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Climate War in the Sahel? Pastoral Insecurity in West Africa Is Not What It Seems
›As violence in Mali and Burkina Faso reached a ten-year high this year, the West African Sahel appears to be experiencing the perfect storm of climate stress, resource degradation, and violent extremism. At the center of that storm, one finds livestock herders—pastoralists—who are both vulnerable to environmental changes in the region, and historically marginalized from politics. Conflict in the region looks like a harbinger of the climate wars to come—but is it really? In research produced for Search for Common Ground, Andrew McDonnell and I found that while competition for land and water resources has increased dramatically across the region, violence associated with pastoralism emerges from a much more complex set of factors. Not surprisingly, the decisive conflict variable is governance.
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Protecting Brazil’s Forests Could Boost Economic Development
›The dry season returned to Brazil’s Amazon region in late July—and with it, forest fires, largely human-made. After making substantial progress in reducing deforestation in the 2000s and early 2010s, Brazil has reversed course and deforestation is rising. In the Amazon, this season has been the worst in more than a decade in number of fires, and second worst in terms of total deforestation, according to satellite data from Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE), which monitors the situation.
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President Bolsonaro Fiddles While the Brazilian Amazon Goes Up in Smoke
›On August 11, 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro dismissed the raging fires in the Amazon, calling their existence a “lie.” However, his own government has reported more than 10,000 fires currently burning in the Amazon, a 17 percent increase from the same time last year, when the number of wildfires reached a nine-year high. The international community has condemned the Brazilian government’s response to the raging Amazon fires. Bolsonaro’s denial about these fires blocks effective domestic, international, government, and non-governmental responses. And it risks exacerbating the conditions contributing to global climate change.
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How Biodiversity Conservation Promotes Economic Growth in Latin America
›What happens to economic output if we expand protected areas to 30 percent of land and sea worldwide? Anthony Waldron, the lead author of a new study about the economic benefits of land conservation, posed this question at a recent Wilson Center virtual event on the role of Latin America in global biodiversity conservation.
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Improve Biodiversity Conservation, Enhance Public Health and Food Security
›Our collective development objectives will not be achieved if they come at the expense of biodiversity and natural resource management, said Jeff Haeni, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment at USAID. He spoke at a recent Wilson Center virtual event, co-hosted with USAID, that explored the links between conservation and public health with examples from USAID’s BRIDGE project, which aims to build the evidence base for integrating biodiversity conservation considerations into policy discussions and decision-making across sectors. “The ability of societies around the world to develop and thrive is dependent on the health of the forests, fisheries, and natural systems around them,” he said.
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How Gum Acacia Trees Could Help Build Peace in the Sahel
›A special type of tree could facilitate peacebuilding in the Sahel. A stretch of semi-arid land south of the Sahara that runs from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean through 10 countries (Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Algeria, Mauritania, and Senegal). But the western subregion covering the Lake Chad area (the intersection of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger) and Liptako-Gourma (the tri-border zone of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) in the Sahel has been the scene of a growing humanitarian crisis. Armed groups are terrorizing local populations. Rampant insecurity has forced 1 million people to flee their homes. People have been cut off from their livelihoods. Food insecurity is worsening. Casualties continue to mount. And climate change will likely exacerbate conditions, forcing more people to compete for depleted forest resources and land. More food shortages and instability will surely follow.
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From Arms to Farms: A Conversation with Casimiro Olvida
›“This project is serious,” Casimiro Olvida said. “It will help the community. If you do not believe me, you can kill me anytime.” He recalled saying this in 1995 to Communist rebels in Mindanao who were suspicious that his USAID-funded team was supporting the Philippine government. We have the same goals, he told them, to help the poor and protect the environment. Apparently, he was convincing. Now Watershed Protection Project Manager of the Sarangani Energy Corporation, Olvida spoke in this week’s podcast with ECSP’s Lauren Risi, at the International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding in October 2019, describing his decades of work in forest management in the Philippines.
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To Envision a More Sustainable Future Tell the Story of Conservation Technology
›Last summer, I stood on a cliff 100 feet above the Madre De Dios River, in Southern Peru near the Bolivian border, to watch the rosy gift of an Amazon sunset. It was quiet, in a tropical rainforest way, with the light clamor of parrots, macaws, and cicadas. Then, a peke-peke motorized canoe broke through the soft din. It arrived from the east, carrying a new supply of diesel fuel for the gold miners who were prepping the generator that would operate a suction-pump and dredge for gold across the river and around the bend. Before nightfall, the fuel ignited the baritone of a diesel generator. It moaned all night and all day, barely stopping. In subsequent days, instead of a light clamor of birds and primates, the thrum of a gold mining operation seemed like all I could hear.
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