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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category energy.
  • The Top 5 Posts of August 2020

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    What You Are Reading  //  September 11, 2020  //  By Wilson Center Staff
    NSB Top 5 Photo

    As Beijing prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, China’s environmental activities are once again on center stage. The Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum took the top spot this month with Karen Mancl and Richard Liu’s coverage of the new program report, “Closing the Loop on China’s Water Pollution,” which details what China can learn from New York, Washington, D.C., and Singapore, to advance its wastewater and carbon reduction targets.

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  • Where the Oil Runs Deep, Water Turns Foul

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    Guest Contributor  //  August 31, 2020  //  By Elena Bruess
    A farmer with his animals near the Gir Zero facility on Rmeilan oil fields

    This article originally appeared on Circle of Blue.

    When Farhad Ahma returned to his native country last year on a work trip, his first thought was of his small daughter back home. The air around him was so thick with pollution, he couldn’t imagine she would survive the climate in this region of northeastern Syria. Ahma himself struggled to breathe almost as soon as he arrived, nauseated by the heavy smell within a couple hours. He was born and raised nearby, in a city called Qamishli, but he had lived in Berlin for some time now. Returning was a shock to his system.

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  • Debt on the Nile? Sharing Rivers on the African Continent

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    Guest Contributor  //  August 12, 2020  //  By Giulio Boccaletti
    shutterstock_1781459021

    Trouble is brewing on the Nile. For years, use of the river was mainly about the needs of Egypt, by far the largest and most powerful riparian country in the basin. But since the Arab Spring of 2011, the situation has changed considerably. Egypt’s troubles over the last decade have weakened its ability to project power southward, while upper riparian states—Ethiopia in particular—have enjoyed a period of economic growth and relative stability, which has led them to look at the great river as an important national resource. Tensions have come to a head since Ethiopia announced the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), construction of which is now almost complete. Once full, the resulting reservoir will be larger than the whole of Greater London. Much of the water it holds would have previously reached Sudan and Egypt largely unhindered.

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  • Divesting Won’t be Enough to Achieve Climate Justice

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    Guest Contributor  //  July 14, 2020  //  By Kate Neville
    48796590033_47dc566df2_o

    A quiet disruption to the established financial order is underway: Around the world, institutions are pulling their investments out of fossil fuels. Climate activists campaigning for divestment suggest that such economic rearrangements might keep oil, gas, and coal in the ground, curbing carbon emissions. In parallel, some high-profile advocates call for reinvestment in renewable energy. But can the financial sector really drive the structural changes needed to address climate change—and, more fundamentally, climate justice? 

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  • Cobalt is Critical to the Renewable Energy Transition. How Can We Minimize its Social And Environmental Cost?

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    Guest Contributor  //  June 17, 2020  //  By Bianca Nogrady

    This is a Gecamines owned artisanal cobalt mining site

    This article was originally published on Ensia.

    Its name conjures an image of vivid deep blues. But when cobalt is dug out of the ground in ore form, there’s barely a hint of the rich hue it lends its name to. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which produces more than half of the world’s supply, it takes the form of heterogenite, a dull brownish mineral that could easily be mistaken for small clods of dirt.

    But people die for this mineral. Children suffer for it. Livelihoods, educations, neighborhoods, environments and personal safety are sacrificed for it.

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  • China’s Risky Gamble on Coal Conversion

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    China Environment Forum  //  Choke Point  //  January 9, 2020  //  By Richard Liu, Zhou Yang & Xinzhou Qian
    Header

    At the September 2019 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Climate Summit, the U.S. delegation, under the shadow of intended withdrawal from Paris, did not volunteer a speaker. Attention instead focused on China. As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China was poised to assert leadership on the climate crisis.  However, perhaps lacking the sibling rivalry pressure that brought the U.S. and China together in 2014 on a joint climate agreement, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi offered no new commitments: no carbon tax, no increased investment in renewables, and no announcement to set a more ambitious coal consumption cap.

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  • Without the Enforcement of Environmental Laws, Petroleum Infrastructure Projects in Timor-Leste Come at a Cost

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    Guest Contributor  //  December 3, 2019  //  By Adilsonio da Costa
    Road Crossing

    Ignoring environmental laws in Timor-Leste to build a petroleum infrastructure project could mean serious problems for communities including environmental destruction, loss of land, and loss of livelihoods. Communities are already facing some of these problems because project proponents haven’t fulfilled their legal obligations to do extensive environmental research and planning to mitigate any damage to the local environment. The supporters have also failed to meaningfully involve local communities, including interested experts, academics, and civil society groups, in this process.

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  • Could Renewable and Nuclear Energy Be the Key to Fighting Climate Change?

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    From the Wilson Center  //  September 3, 2019  //  By Shawn Archbold
    14755077926_e75a716fa8_k

    “Today we face two existential threats: nuclear annihilation and catastrophic climate change,” writes Daniel Poneman, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy, in his book, Double Jeopardy: Combating Nuclear Terror and Climate Change. “Both stem from human origins. We need to fight both threats aggressively.” At a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center, Poneman discussed his book. While the dangers of nuclear energy are clear from incidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl, Poneman proposes policies that aim to encourage a safe, non-carbon baseload power that responds to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 report and keeps our global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, per the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

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