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Climate Changing Arctic Security: A Primer

December 1, 2022 |  12:15 - 1:30 pm  |  SRH 3.122, LBJ School

On Thursday, December 1, the Strauss Center welcomed Marisol Maddox, Senior Arctic Analyst at the Polar Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, for a talk on “Climate Changing Arctic Security: A Primer.” This talk was held at the LBJ School of Public Affairs as part of the Strauss Center’s Brumley Speaker Series.

In her talk, Maddox detailed the unique and growing challenges of a melting Arctic, not only as a facet of climate change but also as a targeted strategic concern for the United States. She articulated the complex nature of Arctic change and its global impacts, whether it be on Indigenous people who call the Arctic home or farmers in the Sahel region of Africa who are impacted by climate patterns in the Arctic, in a particularly illustrative example.

She spent the initial portion of her talk explaining further the motivations between U.S. competitors – Russia and China. Maddox emphasized that, although China considers themselves an Arctic state, it technically is not, having no land or sea territory north of the 66th Parallel. Despite the technicality, China is an increasingly prominent actor in the Arctic, with designs on newly exposed resources in the region and seeking access to the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route as alternatives to established longer, more expensive global sea transits. Russia, on the other hand, maintains the longest Arctic coastline of any nation and is expected to guard its territory and military materiel jealously, amidst the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Maddox shifted her discussion next to speak briefly about the Arctic Council, the eight Arctic states that comprise it, and the consultative rights held by numerous Indigenous peoples of the region (with emphasis on China’s observer status). She suggested that indigenous knowledge could be used by other nations to better steward the Arctic, but that this must be done in conjunction with aggressive climate mitigation action from countries around the world.

She concluded with the thought that, without acknowledging the severe ramifications of climate change on the geophysical status of the Arctic, the United States and its allies may be hard-pressed to respond to the resulting geopolitical shifts in the coming years.

This event was free and open to the public, attended by members of the UT community, along with students, faculty, and staff from across the Forty Acres. Special thanks to Brumley Fellow Kathleen Hillery for moderating and Brumley Mentor Ashley McIlvain Moran.

Biography

Marisol Maddox is a Senior Arctic Analyst at the Polar Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Her research considers the nexus of the Arctic, climate change, security, and geopolitics. She is particularly interested in how the growing presence of actorless threats, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, challenges strategic thinking and first-order assumptions about security.

Ms. Maddox is a non-resident research fellow at the Center for Climate & Security, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Newport Arctic Scholars Initiative at the U.S. Naval War College. She holds an M.A. in International Security with a concentration in Transnational Challenges from George Mason University’s Schar School. She earned her B.A. in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Ecosystems from Binghamton University.

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