Showing posts by Wilson Center Staff.
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Political Rhetoric or Policy Reality? Tracking Trends in Environment, Peace, and Security
›May 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffECSP Director Geoff Dabelko lectures at UC Irvine’s Sustainability Seminar Series.
Over the past 25 plus years, the understanding of environment and security links has evolved to reflect changing threat and opportunity scenarios. Today, “environmental security” has become a popular phrase used to encompass everything from oil exploration to pollution controls to corn subsidies.
While environmental advocates and security actors remain wary of each other’s focus, means, and ends, both scholars and policymakers are working to better understand these linkages and respond to them. Today, the wide range of potential climate change impacts is re-energizing broader debates over human security that suggest redefining security beyond purely militaristic terms.
At the same time, the traditional security community’s increased concern with climate change (and the social reactions it may produce) has helped garner wider attention. The number of U.S. and overseas policy responses is dizzying. In this lecture–part of the Sustainability Seminar Series at the UC-IrvineCenter for Unconventional Security Affairs–the Wilson Center’s Geoff Dabelko highlights key environmental security policy developments and situates today’s initiatives within a context of nearly three decades of efforts.
Video courtesy of OpenCourseWare at University of California, Irvine. -
The Feed for Fresh News on Population
›May 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffRT @popact: World Bank launches action plan to help poor countries reduce fertility rates and prevent maternal deaths http://paidc.org/ …
#Climate change & #demography 2of 10 factors “magnifying uncertainty” in 10 yr horizon of #NATO 2020 report @NATO_news http://ow.ly/1MqWi
Nick Kristof has people, poverty, conservation post with his Gabon column. Challenge is integrated response @NickKristof http://ow.ly/1LQUL
Rich Cincotta on where’s the home for political demography? ISA, AAG, PAA, APSA? All come up wanting @newsecuritybeat http://ow.ly/1LnBn
Population & environmental links in #Rwanda are grist for Reading Radar on @newsecuritybeat including @enviroscribe http://ow.ly/1KzZg
Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich weighs in on population and sustainability in the latest issue of PLoS Biology on the #MAHB. http://ow.ly/1HcC6
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USAID’s Shah Focuses on Women, Innovation, Integration
›May 20, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffWomen in developing countries are “core to success and failure” of USAID’s plan to fight hunger and poverty, and “we will be focusing on women in everything we do,” said USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah at today’s launch of the “Feed the Future” guide.
But to solve the “tough problem” of how to best serve women farmers, USAID needs to “take risks and be more entrepreneurial,” said Shah, as it implements the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative.
“A lot of this is going to fail and that’s OK,” Shah said, calling for a “culture of experimentation” at the agency. He welcomed input from the private sector, which was represented at the launch by Des Moines-based Pioneer Hi-Bred.
In one “huge change in our assistance model,” Feed the Future will be “country-led and country-owned,” said Shah, who asked NGOs and USAID implementing partners to “align that expertise behind country priorities” and redirect money away from Washington towards “building real local capacity.” USAID will “work in partnership, not patronage,” with its 20 target countries, he said.
To insure that the administration’s agricultural development efforts are aligned to the same goals, Shah said USAID will collect baseline data from the start on three metrics: women’s incomes, child malnutrition, and agricultural production.
“Whether it is finance, land tenure, public extension, or training efforts, it does not matter whether it is an ‘agricultural development’ category of program,” said Shah. All programs will “provide targeted services to women farmers.”
While Shah briefly mentioned integrating these efforts with the administration’s Global Health Initiative, he only gave one example. Nutrition programs would be tied to health “platforms that already exist at scale” in country, such as HIV, malaria, vaccination, and breastfeeding promotion programs, he said.
Targeting Food Security: The Wilson Center’s Africa Program Takes Aim
If “food supplies in Africa cannot be assured, then Africa’s future remains dismal, no matter how efforts of conflict resolution pan out or how sustained international humanitarian assistance becomes,” says Steve McDonald, director of the Wilson Center’s Africa Program, in the current issue of the Wilson Center’s newsletter, Centerpoint. “It sounds sophomoric, but food is essential to population health and happiness—its very survival—but also to productivity and creativity.”
The May 2010 edition of Centerpoint highlights regional integration, a key focus of U.S. policy, as a mechanism for assuring greater continuity and availability of food supplies. Drawing on proceedings from the Africa Program’s “Promoting Regional Integration and Food Security in Africa” event held in March, Centerpoint accentuates key conclusions on building infrastructure and facilitating trade.
Photo Credit: “USAID Administrator Shah visits a hospital in Haiti” courtesy Flickr user USAID_Images. -
Interplays Between Demographic and Climatic Changes
›“Impacts of Population Change on Vulnerability and the Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change and Variability: A Typology Based on Lessons from ‘a Hard Country,’” appearing in the journal Population and Environment, is a study of societal resilience by Robert McLeman from the University of Ottawa. Beginning with a literature review of the connections between population growth and greenhouse gas emissions, McLeman then details how demographic changes can negatively affect resilience–the ability of societies to cope and adapt to climate changes. Based on empirical studies of small communities undergoing local climate and demographic changes in eastern Ontario, McLeman finds that simultaneous demographic and climatic change “increased stress on local social networks…critical to climate adaptation.”
