Showing posts from category climate change.
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“Adapt we must”: Joshua Busby on the Climate-Security Connection
›August 29, 2008 // By Sonia Schmanski
In “The Climate Security Connection: What it Means for the Poor,” Joshua Busby (listen to ECSP podcast with Busby) discusses the security implications of climate change for the developing world. In this paper, written for “Development in the Balance: How Will the World’s Poor Cope With Climate Change?,” the fifth annual Brookings Blum Round Table, held earlier this month, Busby explains that “[d]eveloping countries are most vulnerable, partly as an accident of geography, but also because vulnerability is made worse by poverty, bad governance, and past conflict.”
Busby compares the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which pounded Burma in May 2008, to that of an armed attack, describing both as causing “widespread suffering, destruction of infrastructure, mobilization of the military, and the movement of refugees.” In fact, between 1991 and 2005, natural disasters led to as many deaths as armed conflict, as Busby notes. The subsequent political battles around outside efforts to deliver aid “gave people around the world a visual image of the potential future,” says Busby, and offered a glimpse of “the security risks when affected countries lack the capacity or will to respond.”
The economic consequences of natural disasters can also be crippling. In absolute terms, the developed world suffers larger financial losses, but as a share of GDP, the damage to developing countries is far greater. Additionally, though the death toll of natural disasters continues to fall, the total number of affected people is on the rise, which means that many more people are relying on government services to regain their footing in the wake of natural disasters.
These consequences have long-term security implications for a world in which natural disasters are becoming more frequent and severe. “Post-disaster environments are going to be dangerous moments,” Busby predicts, “when mishandled or inadequate disaster response can give way to the kinds of lingering grievances that can motivate people to take up arms.” To prevent this, he advocates an international focus on adaptation and risk-reduction strategies, and cautions against narrowly focusing on the causal relationship linking climate change to violent conflict. By doing so, policymakers and practitioners overlook what Busby says is the more likely outcome, in which large-scale disasters sap government resources by creating humanitarian emergencies that require military mobilization in response. In “Gathering Storm – the humanitarian impact of climate change,” the UN’s Integrated Regional News Networks (IRIN) explores how climate change has altered the face of global humanitarian crises.
Offering a sharp critique of the reactive strategy of many governments, Busby suggests that a modest investment in prevention would be more efficient and more effective. A joint assessment by the World Bank and the U.S. Geological Survey, for example, found that a $40 billion investment in natural-disaster prevention could have prevented $280 billion in damages worldwide during the 1990s. The reactive approach also threatens to politicize the carefully guarded neutrality of aid workers and organizations; engender international friction where inadequate government response leads to international intervention; and sap government resources through costly responses to humanitarian crises.
Busby envisions a system where “the poor bear less of the brunt of half-hearted and partial reactive measures” in response to climate change. Noting Paul Collier’s finding in The Bottom Billion that past conflict is an accurate predictor of future poverty, Busby argues that reducing the potential for violence in post-disaster situations will improve development prospects for countries worldwide. An enlightened approach, emphasizing prevention over reaction, will not only insulate vulnerable regions from the immediate dangers of natural disasters, but will also protect them from more indirect, long-term threats to their prosperity and security.
Photo: Tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers were mobilized in response to the May 12th earthquake. As climate change makes natural disasters more frequent and more severe, this will likely become an increasingly common sight. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Alex and Jerry.
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Weekly Reading
›A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that the global food crisis poses a moral and humanitarian threat; a developmental threat; and a strategic threat. The authors recommend that the United States: modernize emergency assistance; make rural development and agriculture top U.S. foreign policy priorities; alter the U.S. approach to biofuels; ensure U.S. trade policy promotes developing-country agriculture; and strengthen relevant U.S. organizational capacities.
In an article in Scientific American, Jeffrey Sachs argues that the global food shortages Thomas Malthus predicted in 1798 may still come to pass if we do not slow population growth and begin using natural resources more sustainably.
A report by the Government Accountability Office finds that food insecurity in sub-Saharan African persists, despite U.S. and global efforts to halve it by 2015, due to “low agricultural productivity, limited rural development, government policy disincentives, and the impact of poor health on the agricultural workforce. Additional factors, including rising global commodity prices and climate change, will likely further exacerbate food insecurity in the region.”
