“If you want fast money and are willing to take the risk, that’s the only way to get it,” says Abdullah Dieng, a fisherman in Bissau, Guinea, in a new IRIN article, “Fishermen turn to trafficking as fish profits drop.” Fishermen in Guinea have a problem: No one is buying their fish. “The lack of decent roads into the interior of the country, combined with prohibitive fuel prices, makes it too difficult for fish-sellers to transport fish any further than Bissau, creating a saturated market,” reports IRIN. As an alternative, the fishermen are turning to illegal trade in drugs and humans. By smuggling, they can earn much more money.

“The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates several hundred kilograms of cocaine go through the country each week, while according to 2004 figures from the International Office of Migration, one million West and Central Africans head clandestinely to Europe every year,” reports IRIN.

Fisheries are collapsing all over the world, but especially in Africa. The New York Times article “Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow” reports that there is almost no regulation of Bissau’s fishery, like most fisheries along the African coast. “Creating the Enabling Environment for Effective Fisheries Enforcement,” an event in the Environmental Change and Security Program’s fisheries series, explored some of the challenges associated with fisheries management. One of the most basic problems is a lack of information. Vladimir Kacyznski, a marine scientist with the University of Washington, told the Times that “no one has comprehensively studied the nation’s coastal waters for at least 20 years.” As a result, both local and European fishers have mostly stripped the area of its fish.

The lack of oversight is largely due to a lack of attention, and thus a lack of money. IRIN reports that “The fishing ministry receives just 5 percent of the government’s paltry annual budget, despite fishing bringing in 40 percent of the country’s annual revenues, and most of this money can only cover staff salaries.” Without increased funding and attention, it is unlikely that a solution will emerge to the environmental and economic problems that force fishermen to turn to illegal and dangerous activities. As the source of their livelihoods disappears, they have fewer and fewer options. Said one consultant quoted in the Times story, “The sea is being emptied.” MORE

Women “are the most likely to bear the heaviest burdens when natural disasters strike,” says a new report from the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), “Gender, Climate Change and Human Security: Lessons from Bangladesh, Ghana and Senegal.” The report also encourages governments to allow women to play larger roles as agents of preparedness, mitigation, and adaptation.

Climate change, the report says, “forms a major threat to human security at national and livelihood levels.” Because 70 percent of people living below the poverty line are women, their livelihoods are threatened most acutely by climate change and the natural disasters it is likely to make increasingly frequent and severe. In addition, women are often responsible for “tasks such as food collection and energy supply for the household as well as many care-giving tasks, such as caring for the children, sick, elderly, the home and assets.” In the wake of a natural disaster, these activities can become nearly impossible, and being responsible for them can prevent women from migrating from disaster zones, despite the burden of living where disaster has struck. This migration, the authors write, has significant impacts on those who stay as well as those who leave, as “the relocation of people has severe impacts on social support networks and family ties—mechanisms that have a crucial value for women.”

Losing over half a million citizens to natural disasters between 1970 and 2005 has given Bangladesh the highest disaster mortality rate in the world, and gender-neutral data collection makes it difficult to determine gender-specific outcomes. From the data that does exist, the report notes that following the cyclone and flood disasters of 1991, for example, the death rate among adult women (20-44 years of age) was 71 per 1000, almost five times higher than the rate of 15 per 1000 for adult men.

There is consensus that South Asia is among the regions most affected by climate change, the report says, and that Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the region. For the 80 percent of Bangladeshi women who live in rural areas and are solely responsible for water and firewood collection, food preparation, and family health care, the future appears increasingly imperiled.

A study published last year in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers confirmed that natural disasters decrease the life expectancy of women much more dramatically than men; that the more intense the disaster, the stronger this effect; and that the wealthier the women, the less they are affected by this phenomenon.

