
Lauren Herzer
Lauren Herzer is a program associate in the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.
She leads the planning, development, and implementation of seminars, workshops, and conferences focusing on climate change, natural resources, conflict, and peacebuilding as well as programming for ECSP’s work on health, environment, livelihoods, population, and security.
Prior to the Wilson Center, Lauren completed a Master’s degree in Environmental Security and Peace at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica and worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria. Lauren also served as a Crisis Corps volunteer with the Peace Corps and FEMA in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. She has a BA in History from UCLA.
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Kerry Announces New Task Force to Integrate Climate Change and Security Issues Into U.S. Foreign Policy
›November 13, 2015 // By Lauren Herzer-RisiIn a commanding speech at Old Dominion University this week, Secretary Kerry announced a dramatic step toward integrating climate and security into U.S. foreign policy. In Norfolk, Virginia, home to the world’s largest naval station, Kerry said the State Department is creating a new “task force of senior government officials to determine how best to integrate climate and security analysis into overall foreign policy planning and priorities.”
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How to Create a New Climate for Peace: Preventing Climate Change From Exacerbating Conflict and Fragility
›June 19, 2015 // By Lauren Herzer-RisiWhen the leaders of the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States – met earlier this month, they agreed to make fossil fuels a thing of the past by 2100. At the same time the G7 is also taking steps to make climate change’s connection to conflict a priority in the present.
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What’s in a Name? States of Fragility and Adjusting Aid to Conflict Zones
›April 13, 2015 // By Lauren Herzer-RisiDepending on how closely you pay attention to the OECD, you may have picked up on a subtle but meaningful change in this year’s States of Fragility report. Whereas previous reports were titled Fragile States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has shifted its framing to focus less on states and more on conditions, less on the binary status of a “fragile state” and more on fragility as a universal condition that can impede development in all countries.
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Partnering on Climate Change Adaptation, Peacebuilding, and Population in Africa
›June 12, 2014 // By Lauren Herzer-RisiRapid population growth can be a contributing factor to climate change vulnerability and should be considered in climate adaptation and peacebuilding efforts, said the Wilson Center’s Roger-Mark De Souza at a workshop on climate change adaptation and peacebuilding hosted by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Addis Ababa.
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Despite “Greener Economy,” Extractive Industries’ Effects on Global Development, Stability Bigger Than Ever
›Despite the appearance of a new, “greener” economy, extractive industries – mining, oil, and natural gas – are now responsible for “moving more earth each year, just for mining and quarrying, than the global hydrological cycle,” writes the Transatlantic Academy’s Stacy VanDeveer in a recent paper, Still Digging: Extractive Industries, Resource Curses, and Transnational Governance in the Anthropocene. The costs of this activity are high and extend well beyond the wallet, he explains.
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Malaria and Maternal Health: Treating Pregnant Women Reveals Need for Integration
›Ten years ago, a study was conducted in Mozambique to determine the impact of a new medicine for pregnant women with malaria. Over 1,000 women participated in a controlled trial of intermittent preventative treatment with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine – half received a placebo, the other half received the actual drug. All were given an insecticide-treated net.
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Should Maternal Health Goals Be Combined With WASH?
›Does access to quality water and sanitation have an effect on maternal health outcomes? That was a surprising topic of discussion on day one of the second-ever Global Maternal Health Conference hosted this week in Arusha, Tanzania.
Surprising because, to be honest, I did not think there would be strong disagreements over the relationship between water and sanitation (WASH) and maternal health. In my work with the Comparative Urban Studies Project, the two seem to be clearly linked.
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Changing Cities: Climate, Youth, and Land Markets in Urban Areas
›The number of urban slum dwellers worldwide is staggering. According to UN-Habitat, 827.6 million people live in slums around the world. Despite meeting a Millennium Development Goal to significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, the total number of people living in these areas still increased by 55 million between 2000 and 2010. By 2020, the world slum population is projected to reach 889 million. With the majority of people now living in cities, urban priorities are synonymous with human security and environmental sustainability and must be accounted for in the global development agenda.