Iraq’s Southern Marshes, once the Middle East’s largest and most ecologically diverse wetlands, have survived the Iran-Iraq war, systematic drainage by Saddam Hussein, American invasion, and record-breaking drought. Today, however, the prospects for survival are dimming, as water consumption across the region continues to increase and security remains unsettled. Despite these challenges, the marshes’ location along the Iranian border and their reliance on flow from Turkey upstream offers unique potential for environmental peacemaking in this troubled region.

At the U.S.-Mexico border, environmental degradation is a chief concern affecting both countries’ shared watersheds, “airsheds,” and greater ecosystems. At the same time, continuing population stresses in the U.S. Southwest are further aggravating the area’s perennially acute water needs, while climate change is threatening to make the region even hotter and drier.

Compounding these ecological challenges and their consequent health risks is the fact that the poverty on both sides of the border appears largely intractable, at least in the short-to-medium term. Yet the region and its shared challenges also present unique opportunities for enhanced U.S.-Mexico collaboration, particularly in the areas of joint environmental management, cross-border emergency response, and renewable energy development.

Earlier this summer, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute looked to address these challenges and opportunities by co-sponsoring an event with the Good Neighbor Environmental Board (GNEB), an independent federal advisory committee (coordinated by the Environmental Protection Agency) that advises the U.S. government on border environmental practices. The event revolved around the release of the board’s new report, A Blueprint for Action on the U.S.-Mexico Border.

Initiatives Show Promise

Chief among the report’s 63 policy recommendations is the need for better coordination among and between federal, state, and local agencies at the border. GNEB Chair Paul Ganster cited the report’s support of a transboundary environmental impact assessment (TEIA) process “to address transnational (environmental) impacts, and encourage transborder cooperation on environmental infrastructure projects.” The report suggests that the trilateral Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC)—comprising Mexico, Canada, and the United States—“explore such an agreement.”

Ganster added that U.S. border communities require dedicated focus from the government in ways that non-border communities might not because of their unique and poverty-aggravated environmental challenges.

Michelle DePass, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs, said that the board’s findings would be used in the search for solutions to border-region environmental challenges. She acknowledged recent advances in tackling such challenges, such as EPA-coordinated efforts to reduce the serious environmental threat posed by heaps of tires scattered throughout the region.

DePass also described the EPA’s U.S.-Mexico Environmental Program, known as Border 2012, highlighting its successful involvement in efforts to clean up the Metales y Derivados industrial waste site in Baja California.

Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said that the border region is poised to become part of a “clean energy revolution” because of its supply of renewable resources. She lauded the report for encouraging clean-energy collaboration with Mexico, and said the report’s recommendations have a special significance because they are issued by individuals who actually live and work in the border region.

Bilateral collaboration is necessary to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change and to resolve shared environmental problems at the border, said Enrique Escorza, an official with the Political Affairs Section of the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C. Escorza said the need for collaboration has finally eclipsed prior impediments, such as concerns about violations of national sovereignty.

“The border throws us together,” Escorza said, adding that Mexico has a new understanding about shared resources. “It’s not about ‘our’ water,” he declared. “It’s about shared watersheds and our working as partners.”

A Federal, State, and Local Stakeholder Perspective

Duncan Wood, acting chair of the Department of International Relations at the Instituto Tecnólogico Autónomo de México (ITAM), noted that the border region presents enormous opportunities in the area of renewable energy investment. The border is a unique region, he added, since ecosystems overlap rather than respect national boundaries. He drew linkages between the report’s policy options for improving the border and two pillars of U.S.-Mexico security cooperation policy: the development of a 21st century border where security and trade concerns complement one another, and the construction of resilient border communities.

Russell Frisbie, the Washington liaison for the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), and John Wood, a county commissioner in Cameron County, Texas, both discussed the need for a bilateral federal-to-federal memorandum of understanding on cross-border emergency-management response. The development of such a protocol could help first responders in both countries more easily cross the border to provide relief in the event of natural disasters, such as floods or wildfires.

