On the intersections of conflict, security and the climate crisis with Guillaume Long, Adam Hanieh, Samar Al-Bulushi and Lorah Steichen.
Just half way into 2026, the year has already been marked by several "unprecedented" events, from the US-Israeli war on Iran to record-smashing heatwaves across Europe and beyond. The links between climate crisis and conflict are complex: war is both an enormous consumer of fossil fuels and resources like critical minerals, and is often waged—at least partly—in pursuit of the dominance of these resources. Climate and environmental disruption can both drive and result from conflicts.
On the 26th of June, our Editor Adrienne Buller chaired a conversation examining the connections between climate, conflict and security, in collaboration with hosts Transition Security Project and King's College London.
In an exceptional panel featuring Samar Al-Bulushi (UC Irvine and Quincy Institute), Adam Hanieh (Director of SOAS Middle East Institute and author of Crude Capitalism), Guillaume Long (Fellow at CEPR and diplomatic advisor to the Hague Group) and Lorah Steichen (Transition Security Project), we unpacked the historical and ongoing relationship between fossil fuels and war; new forms of imperialism in the pursuit of resource dominance; the geopolitical re-alignments emerging from the energy transition; and new opportunities for collaboration in the effort to build a more sustainable, secure world.