Under an earmark in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), free HIV/AIDS antiretroviral medication will be made available to military and civilians at a Vietnamese military hospital. The program, a collaboration of PEPFAR and the U.S. Department of Defense, will extend to other military hospitals in the future. Vietnam is one of 67 countries worldwide working to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS through involvement with militaries. MORE

The German EU Council Presidency will host a conference on European and national approaches and challenges to integrating environment, development, and conflict prevention in Berlin from March 29-30, 2007. Representatives from EU member states and the European Commission, civil society, the private sector, and the scientific community will identify and discuss key issues, and recommend ways to address the interdependency of environment, development, and conflict prevention policies and programs. Adelphi Research is a collaborating organizer of this conference.

Registration deadline is March 1. MORE

In the hills near Addis Ababa, the protected eucalyptus forest presents a lucrative but risky enterprise, reports the Christian Science Monitor. The forest wood, often collected by women and young girls, can sell at market and greatly subsidize meager Ethiopian incomes. But if caught, the women are beat or raped by forest guards. No one, it seems, looks out for them:

“When the guards find us with wood, they beat us hard,” says Maselech [Mercho], who is now 10. “If we give them money, they leave us alone. If they get drunk, they try to rape us. We will scream for help, but when we scream in these forests, there is nobody to lend us a hand.”

But the organization Former Women Fuel Wood Carriers Association is expanding its operations in Ethiopia to teach girls and women new skills and livelihoods that will keep them out of the forests, away from danger, and also protect the environment. MORE

Need to know what the Department of Defense is doing on the environment? The official version is readily accessible at the Defense Environmental Network & Information eXchange (DENIX). Lots on the mess DOD makes, the rules and regs for making less of a mess, and their steps to lower their ecological footprint.

Give us your comments on DENIX and tell us your favorite sites inside or outside the government. MORE

Violence against women was highlighted as a contributing factor to the spread of HIV/AIDS at the World Social Forum, taking place this week in Nairobi. Ludfine Anyango of Action Kenya-International argued that women still have little say in negotiating their sexual relationships, which increases their susceptibility to infection:

“Many women cannot even choose when to have sex or not. Many cannot ask their husbands to use a condom because in addition to being thought as unfaithful, they fear being beaten. The woman then has no choice but to continue having unprotected sex with her spouse.”

AIDS activists are calling for new and strictly enforced laws aimed at protecting women from all forms of violence, particularly sexual violence. MORE

In the wake of the 34-day conflict that began in July 2006, Lebanon faces widespread environmental challenges, says a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme. The post-conflict assessment cites an urgent need to remove toxic waste and other hazardous materials from bombed areas—particularly industrial complexes—before they affect the country’s waterways and supply. Additionally, agricultural land in the southern region, where the population greatly depends on crop revenues, needs to be cleared of unexploded cluster bombs. MORE

Population Reference Bureau (PRB) will host an online discussion of environment, poverty, and security trends and the ways in which they are affected by population dynamics on Thursday, January 25, from 1 – 2 p.m. (EST).

The discussion will be moderated by PRB Technical Director Roger-Mark De Souza. Questions can be submitted in advance. MORE

Trade, Aid and Security: An Agenda for Peace and Development, a new edited volume arriving in bookstores next week, looks at the ways in which conflict and state failure can arise from inappropriate or misused aid and trade policies, particularly when natural resources are at stake. Richard Auty and Philippe Le Billon contribute a chapter on managing revenues from natural resources, and Ian Smillie discusses the relationship between aid and conflict.

Forward and introduction available from the International Institute for Sustainable Development. MORE

Over the next decade China expects to have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women, said a report released last week by China’s State Population and Family Planning Commission. In esponse, Chinese authorities have made new commitments to slow the imbalance by curtailing fetus gender testing and sex-selective abortions. Efforts to promote equality between men and women are also being scaled up in hopes of staving off potential problems noted in the initial report: MORE

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia are two of several countries in the Persian Gulf beginning to invest in the water sector. In anticipation of growing demand for water due to population growth, UAE plans to spend $7 billion over the next seven years, while Saudi Arabia plans to spend $28 billion over the next decade, reports Gulf News. The article does not provide a breakdown of sector spending, but notes that $6 billion of Saudi Arabia’s investment will go toward desalination plants. MORE

Urging a better understanding of the roots of instability, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs on Wednesday said that fighting poverty will provide security benefits to the developing and the developed worlds:

“Instability will grow where poverty festers in an extreme form, that’s what we’re seeing in the Horn of Africa. This isn’t a crisis about Islam, this isn’t a crisis about geopolitics, this is essentially a crisis of extreme poverty.”

He cited mosquito nets, medicine, and fertilizer as three means to improve health and livelihoods among the world’s poor. MORE

Representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia came together with other international partners in Georgia’s capital city of Tblisi today to discuss the impact of environmental concerns on peace in the region.

Regional cooperation may be the solution to problems such as environmental degradation and access to natural resources, according to Ambassador Roy Reeve, head of the OSCE Mission to Georgia.

The meeting is part of the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC). MORE

Environmental problems such as climate and water scarcity pose growing risks to the world’s future, says a new report from the World Economic Forum. Global Risks 2007 offers sobering scenarios of threats quickly coming down the road: over the next 10 years, more than 1 million people in the developing world are expected to die from disease, while loss of freshwater services is projected to claim somewhere between 40,000 and 200,000 lives.
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Already the world’s sixth-largest country, Pakistan’s population could double to 300 million people in the next 40 years if the current rate of growth continues. Population and Welfare Minister Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain announced new plans to promote contraception and smaller family norms as a way to stem the tide. This marks a major policy shift for a country where discussion of such measures was once taboo, he noted:

“There was a time when you couldn’t talk about family planning, but now things have changed and we are also bringing clerics on board.”

The outreach plan will focus on urban centers and industrial areas, and include contraception as well as sex education. MORE

A World Economic Forum report ranks 115 countries—together comprising 90 percent of the world’s population—by their relative gender gaps. Countries were ranked by the relative inequality between men and women in economics, education, political status, and health and survival. According to London Business School Dean Laura Tyson, who helped shape the report’s methodology, the rankings reveal a lost economic opportunity:

“Countries that do not fully capitalize effectively on one-half of their human resources run the risk of undermining their competitive potential. We hope to highlight the economic incentive behind empowering women in addition to promoting equality as a basic human right.”

Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland have the smallest gender gaps. The Philippines, at six, is the only Asian country in the top 10. The United States comes in at 22. MORE