Even as women suffer disproportionately from climate change and natural disasters, the report says, “women are more often overlooked as potential contributors to climate change solutions,” and their ability to contribute to preparation, mitigation, and rehabilitation efforts is undervalued. The report recommends that countries develop National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) that involve women as contributors to adaptation processes and work toward “improving human security in the context of climate change from a gender perspective.”
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The land of Niger’s Tuareg Bedouin tribes—and thus the Tuareg way of life—is drying up. The steadily advancing Sahara desert is swallowing northern Niger at a rate of six kilometers per year, part of a centuries-old process recently accelerated by climate change and groundwater withdrawals by the nation’s booming uranium mining industry. MORE

Share your thoughts and ask experts questions about “climate refugees” and other hot environmental migration topics at two upcoming online discussions.

On July 30, from 1-2 p.m., Population Reference Bureau’s Jason Bremner will take questions on “Environmental Change: What Are the Links With Migration?” Bremner, who spent several years studying migration and environment links in the Galapagos and Amazon regions in Latin America, will answer your questions about the relationships between migration and the environment, current trends, and future migrations related to environmental change. You may submit questions in advance or during the discussion at http://discuss.prb.org

From August 18-29, a cyberseminar sponsored by PERN and the Environmental Change & Security Program tackles “Environmentally Induced Population Displacements.” In an online seminar, experts and network members will analyze the evidence for environment’s role in migration, including the potential for future population displacements as a result of climate change. PERN Cyberseminars are conducted using a standard email discussion list; instructions are online. MORE

In the Central Albertine Rift, which runs from the northern end of Lake Albert to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, “environmental factors are increasingly an underlying cause of instability, conflict and unrest,” says a new report from the Institute for Environmental Security, Charcoal in the Mist, which outlines environmental security issues and initiatives in the Albertine Rift region.

Part of the larger Great Rift Valley, the Central Albertine Rift encompasses portions of Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The area is one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, but is also a geopolitical hotspot, producing critical natural resources for a number of nations recently emerging from devastating civil wars. Lake Victoria, the birthplace of the Nile River, sits in this region, which means that the watchful eyes of its riparian states are trained at all times on the politics of the area. The Albertine Rift is also home to Africa’s Great Lakes, each of which straddles multiple nations and provides significant income to surrounding communities. Questions of access to these waters only heighten existing geopolitical tensions.

Charcoal in the Mist cites armed rebels, illegal mining, and a growing population’s increasing demands for food and energy as threats to regional environmental security. Virunga National Park, an internationally prized wilderness preserve in the DRC, has fallen victim to these pressures. Rampant poaching and illegal mining, as well as conflicts in the DRC and Rwanda, have left park authorities unable to protect the 7,800 square kilometer park. A timeline from National Geographic dramatically illustrates how violent conflict has disrupted conservation efforts in Virunga.

The “interconnectedness between natural resources, development and security” in the Central Albertine Rift region reinforces the need for innovative approaches to address these issues. For example, according to the report, population density around protected areas in this region is far higher than in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and the continually growing population already exceeds the capacity of local resources. The area’s population swelled with thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war in Rwanda in the 1990s, and simmering tensions continue to push people away from conflict zones and toward the relative calm of the Albertine Rift. Similarly, conflict stemming from the civil war in DRC, which lasted from 1998 until 2003, has beset North Kivu province. Rebel armies continue to clash in the region, restricting the ability of development organizations to work there and limiting the livelihoods of the local population.

The authors of Charcoal in the Mist call for more comprehensive mapping and monitoring of the Central Albertine Rift ecosystem in order to promote effective policies to address the region’s challenges. They also advocate for enhancing property rights to address fundamental conflicts over land, strengthening environmental law, dampening the illegal natural resource trade, and more aggressively protecting Virunga National Park. They believe that transboundary environmental cooperation has the potential to preserve both the ecological integrity and political stability of this important region.
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An independent evaluation group recently reported that while the World Bank has been a vocal supporter of environmentally sustainable practices, it has not followed through on those pledges.

The report, Environmental Sustainability: An Evaluation of World Bank Group Support, states that “addressing environmental degradation and ensuring environmental sustainability are inextricably linked to the World Bank Group’s mandate to reduce poverty and improve people’s lives.” It urges greater coordination between the World Bank, IFC, and MIGA, as well as with external partners, and calls for improving assessments of the environmental impacts of World Bank interventions.

