Monthly archive for October 2008. Show all posts
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Weekly Reading
›In an open letter on water policy to the next U.S. president, Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute urges the next presidential administration to develop a national water policy; highlight national security issues related to water; expand the United States’ role in addressing global water problems; and integrate climate change into all federal planning and activity on water.
A recent survey conducted by Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that land disputes are a key threat to peace in Liberia, reports BBC News.
Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the former Soviet Union, called for a global glasnost, or openness, on environmental problems. “This financial turmoil, which will heavily affect the real economy, was absolutely predictable, and it is only one aspect of the wider crisis of all the current development systems,” said Gorbachev. “In fact, there are connected simultaneous crises that are rapidly emerging. These relate to energy, water, food, demography, climate change and the ecosystem devastation.”
The World Health Organization has developed a plan for research on the health impacts of climate change, reports the Science and Development Network. -
The New U.S. Army Field Manual on Stability Operations: Visionary Shift or Missed Opportunity?
›October 17, 2008 // By Will RogersLast week, the U.S. Army released its new field manual on stability and reconstruction operations, FM 3-07, the 10-month interagency brainchild of the Army, State Department, and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Some have hailed the doctrine as a fundamental shift in Army policy that recognizes the significance of non-military threats to U.S. national security, while others have criticized it as a missed opportunity to critically re-examine notions of what constitutes security.
The new doctrine aims to shift the burden of fostering stability in fragile states from the Army to the State Department and USAID, which are better prepared to address non-military threats. To paraphrase Lieutenant General William Caldwell IV at an October 8, 2008, event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies: The Army is up against non-military threats that can cause widespread destabilization—such as, access to basic necessities like food, water, and shelter—and with its traditional mandate to win wars with overwhelming military force, the Army does not have the expertise to address these threats.
Instead, a new Civilian Response Corps under the State Department and USAID will receive crisis training from the Army to prepare for managing conflict scenarios. The Army hopes that this interagency effort will expand civilian agencies’ capacity to prevent instability from devolving into state failure, which increases the chances of the Army being deployed. Sustainability and human security are clearly viewed as ways to achieve stability and prevent costly military deployments, not as goals in and of themselves.
According to Geoff Dabelko, director of the Environmental Change and Security Program, it is important “to distinguish whether addressing sustainability needs is a tactic or a goal or both. It can be both for militaries but at times it is merely a tactic to achieve stability rather than a fundamental rethink of how security should be defined.”
Tad Davis, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, safety, and occupational health, recently said, with respect to military operations and access to water in Iraq, “You can get out there…and deploy to an area for conducting operations, but if water’s not there for drinking purposes and for cooking, showering, laundry, things like that, then you’re not going to be able to sustain the force.” Clearly, Davis views environmental sustainability as key to the Army’s operations, but not necessarily as a critical component of a lasting peace.
Yet others argue that the Army would be wise to adopt long-term environmental sustainability and human security as immediate goals, as they would reduce the frequency with which the Army is dragged into conflicts. Dabelko wonders whether the War on Terror might be more successful “if part of a diversified response to the attacks of 9/11 would have included an aggressive effort to address poverty as an underlying source of grievances around the world rather than having just a uni-dimensional strategy of use of force. The symbolic and the real impact of such a strategy might have been quite tangible.” Nonetheless, the Army’s recognition that security is broader than military force is a laudable step—hopefully not the last—in the right direction.Photo: Two Iraqi girls from Al Buaytha, Iraq, pump water from a U.S. Army-supplied portable water tank. Courtesy of flickr user James Gordon. -
Watching the World Grow: The Global Implications of Population Growth
›October 16, 2008 // By Will RogersIn a recent nationwide Roper Poll commissioned to study the U.S. public’s attitudes toward population, barely 50 percent of respondents believed there is a strong link between global population growth and climate change, reported Thomas Prugh of World Watch magazine at the September 30, 2008, launch of World Watch’s population issue co-sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute and the Environmental Change and Security Program. People need to learn about population growth’s impact on climate change and other indicators of environmental health, said Prugh.
To Grow or To Shrink? That Is the Question
Historically, governments viewed population growth as a sign of a nation’s vitality; some promoted it by offering incentives to have more children. Prugh noted that such pronatalist attitudes are far from obsolete: “Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared September 13th a national holiday for conceiving children. And couples who delivered a baby nine months later, which not coincidentally would have been on Russia Day, got refrigerators for that accomplishment,” he said. In contrast, many governments are now promoting voluntary family planning rather than population growth. But a lack of political urgency has limited their success. “Support and funding for family planning is actually flat or in decline,” Prugh emphasized.
Empowering Women and Expanding the Discourse
Population has always been an “incredibly gendered issue,” argued Robert Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute, which is one reason for the lack of public discourse on the subject. He called for a broader discussion of population and urged women who work in the sexual and reproductive health and rights fields to actively participate. If you “don’t talk about population from your perspective and from what you know about these issues, others will,” he warned, “and they may not know as much as you do about it.” For Engelman, providing access to family planning and placing population decisions in the hands of women “is natural—this is understandable—and in general, it’s a very good thing.”
The Good, The Bad: Urbanization
“This is the first year, 2008, in which half of us have become city-dwellers,” said Karen Hardee of Population Action International, a development that will have both positive and negative consequences. Urban populations have better access to family planning and education. However, urban growth can outpace local governments’ ability to enforce environmental regulations, treat hazardous and solid waste, and limit air pollution. At the same time, Hardee argues, technological innovation, access to information, efficient land and energy use, and better living conditions—as well as economies of scale—can limit urbanization’s negative environmental impacts. “Urbanization is inevitable, and it’s also accelerating, with most of the growth in the population in developing countries,” she stated.
Population and the Changing Nature of Security
“To be sure, rapid population growth does not have a simple causal relationship with conflict. And to suggest so would fail to take into account additional aggravating factors, such as poverty, poor governance, competition over natural resources, and environmental degradation,” said Sean Peoples of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program. But population dynamics can fuel instability and increase the risk of a country falling victim to intrastate violence. According to The Shape of Things to Come, a report by Peoples’ co-author, Elizabeth Leahy, countries with youthful age structures—where 35 percent of the population is younger than 15—have a 150 percent greater chance of seeing conflict erupt than countries with more balanced age structures, due to pervasive joblessness, lack of education, and competition over resources.
Since countries with very young and youthful age structures represent a great challenge to international stability, population should be included in national security discussions. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said, “We also know that over the next 20 years certain pressures—population, resource, energy, climate, economic, and environmental—could combine with rapid cultural, social, and technological change to produce new sources of deprivation, rage, and instability.” But there is hope of avoiding insecurity: “Progress toward more balanced age structures occurs when health care improves, leading to lower mortality rates and longer life expectancies, and when fertility rates fall, which happens when women and men have access to the services they need to choose their own family size,” said Peoples.
Photo: Thomas Prugh. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center. -
Protecting the Soldier From the Environment and the Environment From the Soldier
›The end of the Cold War coincided with a decline in the total number of armed conflicts around the world; moreover, according to the UN Peacekeeping Capstone Doctrine, civil conflicts now outnumber interstate wars. These shifts have given rise to a new generation of peace support operations in which environmental issues are playing a growing role. The number of peace support operations launched by non-UN actors—including the EU and NATO—has doubled in the past decade.
The environment can harm deployed personnel through exposure to infectious diseases or environmental contaminants, so preventive measures are typically taken to protect the health of deployed forces. However, because environmental stress caused by climate change might act as a threat multiplier—increasing the need for peace support operations—it is ever more necessary for the international community to conduct crisis management operations in an environmentally sustainable fashion. But can the deployed soldier, police officer, or search-and-rescue worker really act as an environmental steward?
I believe important steps are being taken to ensure the answer to this question is “yes.” The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations recently drafted environmental protection policies and guidelines for UN field missions and started to implement them through the UN Department of Field Services and the UN Mission in Sudan. Various pilot projects are underway, including an environmental awareness and training program and sustainable base camp activities, such as alternative energy use. These projects are coordinated by the Swedish Defence Research Agency and funded by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Within NATO, Environmental Protection Standardization Agreements increase troop-contributing nations’ ability to work together on environmental protection. The NATO Science for Peace and Security Committee is also funding a set of workshops on the “Environmental Aspects of Military Compounds.”
Furthermore, defense organizations in Finland, Sweden, and the United States have cooperated to produce an Environmental Guidebook for Military Operations. The guidebook, which may be used by any nation, reflects a shared commitment to proactively reduce the environmental impacts of military operations and to protect the health and safety of deployed forces.
While the United Nations, NATO, and individual contributing nations are trying to reduce the environmental impact of their peacekeeping operations, the EU is lagging behind. In theory, the EU should find it easy to incorporate environmental considerations into its deployments. Most EU members are also NATO members, so if they can comply with NATO environmental regulations in NATO-led operations, they should be able to do the same with similar EU regulations in EU-led operations. Yet comparable regulations do not exist, even though the EU is often considered environmentally proactive—for instance, in its regulation of chemicals. Therefore, for the EU, it is indeed time to walk the walk—especially in light of its growing contribution to peace support operations, with recent operations conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Chad, and an upcoming intervention slated for Somalia.
