Climate and Security: Lessons from Two Years of Public Service in the Biden Administration
Dr. Joshua W. Busby
Professor of Public Affairs
University of Texas
Joshua Busby is a Professor of Public Affairs and a Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense.
Prior to coming to UT, Dr. Busby was a research fellow at the Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs (2005-2006), the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s JFK School (2004-2005), and the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution (2003-2004). He defended his dissertation with distinction in summer 2004 from Georgetown University, where he also earned his M.A. in 2002.
His first book entitled Moral Movements and Foreign Policy was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2010. In his book, Busby seeks to explain why some countries are willing to take on new international commitments championed by principled advocacy groups and others are not. Substantively, he explores the politics of climate change, developing country debt relief, HIV/AIDS, and the International Criminal Court in selected country cases in the advanced industrialized world.
His second book AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations with Ethan Kapstein was published by Cambridge University Press in fall 2013. The book is the winner of the 2014 Don K. Price award, APSA’s prize for the best book on science, technology, and environmental politics. This book seeks to explain the conditions under which social movements can transform markets to achieve to their ends.
His third book States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security was published in March 2022 from Cambridge University Press.
Dr. Busby is the author of numerous studies on climate change, national security, and energy policy that have been published by peer-reviewed academic outlets and various think tanks. He was one of the lead researchers in the Strauss Center project on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS), a $7.6 million grant funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. He was also the principal investigator of a Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA), a 3-year $1.9 million project, also funded by the Department of Defense. He has also written on U.S.-China relations on climate change for CNAS, Resources for the Future, and the Paulson Institute. He is also the principal investigator of a new two-year project on critical minerals and national security funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Dr. Busby is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador (1997-1999), worked in Nicaragua (Summer 1994, Spring 1996), and consulted for the Inter-American Development Bank (2000). Prior to working with the Peace Corps, he was a Marshall Scholar at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, England), where he completed a second B.A. (with Honors) in Development Studies (1993-1995). He completed his first B.A. (with Highest Distinction) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Political Science and Biology.