Showing posts from category livelihoods.
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El Niño, Conflict, and Environmental Determinism: Assessing Climate’s Links to Instability
›October 5, 2011 // By Schuyler Null
A recent Nature article on climate’s impact on conflict has generated controversy in the environmental security community for its bold conclusions about links between the global El Niño/La Niña cycle and the probability of intrastate conflict.
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Aaron Wolf on Water Management, Agriculture, and Population Growth in the Middle East
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In terms of groundwater depletion, “Yemen and Gaza are probably the two places worst off in the Middle East,” Aaron Wolf told ECSP in a recent interview. Wolf, a water expert and geography professor at Oregon State University, said population growth across the broader Middle East region has led to intensified groundwater pumping in recent years. This trend has raised the prospects for water-related conflict down the road, as countries drain their groundwater stocks faster than the aquifers can recharge. Potentially complicating matters further, said Wolf, is that most aquifers in the Middle East cross international boundaries.
Despite the region’s history of water tensions, Wolf said the unprecedented level of demographic change currently being experienced across the Middle East is not necessarily a recipe for future confrontations over the resource, in part thanks to the existence of water-sharing agreements in the area. Nevertheless, mounting demand will likely force water-users across the region – especially within the agriculture sector – to change the ways they utilize the resource.
Accounting for 80 to 90 percent of total water usage in some Middle Eastern countries, agricultural operations have already been forced to adjust to the evolving water-access situation. While moving from flood irrigation to drip irrigation represents one policy option if sufficient funds are available, Wolf said doing away with local food production “is a path that a lot of countries are going to have to take” to ensure a relatively stable water supply for their populations’ drinking, cooking, and cleaning needs.
Wolf added that one frequently discussed but not entirely realistic option for addressing the region’s water-supply concerns involves desalination. To date, widespread deployment of the technology has been hampered by high costs and substantial energy requirements, although that hasn’t stopped a few countries in the region – among them the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel – from becoming partially reliant on converted fresh water.
Wolf maintained that desalination’s hefty price tag means the technology is useful only for urban population centers near the coast. Moving converted sea water further inland remains a non-starter, he said, because transporting it requires an enormous amount of energy (a cubic meter of water weighs a metric ton).
For the same reasons, Wolf asserted, using desalinated water for agriculture doesn’t seem to be in the cards any time soon. “Right now a cubic meter of desalinated water costs about 40 cents, and you can’t use that for agriculture unless it drops down to about 8 cents a cubic meter,” Wolf said. “So until you can irrigate with desalinated water, it really doesn’t go a long way towards mitigating the larger water crisis.”
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes.
Sources: American University, International Food Policy Research Institute, World Bank. -
Certification: The Path to Conflict-Free Minerals from Congo
›This summer, the Wilson Center’s Africa Program, in co-sponsorship with the Enough Project, assembled a panel of experts from American, British, and Congolese governments, private industry, and the NGO community to discuss the deplorable situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) involving conflict minerals and certification as a way forward.
After introductory remarks by Wilson Center President Jane Harman, Africa Program Director Steve McDonald introduced John C. Bradshaw, executive director of the Enough Project, who moderated the panel discussion. [Video Below]
Under Secretary of State Robert D. Hormats began by saying the “extremely traumatic” humanitarian situation in the restive areas of the eastern DRC requires “a bold, resolute, and morally inspired response by the United States and other countries.”
Sasha Lezhnev, policy consultant for the Enough Project, explained how the demand for tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold – for use in batteries, circuit boards, and screens in computers and cellphones – are, in effect, driving the conflict in the DRC.
However, Ambassador to the United States from the DRC Faida Mitifu pointed out that a significant 70 percent of the economy in the eastern regions of the country depends on mining, thus any initiative would have to take into account the livelihoods of the people. In order to assist those communities while a process is formulated, Lezhnev called for targeted development projects in the most affected regions.
The Kimberley Process: A Potential Model?
