As part of the University of Queensland’s ongoing partnership with adelphi, the Environment, Conflict and Cooperation exhibition was on display at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane for three weeks from July-August 2016.
The exhibition was very well received by students and staff at UQ as well as the wider Brisbane community. The ECC Exhibition is part of the Climate Diplomacy Initiative that is a collaborative effort of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany with adelphi, a leading Berlin-based think tank for applied research, policy analysis and consultancy on global change issues.
The exhibition was accompanied by two public events. Associate Professor Matt McDonald from UQ’s School of Politics and International Studies presented a seminar on ‘Climate Change and Security’. The lecture outlined discourses and contemporary thinking on the climate change-security relationship, particularly as it relates to the nation-state, the international community, human welfare or even ecosystem resilience. It made a strong case for climate change as the defining global security threat: now and especially into the future.
The seminar was well-attended and concluded with a lively discussion on climate thresholds, range of security implications and likely next steps across policy and practice.
The exhibition’s closing was marked by a panel discussion on ‘Issues of Global Change’ that brought together three of UQ’s top researchers in the areas of water, energy, mining and conflict. Dr Nina Hall (Global Change Institute, Sustainable Water Program), Professor Paul Lant (co-leader Energy and Poverty Research Group) and Professor Saleem Ali (Sustainable Minerals Institute) each presented their views on the interlinkages among these three critical areas of global concern as well as outlined UQ’s leading efforts on this front.
In total, nearly 80 people attended the two events. The exhibition received a strong endorsement from the speakers as well as the audience for its innovative style of story-telling that brought together compelling evidence of change happening across several world regions. A final message that came through from these discussions was around the enormous challenge that lies ahead of us and that there is no room for complacency moving forward.
You can explore the online version of the Environment, Conflict and Cooperation exhibition here.
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The best resource for all of our 21st Century Diplomacy: Foreign Policy Is Climate Policy content is the official website, hosted by the Wilson Center and adelphi. But the ECC editors are also collecting the topics here for eager readers.
What exactly triggers food riots? At which point does climate change come in? And what can we learn from analyzing the lack and impotence of government action in conflict areas? In our Editor’s Pick, we share 10 case studies from the interactive ECC Factbook that address the connections between food, the environment and conflict. They show how agriculture and rural livelihoods can affect stability in a country, which parties are involved in food conflicts and what possible solutions are on the table.