Securing our Climate
Interview with UK-based geopolitical and security risk professional, Alan Leung
Bonjour de Paris! 🇫🇷
It’s my favorite time of year to be in Europe, and I am spending a few days at home in France to soak in the magic surrounding the Olympic Games.
This month, I’m shining a spotlight on
, a UK-based geopolitical and security risk professional in the financial services sector and the brilliant author of the Substack newsletter, Securing our Climate.Alan and I met almost two years ago at a conference in Vienna, Austria, hosted by the U.S. State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC). We hit it off due to our shared interest in the intersection of geopolitics, climate change, and risk. His long-form analyses of all things security, adaptation and climate are perceptive and revealing, and include a nice touch of humor. So, I decided to pick his brain on how he approaches risk and decision-making in our increasingly complex world. Please enjoy!
Please note that the views expressed below are individual and personal and do not reflect those of any employer or organization.
How do you deal with complexity and compounding risk in your work/industry?
Knowing what you're trying to solve for is so important because that sets the direction for everything else which follows. It can be about a research question, a forecast, a business case, or advocacy. I've been in so many situations over my career where a question or query became overly complex because the question needed to be framed more clearly. People generally "know" what they want,, but they need help from solid project managers, risk analysts, problem solvers, and product leads to guide them to a question that is clearly defined.
Most of the problems we're asked to solve involve limited complexity, and we have some idea of the likelihoods. In my own experience, breaking down a complex idea, situation, system or framework into smaller, more bite-size components is a good starting point to explore risk - its nature, drivers, constraints, other factors it interacts with, and the kinds of outcomes it influences. For instance, when understanding the political stability of a country or its trajectory, it's helpful to break it down into broad factors, then synthesizing it back into an analysis and forecast (one great model is SLIMPETER, as laid out most recently from my esteemed colleague Ben Brandt). Each type of risk can be broken down similarly (operational risk in a payments process: inputs, process design and implementation, outputs, data systems). Collecting and analyzing data is often time-consuming, so having a clear, testable statement is essential so you and your team have confidence that their time is well spent.
Where it (well, one of the ways) can go wrong, though, is when the question is overly simplified or the scope too limited. Or when things are REALLY complex, e.g., modeling for future emergency management needs out to 2035 for your state or country. These formulations have a tendency to ignore risks that may a) build up over time or b) emerge from different sources. You may then need to be more exploratory and iterative in the analysis - flagging where things are most known to be vulnerable and then experimenting with varying factors, such as robust decision-making. Another example is if you're trying to solve for restoring public trust in a country's political system - drivers for resilience/risk typically build up over a long period. There is no one or two main sources for whether the state, judicial system, media, markets, and faith institutions are seen as fair, reliable, equitable, and worthy of belief.
Another source of where the analysis can go wrong is over the notion of "tipping points" or "critical mass." We're just not that good at predicting them if they can be at all. In the political risk context, they are notoriously hard to assess, context and sometimes culturally specific. We also tend to embed a bias towards stability and linear change, thus underestimating sudden, dramatic shifts. One attempt to model tipping points in the political realm was a study a few years back that found that if 3.5% of a society's population engages in nonviolent protests, then major political change outcomes are far more likely, but the research is not universally accepted. While not a silver bullet, tools like decision trees, red-teaming and scenario analysis can help balance systems thinking with targeted analysis.
With AI applications and cloud computing solutions becoming easily accessible compared with previous generations of analysts, techniques like Monte Carlo simulations and newer, AI-enabled modeling solutions can provide new insights at the systems level where it would not have been possible just a few years ago— modeling the physical and transition risks from climate change on a country, region or an organization is a major beneficiary of such technological innovation. And that's why there are so many incumbent and startup "climate AI" and weather modeling firms (MSCI, ClimateX and Tomorrow.io are three of many) out there plying their wares!
Finally, you need the right team with different skill sets but with the adaptability to tackle problems at a systems level. Curiosity and the ability to connect the dots, often from different and disparate sources, is a big asset. Are your people open to incorporating new ideas or sources, even if they are unfamiliar? Or open to challenging their own biases? Are they willing to do the hard work to solve ideas with different techniques and iterate? There are lots of resources on systems thinking, but I've found the UK government's guidance to civil servants as a simple, plain English place to start learning and applying systems thinking principles.
How can companies best navigate polarized environments? What’s the key to strategic decision-making?