In an article in the Belgian journal Les Cahiers du Réseau Multidisciplinaire en Etudes Stratégiques, Thomas Renard argues that climate change is likely to increase the risk of environmental terrorism (attacks that use the environment as a tool or target), eco-terrorism (attacks perpetrated on behalf of the environment), nuclear terrorism, and humanitarian terrorism (attacks targeting humanitarian workers).
A Community Guide to Environmental Health, available for free online in PDF, is a field-tested, hands-on guide to community-based environmental health. Topics include waterborne diseases; sustainable agriculture; mining and health; and using the legal system to fight for environmental rights. -
Population Growth, Environmental Degradation Threaten Development in Uganda
›August 28, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiClimate change, increasing population, and overuse of land, fisheries, and water supplies threaten to undermine development in Uganda, writes Pius Sawa for the Africa Science News Service. Olive Sentumbwe Mugisa, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) population and health advisor in Uganda, warns that Uganda’s economic growth is not keeping pace with its population growth, which is among the fastest in Africa, due to a fertility rate of 6.7 children per woman.
Native Ugandan Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka spoke about the interconnectedness of population, health, and environment issues in Uganda in two events at the Wilson Center in May of this year. Kalema-Zikusoka is the founder and director of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), which works to conserve the habitat of the endangered mountain gorilla by strengthening community health services and providing communities with information about the benefits of family planning.
Kalema-Zikusoka is also the author of an upcoming issue of Focus, the Environmental Change and Security Program’s series of occasional papers featuring Wilson Center speakers. Her piece describes CTPH’s work in and around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, where it has found great success in addressing health, conservation, family planning, and livelihood issues in an integrated fashion.
Photo: Woman and children in southern Uganda. Courtesy of flickr user youngrobv. -
Green Revolution Fallout Plagues India’s Punjab Region
›August 21, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiIndia’s Punjab region faces a host of troubles: In the last 10 years, 100,000 of India’s desperate farmers—many of them Punjabi—have been driven to suicide by their inability to repay loans; half a century of heavy fertilizer use in Punjab has led to soaring cancer rates; water tables in the region sink as much as 100 feet per year, the result of decades of rice production in a naturally dry area; overwatering has brought salts to the soil’s surface, making large tracts of land unusable; and by some accounts, 40 percent of Punjab’s youth and nearly half of its agricultural workforce are addicted to heroin. In a series of reports from Punjab published in Slate magazine, Mira Kamdar argues that the economic, security, and environmental problems facing India can ultimately be traced back some 40 years to the policies of the Green Revolution. The drive to feed India’s rapidly growing population put enormous pressure on Punjab’s land and left consideration for sustainability on the back burner, according to Kamdar, who argues that these issues now threaten to paralyze India’s agricultural sector.
The Green Revolution alleviated the chronic famines that historically plagued India. Hybrid seed varieties, extensive irrigation schemes, and the heavy-handed use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides transformed Punjab into an agricultural powerhouse. It comprises only 1.5 percent of India’s territory, but it produces 60 percent of the country’s wheat and 45 percent of its rice. Yet Kamdar wonders whether India will be able to “feed a growing population in the face of environmental collapse and growing political instability fueled by scarcity.”
With little hope for economic stability, Punjab’s youth are increasingly turning to the drug trade for income, and Punjab’s impoverished citizens, many of whom feel exploited and left behind by the Indian government, are attractive recruits for separatist groups. “Conditions affecting the livelihood of the majority of people in poor countries [or regions] are at the heart of the internal violence” so often found there, according to a report from the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO).
Due to the effects of climate change, the 400 million additional people projected to live in India by 2080 may have to make do with a nearly 40 percent decline in agricultural production during the same period, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Current policies will do little to alleviate the pressures colliding in Punjab. The government—as well as the World Bank, international agriculture corporations, and Indian companies—favors privately funded, large-scale industrial operations. Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s minister of finance, is focused on developing India’s agricultural capacity, and is not terribly concerned with the consequences for the environment, security, or human health. Small-scale farming is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Many countries face the challenge of feeding a growing population with diminishing output, and find doing so in an ecologically responsible manner difficult. Ultimately, though, the case of India shows that increasing output at such dramatic cost to human and environmental health is unsustainable, as it quickly creates complex and intractable problems of its own.
Photo: Punjabi farmers transport fertilizer from a nearby village. Courtesy of Flickr user Aman Tur.
