The news is filled with stories of how natural resources—including water—can lead to resentment, unrest, and even violent conflict. But the Good Water Neighbors project, launched by Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) in 2001, seeks to use transboundary water resources as a means to build peace. According to a recently published analysis, the ongoing project, which brings Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian communities together to protect their shared water resources, has significantly improved the local water sector and helped build peace at the local level. For instance, two communities, Tulkarem in the West Bank and Emek Hefer in Israel, are now cooperating over olive mill waste issues. Until recently, waste from the Tulkarem olive mills was dumped into the Alexander River, which flows through Emek Hefer to the Mediterranean Sea. Today, thanks to cooperative transboundary management, “the waste from the mills is placed in a truck and taken to Israel for treatment, reducing to a big extent the pollution of the shared water resource.”

“The impact of climate change is going to be most likely so harmful that it would threaten governments,” said 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner and chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra K. Pachauri in an interview with Reuters earlier this week. Pachauri focused his remarks on Africa, whose one billion people are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and whose governments frequently lack the capacity to adapt to the impending changes.

“If the situation in Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world, then if the world has a conscience it has to remove that scar,” Pachauri said. While a number of high-profile conflicts in Africa’s recent history have revolved around natural resources, Pachauri warned that environmental change could soon eclipse the so-called “resource curse” as a driver of conflict, citing research predicting that by 2020, climate change could leave between 75 million and 250 million additional Africans without access to water and could reduce the yields of farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture by half. “Climate change has the potential to be a problem for the maintenance of peace,” he said.

The rapidly worsening global food crisis has hit certain parts of Africa particularly hard—instigating riots in Egypt and Burkina Faso, for example—and with food and water becoming increasingly precious commodities, dire outcomes seem increasingly likely. “The answer,” Pachauri said, “is for developed nations to realize that we are living on one planet. We are all inhabitants of spaceship earth.” But, he conceded, “we are nowhere close yet.”

Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced an unprecedented joint effort to save the critically endangered mountain gorilla on February 20, 2008. As part of the 10-year Transboundary Strategic Plan, the countries will develop and adhere to a consistent set of conservation policies and laws in Virunga National Park, which overlaps the three countries and is home to more than half of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas.

The United States and Israel could garner more meaningful engagement from Syria in the Middle East peace process by proposing the creation of a peace park in the disputed Golan Heights area, say University of Vermont Associate Professor Saleem Ali, a recent speaker at the Wilson Center, and Rabbi Michael Cohen of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel in “Salvaging Peace with Syria,” available on the Carnegie Council’s “Policy Innovations” website. Noting that transboundary conservation areas have helped resolve past conflicts—as with the Cordillera del Cóndor Transboundary Protected Area, established between Peru and Ecuador in 1995—the authors argue that a Golan Heights peace park should be on the agenda at tomorrow’s Middle East peace conference in Annapolis.

On Friday, October 12, 2007, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chose the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to receive the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their respective efforts to document and raise awareness of the effects of climate change.

Some observers are perplexed by the Committee’s decision to award a peace prize for work on an environmental issue. The Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP), however, has long been cognizant of the myriad ways in which the environment is linked to peace and conflict. Climate change is only one of many environmental issues—including water scarcity, pollution, deforestation, and natural resource exploitation—that can affect security.

This is the second time in three years that the Committee has awarded the Peace Prize to an environmentalist. 2004 winner Wangari Maathai and her Green Belt Movement were recognized for their efforts to develop sustainable livelihoods and empower women through tree planting and other environmental activities. In the latest issue of the ECSP Report, Maathai explains the close linkage between good governance, sustainability, and peace: “When we manage our resources sustainably and practice good governance we deliberately and consciously promote cultures of peace, which include the willingness to dialogue and make genuine efforts for healing and reconciliation…Whenever we fail to nurture these three themes, conflict becomes inevitable.”

ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko reflected on the Committee’s selection of Maathai—and its implications for the international community’s notions of peace and security—in several articles on leading environmental blog Gristmill. Dabelko’s words on Maathai’s selection still ring true: “Yet the criticism may miss the point by missing the widespread violence that goes on within states, violence that is not necessarily well-organized or by force of arms. The structural violence of poverty, corruption, and environmental degradation affects literally billions every day. The Nobel Prize rightly stretched the prior confines of the award and called attention to these ‘conflicts.’”