Focus on problem-solving and distinguish the professional from the personal. Have the best team possible focused on it. What is your remit and what impact can you make? Whether you're a risk manager, resilience or emergency response officer, in business development, strategy or project management—really, any role—knowing the people in your ecosystem is essential. What does that landscape look like? What kind of internal social capital do you have? Who do you need support from to achieve your objectives? Solving systemic and complex issues typically requires an interdisciplinary approach to have a shot at achieving the outcomes you want. In a crisis planning and management scenario, do you have a) people with the right authority and influence to enact decisions, b) people with the knowledge and ability to ask critical, challenging questions without fear or prejudice, c) people who have the esprit de corps to focus only on what matters, and own their part of the problem and solution, and d) people who separate the professional from the personal? You're there for the interest of the organization, not yourself. Leave the egos at the door.
If you're holding the pen in these situations, your relationships, ability to see the pathway and execute, and levelheadedness are your greatest assets. You're not always going to get it right, so approach it from the perspective of doing the best you can, knowing there is the risk of failure versus trying to avoid mistakes. Be honest about what's possible and what isn't. Not all your stakeholders may be reasonable—but accept that, focus on common interests, and move forward.
Finally, when making decisions, consider the integrity of your decision. Will this stand the test of time, or is it vulnerable to "being twisted in the wind"? A resilient choice is one that may not always work but is defensible for the short and at least medium term—and sets you up to adapt long-term.
What is the biggest risk you worry about for our future? And what can we do about it now?
My greatest concern is the sustainability of the human response to whatever risk arises, anthropogenic or not. Hobbes remarked that life can be short and brutish, and political institutions exist to ensure we survive by restraining primal tendencies under a "commonwealth." The last three centuries have shown glimpses of hope checkered with extended periods of conflict and disorder—the post-Cold War rules-based order is an anomaly in comparison and is now fraying as the physical risks of climate change are intensifying and AI-enabled technologies bring great promise but also threat. Technology itself is a vehicle and will not "save the day" or drive us to an inevitable state of greater good for most people.
These societal and global problems require solutions at that scale and cannot simply fall on individual action. Feeling good about driving an EV won't move the needle. People, power, and institutions need to be harnessed to solve global challenges, and we remain far short of that to tackle climate change impacts with a long-term strategy. Leaders need to recognize that securitizing climate risk risks maladaptation if it does not include a global perspective. People should not only support a climate platform, but also leaders whose policies enhance community resilience and care for the disadvantaged and economically less-resourced. Overseas, take an adaptive approach to collaborating, confronting and competing with other nations.
What role do you think the private sector should play in creating a more resilient society/planet?
I think the private sector should, as they already are, seek out commercial opportunities in segments of the climate + adaptation and resilience space where it helps their bottom line and that of their customers. We are in an era where the moral imperative to be climate-conscious is being challenged again. But businesses understand resilience—for their enterprise, investors, and supply chains. Solving and investing to enhance operational resilience and security can introduce cost savings, avoided losses, and potential asset premiums relative to a competitor that did not incorporate new resilient practices and solutions, e.g., a logistics operator upgrading to an AI-driven GEOINT application which far more effectively predicts the likelihood and intensity of rainfall, or an agricultural firm incorporating permaculture practices and drought-resistant seeds in semiarid regions to reduce the volatility of yields over a multi-year period. In turn, as was the case with greater awareness of cybersecurity risks 10-15 years ago, investors can take greater care to understand the resilience of their investments to climate risks and ask the right questions of their investees' senior management.
What prompted you to start writing “Securing our Climate”? What is the most important message you hope people take away about the intersection of security and climate?
Coming out of the pandemic, I became convinced that climate risk was beginning to and will become, one of the biggest drivers of threats and events which would ultimately end up in my work inbox. Rather than waiting for those threats to be realized and to begin understanding their root causes, I decided to get ahead by learning everything I could about the climate space—physical and transition risks, sustainability best practices, disaster risk reduction, and policy and defense implications. I wanted to share my learning journey in hopes others in the security risk community would also undertake this learning process so they can adapt to the changing operational landscape.
The more I speak to people in security, risk management and across the climate risk space, the more exciting I believe that the future of this space is going to get, with lots of opportunities for risk and operations professionals already in the ecosystem. Governments are already beginning to securitize climate risk—for better or worse—and the impacts of those choices will be felt across our industry for decades to come. We as a profession pride ourselves at making an impact through anticipating, managing, responding, and communicating risk. I think our next great mission for our organizations and communities is to protect our people and enable them to thrive as the world gets hotter, wetter and more volatile.
Alan, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today! If you enjoyed today’s interview, subscribe to Alan’s Substack, Securing our Climate!