Showing posts from category climate change.
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The Conflict Potential of Climate Adaptation and Mitigation
›August 4, 2010 // By Schuyler Null“Climate change and our energy future are issues that are really front and center in our policy debates and public debates,” said ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko in this collection of interviews from New Security Beat’s Backdraft series. “One specific set of questions within this larger debate is about how climate change connects to a broader security set of questions. In that context we have a lot of questions and a lot of concerns – [and] potentially some opportunities.”
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Cleo Paskal: India Is Key to Climate Geopolitics
›July 27, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff“Copenhagen was many things to many people,” said Chatham House’s Cleo Paskal, in a video interview with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, but “what was very clear was that India, specifically, was playing quite a strong, clear role in deciding how alignments would be working.” We spoke to Paskal following her presentation at a recent Wilson Center event.
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Chad Briggs: Dealing With Risk and Uncertainty in Climate-Security Issues
›July 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffWe must do more than simply take our current understanding of climate-change risk and extrapolate it into the future, asserted Chad Briggs of the Berlin-based Adelphi Research in a video interview with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program.
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Local Case Studies of Population-Environment Connections
›“The role of intergenerational transfers, land, and education in fertility transition in rural Kenya: the case of Nyeri district” in Population & Environment by Karina M. Shreffler and F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo, explores the reasons for a dramatic and unexpected decline in fertility in rural Kenya. In one province, total fertility rate (TFR) declined from 8.4 to 3.7, from 1978 to 1998. The study found numerous contributing factors for this decline, which occurred more quickly and earlier than demographers expected, but land productivity seemed to be the primary motivator. A growing population and the tradition of dividing family land among sons made continuing to have large families unrealistic for these Kenyan families. “Family planning is, therefore, not the primary causal explanation for limiting the number of children, but rather serves to help families attain their ideal family sizes,” the authors conclude.
Also in Population & Environment, “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,’” by Robert McLeman, explores the potential for human communities to adapt to climate change. The article centers on a region in Ontario that is experiencing changes in both local climatic conditions and demographics. The study finds that demographic change can have both an adverse and positive effect on the ability of a community to successfully adapt to climate change and highlights the importance of social networks and social capital to a community’s resilience or vulnerability. McLeman also presents a new typology that he hopes will “serve the purpose of drawing greater attention to the degree to which adaptive capacity is responsive to population and demographic change.”
SpringerLink offers free access to both these articles through August 15. -
‘Dialogue Television’ Interviews Paul Collier
›Watch below or on MHz Worldview
According to last week’s guest on Dialogue, restoring environmental order and eradicating global poverty have become the two defining challenges of our era. The environmental horror unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates just how difficult it is to balance economic progress and protection of the planet. It provides an alarming example of how the search for resources and profit can lead to the plunder of nature. Host John Milewski speaks with Oxford University economist Paul Collier on his latest book, The Plundered Planet: Why We Must and How We Can Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. Scheduled for broadcast starting June 30th, 2010 on MHz Worldview channel.
Paul Collier is professor of economics and director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University. Formerly, he served as director of development research at the World Bank. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning The Bottom Billion.
Note: A QuickTime plug-in may be required to launch the video. -
Rear Admiral Morisetti Launches the UK’s “4 Degree Map” on Google Earth
›Having had such success with the original “4 Degree Map” that the United Kingdom launched last October, my colleagues in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been working on a Google Earth version, which users can now download from the Foreign Office website.
This interactive map shows some of the possible impacts of a global temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7° F). It underlines why the UK government and other countries believe we must keep global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial times; beyond that, the impacts will be increasingly disruptive to our global prosperity and security.
In my role as the UK’s Climate and Energy Security Envoy I have spoken to many colleagues in the international defense and security community about the threat climate change poses to our security. We need to understand how the impacts, as described in this map, will interact with other drivers of instability and global trends. Once we have this understanding we can then plan what needs to be done to mitigate the risks.
