Security Risks in the Pacific

Nov 14, 2019 | Wilson Center
Washington DC
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Pacific Island countries (PICs) are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate extremes, variability, and change, including sea-level rise, coastal erosion, El Niño events, extreme weather, and ocean acidification. PIC communities have shown remarkable and long-standing resilience in the face of both physical and social risks. At the same time, many PICs are geographically isolated and remote, heavily aid-dependent, distant from global trade networks, and have limited access to freshwater and natural resources. Understanding how the impacts of present and future climate change will interact with existing vulnerabilities, and where there are entry points for strengthening resilience across the region, is critical to mitigating security risks. A region of strategic importance for the United States in an era marked by great power competition, PICs provide an important and useful context for improving and aligning predictive capabilities and their use for addressing the security risks posed or exacerbated by a changing climate.

Please join the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program to hear from leaders and experts on the multi-dimensional weather, water, and climate-related risks that exist in the Pacific, and how improving and coordinating predictive capabilities to support U.S. decision-making can lead to actionable and effective responses in the region.

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14 November, 2019, 9:30-11:30 AM

Introduction

Lauren Herzer Risi

Project Director, Environmental Change and Security Program

Roger Pulwarty

Senior Scientist, Physical Sciences Division, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration

Moderator

Sherri Goodman

Senior Fellow

Former U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Environmental Security)

Speakers

His Excellency Anote Tong

former President of Kiribati

Admiral Paul F. Zukunft USCG (ret.)

former Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard

John Wood

Director, Indo-Pacific Outreach, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (J9)