Deadline: 1 January 2011
The Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) program at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law has issued its first call for papers on environmental security, open exclusively to scholars from and based in Africa. The Call for Papers is co-sponsored by the Strauss Center, the Institute for Security Studies, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Mission and Topic: The goal of the Call for Papers is to publish a number of working papers on the links between climate change and security in Africa. The Call for Papers seeks to foster innovative African scholarship on these issues and foster a conversation between academics, practitioners, and policymakers in Africa, the United States, and the international community. Given its physical exposure and the immense challenges of adaptation, Africa is widely understood to be one of the continents most vulnerable to climate change. These effects are not likely to be uniformly distributed, nor are the potential consequences clearly understood. This Call for Papers seeks contributions that further global understanding of the likely location of vulnerabilities in Africa, the potential impacts of climate change on Africa’s political stability or security, and/or strategies for addressing these challenges. The Call for Papers is open to submissions from all disciplines. The paper can have a continental focus, a regional focus, a country focus, a local sub-national focus, or a mix of these. The review committee prefers submissions that will be supported by case study research.
Compensation: Up to three papers will receive a research stipend for case study or other field research, as well as travel support to attend an international conference. The author of the first-place paper will receive a $5,000 research stipend and up to $3,000 to attend an international conference. Authors of the second- and third-place papers will each receive a $2,500 research stipend and up to $3,000 to attend an international conference. In the event of a co-authored paper, the stipend will be split equally among authors, and the lead author will be eligible for the conference travel support. A condition for receipt of the research stipend is application to an international conference. If the author is accepted to the international conference, the author must make his/her own travel arrangements and will be reimbursed for travel costs up to $3,000. The research stipend will be issued upon the author’s completion of the publication-ready version of the working paper.
Publication: The Strauss Center will have the prerogative to publish the winning papers as part of the CCAPS program’s Working Paper Series, with an intended publishing date of August 2011. All publishing is subject to the review and editing process. Authors must be available by e-mail and willing to edit their manuscript with the Strauss Center team before publication. After the paper is published in the CCAPS Working Paper Series, the author may publish the paper in journals or other venues upon notification to the Strauss Center. Prior to publication in the CCAPS Working Paper Series in August 2011, the paper cannot appear in print elsewhere, but it may be under review elsewhere. If the paper is published elsewhere after August 2011, the author is required to include the following attribution statement: “The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law contributed greatly to the production of this paper. A version of this paper was previously published as part of the Strauss Center’s Working Paper Series on Climate Change and African Political Stability. This material is based upon work supported by, or in part by, the U. S. Army Research Laboratory and the U. S. Army Research Office under contract/grant number W911NF-09-1-0077.”
Eligibility: Contributors must be from Africa and be currently based in Africa to be eligible for this Call for Papers. Contributors are not required to have a PhD to submit a paper. Preference will be given to authors from economically disadvantaged institutions and countries within Africa. The submitted paper cannot be previously published. The paper can be under review elsewhere, but cannot appear in print elsewhere prior to August 31, 2011.
Deadline for Submission: Midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, January 1, 2011.
Submission Guidelines: The paper and the author’s curriculum vitae must be submitted electronically to ccaps@strausscenter.org by the submission deadline. The paper should be no longer than 10,000 words including notes and bibliography. The paper must be a finished paper. The paper must be original work. Any work found to be plagiarized would result in the contributor’s stipend being canceled and travel assistance rescinded.
Judging Process and Announcement of Recipients: The papers will be judged by a panel of experts from the University of Texas at Austin and leading academic institutions and think tanks in the United States and Africa. Recipients will be notified on March 1, 2011.
Sponsoring Entities: The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin is a nonpartisan research center that engages the best minds in academia, government, and the private sector to develop unique, policy-relevant solutions to complex global challenges. The Strauss Center’s program on Climate Change and African Political Stability conducts research in three core areas, seeking to investigate where and how climate change poses threats to stability in Africa, identify strategies to support accountable and effective governance in Africa, and evaluate the effectiveness of international aid to help African societies adapt to climate change.
The Institute for Security Studies is a pan-African applied policy research institute headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa with offices in Cape Town, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ISS seeks to mainstream human security perspectives into public policy processes and to influence decision makers within Africa and beyond by providing timely, empirical research and contextual analysis of relevant human security issues to policy makers, area specialists, advocacy groups, and the media.
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change is a non-profit, non-partisan, and independent organization established by the Pew Charitable Trusts to bring a new cooperative approach and critical scientific, economic, and technological expertise to the global climate change debate. The Pew Center informs this debate through wide-ranging analyses that add new facts and perspectives in four areas: domestic and international policy, economics, environment, and solutions.
More Information: For more information, please contact the CCAPS program at ccaps@strausscenter.org.