No longer dismissed as “an environmental anomaly,” but now broadly recognized as a threat multiplier and a catalyst for instability and conflict, climate change can lead to crisis, requiring urgent and well-informed collaborative action. Regardless of the rhetoric, climate change presents challenges but also opportunities for the Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) community which can play a critical role in future efforts to address it. GEOINT can help to better monitor and understand climate change and to provide well integrated, accurate, and timely data, technologies, human insight, and methodologies to better predict crises and build problem specific solutions. This panel brings together experts from government, industry, and civil society organizations to discuss the national security implications of climate change. Topics to be covered include climate change impacts on the frequency, scale, and complexity of future defense and intelligence missions, current and future efforts to tackle it, and ways the GEOINT community can leverage its tradecraft and tools to move from data to empirically formed decisions on climate change.

Opening Remarks By:

• Stephanie Epner, Senior Advisor on International Climate Policy, U.S. Department of State

Panelists:

• Jordan Beauregard, Senior Environmental Security Advisor/Liaison to the FCC, USGS
• Dave Birchett, National GEOINT Officer for Economics and Threat Finance, NGA
• Byron Knight, AS&T Chief Scientist, NRO
• Bruno Sánchez-Andrade Nuño, “AI for Earth” Program Director, Microsoft
• Moderator: Joanne Isham, Independent Consultant