“If we want to have a lasting impact, we’re going to need a certification process,” Lezhnev said, and we must learn lessons from the Kimberley Process (KP) in order to implement a suitable framework in the DRC.
Clive Wright, who served as the diplomatic negotiator for the KP and head of the foreign policy team for the British High Commission in Ottawa, described the intricacies of the process and its genesis. Under the provisions of the KP, the trade of rough diamonds is permissible, provided that there is a certificate from the country of origin and complementary legislation is in place in the importing country. This agreement was made through consultations and dialogue between the private sector and civil society.
Though successful in certain respects, Wright listed several shortcomings of the KP: it is not legally binding, therefore there are no levers to pull that compel government action; the process is void of an independent monitoring mechanism; and a consensus clause allows one government to block any action which clears the way for the status quo to prevail.
To implement a policy similar to the KP that guarantees legitimate minerals trade in the DRC, Under Secretary Hormats highlighted four key actors that have critical roles independently and collaboratively: 1) regional governments; 2) industry; 3) civil society; and 4) the U.S. government.
Regional Governments
Governments in the region face considerable challenges, said Hormats, as rebel groups trade across borders and evade efforts to rein in the commerce of precious gems, minerals, and arms. The states surrounding the Great Lakes – including Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Kenya, and the DRC – have coalesced around these issues and developed a plan that will require effective coordination to ensure credibility. Some countries have already established traceability schemes, which are crucial for states that share borders with the DRC, since smuggling is incessant.
With regard to rebel factions, Kinshasa has occasionally participated in joint operations with the governments of Rwanda and Uganda “to stabilize [and] contain the activities of armed groups,” said Ambassador Mitifu. Progress, though slow, has also been made in demilitarizing the mining areas in the Kivu provinces as well as Maniema and in weakening the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple’s (CNDP) parallel administration.
The government in Kinshasa has made significant steps toward a certification framework and taken punitive action against military personnel who have engaged in illicit trade, said Ambassador Mitifu. She outlined the efforts the Kabila administration has made to address the issue, including initiatives to put in place a credible certification system so that clean minerals can be exported. In conjunction with MONUSCO – the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC – the Congolese government has introduced centers where miners can bring their products and feed them into a legitimate supply chain. Finally, Kinshasa is working closely with the private sector, international organizations, and local NGOs to minimize fraud and enhance cooperation. Nevertheless, governance and corruption represent a formidable roadblock in the implementation of any certification process.
Industry Responsibility
Tim Mohin, the director of corporate responsibility for Advanced Micro Devices – one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world – argued that industry can positively influence the supply chain by creating conflict-free smelter programs and a due diligence bulwark where anyone along the supply chain can trace their resources back to a certified smelter.
Customers, Mohin said, are going to have to insist that businesses comply with this tracking system. Under Secretary Hormats agreed with this sentiment, saying that companies that look into the origin of their minerals send a powerful message to the region and the world. He also expressed hope that “companies [would] work to find ways to adhere to legislation [Dodd-Frank] and honor their obligations to their shareholders without shunning the region’s minerals entirely.”
The most difficult stretches along the supply chain are getting buy-in from the miners and the smelters; overcoming the constraints of socio-economic realities on the ground and geo-politics; and the lack of a sustainable tracing system that spans the spectrum of the supply chain. In addition to shored-up U.S. involvement, Mohin called for increased public-private sector partnerships with incentives reminiscent of the Fair Trade system, development aid to assist displaced people, and enhanced security for artisanal miners and their businesses.
Civil Society and Government
Hormats commended the pivotal role civil society has played and must continue to play in highlighting the humanitarian issues at stake, as governments and companies have been only “dimly aware of the link between human rights abuses and the minerals trade.” Furthermore, Wright encouraged civil society’s participation because it serves as a “great policeman” that monitors the bad behavior of governments, especially when the allure of profiteering seeps into deliberations. Moving forward on boosting security for civil society on the ground in the Congo will be essential.
