Faculty Profile
Michael Beevers
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies (2011)
Contact Information
on sabbatical 2022-23
Kaufman Hall Room 106
717.254.8036
Bio
Dr. Beevers specializes in global environmental politics with an emphasis on the linkages between natural resources, security, conflict and peace. His work appears in numerous book chapters and journals including Global Governance, International Peacekeeping, African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review and The Extractive Industries and Society, among others. His book, Natural Resource Governance and Peacebuilding in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict: Sierra Leone and Liberia (Palgrave-MacMillan) was published in 2018. He has worked as a research associate at Princeton University and as a consultant for the United Nations Environment Programme and World Resources Institute. He was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger.
Education
- B.S., Western Illinois University, 1993
- M.S., M.P.A., University of Washington, 2004
- Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2011
2022-2023 Academic Year
Spring 2023
MGCD 855 Glob Env Chg & Human Security
Local environmental constraints have to some extent always determined the security of individuals and communities. But today, localized constraints have diminished as the industrial revolution and the modern nation-state have exponentially increased the production of goods, the use of energy and international trade. This has led to an expanding global population that is by and large living longer, consuming more, and getting better educated. It has also led to consumption and pollution that is global in nature not because environmental change is shared equally but because the consequences (i.e., land degradation, deforestation, depletion of fish stocks, water pollution and scarcity, toxic contamination, and climate change) transcend borders and globalization increasingly locates sites of resource consumption far from the sites of resource extraction. These global environmental changes have, not surprisingly, provoked a robust discussion about the links between the environment, peace, and security.