General William E. Ward was recently chosen to lead AFRICOM, the new U.S. military command in Africa currently in its pre-implementation stage. If Ward and AFRICOM are to succeed in promoting peace and stability in Africa, the military must stop viewing security as consisting of conventional, state-to-state relationships and adopt a more flexible “human security” concept. This model views security as “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear,” and includes economic, food, health, personal, community, environmental, and political sub-components. Developing a robust environmental security engagement strategy would be one of the most constructive ways for AFRICOM to implement a human security approach.

The greatest challenge for this nascent command is expanding its tool bag beyond conventional military strategies to include programs that promote the health and security of Africans. Military planners are skilled at determining the number of brigade combat teams, battle carrier groups, and air wings needed for conventional security challenges. But security in Africa depends heavily on non-military factors that fall outside the traditional purview of the armed forces. For AFRICOM to be successful, it must approach security as a mutually beneficial proposition, not a zero-sum game. Most African governments view the Department of Defense’s attempt to adopt a more nuanced approach to security in Africa with guarded optimism. They would certainly welcome environmental partnerships with AFRICOM as a way to promote political and economic stability through sustainable ecological practices, according to discussions held with Amina Salum Ali, the African Union’s ambassador to the U.S.

One of the top security concerns of African leaders—and one that is little-appreciated in U.S. security circles—is the impact of environment on stability and security. The ongoing misery in Darfur, which is partially rooted in conflicts over land and water use, is one tragic example of this link. On a positive note, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) researchers recently discovered water there that may well prove to be a source of resolution. That said, numerous reports—such as the one by the CNA Corporation’s Military Advisory Board—indicate that climate change and environmental catastrophes will continue to be a source of instability in Africa. Unfortunately, the continent most affected by environmental shock is also the least capable of mitigating its effects. AFRICOM must develop an engagement strategy that works with host governments, international membership organizations, NGOs, and other U.S. governmental agencies to find solutions to Africa’s environmental challenges.

The first, and most obvious, advantage of an environmental security strategy is its potential to build nontraditional alliances. Numerous organizations, from UNEP to the World Wildlife Fund, are actively working in Africa in this arena. AFRICOM could benefit significantly from the years of on-the-ground experience that these groups possess. What remains uncertain is the willingness of these civilian organizations to partner with the new command.

A second advantage of an environmental security strategy is that it allows the U.S. military to engage constructively with host governments and regional economic communities. Using AFRICOM to train African militaries on emergency disaster response, for instance, encourages those militaries to work under the mandate of civilian authority and fosters long-term democratic governance.

The idea of environmental security as a military engagement strategy is not new. When General Anthony Zinni was head of Central Command in central Africa, he devoted an entire section to environmental engagement programs, establishing a strong track record of success. Given that environmental concerns are intertwined with a host of other pressing problems in Africa, a coherent environmental security strategy would pay dividends on multiple levels.

Shannon Beebe is a senior Africa analyst at the Department of the Army. The opinions expressed in this article are solely his own and do not reflect the positions of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Army.

My friend and colleague is in jail. Unjustly.

Her name is Haleh Esfandiari and she is a grandmother. In early May, she was thrust into solitary confinement in Iran’s Evin Prison with a single blanket. She hasn’t been allowed to meet with her friends, family, or lawyers since then. This picture shows Evin Prison nestled within the leafy northern suburbs of Tehran at the foot of snow-capped mountains, but the prison has none of the bucolic qualities that the image suggests. “Notorious” is the ubiquitous descriptor.

Haleh’s “crime” is doing what we do every day here at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.: provide a safe space where scholars, policymakers, and ordinary men and women can learn from one another through open, non-partisan dialogue on today’s most pressing issues. Or at least we thought it was safe.

Haleh’s job is to foster discussion of the many political and social issues at stake in the Middle East, often with a special focus on Iran, one of the two countries she calls home. Haleh is a world-renowned expert on Iran’s rich language, culture, history, and politics. Yet the Iranian Intelligence Ministry has charged her and a handful of other Iranian-Americans with attempting to foment a velvet revolution to overthrow the theocratic regime.

“Nonsense,” says Lee Hamilton, the former congressman who is my and Haleh’s boss at the Wilson Center. As other commentators have pointed out, Haleh is more likely than most in Washington to give those sympathetic to the Ahmadinejad government an opportunity to make their case. She assiduously avoids having financial supporters for her Middle East Program who might compromise her neutrality. She even refuses to go on Voice of America for fear it would associate her with the Bush administration’s strategy of trying to oust regimes rather than change regime behavior.

