|
|
|
International Conference
on
Rethinking Strategies for Peace and Security
in a World in Rapid Transformation
Initial Outline
The world community confronts an array of profound and interconnected crises: the worst financial and economic crisis since the 1930s; the accelerating threats of irreversible climate change and of ecosystem degradation; intensifying pressure on resources of all kinds; rising inequality within and between nations; and rising levels of poverty and a substantial growth in world population. Leaders in both government and the private sector are challenged to restore financial stability and achieve economic recovery while taking measures to avert the threats of ecological breakdown and irreversible climate change and also facing up to the intensifying issues of world development.
It is within this context that the Club of Rome will use its international access and networks to convene in early 2011, a small, high level expert conference on the topic: “Rethinking Strategies for Peace and Security in a World in Rapid Transformation.” The two day conference will bring together a high-level group of around thirty practitioners, experts and officials across the world. Besides making intellectual progress in understanding the systemic nature of the issues of peace and security in the new conditions of the 21st century, the conference is intended to produce practical insights and proposals for policy and action. The Club is positioned to insert the insights of science and analysis directly into the policy process, in particular through GLOBE International, an organisation of senior legislators from the G20 countries.
Among the specific issues affecting peace and security to be examined will be:
- Growing pressures arising from increasing world population to 9 billion by 2050 and the escalating consumption of a growing world middle class;
- The overuse of biological resources of the planet and intensifying competition for energy, water and other vital resources;
- The combined impacts of demographic growth and climate change on food, energy and water security and the potential consequences for political stability, migration and violence;
- The consequences for cooperation and peace of rising levels of inequality in wealth, income and economic opportunity within and between countries;
- Countering the trends towards exclusion, cultural polarisation and alienation;
- Diffuse threats to peace such as terrorism, infectious diseases, and the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities;
In framing its conclusions and proposals, the Conference will consider four major themes:
- New concepts and policies for national security in an interdependent world where the security of citizens is at risk from new, diffuse threats;
- Building the human, social and institutional capabilities in the developing world for conflict prevention and resolution and the prevention of violence;
- New patterns of power and influence in a world community in rapid and profound transformation;
- New international partnerships, institutional arrangements and cooperation to face the security challenges of the 21st Century.
In a new phase of its activities, approved at its 40th Anniversary assembly in Rome in June 2008, the Club of Rome launched a three year, international programme of collaborative research and consultation to define the content of “A New Path for World Development.” This programme takes account of the complexity and interconnectedness of critical global challenges by focusing its analysis on five manageable “clusters” of interconnected issues within a coherent systems framework: Environment, Energy and Resources; Globalisation, Economics and Finance; Demographics and International Development; Social Transformation; and Peace and Security.
The conference agenda will be published soon.
Further Information:
Back to the Overview
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