Allyson Siwik, executive director with New Mexico’s Gila Resources Information Project, seconded the report’s recommendation for a successful Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program, which would, according to the GNEB report, “scientifically characterize aquifers that underlie the international boundary and encourage other efforts to improve data gathering and accessibility for border water resources, such as harmonization of standards.” Ann Marie A. Wolf, president of the Sonora Environmental Research Institute (Arizona), called for upgrades to water and wastewater systems in border sister cities, some of which suffer regular overflows from flooding.

Siwik also stressed an ongoing need to assess the environmental impact of security fencing along the border, which Wood said prevented the natural movement of animal species, while not effectively deterring unauthorized migration.

Robert Donnelly is a program associate with the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Photo credit: “U.S.-Mexico border fence at Nogales, Arizona,” courtesy of flickr user jim.greenhill.

“If we could do something about unintended pregnancies – which are about 80 million a year – we could dramatically reduce population growth,” and reduce pressure on the environment, says Joseph Speidel in this short analysis from the Environmental Change and Security Program. Speidel discusses the connections between population, health, and environment issues, and offers solutions for the way forward.

The “Pop Audio” series offers brief clips from ECSP’s conversations with experts around the world, sharing analysis and promoting dialogue on population-related issues. Also available on iTunes.

Here are some useful links to environment, population, and security work that recently crossed my desk.

• Need a break from the raging debate set off by Halvard Buhaug’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences quantitative-based critique of climate and African civil war linkages (or lack thereof)? Check out some of the correlations Cullen Hendrix and Idean Salehyan of University of North Texas find in their piece “After the Rain: Rainfall Variability, Hydro-Meteorological Disasters, and Social Conflict in Africa.”

• A German military think tank report worries about the economic and political implications of peak oil over a relatively short time frame.

• Militaries’ humanitarian responses to extreme weather events rather than actual shooting wars are the focus of “The Coming Conflicts of Climate Change,” by U.S. Navy Foreign Area Officer Michael Baker. Baker is writing for the Council on Foreign Relations as one of their International Affairs Fellows.

• Oxfam America and IUCN staff experts call for greater consideration of different gender roles in addressing climate change. UN climate institutions are targeted in the IPS story.

• Journalist Steve Solomon highlights the high politics of transboundary water in Asia with a piece in Forbes. China’s control of the Tibetan water tower with massive dam building amps up the pressure in South and Southeast Asia.

• Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann’s book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? breaks down relative population growth rates between the religious and the secular. One is high, one is below replacement level. So far the book is only published in Europe but you can get it from Amazon UK.

• The highly respected science journal Nature editorializes against the rising tide of loud anti-science demagoguery. Strong words on the U.S. political context.

Follow Geoff Dabelko (@geoffdabelko) and The New Security Beat (@NewSecurityBeat) on Twitter for more population, health, environment, and security updates.

A recent news story summarizing some interesting research by Halvard Buhaug carried the headline “Civil war in Africa has no link to climate change.” This is unfortunate because there’s nothing in Buhaug’s results, which were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to support that conclusion.

In fact, the possibility that climate change might trigger conflict remains very real. Understanding why the headline writers got it wrong will help us better meet the growing demand for usable information about climate-conflict linkages.

Environmental Change and Security Program
Thursday, September 2, 2010, 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m
Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC
Event is invitation only. Please tune into the live webcast, which will begin at approximately 12:10 p.m.
Agenda Webcast

Alex Evans, Head of Program, Climate Change, Resource Scarcity and Multilateralism, Center on International Cooperation, New York University; Writer and Editor, Global Dashboard

Mathew J. Burrows, Counselor and Director, Analysis and Production Staff, National Intelligence Council (NIC)

Geoffrey D. Dabelko (Moderator), Director, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson Center

Alex Evans thinks energy, climate, food, natural resources, and population trends are mistakenly considered separate challenges with a few shared attributes. He suggests instead that scarcity provides a frame for tying these sectors together and better understanding the collective implications for development and security. As a regular advisor to the United Nations and national governments, Evans will outline practical policy conclusions that flow from a focus on scarcity and integrated analysis.

As counselor and director of the analysis and production staff, Mathew J. Burrows manages a staff of senior analysts and production technicians who guide and shepherd all NIC products from inception to dissemination. He was the principal drafter for the NIC publication, “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,” the NIC’s flagship, long-range integrated analysis assessment that prominently featured natural resource, climate, and demographic trends. Burrows will share insights on producing and presenting integrated analysis for practitioners and policymakers.

