Cleo Paskal is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, (aka Royal Institute of International Affairs), Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University, India and Adjunct Professor of Global Change, School of Communication and Management Studies, Kochi, India. Also she was a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy's Global Energy and Environment Strategic Ecosystem and is a Huffington Post blogger.
She is a geopolitical expert who specializes in the geopolitical, security, and economic implications of evironmental change (including climate change), as well as Arctic and Pacific security. Her book, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. Global Warring won a US$5000 Awards of Merit in the 2010 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment awards as well as the 2010 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction.
Quote of Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, from Global Warring: "We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It's an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome. After all, the Israelis (began by buying) land in Palestine."[1]
Other published research includes a Chatham House Briefing Paper on how climate change might affect borders [2] (Paskal was the first to publish on the critical issue of how sea level rise can effect exclusive economic zone claims), a new method for assessing a state or region's vulnerability to environmental change [3], the concept of Nationalistic Capitalism [4], a policy paper for the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century on the effects of environmental change on UK national security [5], a Chatham House Briefing Paper on vulnerability of energy infrastructure to environmental change [6], and a Journal of International Security Affairs paper on how environmental change can undermine major components of global and national legal systems.
She has also looked at a range of other strategic topics, including balance of power issues in the Pacific, and corruption in India. She has briefed officials from over two dozen governments.
Cleo Paskal is also an award-winning journalist who has contributed to, among others, The Economist, The Independent, and the Sunday Times. She has hosted BBC radio shows and wrote an Emmy-winning TV series. She has had columns with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Post and the Toronto Star. Having attended McGill University, she co-founded that school's satire magazine, The Red Herring. She also wrote the Primetime Emmy Award winning TV series Cirque du Soleil: Fire Within.