The U.S. government, Hormats asserted, has to do its part to support initiatives on the table to create conflict-free supply chains. If more revenue is invested in legitimizing supply chains, a substantial portion of the problem would be solved. USAID and the State Department are working with civil society to take action against those responsible for illegitimate trade and exacerbating the conflict. Of course there remains work to be done, but as Under Secretary Hormats indicated “this is the most significant moral issue of our time.”
Derek Langford is a program assistant with the Wilson Center’s Africa Program.
Photo Credit: “Aerial View of Camps for People Displaced by Conflict,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo. -
What’s in a Name? Watch Don Lauro on PHE, HELP, and HELPS
›Population, health, and environment (PHE) expert Don Lauro has worked on integrated projects for decades as a scholar, an implementer, a donor, and an evaluator. He recently visited the USAID-funded BALANCED Project in Tanzania as part of a wider look at this integrated approach. In an interview with ECSP, Lauro said the effort “made me think more broadly…about this area that we call population, health, and environment and what’s really in a name like that.”
“We commonly say PHE, and we all know what we’re talking about,” Lauro said of the population and development community, “but when you look deeply into these projects – or even not so deeply – you see that there’s other things going on as well.”
For example, Lauro pointed to the focus on livelihoods that many PHE programs have: “In the project I saw in Tanzania, there were many microcredit groups on the ground – mostly women – taking small loans for developing little enterprises that they had, like baking bread, raising bees, buying a cow…little enterprises to make their lives a little bit better.”
“Some people don’t use the term ‘PHE’…maybe it’s a ‘HELP’ project; that is health, environment, livelihoods, and population,” Lauro said. “Other people would say it’s maybe something even longer, ‘HELPS’ – health environment, livelihoods, population, and sustainability (or ‘security’ – Ed.).” When he was at the Wilson Center, Gib Clarke coined the “HELP” term in ECSP’s FOCUS Issue 20, arguing that livelihoods is such a critical component that it ought to be more formally recognized.
But, said Lauro, “on the ground they don’t use these terms – they say things like, ‘this is a healthy community program’ or ‘this is a green community program.’”
“I think it’s very important for us to realize what happens on the ground is lot different, and maybe more real, than how we talk about it.” -
IRP and TIME Collaborate on Indonesia’s Palm Oil Dilemma
›“Everything the company does goes against my conscience. But the question remains, who should work from the inside to inform everyone? Who should be pushing that these things are right, these things are acceptable, and these things are not?” says Victor Terran, in this video by Jacob Templin for TIME and the International Reporting Project (IRP). Templin traveled to Indonesia as part of IRP’s Gatekeeper Editor program in May 2011.
Terran is a resident of a village west of Borneo in the Kalimatan province, where he works as a field supervisor for one of the largest palm oil companies in Indonesia. Although the industry has supplied his village with much-needed employment and economic development, he worries that the influx of jobs has come at the expense of the health of the forests, agriculture, and clean rivers that sustain his village. “It’s not just about the money,” he says. “Will they sincerely keep the regulations and be fair to our community?”
An Industry with a Checkered Past
Terran’s skepticism of the industry is justified – palm companies, such as Sinar Mas, have a nasty track record of “abusing local labor and pilfering forests” for what they call “liquid gold,” says Templin.
Greenpeace released a report, “How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet,” in 2010 that alleged that Sinar Mas cut down important wildlife preserves, illegally planted on peat lands, and that these actions resulted in the release of considerable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and loss of critical wildlife habitat.
As a result, the company lost major contracts with Unilever, Kraft, and Nestle. Sinar Mas CEO Franky Widjaya tells Templin that the company is taking definitive steps to prevent such instances from happening again, but that change will not happen overnight.
Akhir bin Man, a manager for another palm oil company, PT Kal, says he does not want to experience a public relations nightmare similar to Sinar Mas, so his company is seeking certification from the internationally recognized Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO certification requires PT Kal to conserve nearly half of its land, use safer pesticides, and negotiate profit-sharing agreements with villagers.
