SGRF: Applying Cold War Diplomacy to Climate Change
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Introduction
Note: Some names have been altered or omitted to protect privacy
Between 1981 and 1989, a series of secret meetings alternated between Edinburgh and Moscow that helped thaw the Cold War. Known as the Edinburgh Conversations, these summits were orchestrated by Professor John Erickson, a British military historian at the University of Edinburgh whose two-volume history of Stalin's war with Germany had earned him the rare trust of both the Kremlin and the Pentagon. Under Erickson's facilitation—conducted on sofas, governed by "academic rules," and lubricated by social events—Western and Soviet diplomats, military commanders, intelligence officials, and journalists discussed arms control and international security in a setting where candour was possible precisely because confidentiality was guaranteed. Sir Michael Howard, one of Britain's leading military scholars, would later declare that no one deserved more credit than Erickson for dissolving the misunderstandings that ended the Cold War.
Two decades after the Edinburgh Conversations concluded, Phillip Bruner, a PhD researcher at the University of Edinburgh encountered this history at a wine reception following an event he had organized on campus. The researcher—an American studying sub-state climate diplomacy with a focus on Scotland—saw in the Edinburgh Conversations a transferable model. If structured, confidential dialogue facilitated by a trusted neutral party could help resolve the existential standoff of nuclear deterrence, could a similar approach address the existential challenge of climate change? The question would lead to the creation of the Scottish Global Relations Forum (SGRF), a venture that sought to revive and adapt the Edinburgh Conversations model for a multilateral, multi-sector world grappling with interconnected climate and security challenges. What followed was a nine-month experiment in sustainable venture creation that would illuminate the tension between an inspired historical analogy and the practical demands of building a commercially viable organization in a politically sensitive market.
The Context: Scotland's Climate Ambitions and Diplomatic Aspirations
The SGRF emerged within a political economy uniquely favorable to its ambitions. Scotland's relationship with energy resources had been central to its national identity since the discovery of North Sea oil in the early 1970s, when the Scottish National Party's rallying cry—"It's Scotland's Oil"—won unprecedented electoral gains by linking resource sovereignty to the cause of independence. Although the campaign ultimately failed to secure extraction rights for Scotland, it established a precedent: energy policy in Scotland was inseparable from the politics of national identity and devolved power.
By 2009, with North Sea reserves declining and oil prices volatile, the Scottish Government had pivoted from fossil fuels to renewables with striking ambition. Scotland's Climate Change Bill (2009) committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least forty-two percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and eighty percent by 2050—targets that exceeded both Westminster's and the European Union's commitments. The Scottish Government pledged to meet one hundred percent of electricity demand from renewable sources by 2020. Crucially, Scotland's climate agenda was not merely domestic. The Scottish Government's International Framework called for managing Scotland's reputation as "a distinctive global identity, an independent minded and responsible nation," and the government actively engaged in international climate networks—the UN's States and Regions Program, the Brussels-based Climate Group, and the Montreal Declaration of Federated States and Regions.
This created an unusual institutional landscape. Scotland was not a sovereign nation and had no formal foreign policy apparatus, yet it was conducting what amounted to sub-state climate diplomacy through a constellation of overlapping organizations: Scottish Development International, Scotland's Futures Forum, Scotland's 2020 Climate Group (an independent taskforce of business, academic, and third-sector leaders established in 2009 to help deliver the country's climate targets), and the Scottish Low Carbon Investment Conference, which would host former US Vice President Al Gore as keynote speaker in September 2011. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was separately scheduled to address the Scottish Council for Development and Industry that very November.
Bruner, a first-year doctoral researcher in politics at the University of Edinburgh, had been studying precisely this phenomenon: how devolved governments below the level of recognized nation-states leverage global networks to further their political and economic aims, including on climate change. Through his research he had identified a gap. Organizations like the 2020 Climate Group addressed the environmental dimensions of Scotland's low-carbon agenda, but none tackled the underlying resource competition and security challenges that made climate change such a difficult multilateral problem. There was no organization dedicated to importing or exporting mediation expertise on these broader themes—unsurprisingly, since foreign policy was constitutionally reserved to the UK Government. But the Scottish Government's own international framework, combined with the precedent of the Edinburgh Conversations, suggested that the space for such an initiative existed, even if it occupied an ambiguous position between academic dialogue, commercial mediation, and quasi-diplomatic activity.