Clearly, no single organization can conduct all of the multifaceted tasks required to support and consolidate the processes leading to a sustainable peace; partnerships between military and civilian actors are indispensable to achieving global stability. We must do a better job mainstreaming environmental considerations into foreign policy and into the operations of all stakeholders in post-conflict settings, with the understanding that the fallout from a fragile environment obeys no organizational boundaries. One small step in this direction is an upcoming NATO workshop, “Environmental Security Concerns prior to and during Peace Support and/or Crisis Management Operations.” If militaries continue to contribute to climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, they will be partially to blame when they are called in to defuse or clean up future conflicts over scarce, degraded, or rapidly changing resources.
Annica Waleij is a senior analyst and project manager at the Swedish Defence Research Agency’s Division of Chemical, Biological, Radioactive, and Nuclear Defence and Security. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Swedish Ministry of Defence. -
Conservation Learning Exchange Highlights Climate, Energy, Population, Poverty
›October 15, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarThe Nature Conservancy’s first Conservation Learning Exchange, or ConEx, concludes tomorrow in Vancouver, Canada. It focuses on six themes: climate change and energy; poverty, population growth, and consumerism; ecosystem services; science and technology; working with others; and values and society. You can read more about the goings-on on the ConEx blogs. A sampling from today: “People, poverty and diversity are major themes running throughout this conference and the underlying buzz from the ballrooms to the bars is mission drift. In the sessions I’ve attended, over and over I hear that the Conservancy needs to bring people, of all races, religion and socio-economic backgrounds into our work. Conservation is not just about biodiversity, it is also about human diversity.” -
The Security Implications of Societies’ Demographic Growing Pains
›In their provocative article in The National Interest entitled “The Battle of the (Youth) Bulge” (subscription required), Neil Howe and Richard Jackson take a critical look at the limits of the “youth bulge hypothesis,” which posits that a large and growing proportion of young adults puts societies at greater risk for political instability and civil conflict. The authors’ bigger target in this article is an assumption they perceive as widespread in the security community: that ongoing decline in youth bulges will necessarily produce what the authors dub a “demographic peace.” Howe and Jackson argue that such an expectation is overblown, and that’s clearly the case: Researchers, including myself, describe the effects of a declining youth bulge in terms of lowered risk of instability or conflict (see articles in ECSP Report 10 and ECSP Report 12). Its effects have never been proven absolute or inalterable.
For me, Howe and Jackson’s strongest points lie in their identification of four complications that can arise at various points during the demographic transition:- Unsynchronized fertility decline among politically competitive ethnic groups, leading to shifts in ethnic composition;
- Possible instabilities arising from a secondary youth bulge (an echo bulge), created as the previous generation’s bulge passes through its prime childbearing years (see figure);
- Questions about whether fertility can decline “too fast”; and
- The implications of continuous flows of foreign migrants into low-fertility countries—in particular, European countries today.
Some of Howe and Jackson’s other points seem muddled and inconsistent with quantitative studies, however. They cite researchers who argue that the mid-stages of economic development are the most threatening to security, and then link this to the demographic transition by declaring that “economic development…tend[s] to closely track demographic transition in each country.” This is mistaken: An extensive body of research informs demographers that economic development and fertility decline have been only weakly linked, even during the European fertility decline. While in several countries (including Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa) fertility declined abreast of rising per capita income, none of the East Asian “tigers” escaped the World Bank’s low-income country status until fertility dropped to near 3 children per woman, even though this measure had been declining steadily for years.
Nor can Howe and Jackson validate their assertion that having one of the middle structures is riskier than having one of the younger structures. Studies using the Uppsala Conflict Database’s record of minor and major conflicts show that, from 1970-1999, the very youngest countries (median age less than 18) and the middle group (median age 18-25) both experienced elevated risks of the emergence of a civil conflict —and both have large youth bulges. As Leahy and colleagues have shown, the youngest group was at greatest risk.
However, there is a way to salvage Howe and Jackson’s point. When infant mortality declines rapidly in the absence of fertility decline, age structures actually grow younger—in other words, some aspects of development push countries back into the youngest, most vulnerable category. If this is what the authors mean, they could have been clearer.
The authors go on to contend that neo-authoritarian regimes are likely to crop up among late-transition age structures. Here Howe and Jackson cede demography too much power over a state’s destiny. If one considers Deng Xiaoping the architect of China’s neo-authoritarian state, Lee Kwan Yew Singapore’s, Ali Khamenei Iran’s, and Hugo Chávez Venezuela’s, then this thesis has little empirical support. None of these regimes were established during the latter part of the demographic transition. Deng, Lee, and Ali Khamenei actually hastened fertility decline from high levels. I will, however, grant that Deng and Lee grew powerful as their countries’ age structures matured, and as that maturity promoted economic growth and reduced political tensions.
