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23.3.05_Existential_Scenarios.pdf
Abstract:

International security and defense institutions have acknowledged the urgent need to incorporate existential environmental scenarios and global environmental threats into the spectrum of international security scenario analysis. There are valuable contributions to assessing environmental security risks, for instance, by combining existential risk with security policy to develop a framework of existential security, as well as a vast array of applications of scenario techniques to environmental issues. Yet, there is still a lack of scientific, methodological, and theoretical foundations, as well as coherent theoretical frameworks. Diverse techniques with unclear processes limit many studies, preventing the advancement of further research on existential scenarios. This applies to the spectrum of plausible existential environmental catastrophes, particularly those that are non-anthropogenic, uncertain, and complex, and potentially affect the entire planet. This study suggests that the absence of a narrowly structured research area results in a lack of adequate theoretical foundations. Such a structured research area would help unlock current theoretical stagnation and enable the development of a foundational theoretical framework to evaluate the basis of related inquiries. Through a novel evidence synthesis-based mapping analysis, this study contributes to a framework for existential security scenarios related to non-anthropogenic global planetary catastrophes of complex and uncertain nature.

Keywords: existential security scenario environmental security uncertainty complex scenarios planetary catastrophe survivability planetary defense
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Defense policy and planning, Economics, Environment, Human Security, Security
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Guerrero-Castro, Cristian E., and Roger C. Baars. (2024) 2024. “Back to Classics: Developing an Existential Security Scenario Framework for Global Non-Anthropogenic Catastrophes”. Connections: The Quarterly Journal 23 (3): 77-105. doi:https://doi.org/10.11610/Connections.23.3.05.
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