India’s Punjab region faces a host of troubles: In the last 10 years, 100,000 of India’s desperate farmers—many of them Punjabi—have been driven to suicide by their inability to repay loans; half a century of heavy fertilizer use in Punjab has led to soaring cancer rates; water tables in the region sink as much as 100 feet per year, the result of decades of rice production in a naturally dry area; overwatering has brought salts to the soil’s surface, making large tracts of land unusable; and by some accounts, 40 percent of Punjab’s youth and nearly half of its agricultural workforce are addicted to heroin. In a series of reports from Punjab published in Slate magazine, Mira Kamdar argues that the economic, security, and environmental problems facing India can ultimately be traced back some 40 years to the policies of the Green Revolution. The drive to feed India’s rapidly growing population put enormous pressure on Punjab’s land and left consideration for sustainability on the back burner, according to Kamdar, who argues that these issues now threaten to paralyze India’s agricultural sector.

The Green Revolution alleviated the chronic famines that historically plagued India. Hybrid seed varieties, extensive irrigation schemes, and the heavy-handed use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides transformed Punjab into an agricultural powerhouse. It comprises only 1.5 percent of India’s territory, but it produces 60 percent of the country’s wheat and 45 percent of its rice. Yet Kamdar wonders whether India will be able to “feed a growing population in the face of environmental collapse and growing political instability fueled by scarcity.”

With little hope for economic stability, Punjab’s youth are increasingly turning to the drug trade for income, and Punjab’s impoverished citizens, many of whom feel exploited and left behind by the Indian government, are attractive recruits for separatist groups. “Conditions affecting the livelihood of the majority of people in poor countries [or regions] are at the heart of the internal violence” so often found there, according to a report from the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO).

Due to the effects of climate change, the 400 million additional people projected to live in India by 2080 may have to make do with a nearly 40 percent decline in agricultural production during the same period, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Current policies will do little to alleviate the pressures colliding in Punjab. The government—as well as the World Bank, international agriculture corporations, and Indian companies—favors privately funded, large-scale industrial operations. Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s minister of finance, is focused on developing India’s agricultural capacity, and is not terribly concerned with the consequences for the environment, security, or human health. Small-scale farming is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Many countries face the challenge of feeding a growing population with diminishing output, and find doing so in an ecologically responsible manner difficult. Ultimately, though, the case of India shows that increasing output at such dramatic cost to human and environmental health is unsustainable, as it quickly creates complex and intractable problems of its own.

Photo: Punjabi farmers transport fertilizer from a nearby village. Courtesy of Flickr user Aman Tur.

On Sunday, the Ugandan army attacked thousands of Turkana herders from drought-stricken northern Kenya who had crossed into Uganda seeking water and pasture for their cattle. “This is the second time our people have been attacked and killed,” John Munyes, Kenyan labor minister and Turkana North MP, told The Daily Nation. In 2005, 60 Turkana herders were killed by the Ugandan army in a similar incident. Yet talks scheduled for last month never occurred, and Munyes complained to The Nation that “the [Kenyan] Government had not shown any concern” over deaths in his community.

Senegal’s southernmost region, Casamance, has been the site of outright or latent conflict for some 40 years. Even before Senegal gained independence, there were calls for independence from the region. Separatist agitation in the region was inflamed during the 1970s by an influx of unemployed migrants from Senegal’s drought-stricken northern regions, seeking a part of “the greatest [economic] potential in all of Senegal.” Beginning in 1983, calls for independence soon led to armed conflict between southern separatist groups and the Senegalese government.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Senegal worked to support a peaceful resolution to the conflict by bolstering infrastructure and providing jobs. One USAID-funded program, undertaken in partnership with EnterpriseWorks Worldwide in 2001, aimed to modernize Casamance’s cashew-processing industry to strengthen the region’s war-torn economy. While cashew exports can bring in significant revenue, the region lacked the infrastructure to produce high-quality nuts for export. Processed cashews can bring in seven to 10 times the price of raw nuts. Today, 90 percent of the 15,000 metric tons of cashews Senegal produces each year come from Casamance.

Sadly, violence in the Casamance region has welled up again in earnest. The peaceful conclusion that many had hoped for following the peace accord of 2004 failed to materialize, and instead, the Senegalese army and Movement for Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) rebels both maintain a large presence in the region.

The USAID-funded expansion of cashew production in Casamance may be having an unintended, and profoundly negative, consequence, reports IRIN News: Skyrocketing cashew prices are “lining the pockets of armed rebels.” Cashews remain a central feature of this conflict in other ways, as well. Earlier this year, more than a dozen villagers attempting to harvest nuts were rewarded by having their ears cut off with machetes by rebels patrolling the area.

