Showing posts from category climate change.
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New Security Challenges in Obama’s Grand Strategy
›June 4, 2010 // By Schuyler NullPresident Obama’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released last week, reinforces a commitment to the whole of government approach to defense, and highlights the diffuse challenges facing the United States, including international terrorism, globalization, and economic upheaval.
Following the lead of the Quadrennial Defense Review released earlier this year, the NSS for the first time since the Clinton years prominently features non-traditional security concerns such as climate change, population growth, food security, and resource management:Climate change and pandemic disease threaten the security of regions and the health and safety of the American people. Failing states breed conflict and endanger regional and global security… The convergence of wealth and living standards among developed and emerging economies holds out the promise of more balanced global growth, but dramatic inequality persists within and among nations. Profound cultural and demographic tensions, rising demand for resources, and rapid urbanization could reshape single countries and entire regions.
By acknowledging the myriad causes of instability along with more “hard” security issues such as insurgency and nuclear weapons, Obama’s national security strategy takes into account the “soft” problems facing critical yet troubled states – such as Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Somalia – which include demographic imbalances, food insecurity, and environmental degradation.
Not surprisingly, Afghanistan in particular is highlighted as an area where soft power could strengthen American security interests. According to the strategy, agricultural development and a commitment to women’s rights “can make an immediate and enduring impact in the lives of the Afghan people” and will help lead to a “strong, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan.”
The unique demographic landscape of the Middle East, which outside of Africa has the fastest growing populations in the world, is also given intentional consideration. “We have a strategic interest in ensuring that the social and economic needs and political rights of people in this region, who represent one of the world’s youngest populations, are met,” the strategy states.
Some critics of that strategy warn that the term “national security” may grow to encompass so much it becomes meaningless. But others argue the administration’s thinking is simply a more nuanced approach that acknowledges the complexity of today’s security challenges.
In a speech on the strategy, Secretary of State Clinton said that one of the administration’s goals was “to begin to make the case that defense, diplomacy, and development were not separate entities either in substance or process, but that indeed they had to be viewed as part of an integrated whole and that the whole of government then had to be enlisted in their pursuit.”
Compare this approach to President Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy, which began with the simple statement, “America is at war” and focused very directly on terrorism, democracy building, and unilateralism.
Other comparisons are also instructive. The Bush NSS mentions “food” only once (in connection with the administration’s “Initiative to End Hunger in Africa”) and does not mention population, demography, agriculture, or climate change at all. In contrast, the 2010 NSS mentions food nine times, population and demography eight times, agriculture three times, and climate change 23 times – even more than “intelligence,” which is mentioned only 18 times.
For demographers, development specialists, and environmental conflict specialists, the inclusion of “new security” challenges in the National Security Strategy, which had been largely ignored during the Bush era, is a boon – an encouraging sign that soft power may return to prominence in American foreign policy.
The forthcoming first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review by the State Department will help flesh out the strategic framework laid out by the NSS. It is expected to provide more concrete policy for integrating defense, diplomacy, and development. Current on-the-ground examples like USDA embedding in Afghanistan, stepped-up development aid to Pakistan, and the roll-out of the administration’s food security initiative, “Feed the Future,” are encouraging signs that the NSS may already be more than just rhetoric.
Update: The Bush 91′ and 92’ NSS also included environmental considerations, in part due to the influence of then Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates.
Sources: Center for Global Development, CNAS, Los Angeles Times, State Department, USAID, White House, World Politics Review.
Photo Credit: “Human, Food, and Demographic Security” collage by Schuyler Null from “Children stop tending to the crop to watch the patrol” courtesy of flickr user isafmedia, “Combing Wheat” courtesy of flickr user AfghanistanMatters, and “Old Town Sanaa – Yemen 49” courtesy of flickr user Richard Messenger. -
‘Frontlines’ Interviews John Sewell: “Promoting Development Is a Risky Business”
›May 31, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff
Q: Foreign assistance has had major achievements over the past 50 years. What are some examples?
