Climate Change and the Responsibility to Protect: Insights from the Pacific

The University of Queensland’s Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect invites you to attend 'Climate Change and the Responsibility to Protect: Insights from the Pacific'. All are welcome.

Join us for an expert panel discussion to mark the launch of the Centre’s report Climate Change and Mass Atrocities: Towards a Blueprint for Future Research by the 2024 Mary Wing-Ming Lee Human Rights Senior Research Fellow Ben Parr. Panellists will examine the overlap between climate change, conflict and atrocity research, with specific attention to how this research links to Pacific perspectives on the Responsibility to Protect and efforts to pursue international climate justice.

Panellists 

Dr Ben Parr, Mary Wing-Ming Lee Senior Human Rights Research Fellow 2024

Dr Ben Parr is a political scientist and government official with a special interest in climate change and defence issues. His PhD at the University of Melbourne, examined Australian climate and energy policy and diplomacy during the Howard and Rudd years. He has worked at the University of Tasmania’s Policy Exchange (Hub), University of Melbourne’s Sustainable Society Institute and briefly at the Energy Transition Hub where he is work focused on the politics and policy of the 10 countries that the former US Vice President, the Hon Al Gore, believed key to achieving the Paris Agreement goals. In 2024 he was awarded the Mary Wing-Ming Lee Human Rights Senior Research Fellow located at The University of Queensland’s Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and undertook research examining the relationship between climate-conflict and climate-atrocity literature. He currently works in a related role with the Australian federal government.

Mr Ilan Kiloe, Acting Director General, Secretariat of the Melanesian Spearhead Group

Mr Ilan Kiloe is the Acting Director General at the Secretariat of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) based in Port Vila, Vanuatu. He was formerly the Head of Political and Security & Legal Affairs for the MSG Secretariat. He recently presented the MSG and Vanuatu joint opening submission at the International Criminal Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Climate Change proceedings in December 2024. Mr Kiloe’s areas of interest are in international law, security and diplomacy, being a lawyer by profession himself with Master Laws (LLM) degree from the University of the South Pacific (USP).

Professor Matt McDonald, Professor of International Relations, School of Political Science and International Studies, UQ

Professor McDonald's research is in the area of critical theoretical approaches to security, and their application to environmental change, particularly climate change, and foreign and security policy. He has published widely on these themes and is the author of Security, the Environment and Emancipation (Routledge, 2012), co-author (with Anthony Burke and Katrina Lee-Koo) of Ethics and Global Security (Routledge, 2014) and author of Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security (Cambridge UP, 2021). He is currently completing an Australian Research Council-funded project examining comparative national responses to the security implications of climate change. 

Moderator 

Dr Sarah Teitt, Director, Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect 

Dr Sarah Teitt is the Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and an Australian Research Council DECRA Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland. Sarah’s research focusses on Chinese foreign policy in relation to international intervention, peacebuilding and humanitarian emergency response, and on the politics of genocide and mass atrocity prevention in the Asia Pacific region.

Event details 

Date: Tuesday 25 March 2025
Time: 5:30pm for 5:45–6:45pm, followed by light refreshments 6:45–7:45pm
Location: Terrace Room (level 6), Sir Llew Edwards Building, UQ St Lucia (view map)

Enquiries:
Centre Manager, Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect 
Telephone: +61 7 3346 6435
Email: r2pinfo@uq.edu.au