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Support Grows for Integrating Environment, Energy, Economy, Security in U.S. Government
›November 5, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarA new presidential administration always gives rise to a certain amount of bureaucratic restructuring. But for months now, momentum has been building behind the notion that governments need to improve the integration of their environmental, energy, economic, and security policies. Last month, Edward Miliband was named head of the UK government’s new department of energy and climate change. Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tapped former industry minister Jim Prentice to lead a new ministry of environment, economy, and energy security. “I think that, as more and more countries are coming to realize, we cannot separate environmental and economic policy,” said Harper.
Yesterday, Grist’s David Roberts, noting that responsibility for addressing climate change is currently spread among the departments of State, Defense, Interior, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Energy, offered several possibilities for restructuring the U.S. government to improve its ability to address climate change and energy, including creating a cabinet-level Secretary of Climate; expanding and empowering the Department of Energy or the Environmental Protection Agency; or—my favorite—appointing “some kind of czar,” because “[e]verybody loves a czar.”
Initiatives linking these challenges are popping up in Congress, universities, and the military. Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) frequently speaks of the interrelated challenges of energy, environment, security, and economic growth “[O]ur addiction to foreign oil is a threat to our economic security, environmental security, and national security,” he said last year. The University of Colorado Law School recently established the Center for Energy and Environmental Security, which develops practical solutions to help move the world toward a sustainable energy future. In addition, the 2008 National Defense Strategy explicitly links energy, environment, and security: “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.”
A few small-scale initiatives to integrate environmental, economic, energy, and security policies within the U.S. government already exist. Yesterday, Carol Dumaine, deputy director for energy and environmental security at the Department of Energy, delivered a talk at the Harvard University Center for the Environment where she discussed a fledgling project to use unclassified data and a global network of experts in government, industry, and NGOs to identify interrelated environmental and energy security threats. Dumaine presented on the same project at a September 2008 conference on open-source intelligence sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will continue this and other ongoing projects, or instead launch new projects of its own on these issues. -
Conservation Learning Exchange Highlights Climate, Energy, Population, Poverty
›October 15, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarThe Nature Conservancy’s first Conservation Learning Exchange, or ConEx, concludes tomorrow in Vancouver, Canada. It focuses on six themes: climate change and energy; poverty, population growth, and consumerism; ecosystem services; science and technology; working with others; and values and society. You can read more about the goings-on on the ConEx blogs. A sampling from today: “People, poverty and diversity are major themes running throughout this conference and the underlying buzz from the ballrooms to the bars is mission drift. In the sessions I’ve attended, over and over I hear that the Conservancy needs to bring people, of all races, religion and socio-economic backgrounds into our work. Conservation is not just about biodiversity, it is also about human diversity.” -
In Kashmir, Diplomacy Soothes Friction Over Water Resource Management
›October 3, 2008 // By Will Rogers
The conflict over resource-rich Kashmir has sparked renewed tension between India and Pakistan, this time over access to one of Asia’s most indispensable commodities: water. The latest dispute erupted on September 13, 2008, with allegations by Pakistan that India had violated a 2005 World Bank agreement over the operational schedule of the Baglihar Dam, which lies on the Chenab River, just inside Indian-administered Kashmir. That agreement “required that filling [of the dam] should take place between June 21 and Aug 31 with prior consent of Pakistan and subject to a condition that river flows should not drop below 55,000 cusec inside Pakistan at any time,” according to Dawn. India continued to fill the dam well into September, provoking outrage from Pakistan, despite guarantees that water flow into Pakistan would not diminish. Pakistani officials reported that “Pakistan had been losing up to 15,000 cusec of water every day because of India’s action.”
Regional water disputes are no anomaly in Central, East, and South Asia, where population growth and increases in per capita consumption have led to competition over water resources. In recent years, Indiahas invested in hydroelectric projects—such as the Baglihar Dam, projected to generate 450-900 megawatts of electricity—to satisfy a burgeoning middle class hungry for energy. With the dam just up the river from the Pakistani border, Pakistanis have long worried that the dam would severely limit the region’s water and curtail farmers’ ability to irrigate crops. Since construction began in 1999, Pakistani officials have objected to the project, arguing that the more energyIndia attempts to generate from the dam, the less water will reachPakistan.