Global Benefits
“These are not only vast forest landscapes which are home to species such as orangutans, elephants, and rhinos, but they’re also some of the globally most important reservoirs of carbon,” Adam Tomasek, director of the WWF Heart of Borneo Initiative, tells Templin.
Due to the wide-scale implications of disrupting such a substantial carbon sink, Tomasek and his colleagues see the destruction of these habitats as not just a local problem: “Sustainably managing the forest and carbon stocks that they contain here in Indonesia is not only important locally, not only important regionally, but an extremely important critical in the global approach to dealing with climate change,” he says.
Resisting the Juggernaut
Recognizing the inherent value of their natural resources, some villages are fighting to keep palm companies off of their land. Pak Bastarian is the head of such a village: “In my opinion, [palm] plantations are only owned by certain groups of people, and they don’t necessarily bring prosperity,” he tells Templin.
Bastarian is a reformed environmentalist whose hesitance toward the palm industry is a by-product of his own experiences – in the 1990s he worked for years running a timber company that illegally cut down trees. “I don’t know how many trees I cut down…a countless number.” Now, he uses his elected power to preserve trees like the ones he once cut down.
However, keeping the companies out of his village is an uphill battle, Templin explains. Bastarian says he faces mounting pressure from governmental officials, who make threats, and many villagers, who would rather have the jobs. He tells Templin that he even received bribes from PT Kal (an accusation they deny).
Bastarian’s position may cost him though – with elections right around the corner, he said does not know how much longer he can keep the palm companies out.
“My worry is that if our forests are cleared, our children will not be able to see what protected wood looks like, or what protected animals look like,” he tells Templin. When the palm oil companies first came, he chose to wait and see how the other villages fared before allowing them to come in. “To this day,” he says, “I’ve never changed my mind.”
Video Credit: “Indonesia’s Palm Oil Dilemma: To Cash In or Fight for the Forests?,” courtesy of the International Reporting Project. -
Jay Ulfelder, Dart-Throwing Chimp
Public-Health Campaigns as Outsized Threats to Authoritarian Rule
›August 17, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Jay Ulfelder, appeared on his blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.
Are certain forms of popular activism more likely to hasten the fall of dictatorships than others? This question occurred to me after reading a recent Washington Post story describing how one Russian woman, Darya Makarova, has turned her own frustration with the poor health care given to her (now dead) young son into a wider campaign that’s has caught Moscow’s eye:Thousands have turned out for her rallies, written letters, signed petitions or joined in Internet forums. Since Maxim’s death in November, she has raised money to reopen a children’s clinic, with an emergency room, in her community. She has shamed the city into buying three new ambulances, with proper equipment. She has launched a nonprofit organization, Health Care for Children, that has national ambitions. Politicians have sought her out. Pavel Astakhov, who holds the newly created title of children’s ombudsman, came from Moscow to see her – and then appointed her his unpaid deputy, giving her more access and clout. Even officials from the sprawling and notoriously indifferent Health Ministry started to pay attention.
I can see why government officials would be nervous about this still-modest and outwardly apolitical campaign. Popular activism around matters of public health and safety seems like it should pose a special challenge to authoritarian regimes, like Russia’s, that stake their right to rule on paternalistic claims about their ability to deliver both social welfare and social protection.
Movements organized around failures of public health and safety are threatening to these regimes because they call out the paternalistic state for failing at its own game. Whatever the form of government involved, one of the modern state’s fundamental roles is to protect its citizens from public health threats. Even when they serve this function poorly, most autocrats claim to be trying, and these campaigns reveal that they are not succeeding.
Continue reading on Dart-Throwing Chimp.
Photo credit: “Your Health rests with…,” courtesy of flickr user okeos. -
Fistula, Stigmatization, and Development
›Although obstetric fistula may not be as widely recognized as other maternal health issues, the Fistula Foundation estimates that over two million women and girls in developing countries suffer from this condition today. The World Health Organization has labeled it as “the single most dramatic aftermath of neglected childbirth.”