“It is clear now from the Amazon to India that if environmental sustainability is not raised as a priority, then all bets are off,” Vinod Thomas, the director general of the Independent Evaluation Group, told the New York Times. When pressed about the related issue of preventing the impact of natural disasters, Thomas told Revkin, “Even where disasters recur, the preventive side gets neglected, for political reasons. Reconstruction gets photos.”

At the Wilson Center launch of the new book Greening Aid, former World Bank advisor Robert Goodland said that “The World Bank Group…is de-greening itself,” criticizing a new Bank project:

The project manufactures cheeses in India, flies them to Japan to supply Pizza Hut. Project appraisal omitted any assessment of greenhouse gas emissions or climate risks; accountability is zero, in terms of respecting local religious taboos on holy cows. In this project the World Bank promotes the interests of the well-to-do, flying food away from those who need more to those that don’t. Despite soaring claims of fighting the global food crisis and climate change, the bank makes cows fly.

The authors of Greening Aid?: Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance found that absolute levels of dirty aid have remained relatively constant, while absolute levels of environmental aid have risen dramatically. But despite its absolute rise over the past several decades, environmental aid remains just 10 percent of total aid because neutral aid has increased significantly. Bilateral donors have greened the most, “a bit of a surprise,” said coauthor J. Timmons Roberts, given that so much emphasis has been placed on improving the practices of multilateral donors like the World Bank. The five bilateral donors with the highest per capita environmental aid from 1995-1999 were Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan.

As Revkin asked in his blog dotEarth, “As the world heads toward nine billion people, with most population growth in the poorest places, how can prosperity be spurred — by lenders or in other ways — without erasing the planet’s natural assets?”

Note: ECSP interns Sonia Schmanski and Daniel Gleick contributed to this post. MORE

“Women are key to the development challenge,” says Strategies for Promoting Gender Equity in Developing Countries, but “gender mainstreaming has been associated with more failures than gains.” Detailing findings from an April 2007 conference co-sponsored by the Wilson Center and the Inter-American Foundation, the report calls for a redesigned approach operating on multiple fronts. Blogging about the report, About.com’s Linda Lowen dubs the gap between women and men in developing countries a “Grand Canyon-like divide” compared to the “crack in the sidewalk” faced by Western women.

A Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder on Angola—now Africa’s leading oil producer—tackles the familiar paradox of extreme poverty in resource-rich countries. Burdened by “an opaque financial system rife with corruption,” Angola’s leaky coffers are filling up with Chinese currency. As Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos put it, “China needs natural resources, and Angola wants development.” FastCompany.com’s “Special Report: China In Africa” criticizes the overwhelming Chinese presence in Africa: “The sub-Sahara is now the scene of one of the most sweeping, bare-knuckled, and ingenious resource grabs the world has ever seen.”

In Scientific American’s “Facing the Freshwater Crisis,” Peter Rogers writes that the demands of increasing population, along with increasingly frequent droughts due to climate change, signal rough waters ahead, and calls for major infrastructure investments to prevent catastrophe. Closer to home, Circle of Blue reports on a new era of water scarcity in the United States, and director Jim Thebaut’s documentary “Running Dry: The American Southwest” takes a look at the hard-hit region.

Pastoralists are socially marginalized in many countries, making them highly vulnerable to climate change despite their well-developed ability to adapt to changing conditions, reports the International Institute for Environment and Development in “Browsing on fences: Pastoral land rights, livelihoods and adaptation to climate change.” The paper notes that the “high rate of development intervention failure” has worsened the situation, and calls for giving pastoralists “a wider range of resources, agro-ecological as well as socio-economic,” to protect them.
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Speaking at the Wilson Center on May 16, Leona D’Agnes described Philippine fisheries as the “global epicenter of marine biodiversity.” A little more than a month later, on June 21, a ferry transporting 22,000 pounds of toxic cargo crossed paths with Typhoon Frank and capsized off the Philippine island of Sibuyan. In addition to the endosulfan (a pesticide banned in the United States) buried within its hold, the ferry carried some 850 passengers; 56 survived the wreck, 173 are confirmed dead, and more than 600 are still missing—their bodies presumed trapped within the wreckage of the ship.

Due to concern about releasing the endosulfan or the 70,000 gallons of oil into the surrounding water, and disagreement over how best to remove the cargo, recovery efforts have yet to begin, though Sulpicio Lines Inc., owner of the vessel, recently agreed to a 40-day time frame for removing the cargo and the bodies inside the ferry.

Though there have been no leaks, fishermen in the area have been banned from plying their trade in the weeks since the incident. Fishing communities can ill afford this sort of livelihood disruption. As D’Agnes explained, “fishermen are the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.” One such fisherman, Walden Royo, agreed with this assessment and spoke for many in his community when he said that the country’s actions in the wake of the event are “slowly killing us.” The island’s remoteness has impeded the delivery of relief supplies, and rural fishing communities often lack access to alternative livelihoods. Municipal fisheries, D’Agnes reported, provide 80 percent of the protein requirements of residents of these villages.

On July 10, 1,000 fishermen from Sibuyan gathered their boats around the bow of the ferry to sing a prayer for the victims and push for removal of the wreckage. There is often conflict between protecting the environment and protecting livelihoods, but in this case, the government has to choose between exposing fishermen and their families to potentially toxic waters and cutting off their primary source of income and food. Royo expressed the desperation felt by many of his peers to IRIN news: “When will they begin to realize that we need to fish?” he wondered. “When our children are already dead?” MORE

Desertification is a serious problem for the land bordering—one might say being swallowed up by—the Sahara desert. But help is on the way for this huge swath of the continent. Three years after the idea was initially floated, the Great Green Wall project, which is intended to slow the Sahara’s southward march, is underway, after being formally approved at the Community of Sahel-Saharan States summit in Benin last month.

The first phase of the project will last for two years and will, with a $3 million budget, create a tract of trees 7,000 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide. Planting will begin in September 2008 and will involve representatives and consultants from a number of affected countries, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Nigeria. The second planting phase will take place on the eastern part of the continent and will be undertaken in partnership with Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, and Djibouti. This second phase has not been formalized yet, but it is expected that some arrangement will be reached through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Horn of Africa. MORE

“Over the past two decades, the extraction and trade of natural resources have helped incite, fuel and prolong violent conflicts,” write Alec Crawford and Oli Brown in Growing Unrest: The links between farmed and fished resources and the risk of conflict, a new report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. “The links between natural resources and conflict are established and widely accepted,” point out the authors; however, “it has become ‘received wisdom’ that these linkages only apply to a certain subset of natural resources—oil, diamonds, certain minerals (e.g., coltan), illegal narcotics and timber.” This notion is mistaken, as agriculture and fisheries are also often involved in funding and instigating conflict.

The authors highlight four case studies before making general policy recommendations. In the Côte d’Ivoire, instabilities in the cocoa market during the 1980s exacerbated social tensions, eventually leading to civil war. During this war, both sides taxed cocoa transport or production to finance their war effort.

In Somalia, where limited ports make it easy to control exports, a tax on bananas was a significant source of income for many Somali warlords during the 1990s. In present-day Somalia, many warlords have turned to the fishing market, funding local militias by issuing false fishing licenses to foreign companies for millions of dollars.

The final case examines the tensions over water-sharing agreements in Central Asia between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Water necessary for irrigating cotton, the local economic staple, has been a contentious issue for years, and resolution has not been forthcoming even as irrigation infrastructure continues to decay.

Based on these case studies, the authors report three main findings:

• By controlling the trade of agricultural or marine commodities, gangs, warlords, or sovereign nations can extract wealth and use it to support conflicts and other oppressive activities.
• When the prices of farmed and fished goods are volatile, they can lead to instability and conflict in nations without stable markets or political systems.
• Agricultural and marine goods can be seen as “proxies” for more basic commodities, such as freshwater and land — and thus part of larger conflicts over those resources.

The report offers 14 recommendations — falling into two general categories — for policymakers hoping to minimize conflict over these resources. It recommends expanding existing structures – such as extending sanctions that currently punish those who use diamonds, oil, coltan, and other natural resources to fund conflict – to include agricultural and marine commodities. It also recommends stabilizing dangerous situations, such as easing institutional tensions when faced with shortages or conflicting interests, or cracking down on opportunities for exploitation caused by price volatility.