SEWELL: There have been many but off the top of my head I can think of three. First, the Green Revolution where the combined efforts of American aid and private foundations revolutionized agriculture in Asia. As a result, many more people lived a much longer time. Second, the efforts put into improving education, particularly of women and girls. The third is population growth. When I started working on development, the best predictions said that global population would rise to over 20 billion at the end of the 20th century. Now we know it will not go much above 9 billion and perhaps lower. That wouldn’t have happened without American leadership and funding.
Q: What are the major failures of foreign assistance?
SEWELL: Failures have occurred either because countries were not committed to development, or because aid agencies designed ineffective programs. But most major failures came about because aid was provided for political reasons— for Cold War purposes in Southeast Asia or the Middle East, not for economic and social development. And we should remember that promoting development is a risky business. If there were no failures, development agencies were being too cautious.
But the more important failures are at the strategic level. Assistance really is only effective when governments and leaders want to speed economic growth, improve health and education, and address poverty. When the government isn’t committed to development, a lot of aid is wasted.
That’s why the choice of countries is so important. Korea is one example. Korean leaders knew how to use foreign aid effectively to build agriculture and industry. Part of that assistance funded investments in health and education. We all know the result.
Egypt, on the other hand, also has received large amounts of American assistance since 1979. But its growth rates are low and they still have one of the highest rates of adult illiteracy in the world.
Perhaps the largest failure has been in Africa. Except for a small number of countries, Africa lags far behind other regions. The blame lies not just with African leaders but also with aid donors who have continued to provide assistance in ways that hinder development.
Q: In what ways can global poverty be reduced quickly in the next three to four years?
SEWELL: In the short term, it won’t happen. The global financial crisis makes that a certainty.
The best estimates are that up to 90 million people will fall back into poverty because they will have lost jobs and livelihoods. The most important thing the U.S. can do in the near term is to continue to lead the reform of the international financial systems that are essential to restarting global economic growth, particularly in the developing world.
Q: That’s the way to reduce poverty?
SEWELL: In the short term, yes. But the U.S. can target aid to build poor peoples’ capacities and can make a great difference. That means aid for education, especially women, and to enable poor people to improve their health. And jobs are critical.
I think the right goal is to empower people to move into the middle class.
That means helping to provide technical assistance and in making low-cost credits for both farmers and small scale entrepreneurs. They will be the generators of jobs that enable men and women to move out of poverty.
Q: Why do you say in one of your papers that economic growth alone will not eliminate poverty?
SEWELL: Because it’s true. Growth does not automatically diminish poverty; it has to be complemented by government actions to share the gains from growth by investing in better health and education. For this you also need a competent state. That’s how the East Asian countries managed to develop so successfully. On the other hand, many Latin American countries have grown at decent rates but have lousy income distribution. But now countries like Brazil are starting to change. For instance, the Brazilian government now pays mothers to keep their children in school where they can get education and health care.
Q: USAID has restrictions that inhibit advertising. How can the public and Congress be informed about the successes and importance of development assistance?
SEWELL: USAID has been very timid about educating the public and Congress. I am not even sure that the earlier successful programs of development education exist anymore. Some steps are easy.
USAID staff knows a lot about development. Why not send them out to talk to public groups around the country? USAID staff doesn’t even participate actively in the yeasty dialogue on development that goes on in the Washington policy community and they should be encouraged to do so. Other changes may require funding and perhaps legislation and the administration should work with the Congress to get them.
Informing the public is particularly important now when there are two major processes underway to modernize U.S. development programs and Congress is rewriting the development assistance legislation.
Q: Since China and Vietnam have both developed without democracy, how important is it to push for democracy and good governance? Are they really necessary?
SEWELL: We need to separate democracy and governance. Very few of the successful developing countries have started out as democracies; India is the big exception. On the other hand, all of the successful countries have had effective governments to do what governments should do: provide security and public goods like health and education, establish the rule of law, and encourage entrepreneurship.
We need to face the fact that no outsider, including the U.S., can “democratize” a country. But it can play an important role in helping to improve governance in committed poor countries. And one of the important parts of successful development is what a Harvard economist calls “conflict mediating institutions” that allow people to deal with the inevitable conflicts that arise within successful development.
Q: You have said that we need to make markets work. How can we help poor people begin to trade when Europe, Japan, and the United States either block imports or subsidize exports?
SEWELL: If you are serious about development, you have to give high priority to trade policy. Unfortunately, USAID seems to have very little voice in trade decisions.
The U.S. needs to focus its development trade policy on the poorest countries. The highest priority should be dropping the remaining subsidies for U.S. production of highly subsidized agricultural products like cotton that can be produced very competitively in very poor countries.
But many of these countries have difficulty selling goods in the U.S., not only because of subsidies, but also because they are not equipped to export. Transport costs are high as are the costs of meeting U.S. health and quality standards, and knowledge of marketing in America is scarce.
Here’s where USAID can play an important complementary role. U.S. companies are already providing technical assistance, some with USAID support. But USAID can expand its trade capacity building programs and focus them on the poorer countries.
Q: What about microcredit?
SEWELL: Microcredit is a very important innovation, especially for empowering poor people, particularly poor women. It’s part of the solution to ending poverty.
But there are other needs. In most poor countries, there are large groups of poor entrepreneurs who are not poor enough to get microcredit but who can’t get commercial banks to lend to them. These are people who produce products for sale— handbags, for instance—that employ 10 to 20 people, but they need capital and advice in order to grow. In the U.S., small businessmen used to borrow money from local banks.That’s how America grew. But similar institutions don’t exist in many poor countries.
Q: We are involved in so many different programs—20 or 30 different federal agencies do some sort of foreign assistance— why not just invest in education and health and let each country figure out what their own development plan should be?
SEWELL: A very good idea. I have long advocated that the U.S. should focus its programs on a few major development issues but I would go beyond just health and education. I add climate change and dealing with global health threats. We dodged the bullet on SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] and avian flu but we may not be so lucky in the future. And strengthening governance and strengthening weak states is essential.
The real need now is for some mechanism that oversees and coordinates the multiplicity of agencies that have programs and expertise on these critical issues. Let’s hope that emerges from the current administration’s reviews of development policy
John Sewell a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was interviewed by FrontLines Editorial Director Ben Barber. Originally published in USAID FrontLines, April 2010.Visualizing Human and Natural Resources
›In the policy world, statistics, percentages, and budgets on the order of millions and billions are routinely thrown around. But what do six and a half billion people, 957 tonnes per second, or three trillion dollars really look like?A visualization of London’s natural resources – grass, trees, and water only – by Adam Nieman.
Visual artist Adam Nieman recently received attention from The New York Time’s Dot Earth Blog for his illuminating scale models of hard-to-envision quantities such as the volume of oil being leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wells, global carbon emissions as measured in “UN Building units per second,” and the relatively small amount of air and water on Earth.
Demographers and sustainability experts often warn about the increasingly smaller allotment of natural resources per capita, but few have illustrated that reality at such a human scale as Nieman does.On a global level, Nieman’s work shows the tremendous population density of the world’s “urban island.” Over half of the global population now lives in cities, which is represented by the grey dot, just 616 km across in “Land-Cover Islands.”
Others seeking to improve quantitative visualizations include David McCandless of the site Information Is Beautiful. Among other things, McCandless has tackled the daunting task of accurately comparing spending in an age of trillion dollar budgets, with his “Billion Dollar Gram.”
Another group, the Dutch firm TD Architects, highlights the disparity between global demographics and the distribution of wealth with “Walled World.”
Nieman’s blog examines the confusion that often occurs at the interface between the political and scientific worlds. This confusion is amply demonstrated by debates over contentious issues such as budget priorities, population growth, and climate change.
