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2. Distinguishing Among Climate Change-Related Risks
- Author:
- Lisa Sachs, Denise Hearn, Matt Goldklang, and Perrine Toledano
- Publication Date:
- 02-2025
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
- Abstract:
- Understanding the diverse types of climate change-related risks is crucial for developing effective strategies to address the global climate crisis. A holistic yet disaggregated approach allows for a comprehensive view of the challenges while enabling targeted responses from various stakeholders. This document outlines three main categories of climate-related risks: planetary, economic, and financial, detailing their relevance to various stakeholders, timeframes, and potential response strategies. This short brief aims to disentangle the complex nature of risk discussions for productive discourse and appropriate risk management approaches for different stakeholders. In practice, discussions related to assessing and responding to climate change risk have conflated categories of risk, confusing discussions and undermining the effectiveness of related strategies. We hope this brief can bring clarity and rigor to analyses of risk and support constructive discussion among policymakers, financial institutions, social sector actors, and the public. We plan to follow this short briefing with a longer report including more detailed analysis, integrating feedback to these initial ideas.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Finance, Economy, Investment, Risk, and Sustainability
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. The El Niño Southern Oscillation and Geopolitical Risk
- Author:
- Cullen Hendrix
- Publication Date:
- 05-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- This paper investigates whether the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—the warming and cooling cycle in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that affects both global atmospheric and ocean conditions—is a driver of geopolitical risk at the global scale. Using nonlinear cross-convergent mapping, a technique for characterizing causal relationships in dynamic systems, it finds ENSO is causally related to geopolitical risk at the global level, but that finding is not replicated at the country level for countries whose economies are most strongly influenced by ENSO cycles. Put differently, ENSO-related geopolitical risk is an emergent phenomenon evident only at the Earth system level. Then, using monthly observations of ENSO and geopolitical risk, the paper reports a curvilinear, contemporaneous relationship between ENSO and risk, with La Niña conditions associated with lessened geopolitical risk relative to El Niño and neutral climate conditions. The effects are statistically and substantively significant, and the relationship is demonstrated to be stronger in more recent decades (post-1990). The effect for geopolitical risk of transitioning from La Niña to neutral ENSO conditions is of similar magnitude to that of the outbreak of a major interstate war.
- Topic:
- Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Politics, Geopolitics, Risk, Weather, and El Niño
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. UIP Deviations in Times of Uncertainty: Not all Countries Behave Alike
- Author:
- Purva Gole, Erica Perego, and Camelia Turcu
- Publication Date:
- 07-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
- Abstract:
- In this paper, we reconsider the role of uncertainty in explaining uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) deviations by focusing on 60 emerging and developing (EMDE) and advanced (AE) economies, over the period 1995M1--2023M3. We show that differentiating between EMDE currencies and AE currencies is crucial for understanding UIP deviations as the behaviour of excess returns differs in the two groups in periods of uncertainty: deviations become wider for EMDEs and narrow for AEs. These new results are consistent with the idea that in periods of uncertainty, global investors might change their risk preferences and move from high currency-risk investments in EMDEs towards less risky ones in AEs. This evidence holds for both the short-run and long-run UIP, and becomes stronger since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
- Topic:
- Interest Rates, Risk, Uncertainty, and Emerging Economies
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. A Security Symphony: Harmonizing Cybersecurity Regulation
- Author:
- Aspen Digital
- Publication Date:
- 05-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Global cybersecurity regulation is fragmented, inefficient, and often ineffective. More than 60 countries are implementing an array of legal frameworks, making it difficult to regulate cyber practices across borders. Costly on many levels, inconsistent regulations and varying compliance standards allow bad actors to seek out gaps in the system and facilitate attacks that span geographies. With the current amplification and intensity of cyber threats, government and industry need to share tactics, techniques, and procedures with each other as well as with partner nations. If the field doesn’t achieve a higher degree of harmony in the global regulatory landscape, multiple dimensions will remain inefficient and costly: operations, risk management, research and development, and more. In A Security Symphony, Aspen Digital’s Global Cybersecurity Group calls for establishing regulatory harmonization principles, with a focus on collaboration and standardization. The principles span the core categories of interoperability and transparency, market competition, and mutual recognition frameworks. The paper also demonstrates the real-life harms of lacking coordination as well as the benefits of harmonized models through case studies on the 2016 dismantling of the “Avalanche” network and the Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR). A collective of cybersecurity experts committed to democracy and freedom online, the Global Cybersecurity Group is uniquely positioned to offer cross-border guidance to their peers and like-minded nations.
- Topic:
- National Security, Cybersecurity, Regulation, and Risk
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. If-Then Commitments for AI Risk Reduction
- Author:
- Holden Karnofsky
- Publication Date:
- 09-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- If-then commitments are an emerging framework for preparing for risks from AI without unnecessarily slowing the development of new technology. The more attention and interest there is in these commitments, the faster a mature framework can progress.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Risk, Innovation, and Artificial Intelligence
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
7. Controlling the danger: managing the risks of AI-enabled nuclear systems
- Author:
- Noah Greene
- Publication Date:
- 11-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- Research on AI and nuclear weapons often discusses three broad categories of risk: technical risks, pitfalls in human-machine teaming, and strategic stability concerns. The potential solutions for mitigating these risks include international political declarations, United Nations level reporting, and a limited purpose AIenabled nuclear weapons treaty.
