The Oxford Martin Programme on Security Futures explores how global security is being reshaped by climate change, artificial intelligence, pandemics and other systemic risks, and what this means for how societies understand and respond to risk in the 21st century.

In the 21st century, global security is increasingly shaped by risks still too often treated as peripheral, including climate change, pandemics, artificial intelligence, biodiversity loss and cyber risk.

This has created a dangerous mismatch between the way global security is commonly imagined and the way insecurity is actually experienced. Global military expenditure exceeded 2.7 trillion USD in 2024 – the highest level on record – even as climate shocks, pandemics and digital risks emerge as primary drivers of instability. Climate change is intensifying extreme weather, food insecurity and displacement. In 2022 alone, climate‑related disasters displaced around 32 million people, more than conflict. Pandemics and cyberattacks can spread across borders with extraordinary speed: COVID‑19 killed over 7 million people and cost the global economy roughly 12.5 trillion dollars.

The programme is designed to be more than a research exercise. Over the next three years we plan to develop a global platform, the Security Futures Lab, to engage partners and the public on five continents.

The aim is to shift how security is understood and debated: helping policymakers think about systemic risks in more joined-up ways, broadening public conversation about what security means, and making the case that systemic risks such as climate, health and digital / AI risks belong at the centre of security thinking, not at its margins.

Find out more: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/security-futures

If you or your institution shares this ambition, or is working on questions that connect to it, please get in touch: securityfutures@oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk