The National Intelligence Council has released Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, an unclassified report seeking to identify a range of future security trends. As the Washington Post notes, the report “makes for sometimes grim reading in imagining a world of weak states bristling with weapons of mass destruction and unable to cope with burgeoning populations without adequate water and food.” ECSP hosted a review of an intermediate draft of the report in July 2008.

The United Nations, the U.S. Department of Defense, and several other militaries are spearheading an effort to fight climate change and ozone-depleting substances. The partnership comes out of a conference held in Paris earlier this month on the role of militaries in protecting the climate. Andrew Alder, who attended the conference, writes, “the Pentagon can also play a leading role in reducing carbon emissions, ironically helping to reduce the very threat for which it is preparing.”

In “Quantum of Solace,” James Bond goes up against a villain who takes control of a country’s water supply. Pacific Institute Director Peter Gleick thinks this is “art imitating life in many ways,” as he believes conflict over water will become more severe unless we develop and implement more efficient ways of using our limited freshwater resources.

“Data on rainfall patterns only weakly corroborate the claim that climate change explains the Darfur conflict,” argue Michael Kevane and Leslie Gray of Santa Clara University in “Darfur: rainfall and conflict,” a paper in Environmental Research Letters.

Human and animal diseases must be addressed before the different protected areas that make up the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area can be connected, according to “As the Fences Come Down: Emerging Concerns in Transfrontier Conservation Areas.”

Healthy People, Healthy Ecosystems is a new manual by the World Wildlife Fund on how to integrate health and family planning into existing conservation projects. It features examples of population-health-environment projects from the Philippines, Nepal, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Uganda.

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated two restrictions on the Navy’s use of sonar during submarine training exercises off the coast of southern California. The restrictions had been designed to protect whales and other marine mammals.

Sierra magazine features letters to the next U.S. president from international environmental leaders, including Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, founder and CEO of Ugandan NGO Conservation Through Public Health and recent author of “Sharing the Forest: Protecting Gorillas and Helping Families in Uganda.” “As we become increasingly aware of the great threat of climate change to life on Earth, we must not forget the other immediate threats of poverty, disease, and population growth,” writes Kalema-Zikusoka in Sierra. “These threats are interrelated and need to be addressed simultaneously.”

The Pacific Institute has released an updated version of its popular Water Conflict Chronology. The earliest entry is from 3,000 B.C.; the most recent occurred last month.

Representatives of Arab and Mediterannean governments met in Tunis this week to discuss strengthening their collaboration over environmental security, reports China Daily.

“NATO’s current conceptualization of environmental security needs to be broadened and deepened,” argues Janelle Knox-Hayes in Oxford International Review.

Health in Harmony is promoting conservation and providing access to health care in West Kalimantan in Indonesia through an innovative development project, reports New America Media.

Military leaders and climate experts gathered in Paris for a November 3-5 conference on the role of the military in combating climate change. A conference report will include “proven strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving military effectiveness.”

Justin Brashares and George Wittemyer’s recent article in Science, “Accelerated Human Population Growth at Protected Area Edges,” presents data showing that average population growth at the edges of protected areas in Africa and Latin America is nearly double average rural population growth in the same countries. The authors argue that this phenomenon is due to migration, as people from surrounding areas are drawn to the health-care and livelihoods programs made available to people expelled from the parks.

In “Who Cares About the Weather?: Climate Change and U.S. National Security” (subscription required), Joshua Busby argues that although advocates have overstated some of climate change’s impacts, it nevertheless poses direct threats to conventional U.S. national security interests, and therefore deserves serious consideration by both academics and policymakers.

An article in the Economist examines the melting Kolahoi glacier, which could soon threaten water supply and livelihoods in the Kashmir valley.

“Marauding elephants in northern Uganda have added to the challenges faced by civilians trying to rebuild their lives in the wake of 20 years of civil war, destroying their crops and prompting some to return to displaced people’s (IDP) camps they had only recently left,” says an article from IRIN News.

In an EarthSky podcast interview, Lori Hunter of the University of Colorado, Boulder, discusses her work researching how HIV/AIDS affects families’ use of natural resources.

Payson Schwin of the World Resources Institute recently interviewed Crispino Lobo of the Watershed Organization Trust about his work helping rural Indian villages escape poverty by managing their natural resources sustainably.

A research commentary from Population Action International explores family planning trends in Pakistan, as well as the relationships between demography and security in this critically important country.

Despite—or perhaps because of—its extremely high population density, Rwanda has launched a series of initiatives to protect its environment and reduce poverty, reports the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The Population Reference Bureau has released two new policy briefs examining population, health, and environment issues in Calabarzon Region and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

Stalled Youth Transitions in the Middle East: A Framework for Policy Reform proposes changes to education, employment, and housing that would offer Middle Eastern youth additional opportunities. “Young people in the Middle East (15-29 years old) constitute about one-third of the region’s population, and growth rates for this age group are the second highest after sub-Saharan Africa,” say the authors. “Today, as the Middle East experiences a demographic boom along with an oil boom, the region faces a historic opportunity to capitalize on these twin dividends for lasting economic development.”

An October 2008 brief from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs uses examples from Africa and Latin America to explore ways to ensure that non-renewable resource revenues contribute to sustainable development.

Video is now available for “Breaking Barriers: Family Planning, Human Health and Conservation,” a session at this month’s Conservation Learning Exchange conference in Vancouver.

“[T]he careful management that helped make Alaskan pollock a billion-dollar industry could unravel as the planet warms,” warns Kenneth Weiss of the Los Angeles Times. “Pollock and other fish in the Bering Sea are moving to higher latitudes as winter ice retreats and water temperatures rise. Alaskan pollock are becoming Russian pollock, swimming across an international boundary in search of food and setting off what could become a geopolitical dispute.”

Poor rains, lack of infrastructure, and a shortage of skilled technicians have contributed to water-related disease and local-level water conflicts in Zimbabwe, reports IPS News.

If the Tripa peat forests in Sumatra continue to be cleared to make way for palm oil plantations, not only will the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan shrink further, but millions of tons of CO2 will be released into the atmosphere, accelerating global climate change, reports the Telegraph.

A report on Somalia by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that one in six Somali children under the age of five is acutely malnourished and estimates that 43 percent of the country’s population will need humanitarian assistance through the end of the year. According to the report, poor rains, in addition to the worst levels of violence since 1990, have contributed to the humanitarian crisis.

“The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India’s Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food,” says an article from Reuters.

The current issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (some abstracts available) focuses on the links between climate change and public health.

“Can Conservation Succeed with 9 Billion People?,” a panel at the recent Conservation Learning Exchange, was described as a “bang-up session” by Margaret Francis, who blogged about it.

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 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.