Obstetric fistula is a devastating condition often resulting from obstructed labor that can cause infections, incontinence, and even paralysis. The condition largely afflicts poor, rural, and illiterate women in developing countries who lack resources and access to emergency care and surgery, and sufferers often face an additional burden of social stigma.
Economic Development and Social Standing
Poor infrastructure and poverty significantly increases the occurrence rate of obstetric fistula. Lewis Wall, in an article for The Lancet, writes that “poverty is the breeding-ground where obstetric fistulas thrive.” Wall cites early marriage, low social status of women, malnutrition, inadequately developed social and economic infrastructures, and lack of access to emergency obstetric services as being major contributors of fistulas in developing countries.
Additionally, “postponing the age of marriage and delaying childbirth can significantly reduce the risk of subjecting young women to the arduous labor that induces fistulas,” wrote Sonny Inbaraj of Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS) in an article about how fistula makes social outcasts of child brides.
In most developing societies where child marriage is common, the social standing of women is defined largely in terms of marriage and childbearing. Child marriages are typically arranged without the knowledge or consent of the girls involved. The norms emphasize a girl’s domestic roles and de-emphasize investments such as education.
Stigmatization of Fistula
There is an undeniable link between fistula and social stigmatization. Rather than receiving assistance from their families and communities, women are often ostracized and in many instances exiled from their communities. This is especially true in developing countries where “the role of women is merely limited to providing sexual satisfaction for their husbands, [and] producing children,” said Dr. Catherine Hamlin, founder of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, in an interview with IPS.
“Many women and girls with fistula endure lives of shame, misery, violence, and poverty,” said Agnes Odhiambo, Africa women’s rights researcher and author of ‘I Am Not Dead, But I Am Not Living‘: Barriers to Fistula Prevention and Treatment in Kenya, in a Human Rights Watch article. Human Rights Watch has focused on fistula, recognizing that birth is a human rights issue. Ignoring the issues of women and girls only diminishes progress on human rights and sends a message that says the rights of women do not deserve adequate attention.
Prevention Efforts
Thus far the fight to end fistula has attracted various government agencies and organizations including USAID, UNFPA, EngenderHealth, Maternal Health Task Force, and the Human Rights Watch. Outstanding individuals have also played a key role in fistula prevention efforts, like Drs. Reginald and Catherine Hamlin, Australian gynecologists who came to Addis Ababa in 1959 for temporary medical work, but after hearing heart-breaking stories from fistula patients, they decided to move to Ethiopia permanently and open the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. As the only hospital dedicated exclusively to women with obstetric fistula, the hospital provides care free of change, and has done so since 1974.
Although fistula has gotten some support and attention, the need to scale-up the prevention initiatives has never been greater. As a result of the “poverty and the stigma associated with their condition, most women living with fistulas remain invisible to policy makers both in their own countries and abroad,” wrote Inbaraj on IPS.
“Preventing fistula and restoring women’s health and dignity requires more than good policies on paper,” said Odhiambo at Human Rights Watch. Seriously tackling the issue will require much more than traditional medical and public health interventions – prevention efforts must also take into account underlying social issues, food and economic security.
Sources: The Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, Campaign to End Fistula, The Center for Global Development, The Fistula Foundation, Human Rights Watch, The Lancet, World Health Organization.
Photo Credit: “Hauwa’u, 25, mother from Rogogo community,” courtesy of flicker user DFID-UK Department for International Development. -
Beyond Supply Risks: The Conflict Potential of Natural Resources
›While the public debate about resource conflicts focuses on the risk of supply disruptions for developed countries, the potentially more risky types of resource conflict are usually ignored. As part of a two-year research project on behalf of the German Federal Environment Agency, adelphi and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy, and Environment have analyzed the risks of international conflict linked to natural resources in a series of reports titled Beyond Supply Risks – The Conflict Potential of Natural Resources.
