Last week SIPRI and its partners launched Mistra Geopolitics, a large-scale, interdisciplinary programme examining the impact of climate and environmental change on today’s geopolitical landscape.
The overall programme aims to study the interplay between sustainability issues—such as environmental change and resource management—and the social, political and economic patterns driving geopolitical changes. The programme also intends to look at what future risks and opportunities will exist for Swedish stakeholders.
SIPRI’s primary role will be to study how global environment and climate change impacts security understandings, perceptions and practices. This will be done through analysing academic and policy discourse as well as through case studies and field work where SIPRI researchers can see first-hand how organizations work with environmental and security issues. SIPRI will also explore how these organizations envision future developments.
As well as producing high-quality research, Mistra Geopolitics has an ambitious policy and outreach programme. Stakeholders from public, private and civil society sectors will be invited to participate during the 4-year programme and a strong focus will be given to science-to-policy communication through workshops, seminars and other outreach tools.
The programme brings together 6 Swedish organizations—SIPRI, the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) and the universities of Linköping, Lund, Stockholm and Uppsala—and the research institutes adelphi in Germany and E3G in the UK.
Mistra Geopolitics is supported by a 58 million SEK grant, of which 48 million SEK comes from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra).
More information about Mistra Geopolitics can be found in the programme’s Fact Sheet (pdf) and at www.mistra-geopolitics.se.