Megacities, Population Growth, and National Security:
How Cities are Meeting Global Challenges
The world is in a period of rapid urbanization: for the first time in history, more than half of the global community now resides in cities. And populations are only rising. More people living in less space will have profound implications for a range of national security issues. Domestically, urbanization will stretch emergency management, energy, and policing resources. Internationally, the consequences of urban density could manifest in regional or even global effects, including the spread of diseases, food and water conflicts, and vulnerable pockets of unemployed youth. Climate change will stress many of these issues further. Failure to manage such challenges may turn this future landscape into the U.S. military’s most complicated operating environment. Despite the scale and complexity of these issues, it is often cities, not national governments or multilateral organizations, which are on the front lines of planning and responding. While many of these local governments are under-resourced, they are also often dynamic in innovating policy and infrastructure solutions, even fundamentally rethinking how people live in and interact with the urban terrain.
Please join us for a panel discussion that explores how changing urban populations—domestically and abroad—may impact issues of national security, and identifies what cities are doing with respect to infrastructure, policy, and planning to help shape positive outcomes.
Moderator:
David Kaufman, CNA, Vice President of Safety and Security. As the former Associate Administrator for Policy, Program Analysis and International Affairs at FEMA, Mr. Kaufman launched the Strategic Foresight Initiative, institutionalizing a long range vision and planning capability for the emergency management community nationally that addresses the impacts of global trends on the field. He also created the 2012 FEMA Community Resilience Innovation Challenge, in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, seeding innovative local resilience practices in 30 communities nationally.
Panelists:
Ian Klaus: Mr. Klaus is a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He was senior adviser for Global Cities at the U.S. Department of State. In that role, he led urban diplomacy for the United States, engaging dozens of foreign ministries and development agencies from Africa, South America, North America, Asia, and Europe on urbanization and foreign policy issues. He also internally managed the State Department’s efforts to develop urbanization-related policies. Mr. Klaus was deputy United States negotiator for the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development, the first major implementing conference following the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Daniel Agbiboa: Dr. Agbiboa is a Cambridge and Oxford trained scholar in the field of International Development. His interests and expertise lie in the areas of corruption, security and development in West and East Africa. He has published widely in the fields of transnational terrorism, corruption, and organized crime. He currently is an incoming professor at George Mason University.
Scott Boggs: Mr. Boggs is the Managing Director of Homeland Security and Public Safety for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. He has more than 25 years of experience pertaining to public safety and currently provides program leadership in an ever-changing growth-oriented environment within the National Capital Region. Previously, he served as a Battalion Chief in Prince William County.
Important Event Information:
This event is open to the public, but RSVP is required. To attend, please register below no later than September 1st. Please bring photo ID for check-in at the front desk.
Limited parking is available in the pay-for-parking garage located behind the CNA building on 11th Street North. The CNA building is one block from the Clarendon Metro station.
If you have any questions, please contact CNA National Security Seminar Series (cna_nss@cna.org).
Contact
CNA National Security Seminar SeriesCNA
703-824-2640
cna_nss@cna.org