Join us for our next ConnexUs Thursday Talk, Addressing Climate Security: Toolkits for Action, on 9 March at 10am ET / 15h WAT.
We will be joined by Dr. Daniel Abrahams, Karol Boudreaux, Jessie Anderson, and Nikki Behnke, whose work intersects with climate change and conflict at USAID. They will be sharing USAID-produced actionable toolkits, namely Water & Conflict: A Toolkit for Programming and Land & Conflict: A Toolkit for Intervention 2.0.
Dr. Daniel Abrahams is the Senior Climate Security Advisor in the Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Karol Boudreaux is the Senior Land and Resource Governance Advisor for USAID. Jessie Anderson is the Senior Conflict Advisor for USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, and Nikki Behnke is a Program Specialist at USAID’s Center for Water Security, Sanitation and Hygiene.
During this ConnexUs Thursday Talk, you will have the opportunity to engage with our speakers in a discussion on how we can reduce the risk of conflict and instability and promote peace and security through a comprehensive and integrated approach to climate change.
This ConnexUs Thursday Talk is part of the Climate Security: Finding Shared Solutions to Shared Challenges crowdsourced knowledge-sharing campaign hosted by USAID and ConnexUs that will be running from February to April 2023. The campaign will feature global discussions on ConnexUs, ConnexUs Thursday Talks webinars, knowledge sharing, and more. Sign up to stay up to date on the campaign & opportunities to participate.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn more about this critical topic and how you can make a difference. See you there!
Toolkits:
Speakers:
Dr. Daniel Abrahams
Dr. Daniel Abrahams is the Senior Climate Security Advisor in the Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Daniel provides technical guidance for programmatic interventions as well as Agency and inter-Agency policy efforts. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of South Carolina and a Master’s in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University. His research focused on the ways in which institutions approach the joint challenges of climate change, conflict, and disasters. He has conducted research in Uganda, Haiti, Kenya, Zambia, and the United States on topics ranging from the barriers to addressing climate-security risks with development policy to individual-level perceptions of flood risk. His work has been published in diverse academic outlets including World Development, Climate & Development Conflict, Security & Development, and Current Climate Change Reports.
Karol Boudreaux
Karol Boudreaux is the Senior Land and Resource Governance Advisor for USAID. She is a lawyer and land tenure and resource rights expert with two decades of experience working on land issues. Throughout her career she has supported improvements to the land and resource rights of individuals and communities, with a strong focus on women’s land rights, responsible land-based investments and conflict, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. She has written widely on topics including land and resource governance, land rights and human rights, land-based conflict, indigenous land rights, intimate partner violence and land and responsible land-based investing in a variety of academic and popular outlets.
Jessie Anderson
Jessie Anderson is the Senior Conflict Advisor for USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, where she leads work on conflict integration and humanitarian-development-peace coherence. Jessie has more than fifteen years of aid experience. Previously at USAID she was a Democracy Fellow in conflict, fragility and peacebuilding. Prior to joining the Agency she founded a startup supporting local peacebuilding efforts, consulted for aid organizations, and researched peace operations as a fellow at the Stimson Center. She also coordinated events on the future of humanitarian aid at GWU, where she earned her PhD in political science.
Nikki Behnke
Nikki Behnke is a Program Specialist at USAID’s Center for Water Security, Sanitation and Hygiene. She focuses on Middle East mission support and is the Washington point of contact for improving coherence across humanitarian, development, and peace approaches to WASH and water resources management programming. Prior to USAID, Nikki was a WASH researcher at the Water Institute at UNC, with field research experience in Malawi, Zambia, and Jordan. She has seven years of experience in the WASH sector, and earned an MSPH in Environmental Sciences and Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she focused on WASH and environmental health conditions in protracted displacement.
Climate Security: Finding Shared Solutions to Shared Challenges
Addressing climate security requires an understanding of the best practices and lessons learned in the joint challenges of climate change, conflict, and human security. By considering the link between climate change and conflict and taking a comprehensive and integrated approach, the development sector and related fields can reduce the risk of conflict and instability and promote peace and security.
Together, USAID’s Center for Conflict & Violence Prevention & ConnexUs are hosting Climate Security: Finding Shared Solutions to Shared Challenges, an online crowdsourced knowledge-sharing campaign running from February and April 2023.
This knowledge-sharing campaign is designed to promote discussion, shared learning & collaboration among peacebuilding, development, and humanitarian practitioners. As a crowdsourced platform for social impact in conflict-affected areas, we invite you to participate however you can from wherever you are. The campaign will feature global discussions on ConnexUs, ConnexUs Thursday Talks webinars, knowledge sharing, & more. Sign up to stay up to date on the campaign & opportunities to participate.