<i>The New Security Beat</i> Offers Updates on Environment, Security News

The Wilson Center has a legacy of bringing together policymakers, practitioners, and scholars from around the world. At the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP), we also strive to communicate with people tackling issues of environment, security, population, and poverty in the United States and around the globe.

Why host distinguished speakers, facilitate vibrant discussions, and publish thought-provoking reports unless their insights reach beyond the Beltway? To this end, we devote significant energy to electronic dissemination, sending out a monthly e-newsletter, webcasting most of our events, and constantly updating our website with new content.

Our newest effort, launched in January 2007, is The New Security Beat blog, a website featuring relatively brief entries in reverse chronological order. Security encompasses issues beyond fighting terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, and The New Security Beat aims to shed light on some of today's broader security issues, which include water scarcity, environmental degradation, and population growth.

Recent posts by ECSP staff and guest contributors have discussed the prospects for conflict over the newly discovered oil in Africa's Great Lakes region; the awarding of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate and Change and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore; and the security implications of the unprecedented melting of the Arctic ice sheet.

The New Security Beat also serves as the platform for our original audio podcast series, which features interviews with Wilson Center speakers. This fall, we interviewed UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot on the future of the global response to HIV/AIDS, and retired colonel and professor of geography Kent Hughes Butts on the evolution of the environmental security field.

We think our e-strategy is working: The New Security Beat's readership—which includes people in more than 100 countries—has quadrupled in less than a year, and it was recently named one of five "must-read" blogs on human security. We invite you to join this global dialogue on the connections among environment, health, and population issues and their links to conflict, human insecurity, and foreign policy by visiting The New Security Beat.