The Catalyst: An Event and a Wine Reception
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Bruner's path to the SGRF began not with a business plan but with a £500 event sponsorship. Struggling to fund his doctoral research on sub-state climate diplomacy and earning a meagre living as a tutor, he approached the University of Edinburgh's Public Policy Network (PPN)—a campus organization that facilitated dialogue on policy topics—with a proposal for a public forum titled "Environment, Energy, Economy: Scottish Solutions to Global Economic & Climate Crises." The PPN agreed to sponsor the event for £500, covering venue hire and refreshments. A referral from the PPN's director led to a meeting with Dr Andrew Kerr, who was transitioning from his role as Director of the Scottish Alliance for Geosciences, Environment and Society (SAGES) to become the founding Executive Director of a new initiative—what would become the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI), a University of Edinburgh-led partnership for low-carbon research and business innovation. Kerr contributed an additional £500 for marketing, speaker travel, and a wine reception.
The event, held on 9 June 2010 in David Hume Tower with approximately eighty attendees, was chaired by Simon Pepper OBE (now deceased), who had served as Head of WWF Scotland for twenty years and was a member of Scotland's 2020 Climate Group. The speaker roster included a Member of the Scottish Parliament, a senior policy adviser from the Sustainable Development Commission, and academics from the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews.
It was at the post-event wine reception that a pivotal piece of information surfaced. An audience member approached Bruner and described the Edinburgh Conversations in detail, explaining that a former University of St Andrews graduate had served as personal assistant to the original organizers—all of whom had since died. That graduate 'Iain Russel' (not his real name) was now the Managing Director of Mediation Scotland, an Edinburgh-based firm providing professional mediation services to corporate and individual clients. After conducting online research to validate the claims, Bruner used his event report as a conversation piece in a cold email to Russel, proposing further discussions. Russel responded happily and suggested meeting in person.
The Partnership: Privacy versus Transparency
Bruner's exploratory meetings with Russel, which began on 30 June 2010 and continued over six months, confronted a fundamental design tension that would prove central to the SGRF's trajectory: the competing demands of privacy and transparency.
The Edinburgh Conversations had succeeded in part because they guaranteed near-total discretion. State security officials, diplomats, and journalists could speak candidly precisely because nothing would be reported. But the Cold War context was bilateral, the participants were government-adjacent, and the overhead costs were absorbed by institutional budgets. The SGRF's ambition was broader: to convene representatives from the private and third sectors alongside public officials, addressing not just security narrowly defined but the interconnected challenges of climate change, resource competition, and environmental degradation. This required a revenue model, branding, and marketing—none of which was compatible with absolute secrecy.
The pair also had to differentiate the SGRF from the Edinburgh Conversations themselves. The Cold War was over; the balance of power had shifted toward multilateralism. Climate change could not be addressed through bilateral dialogue alone. The rising influence of emerging economies—India, China—and the concentration of corporate power demanded broader engagement. Both founders shared a scepticism of the UN COP framework's enforcement capacity and looked instead to bottom-up models like the R20 Regions of Climate Action and the Climate Group's states-and-regions framework as potential templates for more locally grounded, implementable solutions.
Their proposed solution was a two-level model. First-level "structured conversations" would be private and confidential, facilitated by professional mediators at Mediation Scotland's offices, with outputs shared only among participants. Second-level "spin-out workshops" would be public events, hosted at the ECCI, where willing participants could share findings and engage with broader audiences. The design attempted to preserve the candor that made the Edinburgh Conversations effective while generating the visibility and accountability that a commercial organization required.
Building the Steering Group
Russel recommended that the venture would need approximately £100,000 in development funding and cautioned that progress should involve only the "necessary" partners, given the political sensitivities of operating in a market where high-level climate and security activity was already underway. The ECCI, through Dr Kerr, agreed to provide £20,000 for a six-month research and development phase—enough to cover the ideation phase of the venture.
A steering group was formed in April 2011, meeting bimonthly at Mediation Scotland's offices. Its composition reflected the cross-sector ambitions of the SGRF: Iain Russel (Mediation Scotland); Dr Andrew Kerr (ECCI); Philip Wright, former Deputy Director of Climate Change for the Scottish Government, who agreed to serve as Chair; Ruth Wolstenholme, Managing Director of the Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research (SNIFFER); and Martin Valenti, Vice Chair of Scotland's 2020 Climate Group. The group designed a brand and logo inspired by the Council on Foreign Relations and the colours of the Scottish flag, and articulated the SGRF's purpose: to "transform the way international stakeholders share ideas, identify underlying interests and agree action plans for delivering solutions to climate and security challenges."
