Call for Papers
"Air Power and the Environment:
The Ecological Implications of Modern Air Warfare"
The Conference of:
The Air Power Studies Division,
King’s College London
and
The Royal Air Force
Centre for Air Power Studies
26 and 27 August 2009
Environmental responsibility already lies at the forefront of our western world perspective and is constantly growing in importance. Ecological activism, which used to be a fringe movement, has now become mainstream. In 2007 Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize (and an Oscar!) for their efforts to raise environmental awareness. Greenpeace, which uses "non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems," alone has no fewer than 220,000 members in the
As a consequence, governments and their armed forces will doubtless be paying more attention to the serious ecological ramifications of conflict. Some already are. The Global Strategic Trends paper published by the MoD’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) illustrates the importance now being placed on these matters by cutting-edge British strategists.
Balancing strategic and operational needs with both military and environmental ethics is certainly not impossible, and responsible armed forces, including the Royal Air Force, are already thinking deeply about how best to balance what superficially seem to be (but actually are not) competing imperatives.
This innovative conference – the first on this topic in the
The organisers intend the conference – to be held at the historic and prestigious Royal Air Force College – to attract practitioners, policy-makers, academics and also university students (for whom attendance will be free upon presentation of a student id card), and for it therefore to wrestle analytically with big air power-related themes and topics at the heart of current strategy and security debates.
The conference proceedings will be published subsequently in book form by the Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies.
Topics for submission might include (but are by no means limited to):
· Climate change and security
· Strategies to prevent, mitigate, and redress war's environmental consequences
· Warfare and environmental law
· The historical targeting of oil and industrial infrastructure
· Contemporary targeting strategies for oil and industrial infrastructure
· Environmentally harmful / acceptable ordnance
· Decommissioning and disposal of ordnance
· Aviation fuel management
· Air forces and carbon emissions
· Air forces and alternative fuel sources
· Air forces and resource / waste management
· Real versus synthetic training
Speakers already confirmed include:
-
Air Vice-Marshal Peter Dye, RAF, ret'd
-
Dr Joel Hayward, Dean of the
Prospective presenters should normally expect 30 minutes per presentation, plus 10 minutes of discussion time.
Abstracts (of no more than 350 words) should be emailed or posted to:
Miss Victoria Allen,
Personal Assistant to the
Dean of the
Cranwell, Sleaford,
Email: vallen-kcl@cranwell.raf.mod.uk
Abstracts must be received by
All prospective contributors will be notified in late November.
Queries of an academic nature should be directed to:
Dr Joel Hayward,
Dean of the
(and Conference Convenor), at:
Email: jhayward-kcl@cranwell.raf.mod.uk
Tel.: +44 (0)1400 268020
We are particularly keen to ensure that graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty are able to play an active role in the conference.
In addition to making attendance entirely free to all currently enrolled university students we may be able to provide limited financial support (beyond purely transport and accommodation) to any students whose papers have been accepted for presentation.
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