Burma’s ruling military junta is prohibiting almost all foreign aid workers from entering the country, despite the massive devastation wreaked by Cyclone Nargis last week. The military has also impounded an aid shipment from the UN World Food Program (WFP) and has refused aid from the United States, among other countries. “We are very concerned that this food is not reaching—on day six after a cyclone—the very victims of that cyclone,” said WFP spokesman Paul Risley. The United Nations has suspended aid to Burma pending resolution of the situation.

In a statement released earlier this week, the junta said it would be willing to accept foreign aid, as long as it could distribute the shipments itself. But so far, the statement has not matched up with reality.

The official death toll from the cyclone is approximately 23,000, but experts say this figure could rise significantly, as approximately 40,000 people remain missing. Hundreds of thousands are currently without shelter, food, safe water, or medical care, and international experts agree that the Burmese military does not have the capacity to meet the need. Further compounding the problem, Burma’s military rulers have pressed on with plans to conduct a national constitutional referendum in the less-affected areas tomorrow. Soldiers who could be delivering much-needed aid to survivors have instead been assigned to guard and run polling places. The ruling generals claim that approval of the referendum will set Burma on a gradual path to democracy; nearly all other observers say the vote is a sham. “If you believe in gnomes, trolls and elves, you can believe in this democratic process in Myanmar,” said chief UN human rights investigator Paulo Sergio Pinheiro last year.

Many of Burma’s citizens are probably too preoccupied with immediate survival right now to be thinking about protesting the junta’s delay of humanitarian relief. But in a few weeks or months, when the situation has (hopefully) stabilized somewhat and word has spread of the holdup of humanitarian aid, one wonders whether the junta will find itself the target of popular outrage. By dragging their feet on international humanitarian relief, Burma’s military rulers seem to be begging for an uprising.

The National Interest sponsored an online debate on the links between natural resources and conflict featuring David Victor, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Michael Klare, Sherri Goodman, and Paul Kern.

Georgetown University’s Colin Kahl argues that Kenya’s present strife is largely due to deep-seated ethnic land grievances, while a Council on Foreign Relations brief claims that it is partially the result of demographic factors—the country’s “youth bulge,” for instance.

“Weathering the Storm: Options for Framing Adaptation and Development,” a new report from the World Resources Institute, reviews climate change adaptation efforts from throughout the developing world, and explores how adaptation activities intersect with poverty, environmental degradation, and other challenges.

An article from IRIN News examines whether or not the extraction of Mozambique’s mineral resources—including heavy metals, coal, natural gas, and perhaps oil—is likely to reduce the country’s widespread poverty.

Thousands of people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi have fled the flooding caused by the overflowing Zambezi River, reports BBC News. “Damage to crops and roads has raised fears of food shortages, and aid agencies have also warned of increased risk of waterborne diseases and diseases caused by poor sanitation.”

Nicaragua is currently struggling to cope with the effects of a double environmental disaster. In September 2007, Hurricane Felix tore through the country’s impoverished northern Caribbean region, killing more than 100 people, leaving 220,000 homeless, and destroying vast amounts of agricultural land and forests.

But that wasn’t all. Fifty days of heavy rains—starting just before the hurricane hit—have continued the destruction, causing flooding in large areas of the country’s Pacific regions. In response, President Daniel Ortega’s government declared a state of national disaster on October 19. SINAPRED, Nicaragua’s disaster relief agency, estimates that the rains destroyed the homes of another 216,000 people.

The international response has been rapid, with numerous countries, international agencies, and NGOs sending aid to Nicaragua. But Laura de Clementi, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization representative to Nicaragua, warns that unless seeds are quickly purchased, distributed, and planted, parts of the country could face severe food shortages in the coming months.

These natural disasters have an unnatural component, however, reports Inter Press Service: deforestation. Of the 8 million acres of forest in the country in 1950, only 3 million remain, according to the country’s Environment Ministry. Deforestation exacerbated the damage done by Hurricane Felix and the rains, increasing the level of soil erosion and boosting the likelihood of landslides. Ironically—and unfortunately—a government plan to reforest 60,000 hectares each year that began just before the hurricane hit has since been put on hold.