- Topic:
- NATO, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, Weapons, Risk, Artificial Intelligence, and Strategic Stability
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
8. Cybersecurity and UN Peace Operations: Evolving Risks and Opportunities
- Author:
- Dirk Druet
- Publication Date:
- 03-2024
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute (IPI)
- Abstract:
- This paper discusses the growing potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities of UN peace operations. Fast-moving changes in the cyber capabilities of state and non-state actors, the changing nature of asymmetric warfare, and the positioning of the UN in relation to global and regional geopolitics are increasingly placing peace operations in the crosshairs of complex cybersecurity threats. In parallel to these external trends, internal trends in missions’ intelligence, surveillance, and data management technologies also make them more vulnerable to cyber threats. At the same time, there are opportunities for missions to leverage cybersecurity infrastructure to support the implementation of their mandates, including in the areas of mediation and political settlements and the protection of civil society actors. The paper provides an overview of the cyber threats facing peace operations and opportunities to leverage cybersecurity tools for mandate implementation. It also documents the operational and policy challenges that have arisen and the Secretariat’s efforts to address them. It concludes with several recommendations for the UN as peace operations seek to operate in an increasingly fraught political and cybersecurity environment: The Secretariat should develop cross-cutting operational concepts and guidance for cyber threat assessments. The Secretariat should articulate its understanding of its duty of care for staff privacy and develop operational guidance and expertise for mitigating threats to privacy. When facilitating political processes, peace operations should consider whether cybersecurity measures will be equally effective in deterring hacking attempts by all parties to ensure they do not exacerbate “information asymmetries.” The UN should explore the boundaries around missions evading or obstructing surveillance or intrusion activities by host states to secure their operations. The Secretariat should mitigate the volume of data exposed to external systems, including by deploying UN-owned and UN-operated intelligence and surveillance devices when possible.
- Topic:
- United Nations, Peacekeeping, Cybersecurity, Risk, and Asymmetric Warfare
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
9. Arms Control Tomorrow: Strategies to Mitigate the Risks of New and Emerging Technologies
- Author:
- Shannon Bugos
- Publication Date:
- 05-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Arms Control Association
- Abstract:
- Over recent years, the topic of new and emerging technologies with military applications has ignited a dynamic debate among defense officials, political leaders, diplomats, policy experts, and technical experts. This report provides an overview of the potentially destabilizing effects of several new and emerging technologies and their respective military applications. It aims to provide decision-makers with a better understanding of how to mitigate the risks and reduce the chances that a major power conflict or confrontation escalates to the nuclear level through a range of arms control and risk reduction measures. This report focuses on six significant, distinct emerging military capabilities: hypersonic weapons systems, direct offensive cyberoperations, offensive counterspace capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled capabilities, drones, and lethal autonomous weapons systems. This report distills information and ideas from a series of workshops, involving dozens of technical and policy experts in each technology area, that the Arms Control Association conducted in 2021 and 2022. It identifies four overarching themes that highlight the greatest concerns over how the military employment of new and emerging technologies might increase the risk of nuclear weapons use. Increasing the pace of conflict. Increasing uncertainty. Reducing the human role. Incentivizing arms racing. This report identifies near-term risk mitigation measures that are likely achievable now or within the next five years: crisis communications systems, definition establishment, norms, unilateral declarations and actions, and confidence-building measures. This report also outlines long-term measures that are achievable within the next 10 years or beyond: arms control and risk reduction arrangements (e.g., treaties, agreements) that involve more than one country and are more formal than confidence-building measures, although not necessarily legally binding.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Risk, and Artificial Intelligence
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
10. Safety Perceptions Index 2023 Foundation: Understanding the impact of risk around the world
- Author:
- Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP)
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP)
- Abstract:
- The Lloyd’s Register Foundation Safety Perceptions Index (SPI) provides a comprehensive assessment of worries and experiences of risk across 121 countries. The SPI is a unique body of work, providing a deeper understanding of citizens’ feelings of safety than any other publicly available source. The index is produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) on the basis of data from the World Risk Poll, a global survey designed by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and administered by Gallup. This is the second edition of the SPI. The report analyses two iterations of the World Risk Poll, the first conducted in 2019 and the second conducted in 2021; providing commentary, trends, and insights into these two sets of data. One of the defining features of the research is that one survey was administered prior to the onset of COVID-19 and the other was administered afterwards, allowing for an analysis of the effects of the pandemic on perceptions of risk. This report will be useful in the decades ahead as it will give insight into likely shifts in perceptions of risk for any future pandemics that may occur. The SPI measures two themes, worry about harm and recent experience of serious harm, analysing them across five domains: food and water, violent crime, severe weather, mental health, and workplace safety. These themes and domains are combined into a composite score which reflects perceptions of safety by country and region.The past several years have been characterised by rising feelings of uncertainty worldwide. Central to this shift has been the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the functioning of social institutions as well as patterns of individual and collective behaviour in countless ways.1 Multiple studies have shown that the pandemic brought about increased levels of fear and anxiety across groups.2 Against this backdrop, there are two central findings of the 2023 SPI report. The first is that there were two parallel developments in people’s perceptions of safety over the last several years. On the one hand, the index showed no meaningful change in levels of worry and experience of harm in the aggregate, with an improvement of less than 0.1 percentage points recorded between 2019 and 2021. On the other hand, complementary data from the World Risk Poll points to a notable rise in generalised and non-specific feelings of fear and lack of safety throughout the world, with people becoming more fearful overall but less certain about the sources of potential threats.
- Topic:
- Economics, Infrastructure, Risk, Peace, Threat Perception, and Public Safety
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus