CECS

The  Center for Energy and Climate Security (CECS) analyses issues at the intersection of climate change, energy access, geopolitics, and security. We curate and disseminate well-researched and pragmatic policy solutions through platforms designed to help decision-makers evaluate existing and future climate change responses.

According to the Global Climate Risk Index (2019), India and its South Asian neighbors are among the top 20 most severely impacted countries by climate change events in the past two decades. The region is especially prone to natural disasters - cyclones, floods, droughts and heatwaves - all of which have socio-economic repercussions and severely burden political and governance systems. The long-lasting impact of climate-related events adversely affect economic, human, national and regional security.

Additionally, there is a growing consensus that climate change can severely strain bilateral and multilateral relations due to asymmetries in risk perception, impact and response capabilities. In South Asia, a region with increasing geopolitical skirmishes, climate change events act not only as ‘threat multipliers’- escalating unresolved inter-state disputes, but also produce fresh disagreements.

In this context, CECS aims to

• Produce high quality and pragmatic strategic insights to create an enabling policy environment that reduces the increasingly disruptive impact of climate crisis in the Indo-Pacific,
• Bring together various stakeholders and institutions working at the intersections of human security, climate change and national security to produce synergy in efforts aimed at addressing climate change,
• Advocate for climate diplomacy in South Asia as a foreign policy priority in Track II dialogues and other policy initiatives. Focus on the nexus between climate change, regional stability, and prosperity.

Our work balances environmental, economic, security and developmental priorities. CECS relies on a wide network of regional climate change and energy experts from across sectors and its interdisciplinary team of researchers to help decision makers take environmentally sound and economically efficient decisions.