Showing posts from category environmental security.
-
Visualizing Natural Resources, Population, and Conflict
›Environmental problems that amplify regional security issues are often multifaceted, especially across national boundaries. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the natural resource, energy, and security issues facing a region is not fast or easy.
Fortunately, the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC) has created highly informative, easy-to-understand maps depicting environmental, health, population, and security issues in critical regions.
Published with assistance from the United Nations GRID-Arendal, these maps offer policymakers and the public a snapshot of the complex topography of environmental security hotspots in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and the Southern Caucasus.
Some that caught our eye:• Environmental Issues in the Northern Caspian Sea: Overlaying environmental areas and energy production zones, this map finds hydrocarbon pollution in sturgeon spawning grounds, seal habitats in oil and gas fields, and energy production centers and waste disposal sites in flood zones.
• Water Withdrawal and Availability in the Aral Sea Basin: Simple and direct, this combination map and graph contrasts water usage with availability in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan—which stand in stark comparison to the excess water resources of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.• Environment and Security Issues in Belarus: In addition to noting the parts of the country with poor water quality and potassium mining, the map also delineates wildfires that occurred in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl explosion, thus threatening downwind populations.
Maps: Illustrations courtesy of the Environment & Security Initiative. -
Patriotism: Red, White, and Blue…and Green?
›“National security often means cyber security, it means energy security, it means homeland security, and more and more…it means environmental security,” says retired U.S. Army Captain James Morin in the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate’s recently released video short, “Climate Patriots.”
“Climate Patriots” calls attention to the nexus between energy, climate change, and national security. The video identifies climate change as a two-fold threat likely to increase the frequency and intensity of humanitarian disasters and political instability. The latter, military analysts believe, will fuel further conflict, fundamentalism, and terrorism.
“Climate Patriots” also touches on military efforts to combat climate change (e.g., reducing energy consumption and shifting to renewable fuel supplies) as well as Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) research on national security, energy, and climate.
“If we don’t take action now,” retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn says, “the options for dealing with the effects of climate change and the effects of energy security become much, much more expensive. In fact, some of the options completely go away over the next 10-20 years if we don’t start taking some prudent actions now.” -
Video—Ken Conca: ‘Green Planet Blues: Four Decades of Global Environmental Politics’
›February 19, 2010 // By Julia Griffin“Much of the conversation about the global environment, frankly, is an elite conversation,” says Ken Conca, professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. “But at the same time there are community-level voices, there are voices of indigenous people, there are voices of the powerless, as well as the powerful…. I think it’s important to capture them and not just limit [the conversation] to the most easily accessible voices.”
Conca and co-editor Geoff Dabelko include these oft-muted voices in the newly released 4th edition of Green Planet Blues: Four Decades of Global Environmental Politics. “One of the things we were really trying to achieve was to give people a sense of the history,” said Conca. To fully understand the origins of today’s debates, students must go back to the beginning of the last four decades of international environmental politics.
Three key paradigms—sustainability, environmental security, and ecological justice—frame the debates in Green Planet Blues. “Ideas do matter,” says Conca. “They really do change the world, and one of the premises of our work and of the book is to try to understand what sorts of ideas people bring to the table when they think of global environmental problems.” -
Video—Integrating Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) to Conserve Ethiopian Wetlands
›February 1, 2010 // By Julia GriffinIn our latest video interview about PHE programs in Ethiopia, Zuna–a village elder from the Mettu Woreda region of Ethiopia—describes how an integrated intervention by the Ethio-Wetlands and Natural Resources Association (EWNRA) has benefited her community.
EWNRA aims to raise awareness within Ethiopian communities and governmental organizations of the importance of sustainable wetlands management. The organization also imparts local-level training on resource conservation and wise-use labor techniques.
Zuna recounts how EWNRA provided welcome training in sanitation and housekeeping practices that increased both safety and sustainability within her community. The more efficient, cleaner-burning wood stoves introduced in Mettu Woreda, for example, have improved local air quality while decreasing the frequency of skin burns and amount of harvested fuel required for cooking and other activities.
“We are benefiting from all this and I think the benefits from this intervention are good,” she says through an interpreter. “I want them to keep doing this and hopefully we will improve our activities working with them.” -
Oli Brown on Climate Security and Environmental Peacebuilding
›January 28, 2010 // By Sajid Anwar“Climate change seems to be eclipsing all other environment and security issues, but those issues haven’t gone away,” says Oli Brown, program manager at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). “There are still problems with illegal timber, still problems with mining, there are still problems with diamonds, there are still problems over land, water, and so on. Climate change encompasses a lot of those issues and makes some of them more difficult and more pressing.”
IISD is working with the United Nations Environment Programme on ensuring that these issues are addressed in UN peacekeeping missions. “What we do with UNEP is to coordinate a group of experts that help to advise the UN family on ways that it should do conflict prevention, post conflict reconstruction, peacekeeping, peace negotiations and peacebuilding more effectively,” says Brown. -
Walker’s World: From Warming to Warring: A Review of Cleo Paskal’s New Book
›January 15, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffWilson Center Senior Scholar Martin Walker recently reviewed Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map by Cleo Paskal, for his UPI column, “Walker’s World.”
Excerpts:The Copenhagen summit showed that climate change is as much about geopolitics and power as it is about the weather. China‘s blunt refusal to accept any binding limits on its carbon emissions, despite the agonized pleas of small island governments facing extinction, demonstrated that this new aspect of the game of nations is going to be played as hardball.
And yet, as Cleo Paskal argues in her pioneering new book “Global Warring,” China is also powering ahead on every aspect of climate change. While protecting its right to pollute (because it depends heavily on coal as its main homegrown energy source), China is using state subsidies to seize the lead in solar power manufacturing….But perhaps Paskal’s most striking story is the way that China is also seeking to become a major player in the arctic. China has acquired an icebreaker, a seat with observer status on the Arctic Council and its own arctic research base at Svalbard. (China also has two research bases in the Antarctic.) …
Paskal’s book is full of such vignettes, illustrating the way that climate change and the intensifying competition for resources is starting to change the nature of power politics. Paskal, a Canadian who is a fellow of London’s prestigious Chatham House think tank and a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy, has been a pioneering scholar of the new terrain where climate change confronts national security, where geopolitics, geoeconomics and global warming all collide. It is not just rivalry for oil and gas supplies and water, but also for fishing rights and undersea mining and mineral rights that may well be up for grabs when some of the lowest-lying Pacific island countries disappear under the rising waves. …
“We need to start thinking about the legal and economic implications of these developments now, before we have to start tackling them in the middle of a crisis or a humanitarian emergency,” Paskal told a seminar at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center Friday. …
Paskal sees China and Russia taking these issues more seriously that the United States and Europe, and her book is not just a wakeup call for Western leaders but is also an arresting and original work on climate change, probably the most important book on the environment to be published this year.
“As pressure is put on food, water supplies and national boundaries, famine and war may become more frequent,” Paskal concludes. “This instability may make populations more tolerant of autocratic governments, especially nationalistic capitalist ones where the political, economic and military sectors combine to protect existing resources and aggressively try to secure new ones. China and Russia already have a head start on this model.” -
Alec Crawford on Climate Change and Conflict in Africa and the Middle East
›January 14, 2010 // By Sajid Anwar“Climate change certainly does pose a risk to the world in terms of violent conflict, but there’s a lot of nuance to that argument and a lot of attention and care has to be put into making that case,” says Alec Crawford, project officer at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in this video interview with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko.
According to Crawford, the argument that climate change will lead directly to violent conflict is overly simplistic, but climate could be one of conflict’s many drivers in both Africa and the Middle East. A recent IISD report discusses the potential security challenges of climate change and how to prevent them. -
Eco-Tourism: Kenya’s Development Engine Under Threat
›Africa’s elephants and black rhinos—already at risk—are increasingly threatened as the price of black market ivory rises, global markets contract, and unemployment rates rise. To fight poaching of these tusked animals, Ian Craig, founder of the Lewa Conservancy in Kenya and the brains behind the Northern Rangelands Trust, takes a unique approach to conservation that involves both local community members and high-level government officials, as well as private and public sector investors.
In the 1970s the black rhino population was at about 20,000. Less than three decades later, it had fallen to 200. Today, the population is about 600, of which 79 live in the Lewa Conservancy. The vast regions of Kenya covered by the Northern Rangelands Trust and the Lewa Conservancy are difficult to govern, so the conservancies partner with local communities to ensure the security necessary to protect the animals from poachers. By investing in community institutions, the conservancies create long-term sustainability and self-sufficiency.
But why should local communities—often beset by poverty, disease, and hunger—care about saving elephants or rhinoceroses rather than killing them for their tusks or meat? Revenue from tourism can total hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially because of the high cost and exclusive nature of tourism facilities in the area. This money is then injected back into community programs to improve adult literacy, school nutrition, health care, micro-credit, water and irrigation systems, community livestock and agriculture, and forestry and aquaculture.
In some politically volatile areas, the conservancy serves not only as a platform for ecological security, but also as a mediator of disputes. Where livestock theft is rampant, multi-ethnic anti-poaching teams have been able to act as intermediaries. Community elders and other traditional leaders serving on the conservancies’ boards have bi-annual meetings to further intra- and inter-regional cooperation. Along with regular managerial and council meetings, the board meetings set standards for good practices, open dialogue for policymaking and cooperation, and act as a unique platform for communication between different ethnic and regional groups.
Community members understand they have a stake in protecting not only the animals, but in ensuring security and building trust within the country. With its unique combination of local-level engagement, the cooperation and support of the Kenyan Wildlife Service and the national government, and with the resources available to the conservancies as a group, the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy hopes to create a model of conservation that can be used across Africa and in other at-risk regions.
The future is shaky: ivory prices continue to rise, the migration of animals has facilitated poaching, and small arms are abundantly available. However, the new community-focused approach has helped to create positive attitudes that aren’t just about saving animals, but about developing the nation.
Justine Lindemann is program assistant with the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Photo: Elephants in Lewa Conservancy area, courtesty Flickr user Mara 1
The 
Africa’s elephants and black rhinos—already at risk—are increasingly threatened as the 