Politicians often ask that complex problems be distilled into simple bullet points for speeches and policy documents. However, when it comes to problems of such complexity and scale, pictures like these may be worth a thousand bullet points.
Sources: New York Times, Reuters.
Photo Credit: “Green London (wide)” and “land cover islands” courtesy of flickr user JohnJobby.‘NATO 2020’ Recommendations Avoid “New Security” Challenges
›May 25, 2010 // By Schuyler NullA recently released report, NATO 2020, outlines expert recommendations for the alliance’s new strategic concept. However, while pointing to a nighttime satellite image of the globe at a Wilson Center conference last week, Professor Peter Liotta of Salve Regina University said the report focuses too much on conventional self-defense, when most of the new security challenges of the 21st century will come from areas of the world “where the lights are out.”
In an interview with New Security Beat, Liotta criticized NATO 2020’s emphasis on what he sees as a reactive, rather than a proactive, stance. By ignoring “new security” vulnerabilities such as environmental and demographic challenges, NATO may end up creating more threats for itself down the line, he said.
The report briefly acknowledges that demographic change and environmental degradation represent sources of uncertainty in forecasting global trends. However, neither are included as major threats to the alliance. Instead, the authors say the most probable threats are nuclear or non-nuclear armed ballistic missiles, terror attacks, and cyber intrusion.
Discussions about non-traditional security vulnerabilities often produce contentious and conflicting viewpoints, which makes it easier to ignore them, said Liotta. However, it is important for NATO to realize that security threats – even more conventional ones – do not exist in isolation.
Liotta said the continued focus on NATO’s Article 5, the invocation of collective self-defense, overshadows other important foundations of the alliance. For example, Article 2, which encourages “promoting conditions of stability,” could be invoked to help the alliance address non-traditional security threats.
In his presentation, Liotta, formerly of the U.S. Naval War College, cited mass migration, water scarcity, and low probability, high-risk events, such as rapid sea-level rise from Arctic ice melt, as examples of challenges that NATO should be preparing to meet. He also drew attention to the security challenges of a burgeoning global population, saying that rapid growth and urbanization will produce 600 cities with more than one million people by 2025.
Such extreme events as the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China, which killed about 90,000 people and left five million homeless, might be a symptom of the strain our growing population has placed on the Earth’s natural systems, said Liotta. Scientists point out that an earthquake of such magnitude has never been seen in Sichuan and that large construction projects – particularly a large dam and reservoir that lie within 550 yards of the fault line – have likely had a considerable effect on local geology.
In Europe’s current deployment-adverse, difficult fiscal environment, it is perhaps understandable that NATO planners would focus on concrete threats rather than emerging vulnerabilities. But, as Liotta argues, the consequences for ignoring these new security challenges could be no less dire.
Sources: Daily Mail, Foreign Policy, NATO, Telegraph.
Photo Credit: “The Night Lights of Planet Earth” courtesy of flickr user woodleywonderworks.21st Century Water
›The Economist published this week For Want of a Drink, its special report on water. The report, a compilation of 11 articles, is a mix of surveys of global management strategies, health impacts, and economic considerations on the one hand, and deeper looks into specific practices in Singapore, India, and China on the other. Most interesting for New Security Beat readers is the article “To the Last Drop: How to Avoid Water Wars.” The article states there have been “no true water wars,” but goes on to question whether the pressures of climate change and population growth could generate different outcomes in the future. While the challenges laid out are manifold, the article concludes that potential for cooperation is equally present. “The secret is to look for benefits and then try to share them. If that is done, water can bring competitors together.”Global Change: Impacts on Water and Food Security, published by IFPRI in collaboration with CGIAR and the Third World Centre for Water Management, is an anthology of focused articles studying “the interplay between globalization, water management, and food security.” While heavily focused on trade and finance, the articles span the spectrum of food and water challenges, from biofuels to the global fish trade. Overall, the book finds that “global change provides more opportunities than challenges,” but taking advantage of globalization’s opportunities demands “comprehensive water and food policy reforms.”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.”New Research on Population and Climate: The Impact of Demographic Change on Carbon Emissions
›“Policies that have the effect…of leading to lower fertility and to slower population growth can be considered ‘win-win’ from the climate point of view,” said Brian O’Neill of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at a recent Wilson Center event on his latest research. Yet while the connection between demographic change and CO2 emissions is implicitly understood among both researchers and policymakers, it “has not really caught on,” he added.
