May 17, 2012
2011 Opening Conference "The Competition for Natural Resources: The New Geopolitical Great Game?"
On November 3 the Transatlantic Academy held a conference to mark the opening of its fourth year and to welcome its fourth generation of fellows.
The conference, entitled “The Competition for Natural Resources: The New Geopolitical Great Game?” brought together a high-level group of U.S. and European academics and policymakers, and examined several major questions relating to the transatlantic implications of the competition for natural resources. These included: How do the linkages and interdependencies between different resource sectors interact to create economic, political, environmental, and strategic threats and risks? How do failures of resource governance play into rising resource scarcity? What is the connection between resource competition and social unrest and interstate conflict? Where do Europe and North America converge and diverge in terms of interests, assessments and strategies for dealing with this complex of issues?
Marc Levy, Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, provided keynote remarks. Among the non-resident panellists were: Mathew Burrows, National intelligence Council Counsellor and Analysis and Production Staff Director; Julie Howard, Chief Scientist in the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Food Security; Robert Kleinberg, Senior Research Scientist and Scientific Advisor at Schlumberger-Doll Research; Paul Faeth, Senior Fellow at CNA Corp.; Jonas Meckling, Postdoctoral Fellow with the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Geoffrey Dabelko, Director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Paul Saunders, Executive Director of the Center for the National Interest; and Edward Luttwak, Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
