Urbanization, the Environment and Biosecurity

Over the summer, Nancy Brune and I contributed to the
National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 blog, a forum to
discuss a range of issues ahead of the NIC’s forthcoming Global Trends 2030 study, to be released after the presidential
election this fall.

What is interesting about the NIC’s study is that it focuses
on emerging trends and their implications for the security and geopolitical
environments. But rather than explore these trends in isolation of each other,
the NIC examines different scenarios, and how trends engage one another. Urbanization
and climate change are among the trends that the NIC has looked at closely. In
separate posts, Nancy
and I
both examined the security implications of urbanization and climate change for
the NIC’s blog. 

Urbanization – the shift of populations from rural to urban
communities – presents challenges and opportunities for policymakers in
developed and developing countries. As I wrote in July:

On the one hand, urban cities have
the potential to serve as engines of change, driving economic growth in some of
the world’s least developed countries and pulling more people out of poverty
than at any other time in history. On the other hand, climate change could
undercut all of this by exacerbating resource scarcity and putting vulnerable
communities at risk from sea level rise and more frequent and intense
storms. 

But of course, climate change is not the only other trend
that touches urbanization. A range of trends, such as globalization and
emerging diseases, combine with urbanization to present dilemmas for
policymakers. 

Last week, Yale Environment 360 published a piece
that explored the challenges that could manifest from urbanization,
globalization and emerging diseases coming together in novel ways. See: “The
Next Pandemic: Why It Will Come from Wildlife.”

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