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Kenyan Pastoralists Clash With Ugandan Army
›August 21, 2008 // By Daniel GleickOn Sunday, the Ugandan army attacked thousands of Turkana herders from drought-stricken northern Kenya who had crossed into Uganda seeking water and pasture for their cattle. “This is the second time our people have been attacked and killed,” John Munyes, Kenyan labor minister and Turkana North MP, told The Daily Nation. In 2005, 60 Turkana herders were killed by the Ugandan army in a similar incident. Yet talks scheduled for last month never occurred, and Munyes complained to The Nation that “the [Kenyan] Government had not shown any concern” over deaths in his community.
A UNICEF video discusses the hardships facing the Turkana.
According to The Daily Nation, some Turkana have resorted to cattle rustling to make a living. After a raid earlier this week, residents of the Kenyan town of Galole in the North Horr district reported that Turkana raiders stole “more than 20,000 animals,” and that 11 people were killed while pursuing the raiders. According to The Daily Nation, “[s]ince 2005, there have been a series of livestock raids between Turkana herders and their neighbours in North Horr.” At a recent Wilson Center event, Peter Hetz of ARD, Inc. explained that “[i]nsecure land tenure and property rights and the inequitable access to land and natural assets are two of the leading triggers of violent conflict, population displacement, the over-exploitation of natural resources, and political instability throughout eastern Africa.”
Sadly, this type of conflict may become even more prevalent. Survival of the fittest: Pastoralism and climate change in East Africa, a new report by Oxfam International, notes that the risk of conflict “is greatest during times of stress, for example drought or floods.” Drawing on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) reports, it points out that some regions are expected to have higher rainfall, which could lead to flooding, and others are likely to face further drought. While more rain could be a boon in some cases, it could also make semi-arid lands attractive to farmers—who are typically more politically enfranchised—pushing out pastoralist communities.
Given this dynamic, the interstate and intrastate conflicts that occurred earlier this week could become more common all over the continent. “Pastoralism enabled people to adapt to an increasingly arid and unpredictable environment by moving livestock according to the shifting availability of water and pasture,” notes the report, but “[t]o be practiced effectively, pastoralism depends on freedom of movement for all herds between pastures and water sources.” It is impossible to attribute the incidents this week directly to climate change, but as the climate in the area shifts and affects local resources, migration will likely become an increasingly attractive adaptive mechanism for pastoralists. Environmentally induced migration is currently being discussed in more detail in an interactive online seminar co-sponsored by the Environmental Change and Security Program and the Population-Environment Research Network.
The problems Survival of the fittest discusses are serious, but the report argues that because they have been adapting to climatic changes for millennia, “pastoralist communities could have a sustainable and productive future in a world affected by climate change, given the right enabling environment.” Mohamed Elmi, Kenya’s minister for the development of Northern Kenya and other arid lands, supported the report’s conclusion, saying that pastoralist adaptability “cannot be realised without government support and investment.” While it is impossible to predict the exact changes the Turkana and other pastoral groups will face, it is certain that without government support, clashes such as the ones earlier this week will continue to occur. -
Weekly Reading
›“Over the next twenty years physical pressures – population, resource, energy, climatic, and environmental – could combine with rapid social, cultural, technological, and geopolitical change to create greater uncertainty,” warns the newly released 2008 National Defense Strategy. Demographic trends, resource scarcity, and environmental change all inform the updated strategy, which encourages international cooperation to address these impending challenges.
The “Population Forum” in the September issue of WorldWatch Magazine “reveals that empowering women to make their own family size choices…is the best strategy to tackle population growth” and the environmental and security problems linked to it. A short history of population trends is available online; the website offers free previews of Lori Hunter’s article on PHE and gender, as well as “Population and Security” by Elizabeth Leahy and ECSP’s own Sean Peoples. Bernard Orimbo links population growth and environmental degradation in his native Kenya, and PAI staff discuss urbanization.
Climate change threatens to exaggerate the challenges faced by the billions of people worldwide who depend upon natural resources for their survival. But the competition and, at times, violent conflict that results from increased resource scarcity is not a given; the recently released World Resources Report 2008 finds that “well-designed, community-based enterprises” can ease the environmental burden on natural resources and pave the way for sustainable dependence on the land.