Those interested in natural resources and conflict should expand their focus to fished and farmed resources instead of remaining trapped in a worldview in which only certain commodities are important. The authors write, “It is not the type of resource that matters, but rather how it is produced and traded, to what ends the revenues are put, and what the associated impact is on people and their environments.”

ECSP examined the challenges facing the world’s fisheries in a recent meeting series available at www.wilsoncenter.org/fish. An ongoing series looks at natural resources and conflict: www.wilsoncenter.org/newhorizons.

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“Corruption in the water sector puts the lives and livelihoods of billions of people at risk,” says the Global Corruption Report 2008, a new report from the Institute for Security Studies and Transparency International, warning that pervasive corruption in the water sector could have devastating consequences for economic and social development, as well as the health of ecosystems worldwide. The report urges policymakers and scholars to address the issue of corruption in the water sector in the context of broader climate change and development discussions.

News coverage of the global water crisis focuses on the familiar circumstance of too many people and not enough water. This report takes a slightly different stance, suggesting that the water crisis is actually a water governance crisis, of which corruption is a major component.

According to the report, 80 percent of health problems in the developing world can be attributed to inadequate access to clean water and sanitation. The report cites China as a particularly egregious example, noting that 90 percent of Chinese cities pull from polluted aquifers and that 75 percent of river water in urban areas is too contaminated for drinking or fishing. This situation violates Chinese environmental standards, but corruption allows polluters to circumvent legal enforcement.

International water governance is increasingly critical. Forty percent of the world’s population draws on water from international water basins. Numerous countries depend on the Nile River, from its origin in the Rift Valley to its mouth on the Mediterranean. The report finds, “where corruption disrupts the equitable sharing of water between countries and communities, it also threatens political stability and regional security.” Ken Conca’s Governing Waterdelves more deeply into the links between poor water governance and new forms of social conflict, which are summarized in a Navigating Peace research brief.


But sharing water resources can also build confidence and increase dialogue. For example, Israel and Palestine discuss the Dead Sea and the Jordan River more frequently, and more productively, than they do political rapprochement.

Water’s global nature demands a comprehensive response involving governments, inter- and nongovernmental organizations, and local institutions. The report puts forth four recommendations:

• Improve measurements of existing corruption;
• Strengthen regulatory oversight;
• Develop a more transparent public procurement process; and
• Implement transparency and participation as guiding principles for all water governance.

ECSP has long been involved in the discussion of water’s place in the international political dialogue. In “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,” published in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs, Geoff Dabelko and Karin Bencala explain how transboundary water use can facilitate cooperation as readily as conflict. It would be a boon to the global community if that cooperation could be harnessed to promote stronger, more transparent water governance.

Graphic used courtesy Transparency International. All rights reserved. ©Transparency International 2008.
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“The U.S. military recognizes that the use of conventional military force is of limited use” in advancing U.S. national security, said Reuben Brigety II, director of the Sustainable Security Program at the Center for American Progress (CAP), at a July 18 launch of his report Humanity as a Weapon of War: Sustainable Security and the Role of the U.S. Military. The tragedy of 9/11, as well as the setbacks experienced in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, emphasized to the U.S. defense community that although combat operations remain critical to its mission, the military must also strive to “prevent conflict from emerging in the first place” through activities that stabilize societies, economies, and governments.

Brigety cited efforts by the Combined Joint Task Force for the Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), the nascent U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), and the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) as examples of the U.S. military’s growing appreciation of how development assistance can help stabilize countries, build goodwill toward the United States, and increase U.S. understanding of local socio-political and economic conditions. In recent years, CJTF-HOA has dug wells, vaccinated livestock, and provided health services, while SOUTHCOM has a long track record of providing humanitarian assistance in Central and South America, particularly in the wake of natural disasters.

