As President Obama readies a new road map for addressing climate change in the United States, experts warn that poorly designed and implemented initiatives, especially in already-fragile parts of the world, could unintentionally provoke conflicts, rather than diffuse them.

Amid the growing number of reports warning that climate change could threaten national security, another potentially dangerous – but counterintuitive – dimension has been largely ignored. Could efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and lower our vulnerability to climate change inadvertently exacerbate existing conflicts – or create new ones?

“What are the conflicts or risks associated with response to climate change?” asked ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko at the Wilson Center on July 18. “How we respond to climate change may or may not contribute to conflict,” he said, but “at the end of the day, we need to do no harm.”

After decades on the periphery, climate change has made its way onto the national security stage. Yet, while the worlds of science, policy, and defense are awakening to the threats of rising sea levels, stronger storms, and record temperatures, debate continues over the means and extent of adaptation and mitigation programs. In a world of possibilities, how to decide which paddle to use to navigate uncertain waters?

“Climate change and our energy future are issues that are really front and center in our policy debates and public debates,” said ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko in this collection of interviews from New Security Beat’s Backdraft series. “One specific set of questions within this larger debate is about how climate change connects to a broader security set of questions. In that context we have a lot of questions and a lot of concerns – [and] potentially some opportunities.”

“Copenhagen was many things to many people,” said Chatham House’s Cleo Paskal, in a video interview with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, but “what was very clear was that India, specifically, was playing quite a strong, clear role in deciding how alignments would be working.” We spoke to Paskal following her presentation at a recent Wilson Center event.

We must do more than simply take our current understanding of climate-change risk and extrapolate it into the future, asserted Chad Briggs of the Berlin-based Adelphi Research in a video interview with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program.

If we were to actually use less fossil fuel, what would happen to today’s petrostates? “If the oil revenues dry up or even decline a little bit you might have a real serious crisis,” said Stacy VanDeveer of the University of New Hampshire, during an interview with ECSP. We spoke to VanDeveer following his presentation at the Wilson Center event, “Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation.”