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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program

Truett Sparkman

Truett Sparkman was a Staff Intern with the Environmental Change and Security Program from 2018-2019.

  • Headlines and Trend Lines: A Wilson Center NOW Interview with James Hollifield on Global Migration

    ›
    From the Wilson Center  //  June 4, 2019  //  By Truett Sparkman
    29816276390_6cd4434a2e_h

    One factor frequently underestimated in the global migration discussion is climate change, said James Hollifield, a Wilson Center Global Fellow, in a recent episode of Wilson NOW. Resulting in both internal displacement and international forced migration, climate-induced migration is set to become a complex problem. So far, there are no international agreements protecting those who may be displaced by climate-induced hardships. Hollifield anticipates regions in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia will be significantly impacted by these dynamics and notes that Central America is already dealing with challenges of climate-induced displacement, in part due to increasing failure of cash-crops like coffee.

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  • New Report Addresses Climate and Fragility Risks in the Lake Chad Region

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    May 15, 2019  //  By Truett Sparkman
    Shoring Up Stability

    Contrary to popular belief, Lake Chad is not shrinking, according to Shoring up Stability: Addressing Climate and Fragility Risks in the Lake Chad Region, a new report from adelphi. This finding has profound implications for how the governments of countries bordering Lake Chad (Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon) as well as the international community should address the conflict trap in which the people of the region are caught. “Supporting the people of the basin,” write the authors, “is not a function of saving Lake Chad from desiccation.” 

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  • To Mitigate Climate-Fragility Risks, Build Preventative Capacity in Fragile States

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    On the Beat  //  April 23, 2019  //  By Truett Sparkman
    Bangladesh Flood

    “When states face fragility and climate risks simultaneously, the risks and challenges are compounded,” according to The Intersection of Global Fragility and Climate Risks, a new global report commissioned by USAID, which was presented during a recent USAID Adaptation Community Meeting webcast. States facing major climate hazards, such as flooding, drought, and sea level rise, will be forced to contend with the cost of humanitarian and adaptation responses to mitigate the physical and livelihood risks threatening their populations. Fragile states struggling with issues of legitimacy in the social, economic, political, and security spheres may become overwhelmed by the process and cost of redirecting limited resources to address climate-induced disasters.  

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  • New Report Pushes for Greater Focus on Resilience in Feed the Future’s Work in Nigeria

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    On the Beat  //  March 18, 2019  //  By Truett Sparkman
    NIgeria Rice

    “We are suggesting the tilt to resilience [in Nigeria] is not fully evident,” said Julie Howard, Senior Advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Global Food Security Project. She spoke at a recent CSIS event launching a new report, Risk and Resilience: Advancing Food and Nutrition Security in Nigeria through Feed the Future. The report critiques the USAID global food security and hunger program, Feed the Future, which is attempting to expand on its work reducing poverty and malnutrition by adding a third priority: building resilience in the second phase of its campaign.

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  • China’s Demand for Raw Materials Harms Communities Around the World

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    China Environment Forum  //  January 23, 2019  //  By Truett Sparkman
    Logging  Truck

    The Solomon Islands’ “commercially available forests will be gone in about 15 years” due to deforestation, said Lela Stanley, a Policy Advisor for Global Witness’ Asia Forests team at the Wilson Center’s recent China Environment Forum event. It looks like they are logging about 20 times faster than they should for the logging to be sustainable, she added. While timber from the islands is exported to China—the world’s largest importer and consumer of timber products—local residents and communities bear the brunt of the environmental cost of lost ecosystem services suffered at the hands of the timber trade. And they aren’t alone. China’s insatiable demand for raw materials and its harmful resource extraction practices wreak havoc on the ecosystems of its many producer countries.

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  • Ken Conca on Transboundary Water Basin Management

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    Friday Podcasts  //  Water Stories (Podcast Series)  //  January 18, 2019  //  By Linsey Edmunds & Truett Sparkman

    “When we start talking about water in the context of security, we’re immediately drawn to a conversation about conflict. And that’s often framed in terms of scarcity of water and a real zero-sum game around water, where scarcity begets grievances, which beget instability and conflict,” says Ken Conca, Professor at American University’s School of International Service, in this week’s Water Stories podcast. Of the world’s 276 transboundary water basins, fewer than half are governed by an agreement or accord that allocates use of the shared water between countries—and less than a quarter of these accords include all the riparian states in a basin.

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  • Doris Kaberia on Public-Private Partnerships and Holistic Approaches to Water Management in Kenya

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    Friday Podcasts  //  Water Stories (Podcast Series)  //  January 11, 2019  //  By Truett Sparkman

    Doris Kaberia 235“You cannot separate water and health,” says Doris Kaberia in this week’s Water Stories podcast. “People need safe drinking water for them to be healthy.” Kaberia works with Millennium Water Alliance, a coalition of international NGOs working on water sanitation and hygiene around the world, where she manages a Kenyan water program.

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  • Snow and Ice Melt Patterns Help Predict Water Supply for Major Asian River Basins

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    From the Wilson Center  //  December 21, 2018  //  By Truett Sparkman
    2269225248_c60c9ffd13_b

    “For the longest time we thought that water was forever renewable and that it would always be there,” said Gloria Steele, Acting Assistant Administrator for Asia with USAID, at a recent Wilson Center event on water security in High Asia. “We now know that is not the case, and we need to protect it and manage it effectively.”

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