Although Brigety asserted that it is nothing “new for the military to be involved in addressing basic human needs,” he and his fellow presenters—Elisabeth Kvitashvili of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), James Schear of the Institute for National Security Studies, and Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations—agreed that the Department of Defense (DoD) has been undertaking an increasing share of the U.S. government’s development activities in recent years. As Brigety’s report notes, the “share of the U.S. government’s official development assistance, or ODA, spent by the Defense Department increased to 22 percent in 2005, the last year for which complete data is available, from 3.5 percent in 1998. Over the same time period, USAID’s share of ODA fell to less than 40 percent from 65 percent.”

Earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made waves when he said that “the United States military has become more involved in a range of activities that in the past were perceived to be the exclusive province of civilian agencies and organizations. This has led to concern among many organizations…about what’s seen as a creeping ‘militarization’ of some aspects of America’s foreign policy. This is not an entirely unreasonable sentiment.”

At the CAP launch, Patrick asserted that one reason why the DoD has become increasingly involved in development activities—in peaceful regions as well as violent ones—is the “massive budgetary asymmetry” between the DoD and the State Department and USAID. Gates made a similar point: “America’s civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long—relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world.”

Kvitashvili agreed that USAID is underfunded and understaffed, but said the solution was not having the military take the lead in development activities. She argued that the military—which, unlike USAID, is not staffed by development professionals—tends to engage in “feel-good, short-term, one-off” projects that do not lead to sustainable gains for local populations. Instead, she welcomed a stepped-up supporting role for the military in development activities. MORE

“Population, Health, and Environment: Exploring the Connections,” an original ECSP video, offers a lively, brief, and accessible explanation of population-health-environment connections, with examples and photos from successful programs in the Philippines. Presenter Lori Hunter of the University of Colorado, Boulder, spoke at the Wilson Center earlier this year as part of ECSP’s PHE meeting series. View the video on YouTube, then rate it, comment on it, favorite it, or post a video response. MORE

“They say good fences make good neighbors, and maybe they do. But what I’ve learned is that good medicine makes good neighbors, and it makes good foreign policy too,” said Tommy Thompson, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a press release received by the New Security Beat. In an appearance at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Thompson announced his new position as global ambassador for the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). “It is a tragedy,” he said, “that the world’s poorest citizens are suffering from diseases that have been neglected for too long, particularly when we can treat many of them for less than 50 cents a year.”

Thompson’s announcement came amid news of a $3.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to raise awareness about the diseases and advocate for increased funding for NTDs, which include leprosy, river blindness, hookworm, and elephantiasis and affect one billion of the world’s poor. Thompson, who will travel to Rwanda next months as part of his new position, was quick to articulate the broader impacts of global humanitarian aid for health. “Through medical diplomacy, we can win the hearts and minds of people in less fortunate areas of the world by exporting medical care, expertise, and personnel to those who need it most,” he said. “America has the best chance to beat the war on terror and defeat the terrorists by enhancing our medical and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable countries.”
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In a foreign policy speech on Tuesday attended by several of the New Security Beat’s authors, Senator Barack Obama said the danger posed by the price of oil “is eclipsed only by the long-term threat from climate change, which will lead to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine. That means people competing for food and water in the next 50 years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most disastrously, that could mean destructive storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline. This is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern—this is a national security crisis.”

“The US security community has been looking at environment and security links for much longer than the current attention around climate/security linkages would suggest,” ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko told the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, which published a piece examining climate change and national security earlier this week.

“The next president must strengthen civilian professional capacity to carry out diplomatic and development operations. More funding is needed to address the current 17 to 1 spending imbalance in staffing and resources between defense and diplomatic/development operations, and to reduce the use of contractors in foreign assistance programs,” argues a report from Refugees International, U.S. Civil-Military Imbalance for Global Engagement: Lessons From the Operational Level in Africa.

An opinion piece by Laurie Mazur and Priscilla Huang argues against blaming immigrants for environmental degradation. “Environmental impact is determined not just by our numbers, but by how we use resources—our systems of production and consumption and the policies that shape them,” they write. “It’s laughable to blame immigrants and population growth for traffic, as the [anti-immigrant] ads do, without mentioning, say, our chronic neglect of public transportation.” MORE