MT26 Energy Seminar – Week 6: Looking at the big picture: aligning energy, climate, food, water and nature security
Alison Smith, ECI, University of Oxford
- Start Tuesday 17 Nov 2026 5:00pm
- Finish Tuesday 17 Nov 2026 6:00pm
- Venue School of Geography & the Environment
- Postcode OX1 3AN
- Register for event
Summary: This seminar, based on outputs from a recent research sprint on Environment and National Security, will look at how energy security fits into the big picture of environmental security. It will explore how energy, food, water, climate and nature resilience are interlinked, and how environmental degradation leads to cascading risks for national security. Finally, it will look at how to avoid potential conflicts between energy and other security dimensions, and consider how to break out of policy silos to support interventions with multiple benefits.
Speaker: Alison is a Senior Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, where she works with the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and the Nature-based Solutions Initiative. With a background in natural sciences and geology, she worked for 15 years as a senior environmental consultant, specialising in climate change, transport, energy and waste management policy. She then joined the University of Oxford in 2014 to work on land-use strategy and nature recovery. This broad background has given her a strong interest in looking at the big picture of how different sectors and policies interact, trying to maximise synergies and minimise trade-offs.