The SSRC Academic Network on Peace, Security, and the United Nations, a product of the Council’s Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF) and its Understanding Violent Conflict (UVC) Program, is a new Council initiative that emerged out of a request from the UN Secretariat to provide UN entities and departments charged with responsibility for peace and security with better, more systematic access to new and emerging research from the field and from within the academy. The Network also aims to facilitate collaborative engagements between various institutions, research networks, and professional associations on conflict-management relevant research, and between the UN and these academic institutions.

The first meeting of the Academic Network examined the frameworks and methodologies used by academics to study the nexus between climate change and risks to sustaining peace, as well as the ways in which climate factors might affect the UN prevention agenda. The SSRC commissioned Joshua Busby, Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, to write a literature review on the intersection of climate change and conflict. The review was distributed to participants in this meeting, which was off-the-record and conducted under the Chatham House Rule.