Provided by the Center for a New American Security
Sharon Burke is Vice President for Natural Security at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to assuming the position of Vice President, she was a Senior Fellow at CNAS, co-authoring The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change; A Strategy for American Power: Energy, Climate, and National Security; Remodeling the U.S. Government for Energy Security: Preliminary Findings from the Big Energy Map; and Uncertain Waters: the U.S. Navy and Navigating Climate Change. She also led and designed an international war game focused on the future challenges of global climate change. Prior to joining CNAS, Ms. Burke was the Director of the National Security Project at Third Way. In that capacity, Ms. Burke advised candidates for office and members of Congress on the full range of national security issues, including the Iraq War, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and America’s role in the 21st century world. Previously, she served as a high-level advisor in the U.S. government on the Middle East, South Asia, and strategic communications, including as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State, a Country Director in the Department of Defense’s Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, and a speechwriter to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Secretary of Defense William Cohen. She also worked in Congress’s Energy and Materials program of the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, helping to produce a multi-year study of energy in developing countries. Ms. Burke received medals for Exceptional Public Service from the Department of Defense and the Superior Honor Award from the Department of State. She serves on the Leadership Team of the American Assembly’s Next Generation Project, served as the Middle East Advocacy Director at Amnesty International USA, and is the author of numerous reports, including Beyond Bush: A New Strategy of Constriction to Defeat Al Qaeda and its Allies. Ms. Burke graduated from Williams College and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she focused on international energy policy and earned a Certificate of Middle Eastern Studies. At Columbia, she also was a Zuckerman Fellow, an International Fellow, and a recipient of a Foreign Language and Areas Studies grant for Arabic.
Dr. Jay Gulledge is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security and the Senior Scientist and Program Manager for Science and Impacts at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Dr. Gulledge is a Certified Senior Ecologist with more than 15 years experience teaching and conducting research in environmental science. Prior to joining CNAS and the Pew Center he served on the faculties of Tulane University and the University of Louisville, where he developed courses in global environmental change and ecosystem ecology, among others. His academic research program is housed at the University of Wyoming, where he holds an adjunct faculty appointment. His research investigates how environmental change alters the natural exchange of greenhouse gases between soils and the atmosphere, and he actively publishes in the peer-reviewed literature on this and other global change topics. He also serves on the editorial board of Ecological Applications, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Ecological Society of America. Dr. Gulledge earned a PhD (1996) in biological sciences from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and M.S. (1991) and B.S. (1988) degrees in biology from the University of Texas at Arlington. He was a Life Sciences Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1997-1999) and a postdoctoral research associate with the Bonanza Creek (Alaska) Long-term Ecological Research Program of the National Science Foundation (1996-1997).
Christine Parthemore is a Research Associate at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). She co-authored the CNAS reports A Strategy for American Power: Energy, Climate, and National Security and Iran: Assessing U.S. Strategic Options, and contributed to the book Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change. Prior to joining CNAS, she worked as an assistant to journalist Bob Woodward on State of Denial: Bush at War Part III and The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat. She has contributed to The Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Parthemore has a B.A. in political science from The Ohio State University, and is a graduate student in Georgetown University's Security Studies Program.
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) develops strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defense policies that promote and protect American interests and values. Building on the deep expertise and broad experience of its staff and advisors, CNAS engages policymakers, experts and the public with innovative fact-based research, ideas and analysis to shape and elevate the national security debate. As an independent and nonpartisan research institution, CNAS leads efforts to help inform and prepare the national security leaders of today and tomorrow. CNAS is located in Washington, D.C., and was established in February 2007 by Co-founders Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy.
“Natural security” refers to the intersection of natural resources and national security, where access to and consumption of natural resources has national security implications. This ranges from superpowers that may be finding new constraints on their ability to project power to developing nations that may be finding new geostrategic strength in natural resources. Every step down the path toward global resource scarcity and global consequences is generating hardship, tension, instability, and even conflict – within and between nations. Today, natural security for countries all over the world is at risk. The CNAS Natural Security Program, launched in 2009, integrates previous programs on energy security and climate change with an expanded portfolio of natural resource concerns, including water, food and critical minerals.