I serve as a program director at the Wilson Center, just as Haleh does. While her area of expertise is U.S.-Iranian relations, mine is finding ways to use the environment to build trust and confidence between adversaries. Haleh and I have routinely collaborated on environmental and health issues. For instance, in 1999, Haleh and I hosted ten Iranians who headed environmental nongovernmental organizations or were professors of environmental studies. They came to the United States as guests of Search for Common Ground in order to develop new allies in battling environmental challenges in Iran and gain a deeper understanding of Iran’s environmental issues. In both Tehran and Los Angeles, for instance, tall mountains trap pollution over the city, causing poor air quality.

Search also hoped that the Iranian delegation would build civil society links between Iran and the U.S. that could serve as a baby step in a long path to reconciliation between the two countries’ peoples and governments. In this way, environmental dialogue may serve as a “lifeline” for dialogue when a relationship is otherwise stormy. Some of us have called this and similar efforts “environmental peacemaking.”

In May 2005 it was my turn to go to Iran. Whereas Haleh routinely visits Iran because her ailing mother still resides there, it was my first venture. My previous attempts to reciprocate the Iranian delegation’s visit had fallen through because I had been denied a visa. But this time, the Iranian government was doing the inviting. Under the government of President Khatami, “dialogue among civilizations” was a key foreign policy initiative. Massoumeh Ebtekar, Iran’s vice president for environment, partnered with the UN Environment Programme to organize a large international conference entitled “Environment, Peace, and the Dialogue of Civilizations.”

The country’s first female vice president, Madame Ebtekar gained revolutionary street cred as “Mary,” the student spokesperson during the 1979 embassy takeover and hostage crisis. In organizing the conference, she was using environmental issues to engage governments (six ministers of environment attended the conference), UN leaders, and civil society representatives from all over the world. When President Khatami addressed the attendees, it was clear that even the highest levels of the Iranian government supported Ebtekar’s initiative.

Progress made those days in Tehran was hard to measure. For me, the most encouraging signs came not at the conference but on the wide boulevards and tree-lined riverside pathways of Isfahan, where a Norwegian colleague and I ventured as tourists. Looking distinctly non-Iranian, the two of us were repeatedly approached by men, women, and children, who were uniformly welcoming. The short version of each conversation: Don’t you think our country is beautiful? Our governments have their differences, but you shouldn’t mistake those disagreements for Iranian hatred of the American people.

It is this sympathetic view toward Iran that I am sure Haleh wants us to bear in mind as our outrage at her ludicrous detention intensifies. No one has been allowed any in-person contact with her since her May 8th arrest. Monitored minute-long calls to her 93-year-old mother are the only source of information on Haleh’s condition. Naturally, she assures her mother that she is fine, but we have no way of knowing whether or not that is true. And no one is “fine” after being falsely charged with capital crimes and spending more than two months in solitary confinement.

The generous view of Iranians that I gained on my one short trip there is harder and harder to keep in mind. The government changed hands just after I visited in the summer of 2005, and the dramatically more hostile Ahmadinejad regime has jettisoned any efforts toward regular dialogue on even less-contentious issues than nuclear proliferation. President Khatami, Madame Ebtekar, and other government officials seeking dialogue with the West have been sidelined. I am afraid to even email the Iranian colleagues I met during my visit for fear that they would come under suspicion for such an exchange.

Imprisoning Haleh has not done Iran’s government any favors. All the Intelligence Ministry has accomplished by detaining her is silencing one of the most thoughtful, evenhanded voices currently speaking about Iran and the Middle East. Iran’s imprisonment of Haleh is damaging its global image and reducing the international community’s sympathy for its goals. We demand Haleh’s immediate release. It will be to her benefit and to Iran’s.

More information on Haleh’s case is available at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ and http://www.freehaleh.org./

This piece was also published on Gristmill.

Scholars, policy analysts, and even military officers are breaking down climate change’s impacts into what they hope are more manageable topics for examination. The migration that climate change could cause is one such topic. For instance, the Center for American Progress recently posted a piece entitled “Climate Refugees: Global Warming will Spur Migration.” The International Peace Academy analyzed “Climate Change and Conflict: The Migration Link” in a May 2007 Coping With Crisis working paper. Climate change-induced migration also figured prominently in the security perspective offered by the CNA Corporation’s Military Advisory Board in its “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.”