In response to critiques of earlier studies looking at demographic change and CO2 emissions—which the climate research community has faulted for their lack of sophistication, use of unfamiliar analytic approaches, and failure to clearly demonstrate the magnitude of the connection—O’Neill is using a novel, more rigorous approach that he hopes will provide a clearer understanding of the links between demography and climate change.
The Population Factor
To generate CO2 emissions scenarios for the next 100 years, O’Neill’s team used the Population-Environment-Technology (PET) Model, originally created by Lawrence H. Goulder and Michael Dalton of Stanford. The PET Model takes its basic assumptions on regional economic growth, technological development, change in population characteristics, and other factors from the IPCC’s A2 and B2 scenarios, but replaces each scenario’s singular population growth curve with high and low alternatives from the United Nations Population Division.
Like other climate models, the PET Model divides the world into nine regions. “You don’t want to treat economies—or the demography, the consumption patterns, the energy system, and so on—of sub-Saharan Africa the same as you do for the U.S. or EU,” he said.What makes the O’Neill’s approach unique, however, is his attention to the sub-regional level. “Typically in these models…you break the world up into nine regions, but then you treat everyone in sub-Saharan Africa the same, everyone in China the same,” said O’Neill.
By drawing on data from detailed surveys of 800,000 households from 35 countries, O’Neill and his team demonstrated that the distinctions between urban and rural, older and younger, and smaller and larger households hold important implications for carbon emissions. This inclusion of demographic sub-factors allows a deeper degree of analysis than models that treat all households the same. They found that age structure, household size, and urbanization all altered emissions outputs.
Could Bending Population Growth Curves Reduce Emissions?
In the long run, the potential for demographic shifts to reduce CO2 emissions “is a big number,” said O’Neill. In the medium term, for example by the middle of the century, results are less clear. To compare population-related emissions reductions to other carbon-reduction opportunities, he evoked Socolow and Pacala’s “stabilization wedge” framework. The wedge framework posits 15 opportunities, or wedges, to eventually reduce CO2 emissions by 1 billion tons of carbon equivalent per year. They contend that implementing any 7 of the wedges could stabilize CO2 emissions by 2050 and, if followed by additional measures reducing emissions below today’s levels, would stabilize the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at 550 ppm and forestall the worst impacts of climate change.
Would reducing population growth equal a wedge? The full results, currently under review at a scientific journal, will seek to answer this question. “Slower population growth can’t solve the climate problem,” he concluded. “But it can certainly help.”Want to Model Climate Change? There’s an App for That
›C-Learn, developed by the coalition group Climate Interactive, is a three-region climate simulator that allows users to input targets for fossil fuels emissions, emissions from deforestation, and reductions from afforestation. The app then outputs the expected results for atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global temperature. The simulator is a free, public version of the more complicated C-ROADS, a tool designed to help policymakers compare the predicted effects of particular climate change mitigation policies.
Although interesting, C-Learn notably lacks the option to input assumptions regarding population growth rates, let alone those concerning more nuanced factors such as age structure, urbanization rates, or household size, the importance of which were recently discussed at the Wilson Center by the National Center for Atmospheric Research‘s Brian O’Neill. Population is a significant factor in determining what can be expected as reasonable emission targets and the failure to include space for demographic assumptions is a significant short-coming.