“Nicaragua is not to blame for the hurricanes and storms, but it is responsible for the destruction of its forests, which form a protective barrier. Rain causes greater damage to land stripped of its trees than to forested areas,” biologist and geographer Jaime Incer Barquero told IPS. Yet the people who cut down trees are often impoverished, possessing few other ways to earn a living. An effective plan to combat deforestation will need to establish alternative, environmentally sustainable livelihoods for Nicaragua’s poor communities. These sustainable ways of generating income would also bolster—rather than undermine—the country’s natural protections against disasters, contributing to the security of all Nicaraguans.

Climate change has been altering the world’s geography so rapidly that cartographers can hardly keep up. The prestigious Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World was last published in 2003, and in preparation for the release of the 12th edition this year, coastlines, lakes, forests, and cities have had to be redrawn.

The Aral Sea in Central Asia has shrunk by 75 percent in 40 years, while Lake Chad in Africa is only 5 percent of its 1963 size. Furthermore, during certain times of the year, the Rio Grande, Colorado, Yellow, and Tigris rivers fail to reach the sea.

The 12th edition of the atlas contains approximately 20,000 updates. Naturally, not all the updates are consequences of climate change: 3,500 are simply name changes, and not every geographic update is the result of climate change. Also, not all the geographic changes occurred during the last four years—some happened earlier, but are only now being noticed by mapmakers, who are becoming increasingly aware of climate change-related geographical changes.

Some changes were previously unknown because they were happening in isolated parts of the world. In India, for instance, official records list 102 islands in the Sunderbans, where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal. Those islands are inhabited by 1.8 million people. However, after a six-year study, scientists have been able to map only 100 islands, finding that the other two had been swallowed up by the sea, said Sugata Hazra, director of Calcutta’s School of Oceanography Studies at Jadavpur University. Scientists estimate that the submersion of the two islands rendered approximately 10,000 people homeless.

Rising sea levels—which threaten to submerge some 12 additional islands in the Sunderbans—are sometimes perceptible to the human eye. In Bangladesh, many islands disappear each year, forcing populations to migrate from island to island and to live in extremely precarious conditions. As Shahidul Mullah, who lives with his family on a small island in Bangladesh, told Spiegel Online, “When I moved here, we still had three fields in front of the house. Now there are only two. I’m afraid the water will take another piece away from me this year.”

Flooding causes massive damage each year in South Asia, but this destruction will not be diminished without more comprehensive disaster preparedness, says a new report by Oxfam International entitled Sink or Swim: Why Disaster Risk Reduction is central to surviving floods in South Asia. The report comes halfway through a monsoon season that has already harmed the livelihoods of 20 million people in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India, crumbling homes and schools, sweeping away crops, and crippling the region’s already-weak infrastructure.

Current flood control efforts are often ineffective and can even exacerbate the problem, says the report. For instance, poorly designed and broken culverts and embankments often flood roads and downstream areas. One embankment in Bihar, India caused a flood-prone area to expand from 2.5 to 6.9 million hectares over the course of fifty years.

In the report, Oxfam recommends that governments implement local emergency plans; avoid building additional dams and embankments; equip communities with preparedness capacities such as early warning systems and first-aid skills; provide community assets such as flood shelters, raised homesteads, and motorized boats; and mainstream disaster preparedness into government policy. Furthermore, the report urges donors to increase funding for disaster risk reduction, which is a strong long-term investment.

Governments and NGOs should also note that lower-income groups and women are more vulnerable to disasters—and tailor their programs accordingly. Poorly built houses are easily destroyed, the landless have reduced access to post-flood aid, and women struggle with malnutrition and disease in displacement camps. Reducing disaster risk—especially for the most vulnerable members of the population—is an important step in raising the standard of living in South Asian countries afflicted by flooding.