Last week, Pakistanissued a formal protest to the Permanent Indus Commission, a body formed by the 1960 treaty, over the reduction of Chenab River flows and asked for an emergency meeting with the governing body in order to address the danger posed to Pakistani rice farmers who rely on water flow to irrigate their crops. Since then, prospects for diplomatic resolution have warmed: Pakistani President Asif Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met on the “sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly” last week to discuss the issue. Meanwhile, the Permanent Indus Commission is schedule to meet this month, following an invitation from India to Pakistan’s Indus Water Commissioner to meet to resolve the issue.
Fortunately, water disputes have been one area where Pakistan and India have been able to manage their grievances and find resolution through diplomacy rather than force. By working together on environmental issues—whether water resource management, transboundary forest conservation, or endangered species protection—where cooperation is often possible, even longtime foes can move closer to resolving their larger conflict.
Photo: The Chenab River, flowing here through Himachal Pradesh in the Indus Basin, provides farmers and local populations with the water required to meet their sustainable needs. Courtesy of flickr user Motographer. -
Energizing Investors and Innovators to Think Outside the Grid
›October 2, 2008 // By Will Rogers“The issue of our time is the combination of energy security and climate change,” said former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert at “Thinking Outside the Grid: An Aggressive Approach to Climate and Energy,” a September 23, 2008, forum co-sponsored by Wilson Center On the Hill and the Environmental Change and Security Program. Boehlert noted that the energy security-climate change nexus has received more attention lately, due to record gas prices; successful advertisement campaigns like that of Texas oil magnate-turned-wind farm entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens; and bestselling books like Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America.The Ice Thins and the Plot Thickens: Climate Change Impacts
Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, pointed to the faster-than-expected melting of Arctic ice as an indicator of the severity of the climate crisis. Last year, an ice sheet the size of the
Investing in Technology to Create a Sustainable Future
We may be able cut carbon emissions enough to prevent the Tibetan glaciers and
Brown believes we can create a sustainable energy future by increasing our investments in existing alternative technologies, including wind, solar, and geothermal projects. One of the leading generators of wind energy, Texas currently has more than 4,000 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity, enough to meet the energy needs of` more than 1 million households.
While skeptics claim it would take decades to restructure
Industry and Government: Each Must Play a Role
Melanie Kenderdine, associate director of MIT’s Energy Initiative, noted that energy companies such as BP and Shell are gradually investing more money in cleaner technologies, and that venture capitalists have also put funds into renewable alternatives. Still, Kenderdine emphasized that “the enemies of urgency are many,” so governments must exercise leadership on energy innovation. Ninety percent of the U.S. Department of Energy’s budget “is not for energy, has nothing to do with energy,” decried Kenderdine. “And if we don’t fix that, we’re not going to be able to rapidly develop the technologies and do it in the right way with the right incentives, right sequencing of investments that we need in order to deal with the climate issue—we won’t be able to accomplish it.”
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How America Gets Its Groove Back: Thomas Friedman Foments a Green Revolution
›October 2, 2008 // By Rachel Weisshaar“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, discussion of his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How it Can Renew America, sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Division of International Security Studies and Environmental Change and Security Program. “We need to get back to an America that’s about the Fourth of July and not 9/11,” maintained Friedman, who believes the United States needs to assume a more active and less defensive posture in the world. “We get our groove back as a country…by taking the lead in solving the world’s biggest problems,” which he said include climate change, rising energy demand, and biodiversity loss.
The book’s title identifies three major trends of this century: Climate change is warming our planet; the rise of a global middle class is flattening the differences between rich and poor; and a rapidly expanding population is crowding the world. According to Friedman, these converging trends are driving “five global mega-trends” that will determine our future stability:- Energy and natural resource supply and demand: While some countries are taking steps to become more energy-efficient, the explosive growth of developing-country cities is outpacing these gains. Friedman asserts that there are not enough energy and natural resources for everyone to consume at Americans’ current rates and that everyone, Americans included, must address energy supply and demand.
- Petrodictatorship: We are “funding both sides of the war on terrorism,” said Friedman: the U.S. military with tax dollars, and terrorist groups (and the states that sponsor them) with gas dollars.
- Climate change: Friedman emphasized that the pace of climate change is exceeding many scientists’ predictions, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that we have little time to act.
- Energy poverty: The lack of a consistent electricity supply not only cripples 1.6 billion people’s ability to obtain high-quality health care and adapt to the effects of climate change, but also prevents them from accessing the myriad educational and economic opportunities provided by the Internet.
- Biodiversity loss: The Earth is losing species 1,000 times faster than normal, claimed Friedman. “We are the first generation of humans that is actually going to have to think like Noah,” said Friedman, to save rapidly disappearing plants and animals.
