The geopolitics of water: The "Nightmare Series" lectures launched at St John's

Professor Paul Kennedy of Yale University will deliver the inaugural “Nightmare Series” lecture at St John’s College on Friday 15 May, exploring the wide-ranging geopolitical consequences of a sudden, major contamination event.

What would happen if two billion people suddenly lost access to clean water? Professor Paul Kennedy will examine this disturbing question in the first of a new “Nightmare Series” of lectures, to be launched at St John’s College tomorrow.

Professor Kennedy, Director of International Security Studies at Yale University, will deliver a talk entitled “The day two billion people lost their water”. The lecture will explore the geopolitical consequences of a cataclysmic water contamination event on the Tibetan Plateau, the source of the great waterways of Asia including the Ganges, Irrawaddy, Mekong and Yang-Tse-Kiang rivers, which together supply drinking water for over two billion people.

The Nightmare Series, created by the Forum on Geopolitics, invites leading thinkers and practitioners in the area of geopolitics to reflect upon their own personal “nightmare” scenarios for humanity: the greatest potential man-made disasters that could be on the horizon in the near future. As well as outlining the precipitating event or cause of the nightmare scenario, and the social, political and economic ramifications that follow, speakers will also consider strategies and new ways of thinking that could prepare governments, organisations and individuals to prevent these events from happening, or better cope with the consequences if they do.

The aim of the Nightmare Series is to demonstrate the need for innovative, strategic forward planning at the highest levels of policy-making, and to illustrate the value of cutting-edge academic thinking to prepare for “real world” geopolitical events that may very well be just around the corner.

The Forum on Geopolitics, founded in 2014, is the first step towards the establishment of a new Centre of Geopolitics and Grand Strategy (CoGGS) at the University of Cambridge, which will provide training in international affairs to develop world-class strategists and decision-makers. Bringing together the brightest students and the most innovative international thinkers from academia, politics and business, the Forum aims to provide a space for cutting-edge research on the biggest issues facing humanity today.

The inaugural Nightmare Series lecture will take place at the Main Lecture Theatre in the Old Divinity School at 5:00pm on Friday 15 May and is free to attend. The talk will be chaired by St John’s College Fellow Professor Robert Tombs.

Details of further Nightmare Series events will be announced online at www.coggs.polis.cam.ac.uk. For more information contact Dr Maeve Ryan, Development Coordinator for the Forum on Geopolitics, at mcr39@cam.ac.uk.