The map includes videos from the contributing scientists, who are led by the Met Office Hadley Centre. For example, if you click on the impact icon showing an increase in extreme weather events in the Gulf of Mexico region, up pops a video clip of the contributing scientist Dr Joanne Camp, talking about her research. It also includes examples of what the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and British Council are doing to increase people’s awareness of the risks climate change poses to our national security and prosperity, thus illustrating the FCO’s ongoing work on climate change and the low-carbon transition.
Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti is the United Kingdom’s Climate and Energy Security Envoy. -
Stacy VanDeveer: Will Using Less Oil Affect Petrostate Stability?
›July 12, 2010 // By Schuyler NullIf we were to actually use less fossil fuel, what would happen to today’s petrostates? “If the oil revenues dry up or even decline a little bit you might have a real serious crisis,” said Stacy VanDeveer of the University of New Hampshire, during an interview with ECSP. We spoke to VanDeveer following his presentation at the Wilson Center event, “Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation.”
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The United States and China: Clean Energy Friends or Foes?
›July 7, 2010 // By Joshua NickellAs the world moves toward clean energy alternatives, companies in the United States and China are working to develop new, more cost-efficient manufacturing processes and increase their shares of the domestic and export markets for new renewable energy technologies. Controlling production lines and growing market share will certainly have important economic implications for both countries. But over the long term, a broader perspective suggests that cooperative initiatives to increase the capacity and reduce the cost of renewable energy technologies may produce benefits on both sides of the Pacific.
At an event co-hosted by the Wilson Center on the Hill and the China Environment Forum last month, John Romankiewicz, a senior analyst for China Clean Energy and Carbon Markets at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and Ethan Zindler, head of North American Research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, considered the big picture implications for U.S.-China clean energy cooperation and development.
Coming from an investment background, Zindler said that he looks at clean energy development “not as a social project, but as an industry.” The end goal, he asserted, is to produce clean energy more cheaply than fossil fuels. Zindler argued that if clean energy remains prohibitively expensive and uncompetitive without subsidies, it will be more difficult to implement and less likely to produce the desired environmental benefits.
Romankiewicz discussed China’s current supply of and growing demand for energy, pointing out that China’s power grid has grown by more than 70 gigawatts per year during each of the past 5 years, and that “at some point next year, the total installed capacity of China’s grid will surpass that of the United States.”
While coal and hydropower continue to play a significant role in meeting this growing demand, Romankiewicz noted that China also has set ambitious investment targets for wind farms, solar farms, biomass power plants, and other renewable energy sources.
China Looks to Go Global With Renewables
China is investing in clean energy not only to serve growing domestic energy demands, but also to become a major force in the international market, Romankiewicz asserted. Already, China has made impressive advances in clean energy industries: Of the top 15 wind turbine producers, four are Chinese and only two are American. Of the top 10 crystalline-silicon solar cell producers, six are Chinese.
But how will the United States impact China’s drive to become a major player in exporting clean energy technologies? Romankiewicz argued that breaking into the American market could prove exceedingly difficult for Chinese companies given the stiff competition from U.S. companies and other foreign firms.
The speakers also emphasized the importance of understanding the complex global economic implications of clean energy development. “If the Chinese are helping to drive down the cost… then they make solar less expensive,” said Zindler, “which means you can create more jobs in California or New Jersey.” Romankiewicz cautioned against reading too much into the “Made in China” label on clean energy technologies, as the supply chain could include parts from all over the world.
Though he maintained that focusing on the long-term benefits of clean energy investment in the United States would prove beneficial, Zindler advocated for a modicum of urgency. “I think a lot of opportunity would be missed potentially because there is innovation that doesn’t just come from a lab but comes from building newer and newer assembly lines,” Zindler remarked. But in the end, he characterized the U.S.-China battle for influence in the world’s renewable energy market as “a marathon, not a sprint,” asserting that “we’ve got a long way to go to determine who the winner will be in the clean energy race here.”
Joshua Nickell is a staff intern with the Program on America & the Global Economy at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Photo Credit: <Wind Turbine Manufacture (in China),” courtesy of flickr user ANR2008.