Friedman thinks these trends are “a series of incredible opportunities masquerading as impossible and insoluble problems” because all five can be reversed by “abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons” and energy efficiency. The country that becomes the leader in new energy technology (ET) will have the most stable economy and garner the most respect on the international stage, said Friedman. If the United States does not take the lead in the ET revolution, others—China, India, Europe—will, but they won’t do it as fast or as well as the United States, he says.
Friedman believes the market is the key to igniting an ET revolution. “This country has never been more alive in terms of innovation,” he says, but our leaders have not capitalized on it. He thinks the government must play an important role—“for markets to produce innovation, they need to be shaped”—but not by launching a “Manhattan Project” for energy. “We are not going to regulate our way out of this problem; we are only going to innovate our way out of this problem.”Friedman criticized the pop culture environmentalism that claims people can save the Earth by changing their daily lives in small, painless ways. “Easy should not be in the lexicon,” he maintained. But even if an ET revolution will be difficult, it is still achievable: “We have exactly enough time, starting now,” said Friedman.
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Exploring Brazil’s Urucu Natural Gas Fields Sustainably: An Impossible Task?
›September 29, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffWhat does the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) have in common with Brazil’s Urucu natural gas fields? They both epitomize the struggle to balance energy independence and environmental conservation.
Located in the southern Amazon region and discovered in 1978, the Urucu fields are the largest onshore natural gas reserves in Brazil. Exploration began in 1988, but not without controversy. The Amazon rainforest, like ANWR, is a sensitive, biologically unique environment. Plans for exploration of the Urucu fields sparked heated debate over the extent of the environmental damage caused by such exploration—much like the current debate over oil drilling in ANWR.
Conservationists’ arguments revolved around two main issues: preservation of the environment and local communities’ livelihoods. The extraction complex will consist of three pipelines (map): Urucu-Coari (in existence); Urucu-Manaus; and Urucu-Porto Velho. The two new pipelines, which will total 621 miles of additional pipe, will also require the clearing of a 65-foot-wide strip along the entire pipeline. For the pipeline to reach Manaus, it needs to cross the six-mile wide Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon river. The project’s critics argue that even a small oil spill, especially in the stretches of the pipeline in the river, would harm the region’s biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous communities and others who depend on the river.
Petrobrás has sought to assuage activists’ concerns over the pipeline’s impact on local communities by assuring them that the Urucu gas fields will employ at least 3,800 local workers. In addition, Petrobrás is sponsoring community development projects to stimulate alternative economic activities.
Bolivia’s political crisis triggered Brazil’s decision to build the gas extraction pipelines, in spite of environmentalists’ misgivings. The December 2006 “nationalization” of natural gas in Bolivia, which provided Brazil with approximately half of its natural gas supply, made energy security and diversification of energy suppliers priorities for the government, and prompted Petrobrás to jumpstart a natural gas independence project in which Urucu features prominently.
While environmentalists may not have succeeded in stopping the development of the Urucu fields, their efforts have forced Petrobrás to significantly diminish the project’s environmental footprint. In conjuction with local universities and research centers, Petrobrás carried out an impact and risk analysis (Piatam) that led to the implementation of several environmental precautions. For example, the pipeline must be built eight feet under any river it crosses and permanently monitored by a cable embedded within the pipes. In addition, the extraction wells are very small, taking up very little forest area, and a remote control center that tracks any leaks in the pipeline is able to isolate and disable leaking pipes or valves, according to Jeff Hornbeck, an international trade and finance specialist at the Congressional Research Service (via email).
Moreover, all equipment is transported to the site by helicopters in order to avoid building roads, which frequently open up areas to logging and wider-scale development. Petrobrás also plans to use robots to monitor changes in environmental conditions, including the level of oil in the water; and to gather information to help prepare for emergency situations (e.g., flooding or other natural disasters) that threaten to damage the pipelines.
If Petrobrás executes the development of the Urucu fields successfully—with minimal negative consequences for communities and the Amazon—it could serve as an example for other energy projects in sensitive habitats. As growing energy needs increase demand for more exploration, environmentally conscious projects will become even more important.
By Brazil Institute Intern Ana Janaina Nelson.