Overall, I’m much more positive than Howe and Jackson. I believe that parts of the world will, indeed, be left more politically stable and more democratic when very young age structures mature. Look at much of East Asia. Few veterans of conflicts in that region would have expected that, in 2008, most of its countries would be listed as vacation spots. I find it hard to believe, as Howe and Jackson do, that the most advanced phases of the demographic transition—a period yet to come—pose the greatest global security threats. Of course, I’m guessing…and so are they.
Richard Cincotta is the consulting demographer for the Long-Range Analysis Unit of the National Intelligence Council.
Figure: Iran’s 2005 youth bulge could give rise to an echo bulge in 2025. Courtesy of Richard Cincotta. -
Environment, Population in the 2008 National Defense Strategy
›The 2008 National Defense Strategy (NDS), released by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) earlier this summer, delivers the expected, but also throws in a few surprises. The NDS reflects traditional concerns over terrorism, rogue states, and the rise of China, but also gives a more prominent role to the connections among people, their environment, and national security. Both natural disasters and growing competition for resources are listed alongside terrorism as some of the main challenges facing the United States.
This NDS is groundbreaking in that it recognizes the security risks posed by both population growth and deficit—due to aging, shrinking, or disease—the role of climate pressures, and the connections between population and the environment. In the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on climate change and the CNA study on climate change and security, Congress mandated that the NDS include language on climate change. The document is required to include guidance for military planners to assess the risks of projected climate change on the armed forces (see Section 931 of the FY08 National Defense Authorization Act). The document also recognizes the need to address the “root causes of turmoil”—which could be interpreted as underlying population-environment connections, although the authors provide no specifics. One missed opportunity in the NDS is the chance to explicitly connect ungoverned areas in failed or weak states with population-environment issues.
What really stands out about this NDS is how the authors characterize the future security environment: “Over the next twenty years physical pressures—population, resource, energy, climatic and environmental—could combine with rapid social, cultural, technological and geopolitical change to create greater uncertainty,” they write. The challenge, according to DoD, is the uncertainty of how these trends and the interactions among them will play out. DoD is concerned with environmental security issues insofar as they shift the power of states and pose risks, but it is unclear from the NDS what precisely those risks are, as the authors never explicitly identify them. Instead, they emphasize flexibility in preparing to meet a range of possible challenges.
The environmental security language in this NDS grew out of several years of work within the Department, primarily in the Office of Policy Planning under the Office of the Under Secretary for Defense. The “Shocks and Trends” project carried out by Policy Planning involved several years of study on individual trends, such as population, energy, and environment, as well as a series of workshops and exercises outlining possible “shocks.” The impact of this work on the NDS is clear. For example, the NDS says “we must take account of the implications of demographic trends, particularly population growth in much of the developing world and the population deficit in much of the developed world.”
Finally, although the NDS mentions the goal of reducing fuel demand and the need to “assist wider U.S. Government energy security and environmental objectives,” its main energy concern seems to be securing access to energy resources, perhaps with military involvement. Is this another missed opportunity to bring in environmental concerns, or is it more appropriate for DoD to stick to straight energy security? The NDS seems to have taken a politically safe route: recognizing energy security as a problem and suggesting both the need for the Department to actively protect energy resources (especially petroleum) while also being open to broader ways to achieve energy independence.
According to the NDS, DoD should continue studying how the trends outlined above affect national security and should use trend considerations in decisions about equipment and capabilities; alliances and partnerships; and relationships with other nations. As the foundational document from which almost all other DoD guidance documents and programs are derived, the NDS is highly significant. If the new administration continues to build off of the current NDS instead of starting anew, we can expect environmental security to play a more central role in national defense planning. If not, environmental security could again take a back seat to other national defense issues, as it has done so often in the past.
Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba is the Mellon Environmental Fellow in the Department of International Studies at Rhodes College. She worked in the Office of Policy Planning as a demography consultant during the preparations for the 2008 NDS and continues to be affiliated with the office. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
For more information, see Sciubba’s article “Population in Defense Policy Planning” in ECSP Report 13. -
Weekly Reading
›In Poverty: Combating the Global Crisis, a paper for the Better World Campaign, Wilson Center Senior Scholar John Sewell urges the next U.S. president to focus on promoting open political and economic systems; universal education; better health systems and disease prevention; and equitable trade liberalization in order to reduce poverty.
“Somebody recently said water’s the new oil and there’s a lot to be said for that,” Tad Davis, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, safety, and occupational health, told Reuters. “If we don’t have water, then we don’t have the ability to perform,” said Davis.
Scientists attending the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona this week released The World’s Protected Areas, a book that examines past progress and continuing challenges in the struggle to protect some of the world’s most biodiverse places.
An Encyclopedia of Earth article examines the important role of forest-derived environmental income in the lives of the rural poor in developing countries.