Resource extraction, transportation, and processing can create considerable crises and increase the risk of conflicts in producing and transit countries. This phenomenon – widely referred to as the “resource curse” – impacts consuming countries only if it leads to shortages and higher prices. However, in the producing and transit countries it can have much wider destabilizing effects – from increasing corruption to large-scale violent conflict. In addition, the extraction, processing, and transportation of resources often create serious environmental risks. Overexploitation, pollution, and the degradation of ecosystems often directly affect the livelihoods of local communities, which can increase the potential for conflict.
The eight reports that comprise Beyond Supply Risks explore plausible scenarios over the next two decades, focusing on four case studies: copper and cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project across Southern Europe and Turkey; lithium in Bolivia; and rare earth minerals in China.
Lithium in Bolivia
Bolivia possesses the world’s largest known lithium deposits, a potentially important resource for the development of electric vehicles. While the development of Bolivia’s lithium reserves could provide major economic benefits for one of the poorest countries in Latin America, our analysis identifies two main potential risks of conflict.
First, the environmental consequences of developing industrial-scale lithium production might have negative effects on the livelihoods of the local population. The local population in the lithium-rich department of Potosí has shown that it is capable of organizing itself effectively in defense of its interests, and past resource conflicts have turned violent, making a conflict-sensitive approach all the more important.
Second, the Bolivian economy is largely dependent on natural resources, and consequently is susceptible to price shocks. At present, this risk is primarily associated with natural gas. But lithium production, if developed, might be subject to the same dynamics, which could potentially destabilize the political system.
For consuming countries, these conflicts threaten supplies of lithium only if local protests or broader destabilization were produce bottlenecks in the supply chain.
Rare Earths and China
Like lithium, rare earths are likewise essential for some new technologies. China’s well publicized monopoly on 97 percent of the global production spurred a heated debate on the security of supply of strategic minerals. While our case study identifies supply risks for consuming countries, it also outlines some of the conflict risks China might face internally.
First, local populations could protest against the severe ecological impact of rare earth mining and production. In addition, conflicts might arise if those who profit from economic development (entrepreneurs or regional power-holders) undermine the traditional centralized party structures and expand their own influence.
International conflicts over access to Chinese rare earth resources, while they dominate the headlines, do not appear to be the dominant risk. Instead, internal political tensions could result in a weakened China that is not able to exploit its monopoly position for foreign policy gains. Or the government could enter into multilateral agreements and thus avoid a confrontational approach towards consumer nations.
Ultimately, the actual rate of diffusion of environmental technologies and the development of new technologies remain the key factors in determining whether relative shortages in global supply of rare earths will in fact occur. If industrialized nations and emerging economies commit to the same technologies to attain climate policy goals, international resource governance and coordinated promotion of (environmental) technology will also play a role in preventing conflict and crisis over rare earths.
The Way Forward
The series concludes with five recommendations to mitigate the risks of future resource conflicts:- Introduce systematic policy impact assessments to understand how policy goals and strategies, especially in regard to climate and environmental policy, interact with resource conflict risks.
- Increase the transparency of raw material markets and value creation chains to prevent extreme fluctuations in prices and improve information on markets, origins, and individual players.
- Improve the coherence of raw material policy by linking raw material policies with security, environmental, and development policies.
- Demand and promote corporate social responsibility along the whole value chain.
- Increase environmental and social sustainability as a means of strengthening crisis and conflict prevention by systematically taking into account social and conflict-related aspects in the resource sector.
The individual reports from the project can be downloaded here:- Conflict Risks (GERMAN only)
- Supply and demand (GERMAN only)
- Case Study: Nabucco Pipeline (GERMAN only)
- Case Study: Congo
- Case Study: Bolivia
- Case Study: China
- Conflict Resolution Strategies (GERMAN only)
- Summary and Recommendations
Sources: Government Accounting Office.
Photo Credit: “Potosí: miners in darkness,” courtesy of flickr user Olmovich.
