In Dead Water, a report released today by the UN Environment Programme, warns that pollution, overharvesting, invasive species, and climate change pose grave threats to the world’s fisheries and coral reefs. “Fishing for a Secure Future,” a recent meeting series hosted by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP), examined the many challenges facing fisheries—as well as potential solutions.

U.S. officials might have taken more aggressive steps to combat climate change at the recent UN climate change conference in Bali had the Pentagon pressured them more forcefully, argue John Podesta and Peter Ogden in a Financial Times op-ed. According to Podesta and Ogden, climate change will threaten the U.S. military’s ability to effectively perform many of its duties, including responding to natural disasters and stabilizing fragile states.

“While governments continue to rely on the military as a preferred tool of security policy, the nature of many of the world’s intractable conflicts suggests severely misplaced priorities. Research suggests that among the underlying reasons for many tensions today are competition over lucrative resources and the repercussions from environmental degradation,” writes the Worldwatch Institute’s Michael Renner, who argues that UN peacekeeping forces, if given sufficient funds, could do a better job calming unstable regions than militaries. Renner also discussed environment-conflict links at the Wilson Center in June 2007.

Mongolians are moving from the steppes to cities in record numbers, and climate change is one of the drivers of this migration, reports National Geographic. “Reign of Sand,” a multimedia report by the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum and water NGO Circle of Blue, explores how desertification is threatening Inner Mongolians’ traditional livelihoods.

A report by the Population Council examines the impact of the Partners for Food Security project, which aimed to reduce the food insecurity of HIV-infected households in Tororo, Uganda, by fostering collaboration among agricultural, health, and economic development organizations. According to the report, “the coordination of agricultural extension and HIV/AIDS education and awareness can enhance the outcomes of both sets of activities.”

The recent fighting in Chad was partially fuelled by rebels’ resentment over President Idriss Déby’s handling of the country’s oil revenue, reported The New York Times. “They say that he has not managed the country’s growing oil wealth well and that he has given preferential treatment to members of his ethnic group, the Zaghawa.”

Although an agreement with the World Bank states that Chad’s government must devote 70 percent of oil revenue to development, few believe this is occurring, especially given Déby’s recent high levels of military spending. Philippe Hugon, a researcher specializing in African economic affairs, told Agence France-Presse, “The oil wealth has been partially siphoned off and wasted on arms spending and on building up the personal fortunes of people close to Idriss Déby….The rebels want their share.”

Chad’s oil production is tiny when compared with that of some of its neighbors, such as Nigeria; even so, it constitutes a considerable portion of the country’s economy. Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 170th out of 177 countries in the 2007-2008 Human Development Index.

“In Kenya’s highly competitive landscape, land has become the battleground,” argued Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post. Maathai joins a growing group of experts who emphasize that recent violence in Kenya stems not only from ethnic divisions, but also from longstanding tensions over resource allocation. Earlier this year, guest contributor Colin Kahl asserted that the struggles between the Kikuyu, Luo, and Kalenjin tribes are partly based on disparate levels of property ownership.

The media sometimes portray the violence in Kenya as a simple manifestation of ethnic friction, but many commentators note the importance of land distribution and other factors. Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and a visiting public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, told The New York Times, “You have to understand that these issues are much deeper than ethnic. They are political…they go back to land.” In a similar vein, Oxford University’s David Anderson told Newsweek, “If this violence is really driven by ethnic hatred, why is it that violence breaks out in specific places that are utterly predictable? This violence…is provoked in areas that have a history of violence because of other issues, like land.”

Looking forward, Harvard professor Calestous Juma says that if mediation talks are to be effective, they will have to avoid “the template [of thinking] about Africa in terms of ethnic differences.” Similarly, Maathai emphasizes that “ruling elites must devote time, energy and resources to ensuring…equitable distribution of resources.”

According to The Economist, one similarity between seemingly dissimilar Gaza and Kenya is that they both have “too many young men without either jobs or prospects.” Improvements in health and education—which resulted in more current 15-to-24-year-olds being healthy and relatively well-educated—have not been matched by sufficient growth of economic opportunities, leaving many young people frustrated in their attempts to provide for themselves and their families. Fertility rates have fallen somewhat in both places, from around seven children per woman 20 years ago to approximately five today—but this is still far higher than the 1.6 children per woman average in developed countries.

For a more detailed analysis of the relationships between large youth cohorts and conflict, see Population Action International’s report The Shape of Things to Come. As report author Elizabeth Leahy noted at the Wilson Center in October 2007, “The problem is not that there are too many young people, but that there are too few opportunities and resources available to them….Young people are the most important asset a society has in looking to the future. When young people are educated, healthy, and employed, they are the ones who renew and revitalize a country’s economy and institutions.”

“Cities themselves represent microcosms of the kinds of changes that are happening globally, making them informative test cases for understanding socioecological system dynamics and responses to change,” argue the authors of “Global Change and the Ecology of Cities,” published in today’s issue of Science magazine. The article focuses on changes in land use and cover, biogeochemical cycles, climate, hydrosystems, and biodiversity.

In an op-ed in today’s Washington Post, Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai argues that the country’s post-election violence is partially the result of “the inequitable distribution of natural resources in Kenya, especially land.” Maathai has written extensively on the links between peace and natural resource management.

A joint policy brief by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the World Resources Institute lays out the challenges associated with simultaneously increasing energy security and reducing carbon emissions, and proposes principles to guide these transitions.

Austria has not abided by its promise to crack down on a leather factory that Hungary contends is polluting the transboundary Raba River, said Hungary’s minister of environment, who proposed bilateral talks to resolve the issue.

This mid-term report evaluates progress made by the USAID-funded Okavango Integrated River Basin Management Project, which seeks to strengthen regional water management institutions and preserve the basin’s biodiversity.

“HIV and AIDS affect all people in a community by driving faster rates of resource extraction and use, increasing gender inequality, lowering the general health of the labor force, and impeding an individual’s ability to maintain a viable livelihood,” argue the authors of “Guidelines for Mitigating the Impacts of HIV/AIDS on Coastal Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management,” which suggests ways to combat these challenges.

USAID’s “Adapting to Climate Variability and Change: A Guidance Manual for Development Planning” seeks to help USAID country missions and partners increase their projects’ resiliency to global climate change, though it neglects to mention the links between climate change and population.

The North-South Institute’s Canadian Development Report 2008—Fragile States or Failing Development? (free registration required) assesses reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan; Canada’s contributions to gender equality in Afghanistan and Haiti; and the destabilizing effects development aid and intervention can have in fragile Latin American states.

Yet another world leader is predicting impending water wars. Today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Our experiences tell us that environmental stress due to lack of water may lead to conflict, and it will be greater in poor nations.” Agreed. Water stress may lead to conflict, but a historical analysis shows that it is actually more likely lead to a cooperative outcome than a conflictive one. (For a quick summary of water conflict and cooperation and how water can be a force for peace rather than war, see ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko’s co-authored piece on the subject, “Water Can Be a Pathway to Peace, Not War.”)

Hostility between the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) and the country’s government—brewing since government officials announced a sharp increase in mining project commitments in the northern region of Niger in early 2007—escalated this month. Violence reached Niger’s capital city of Niamey for the first time on January 8, 2008, when a landmine exploded under a car, killing a local radio director. The MNJ, which decries what it perceives as the unequal distribution of profits from uranium mining and oil drilling in Tuareg territory, has killed nearly 50 soldiers since early last year, earning the wrath of the Nigerien government. Although the group vehemently denies any involvement with the January 8 attack, many in Niger are skeptical of this claim.