Name: Olivia Lazard
Location: Europe
Initiative Title: Transition Intelligence
Short Description of Initiative: A new institute focused on anticipating the geo-strategic implications of planetary change to navigate them, achieve an ecologically and fragility-informed set of climate transitions, and catalyse a transition of peace and security architectures for the planetary era. 
Sectors: Security, energy, climate, policy
Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-lazard/

Olivia Lazard works at the intersection of planetary security, global governance, and eco-technologies. With a background in conflict resolution and deep field experience across some of the world's most fragile contexts, she focuses on preventing and mitigating the risks tied to global competition over renewable and non-renewable resources.

Simultaneously, she researches how societies can adapt to climate and ecological disruptions in order to remain within a safe operating space, uphold a collective security system, and sustain governance structures that support open societies. Olivia’s work explores the nexus between decarbonisation and ecological regeneration — a critical foundation for the future of global peace and security.

Her new project, Transition Intelligence, is dedicated to analysing the stakes of transition through the lens of security and identifying international governance systems that classify critical minerals essential for the energy transition as global public goods. Transition Intelligence will develop methodologies integrating complex regeneration processes with political mediation, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. Her initiative will conduct research on the future of planetary security governance.

In this conversation, Olivia shares why the energy transition is not just a technical or financial challenge but a profound geo-strategic transformation; how we must confront the messy realities of conflict, fragility, and power shifts to safeguard a climate-safe future; and why building new peace and security architectures for the planetary age requires courage, solidarity, and a deep commitment to reality over idealism.

Every innovator’s story starts with a spark. If you had to pick one defining moment that set you on this path, what would it be?

Rather than one defining moment, I had a collection of them between 2012 and 2018. I was working in fragile and conflict-affected contexts in Africa and the Middle East and saw how mediation and peacemaking fields were missing the convergence of risks: climate disruptions, ecological plundering, nature-based conflict economies on one side, and the growing geopolitical competition for critical minerals needed for the energy transition on the other.

Later, I realised that climate action actors and funders were also missing the necessity of working on peacemaking and security for the energy transition. There was a lot of talk about how a climate-safe future would automatically equate to a peaceful future. But no one wanted to discuss the messy middle: the fact that the energy and digital transitions lead to power transitions, raising real and dangerous risks of conflict, fragility, war, and new forms of authoritarianism and fascism.

This is what I'm setting up Transition Intelligence to address: to understand the shapes and edges of the messy middle, to identify the tools we need to navigate it, and to redefine its outcomes — shaping a transition of peace and security architectures for the age of the planetary.

What system are you aiming to transform, and why does it need to change?

System of systems.

All the ways in which the energy transition transforms our relationship to ecology, technology, political economies, international security, norms, and the balancing of power. I am part of the people helping midwife language, relationships, norms, and architectures for the age of the planetary.

How does your initiative challenge dominant narratives or conventional models? What makes it truly “Unearthodox”?

We’ve tended to view the energy transition as a technical, technological, or financial challenge. But it is actually a vessel of geo-strategic transformation and power shifts, calling into question the ways we organise ourselves at the level of international and planetary security.

By debunking the simplistic narrative that climate-safe futures automatically equal peace, I spotlight blind spots — helping to navigate the complexities of energy, digital, and power transitions.

It’s Unearthodox because it sheds light on the dark underbellies of climate-related transitions, to protect and strengthen those transitions, not undermining them.

Photo Credit: Olivia Lazard

How has your multidisciplinary work shaped your perspective on solutions that single-sector approaches might overlook?

Working on peace and security architectures is like working on the scaffolding of societies and of the international community. Materials and energy are the base of that scaffolding — they shape the systems that balance power, norms, rules, and laws.

To build a resilient scaffolding for the age of the planetary, we have to work across geo- and bio-physics, thermodynamics, earth systems, economics, political economies, culture, governance, ideology, and security. We can't afford to focus on one at the expense of the others — we have to understand them all, in dynamic relation.

Throughout my life, I’ve worked with applied research methods and human integrity across conflict resolution, supply chains, mining, mediation, anthropology, ecological regeneration, climate and earth system science, security, energy, and climate policy. I could not function in the complexity we face today without dynamic, multi-faceted forms and modalities of knowledge and computation.

Honestly, how could anyone?

Innovation often requires letting go. What beliefs, assumptions, or practices have you had to unlearn to create real change?

I had to learn that peace architectures have a material scaffolding — they’re not dematerialised. They’re not just about values; they require material realities that protect those values. Understanding this helped me grasp the behavioural drivers behind realpolitik. There was a time when I might have judged people who operated through a realpolitik lens. Now, I am more equanimous — and better equipped to deal with the hard realities the energy transition demands us to face.

Today, I use realpolitik to test theories about governance and normative architectures, and to help midwife them. I am more attached to reality than to idealism or dogma. It helps me see the world differently, while holding core values of human dignity, transparency, poise, solidarity and freedom as my guiding lights. 

Photo Credit: Olivia Lazard

What does a successful energy transition look like, not just technologically or economically, but in terms of how people experience security and dignity in their daily lives?

Freedom. Rule of law.

Trust in political and societal systems.

Unhampered access to natural resources and habitable spaces.

Planetary and life fabrics that are not tech-mediated or modified.

Beyond funding, what kinds of support—emotional, relational, or otherwise—are essential for innovators to thrive?

Innovators brush against certainties and the sense of safety they provide. Real, groundbreaking, humane innovation requires looking at the things that don’t work and that we’re uncomfortable with. In the case of the energy transition, it creates cognitive dissonance: we want to work toward peace, but we have to deal with conflict, war, and fascism. 

My job is to bring these dark realities into the light — and I need allies who are willing to hold those truths, and trust that we can work through them.

Support means emotional courage, willingness to take risks (including funding and experimental forms of action across private diplomacy, security innovation, industrial action), and creative support: ideas, communications, connections — everything that helps the work ripple in all directions.

What motivated you to join the Exploration Co-Lab cohort?

The willingness to support unconventional ideas — the kinds that make most funders in the climate and ecology space uncomfortable.

In my case, that means engaging with security to protect the energy transition, and midwifing the concepts, narratives, languages, rules, and relations for the age of planetary security.

What also drew me was the Exploration Co-Lab’s spirit: none of us, including the team at Unearthodox, came with a script or rigid expectations. Support was offered with an open question: how best can we serve? This made the whole experience co-designed, generative, and collective — something we can all pay forward.

This insight is part of a series highlighting our first cohort of the Exploration Co-Lab. Read more about the Exploration Co-Lab here.

You can also read more insight pieces like this here.

The content of this piece represents the author’s own views and does not necessarily represent the views of Unearthodox or of any of its collaborating institutions.