Note: The live webcast will begin approximately 10 minutes after the posted meeting time and an archived version will be available on the Wilson Center website in the future. You will need Windows Media Player to watch the webcast. To download the free player, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download.

Over the past year, there have been a series of new initiatives on U.S.-China energy cooperation. These initiatives have focused primarily on low-carbon development, and have covered everything from renewables and energy efficiency to clean vehicles and carbon capture and storage. Central to the long-term success of these efforts will be strengthening the U.S.’s incomplete understanding of China’s electricity grid, as all of the above issues are inextricably linked to the power grid itself.

The original version of this article appeared on the Atlantic Council’s New Atlanticist blog. By Derek S. Reveron.

For the second time this year, naval forces have been involved in major operations that have little to do with combat at sea. Instead, Sailors and Marines operating from dozens of warships have responded to natural disasters.

Earlier this year in Haiti, traditional warships delivered food, water, and medical supplies. On amphibious ships, the large flight decks designed to move Marines ashore via helicopters proved to be temporary airports for search and rescue teams; medical facilities designed to treat wounded infantry became floating clinics for sick and injured civilians. The use of naval ships as airports, hospitals, or as refugee camps must be temporary, but in a crisis, temporary relief is what is necessary.

Similar uses of militaries are occurring in response to flooding in Pakistan and wildfires in Russia today. NATO is planning and executing responses to alleviate human suffering created by natural disasters, which are certainly non-traditional.

But militaries around the world are being called to serve their people and others in distress. Increasingly, militaries are including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as a core concept in how they train, equip, and organize. Militaries have reluctantly embraced these new roles because their governments expect them to provide responses to humanitarian crises, support new partners, and reduce underlying conditions that give rise to instability.

At the same time that military aircrews rescue stranded people or military engineers erect temporary housing, critics worry that development is being militarized. But, they miss the larger point that military equipment like helicopters, medical facilities, and logistic hubs are necessary for providing humanitarian assistance during a crisis. Additionally, NGOs increasingly partner with militaries in North America and Europe because militaries have the capacity to reach populations in need where NGOs can deliver their services.

Given the real stress on militaries created by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, these non-traditional operations are not needed to prove relevance for militaries in a difficult fiscal period. Instead, the inclusion of humanitarian assistance in military doctrine are driven by countries’ national strategies that increasingly link human security and national security. As I wrote in Exporting Security: International Engagement, Security Cooperation, and the Changing Face of the U.S. Military, militaries are being directed to be involved in humanitarian operations.

Far from preparation for major war, humanitarian activities rely on a unique blend of charitable political culture, latent civil-military capacity, and ambitious military officers who see the strategic landscape characterized by challenges to human security, weak states, and transnational actors. Further, changes are informed by international partners that conceive of their militaries as forces for good and not simply combat forces. The United States has been slow to catch up to European governments that see the decline of coercive power and the importance of soft power today.

This change is not only about the state of relations among governments today, but also the priority of human security. Security concerns over the last twenty years have been shifting away from state-focused traditional challenges to human-centered security issues such as disease, poverty, and crime. This is reflected in the diversity of ways by which NATO countries protect their national security. While there are remnants of Cold War conflicts on the Korean Peninsula and in the Persian Gulf region, these are largely the exception. Instead, sub-national and transnational challenges increasingly occupy national security professionals.

Within the United States, the government has embarked on a program to illustrate that its military superpower capabilities can be used for good. The same capability that can accurately drop a bomb on an adversary’s barracks has been used to deliver food aid in the mountains of Afghanistan. The same capability used to disembark Marines from Navy ships to a foreign shore have been used to host NGOs providing fisheries conservation in West Africa. And the same capability to track an enemy’s submarines can detect changes in the migration of fish stocks in response to climate change. To be sure, swords haven’t been beaten into plowshares, but military capabilities once used for confrontation are now used for cooperation.

Derek S. Reveron, an Atlantic Council contributing editor, is a Professor of National Security Affairs and the EMC Informationist Chair at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.The views expressedare his own and do not reflect those of the Navy or the U.S. government.

Photo Credit: “100304-F-2616H-060” courtesy of flickr user Kenny Holston 21.