“Climate Change and Population Migration in Brazil’s Northeast: Scenarios for 2025–2050,” also appearing in the journal Population and Environment, examines “demographic dynamics–particularly migration–driven by changes in the performance of the economy due to climate changes.” The region of study was chosen for its high levels of both population and poverty and its dry climate, “which will be severely impacted by growing temperatures.” The study concludes that predicted climate change impacts on agriculture are potential push migration factors and offers policy and planning recommendations to reduce migrant vulnerabilities.
Both articles are part of Population and Environment‘s special issue on “Climate Change: Understanding Anthropogenic Contributions and Responses.” -
The Feed for Fresh News on Population
›May 5, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffDavid Lopez-Carr of UC-Santa Barbara bringing his A-game on demographic trends at USAID #WilsonCenter mtg on econ & environ trends in LAC
Family planning in fragile state settings possible & priority say health workers from
URI & BALANCED Project’s Elin Torell on integrated population-health-environment in the
RT @mercycorps: Working to prevent gender-based violence in
#Climatechange and #gender in New Security Beat’s Reading Radar @UN_Womenwatch Heinrich Boell Fdn #WilsonCenter http://ow.ly/1Cpam
USAID Health’s Earth Day message has link to “An Ethical Approach to Population & Climate Change” article frm ECSP Report http://ow.ly/1BfV3
Follow Geoff Dabelko on Twitter for more population, health, environment, and security updates -
Top 10 Posts for April 2010
›Peace parks remain at the top for two months in a row, but the rest of April’s faves includes new posts on population and climate change.
1. Guest Contributor Todd Walters, International Peace Park Expeditions: Imagine There’s No Countries: Conservation Beyond Borders in the Balkans
2. Climate Change and Energy in Defense Doctrine: The QDR and UK Defence Green Paper
3. Book Review: Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map by Cleo Paskal
4. Guest Contributor Rear Admiral Morisetti: Climate Change: A Threat to Global Security
5. Copper in Afghanistan: Chinese Investment in Aynak
6. VIDEO: Peter Gleick on Peak Water
7. Megatrends: Embracing Complexity in Today’s Population and Migration Challenges
8. VIDEO: Joshua Busby on Climate Change and African Political Stability
9. The Beat on the Ground: Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains — Cassie Gardener Reports on Integrating Population, Health, and Environment
10. Canada Flip-Flops on Family Planning; Will the G-8 Follow? -
The Feed for Fresh News on Population
›April 20, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffPRB’s renowned demographer Carl Haub makes #demography accessible for all of us with Distilled Demographic video series http://ow.ly/1Acf1
RT @usaid_news: VIDEO: #USAID #globalhealth coordinator Amie Batson at Kaiser talking about GHI http://bit.ly/akiY0S
Report on #population #health #environment integration in #Ethiopia‘s
RT @AmbassadorRice: Meeting with Ban Ki Moon and HHS Secretary Sebelius at UN for Launch of Joint Effort on Maternal and Child Health @MHTF
URI Coastal Resources Center BALANCED Project releases its first population, health, environment (PHE) newsletter http://ow.ly/1xOlc
The Lancet tracks maternal mortality improvements 1980-2008 vis a vis MDG 5 http://ow.ly/1xAMl
Follow Geoff Dabelko on Twitter for more population, health, environment, and security updates -
World Bank President: Climate Policy Is Not “One-Size-Fits All”
›Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the financial crisis indicated that developed countries should listen to developing countries, but not out of “charity or solidarity: It is self-interest.”
His prepared remarks, “The End of the Third World? Modernizing Multilateralism for a Multipolar World,” notably included a section on climate change:Take climate change: The danger is that we take a rule book from developed countries to impose a one-size-fits-all model on developing countries. And they will say no.
Climate change policy can be linked to development and win support from developing countries for low carbon growth but not if it is imposed as a straitjacket.
This is not about lack of commitment to a greener future. People in developing countries want a clean environment, too.
Developing countries need support and finance to invest in cleaner growth paths. 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity. The challenge is to support transitions to cleaner energy without sacrificing access, productivity, and growth that can pull hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Avoiding geo-politics as usual means looking at issues differently. We need to move away from the binary choice of either power or environment. We need to pursue policies that reflect the price of carbon, increase energy efficiency, develop clean energy technologies with applications in poorer countries, promote off-grid solar, innovate with geothermal, and secure win-win benefits from forest and land use policies. In the process, we can create jobs and strengthen energy security.
The developed world has prospered through hydro electricity from dams. Some do not think the developing world should have the same access to the power sources used by developed economies. For them, thinking this is as easy as flicking a switch and letting the lights burn in an empty room.
While we must take care of the environment, we cannot consign African children to homework by candlelight or deny African workers manufacturing jobs. The old developed country prism is the surest way to lose developing country support for global environment goals.