Video: You can glimpse unspoiled forest outside the window of a plane landing at the Urucu fields, the product of Petrobrás’ efforts to minimize damage to the Amazon. -
Weekly Reading
›The World Bank cancelled a deal with Chad to help finance a $4.2 billion, 665 mile-long oil pipeline, citing evidence that Idriss Déby’s government had not used oil profits to alleviate poverty, as had been stipulated in the agreement.
“Emergency aid to Africa continues to be made available too late, is too short-term and targeted too heavily on saving lives rather than protecting vulnerable livelihoods….food aid only addresses the symptoms of the emergency—hunger—and fails to address the real reasons for the crisis, which include a range of social, political and economic factors such as access to land and basic services, social marginalisation, climate change and poor governance,” argues a new report from CARE.
A report from swisspeace examines the role of the United Nations in linking the environment and conflict prevention.
According to Michael Shank of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, the conflict between Georgia and Russia last month “was chiefly, if not solely, spurred by the desire for mastery over natural resources.”
The World Resources Institute has released a number of new publications on the structure and implications of natural resource decentralization, including Protected Areas and Property Rights: Democratizing Eminent Domain in East Africa and Voice and Choice: Opening the Door to Environmental Democracy. -
Niger Delta Militants Escalate Attacks, Days After Government Establishes Ministry to Aid Delta’s Development
›September 19, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarNiger Delta militants destroyed Royal Dutch Shell’s Orubiri flow station on Tuesday and blew up a major oil pipeline near Rumuekpe on Wednesday, according to statements from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the main insurgent group. On Monday, militants attacked other Shell oil facilities, killing a guard and forcing nearly 100 workers to evacuate. Clashes between the militants—who demand a larger share of the oil revenue and greater political autonomy for Niger Delta residents—and the Nigerian army have reduced the country’s crude oil output by more than 20 percent since 2006. The conflict is “perhaps the most significant, most volatile, and potentially dangerous in that part of the world,” says Wilson Center Africa Program Director Howard Wolpe, who is part of a working group formed to advise policymakers on the issue.
On Wednesday, MEND announced it was broadening the scope of its land attacks beyond Rivers state, the heart of the Niger Delta, and would also seek to target offshore oil rigs. On September 14, MEND declared an all-out war on the Nigerian government for the first time—only three days after its declaration of a cease-fire. The cease-fire came in response to the Nigerian government’s announcement of the creation of a new ministry to accelerate infrastructure development, job creation, and environmental cleanup in the impoverished region.Perhaps the declaration of both cease-fire and war within the space of three days is not so surprising, given the disagreement among Niger Delta leaders over the new ministry. In an online statement, MEND said,
The people of the region should receive this latest dish with apprehension and not allow the over five decades of starvation to rule our emotions as this is not the first time such ‘palatable’ offers have been served to the region from the late 50’s to date. Creating a ‘Ministry’ is not the coming of the much awaited messiah. Nigeria has in existence, ministries over 40 years old which have not positively impacted on the people. It will be yet another avenue for corruption and political favoritism.
Yet People’s Democratic Party Chief Okotie-Eboh had a different take: “It is a very good measure and it shows the sincerity of President Yar’Adua to resolving the Niger Delta crisis. We should give him a chance. This ministry will get allocations like other ministries to tackle the problems of the Niger Delta.”
Although views on the new ministry vary widely, all agree that the Niger Delta faces several grave security, economic, and environmental threats. For instance, an International Crisis Group report recently concluded that one “major issue that has to be dealt with in the context of reconciliation [between the Ogoni people and Shell] is environmental clean-up. No significant study has been conducted to determine reliably the precise impact of oil industry-induced environmental degradation on human livelihoods in the area, but there are indications of severe damage.”
Yet the Delta must also contend with the longer-term implications of its demographic challenge. Forty-five percent of Nigeria’s population is younger than 15, which amounts to a serious youth bulge. The government’s chronic inability to provide these young people with education, health care, and jobs is likely contributing to instability in the Delta.
Photo: MEND fighters and hostages. Courtesy of Dulue Mbachu and ISN Security Watch.
Showing posts from category energy.
The conflict over resource-rich Kashmir has sparked renewed tension between India and Pakistan, this time over access to one of Asia’s most indispensable commodities: water. The latest dispute erupted on September 13, 2008, with allegations by Pakistan that India had violated a 2005 World Bank agreement over the operational schedule of the Baglihar Dam, which lies on the Chenab River, just inside Indian-administered Kashmir. That agreement “required that filling [of the dam] should take place between June 21 and Aug 31 with prior consent of Pakistan and subject to a condition that river flows should not drop below 55,000 
“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, 