The Organizational Model
The SGRF's proposed structure was ambitious. A Board of Advisors or Trustees, comprising leading decision-makers and opinion-shapers based in or around Edinburgh, would advise on strategy, select conversation topics, leverage their networks to attract participants, and help locate further funding. The steering group identified two proof-of-concept topics that fell outside the scope of the 2020 Climate Group but within the SGRF's strategic outlook: the supply-chain vulnerabilities of critical raw materials essential to Scotland's low-carbon economy (identified by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency as a growing risk across twelve priority materials, from rare earth elements to cobalt and lithium), and the North Sea Countries Offshore Grid Initiative (NSCOGI), an EU-led collaboration to build integrated offshore energy infrastructure linking wind farms across northern European seas.
The NSCOGI topic was selected for a proof of concept. Participants with commercial interests in the North Sea offshore grid would be invited to a three-day programme: a first day of structured conversation involving a mock negotiation scenario, a second day of roundtable discussions chaired by a senior Scottish energy professional, and a third day of public forum at the ECCI. Outputs would include position papers, policy briefings, and audio and video content for dissemination through the 2020 Climate Group and Scottish Government contacts.
The Revenue Question
The question of how the SGRF would sustain itself financially proved to be the venture's central unresolved problem. The steering group debated at length whether the model should operate as a for-profit business, a charity, a social enterprise, or a trust. Each structure carried different implications for the type of participants the SGRF could attract, the funding it could access, and the degree of independence it could maintain from the Scottish Government and its existing institutional ecosystem.
The operational economics were challenging regardless of structure. An events-based organization catering to influential participants incurred high costs: exquisite venues, four-star hotels, fine catering, good whisky. The Edinburgh Conversations had avoided these constraints because participant costs were absorbed by institutional and state budgets. The SGRF would need either sponsorship revenue, membership fees, government grants, or some combination—each of which came with strings attached. Sponsorship from corporations risked compromising the neutrality essential to the mediation model. Government funding risked making the SGRF a subsidiary of existing state apparatus rather than an independent voice. Membership fees presupposed a value proposition that had not yet been proven.
The steering group also confronted a more fundamental tension. A formal partnership between Mediation Scotland and the ECCI was identified as necessary for the second development phase, with Mediation Scotland providing the confidential facilitation capability and the ECCI providing the public-facing venue and academic credibility. But the two organizations had different institutional cultures, governance structures, and incentive systems. Mediation Scotland was a private commercial firm; the ECCI was a university-led center. Aligning their respective interests around a shared revenue model proved more complex than anticipated.
The Outcome
A final determination on the SGRF's organizational structure and revenue model was never reached. The lack of consensus among the five founding members on whether to operate as a for-profit or not-for-profit entity was, by the team's own assessment, the principal cause of the venture's failure to deliver a proof of concept. The body remained unincorporated throughout its nine-month active period. It was later transformed—by Bruner and Kerr, acting independently of the broader steering group—into a private-sector initiative called the Green Investment Forum (GIF). The SGRF itself did not survive the transition.
Epilogue
The Edinburgh Conversations that inspired the SGRF have experienced a notable revival. In September 2024, the University of Edinburgh hosted a commemorative event at Edinburgh Futures Institute, bringing together John Sturrock KC—one of the UK's leading mediators—and retired US Air Force Colonel Fred Clark Boli, who had worked closely with Professor Erickson, to discuss the Conversations' legacy and their relevance to a world of resurgent geopolitical tensions. Coverage in The Scotsman, The Times Higher Education Supplement, and across the University of Edinburgh's own communications reflected renewed interest in how informal, academically hosted dialogue between adversaries can achieve what formal diplomacy cannot. The questions that animated the SGRF—whether the mediation techniques that helped end the Cold War could be adapted to address climate change and resource competition—remain as urgent, and as unresolved, as they were when the venture was conceived in 2010. The institutional infrastructure of Scottish climate diplomacy has continued to evolve: the 2020 Climate Group was dissolved in 2018 after achieving its initial objectives, while the ECCI (now the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute) remains a leading center for climate research and innovation. Whether the gap the SGRF identified—for structured, confidential, multi-sector dialogue on the security dimensions of climate change—has been filled by other means, or whether it persists as an unmet need, is a question that the next generation of sustainable entrepreneurs may yet choose to answer.