At the 2008 World Expo’s “Water and Conflict Resolution” week, municipal representatives working with Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) presented case studies from its “Good Water Neighbors” programs: cross-border solutions for the Lower Jordan River; the Jordan River Peace Park project; and the town of Auja in the Jordan River Valley. Speaking about these programs the Wilson Center, FOEME’s Gidon Bromberg said that “by working together, not only do we advance the environmental issues…we also advance peace between our peoples.” -
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Climate Scientists in the Policy Realm
›August 14, 2008 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoAs someone who sits between scholarship and policy at the Woodrow Wilson Center, I am sympathetic to Harvard Professor John Holdren’s efforts to articulate critical scientific issues in short, digestible formats. Holdren, who also directs the Woods Hole Research Center, recently tackled what he views as the dangers of climate change deniers in a Boston Globe op-ed—which is, by definition, brief. According to an email sent by Holdren, the reaction to “Convincing the climate-change skeptics” has been quite critical, with castigation running 6 or 7 to 1 over praise.
Holdren’s op-ed neglected to explicitly note that healthy skepticism is a necessary foundation for good science. In a response posted online, Holdren provides his original text including this point, which was edited out by the Globe—a common frustration of scientists who attempt to simplify complex arguments to fit the constraints of newspapers and more popular outlets (he was on Letterman in April).Those scientists who excoriate Holdren for underplaying skepticism are often the same ones who complain about bad (or no) climate policy—but refuse to engage policymakers and the media (and, therefore, forfeit their right to complain). Just as bad, some scientists assume policymakers will find their book or article, read it, understand it, and glean the correct conclusion from the scientific evidence—with no translation necessary. I’ve said it before: to reach policymakers, we have to speak their language.
I also think headline writers are the bane of every serious op-ed or news story. As someone who spends a lot of time on the faux water wars argument, I have come to believe that headline writers seeking to make a splash are a big part of the continued belief that states go to war over water.
Holdren’s experience suggests scientists should take proactive steps, such as setting up supporting web pages when the piece is published, and including the URL as part of their byline. This annotated or fully referenced and extended online version may help temper some of the outrage in cases like this. Jeff Sachs’ “Sustainable Developments” column in Scientific American, Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog, and Nick Kristof’s New York Times column and “On the Ground” blog commonly include links to more extensive discussions.
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Averting a Global Freshwater Crisis
›August 7, 2008 // By Karen BencalaWith more than one billion people lacking adequate access to freshwater, the world is already experiencing a vast set of challenges. In the not-so-distant future, as the global population continues to grow and as the impacts of climate change are felt, the problem will intensify. In this month’s issue of Scientific American, Harvard professor Peter Rogers unpacks the multiple factors contributing to this scarcity and proposes six priority actions to alleviate some of this stress.
Rogers’ key message is: “If a crisis arises in the coming decades, it will not be for lack of know-how; it will come from a lack of foresight and from an unwillingness to spend the needed money.” He points out that it is the combination of climate change and continued population growth that will have a devastating affect on local water scarcity. However, water scarcity is not only driven by demand outweighing supply, but also by the pollution of our water supply and by the wasting of water by individuals, industry, and our water-supply systems.
To address these issues, Rogers proposes six priority recommendations:- Set higher prices for water use. In the United States and other developed countries, water is so cheap that “it seems almost free,” so there is little incentive to conserve or reuse. Increasing the price of water supply would drive conservation. For instance, municipalities would be more likely to fix leaks in water-supply systems and to invest in water reuse.
- Improve irrigation efficiency. With approximately 70 percent of available freshwater going to agriculture, increasing the efficiency of irrigation systems—fixing leaks, creating low-loss storage capabilities, and more efficiently applying water to crops—would create a volume of water that could go to other uses.
- Supply “virtual water.” “Virtual water” refers to the amount of water used to produce a product. If arid and semiarid areas imported more food or other water-intensive products, this import of virtual water would allow the limited water that is available to go to other uses, such as drinking water or industry. Implementing this recommendation would require the liberalization of trade in farm products and a reduction in tariffs. Given the highly contested debates about farm subsides in the United States and the EU, this seems a far-off proposition.
- Use dry or low-water devices for sanitation. This would reduce the amount of water used for sanitation and could also reduce the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers if the solid waste were collected and composted for farming purposes.
- Use desalination to increase supply. Once limited by high costs and high energy demands, desalination technologies are nearing commercial viability.
- Invest in water. Major investment in existing technologies to conserve water, maintain and replace infrastructure, and construct sanitation systems will be needed to stave off a water crisis. According to the article, Booz Allen Hamilton estimates that a $1 trillion annual investment in these sectors will be required to meet the world’s water needs through 2030.
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India’s Punjab region faces a host of troubles: In the last 10 years, 100,000 of India’s desperate farmers—many of them Punjabi—have been 
As someone who sits between scholarship and policy at the 
