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February 18, 2005

Environmental Security, International Environmental Policy, and How Science Informs Public Policy

Beth Chalecki can remember the precise moment when she became an environmentalist. It was in 1993, while she was working as an International Trade Analyst for the US Department of Commerce. “I was on a business trip to Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,” Beth recalls, “and I was inspecting former Soviet uranium mines. They were in terrible shape, leaking sulfuric acid and other chemicals right into the ground and the streams, because of course the former Soviet Union wasn’t big on enforcing environmental regulations.”

"Curiously,” she notes, “in the area around the mines there were vegetable gardens and fruit trees. After the inspection, we went to a large dinner that the Ministry of Natural Resources was throwing in our honor. There on the table, they proudly pointed out all the dishes that were made with the fruits and vegetables grown right in the area! I didn’t want to offend our hosts, but I could barely touch them – all I kept thinking about was that the food was contaminated with chemicals, and that this was all these people had to eat. That’s when I really realized that pursuit of economic progress without regard for natural systems would lead to disaster.”

After receiving a Master’s degree in International Relations from Boston University in 1989, she worked for a year as a researcher for the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Division. She has always been interested in major problems in international affairs, and wrote her undergraduate honors thesis at the University of Notre Dame on bilateral nuclear disarmament. Two years after her 1993 revelation, she went to Canada to get second Master’s – this time in Environmental Science from the University of Toronto. “Canadians would ask me why I wanted to come to such a high-stress city as Toronto,” she laughs, “ and I would tell them that compared to Washington, DC, Toronto was positively bucolic.”

While in Toronto, Beth consulted for Environment Canada, writing an examination of the effects that climate change would have on Canada’s interests outside Canadian territory. This set her on the environmental security path: examining how environmental issues contribute to national security concerns and how war impacts the environment. Moving to San Francisco in 1998, she began work at a think tank called the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security.

“This was a great place because I could focus my work on issues that I felt were truly important from a policymaking perspective,” she says... “Having worked in two think tanks and for two government agencies, I know how important it is to speak to your audience in their language if you want them to hear what you’re saying and act on it.” Beth also taught environmental studies and environmental security at California State University – Hayward and at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

At Fletcher, Beth is pursuing International Environmental Resource Policy, International Security Studies, and United States as her fields. Her dissertation, tentatively titled, “The CO2 Will Always Get Through: National Security and Climate Change,” will focus on the national security ramifications of climate change.

“Environmental realities have to be taken into consideration when planning national security policy, energy or economic policy, or any sort of policy, really,” Beth believes.! “We seem to think that the environment will provide us with natural resources for free and absorb our wastes indefinitely, but Easter Island is a frightening example of what happens when societies overwhelm the carrying capacity of their environment. It’s our responsibility not to let that happen to ourselves or future generations.”

Her advisor, Adil Najam, has described her as “enthusiastic.”

Beth’s interests include environmental security, international environmental policy, and how science informs (or should inform) public policy. Among the PhD offers she had, Fletcher was her first choice, “because of the flexibility of the program,” she says. “Having two relevant grad degrees already, I knew exactly what I would need to fill out my PhD and I get that here at Fletcher.” While university teaching is certainly an option after Fletcher, Beth harbors dreams of returning to the Brookings Institution as an environmental security fellow.

Posted by jessica at February 18, 2005 10:00 AM