Alan Dupont - International Security

Food and energy security

The Centre for International Security Studies (CISS) conducts innovative, multidisciplinary academic research spanning both traditional and non-traditional threats to security, particularly in Asia and the Pacific. The Centre works on some of today’s most salient security issues, including pandemic disease, climate change, food and energy security, and terrorism.

Professor Dupont and the Centre’s core team of Dr Leanne Piggott, Dr Christian Enemark and Professor Peter Curson help businesses, government and a new generation of strategists learn key lessons from the world of today and apply them to the world of tomorrow.

CISS examines the impact of environmental challenges on national and international political and economic stability. Dupont is Australia’s leading expert on the security implications of climate change. His work examines its effect on food production, energy and health systems, and its potential to trigger extreme weather events, short-term disease spikes and large-scale unregulated population movements.

Dupont also leads projects exploring the security dimensions of food and energy supplies. The Centre’s work explores how foreign and national security policies worldwide are increasingly being shaped by the drive to secure future energy supplies. It also considers the implications of renewed interest in nuclear energy at a time of heightened strategic rivalries and geopolitical tensions. The Centre’s food security work is intertwined with these projects, monitoring the impact of forces such as climate change and rising energy costs on agricultural output and tracing the consequences for regional and global stability.

The Centre also examines security challenges, such as natural infectious disease threats like HIV/AIDS and pandemic influenza, biological weapons and biosecurity, unregulated population movements, and demographic transitions.

• Centre for International Security Studies