MFDC member Damien Manga disputes claims that rebel groups are financed by revenue from cashew exports. He says that while rebels do sell the nuts, the profits finance living expenses only, not weapons purchases. “We collect cashew nuts to sell like everyone else…Some say [selling] cashews…enables us to buy weapons. This is false…it is only our leaders who buy our weapons.” Instead, Manga places blame for violence around the cashew orchards squarely on the shoulders of the Senegalese military. Senegalese military spokesman Lieutenant Malamine Camare refutes this claim, saying that the army’s mission is “to ensure the safety of people and goods in this region. We never engage in profit-making activities, and we execute our mission by the rules.”

Because certain resources and activities are so frequently linked to conflict – diamonds and oil, for example – the role of agriculture is often ignored. As authors Alec Crawford and Oli Brown argue in a new publication discussed in this New Security Beat post, any resource can be exploited to further conflict. Earlier this year, ECSP hosted the “New Horizons at the Nexus of Conflict, Natural Resources, and Health” event series exploring the interaction between human health, natural resources, and conflict.

Photo: A cashew seller in the Gambia. Courtesy of Flickr user Javier D.

Earlier today, Russian tanks attacked Georgian positions in South Ossetia, the much-disputed Georgian territory sandwiched between Georgia and Russia. With a population of around 70,000, the region has not known peace since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia’s actions came in response to the Georgian army’s attacks on Russian-backed separatists. Hostilities between Georgian troops and the separatists had been rising since six people died during a skirmish between the two in early July, with Russia and Georgia subsequently accusing each other of violating the ceasefire by flying jets over South Ossetian territory.

The conflict has significant natural resource and environmental aspects. South Ossetia possesses rich stores of natural resources (including timber, manganese, iron ore, and copper and coal deposits), although it remains an economically isolated and depressed region. Also, its location is geopolitically strategic: It houses “[t]wo of the four major border crossings among the mountains separating Russia and Georgia,” along with several other critical roads, and is next to two vital oil pipelines, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the Baku-Supsa, which run from Azerbaijan to Turkey’s Black Sea ports and provide oil for numerous European countries, as well as the United States. These pipelines, in addition to Georgia’s “pivotal role in the global energy market,” render this newest iteration of the conflict cause for international concern.

There are additional environmental concerns in this region. The long-simmering conflict in South Ossetia has left a former Russian industrial complex categorized as “still generating pollution” and a nuclear waste site both untended. With no one to secure, assess, monitor, or remove the hazardous material, regional water sources and arable land are threatened. Lack of economic opportunity in Georgia, and particularly in South Ossetia, has led to illegal logging; “[i]ncentives for illegal export of valuable timber and endemic tree species from the conflict areas…are exacerbating deforestation.”

Economic desperation—combined with a lack of natural resource monitoring—can lead to conflict as people vie for use of a limited resource. A 2004 report from the Environmental Security Initiative (a joint program of UNEP, UNDP, and OSCE) on the South Caucasus region warned that “[u]ncontrolled exploitation of forests, combined with outdated farming practices, are contributing to land degradation and desertification, threatening agricultural productivity.” Indeed, these factors did lead to further trouble for South Ossetia. When Georgia tried to clamp down on “the significant black market trade [in everything from vegetables to illegal arms] going on between South Ossetia and Russia” in 2004, violence quickly re-emerged.

“The health of our planet is inextricably linked to the health of people,” says Judy Oglethorpe, director of World Wildlife Federation’s Community Conservation program in “The Human Face of Conservation” (WWF Focus, July/August, 2008). While the links between population, health, and environmental degradation are fairly well understood, environmental groups have largely neglected to incorporate family planning or health programs in their conservation efforts.

Several WWF initiatives are breaking this trend, spreading awareness of ecological issues by integrating health or livelihood strategies. In Mozambique, illegal industrial fishing was leading to conflict with local fishermen, who were left with smaller catches of smaller fish. The WWF program helped authorities crack down on illegal fishing and set aside “replenishment zones” for fish to spawn and grow. As a result, local fishermen “have seen dramatic increases in the size of individual fish and in their overall catch outside these zones – and in their earnings,” allowing them to feed their families.

WWF is also diversifying its focus by partnering with other organizations to bring family planning services to poor communities, including in the Khata corridor of Nepal. “It’s really difficult for women living in remote regions to have access to modern family planning and basic healthcare,” said Population, Health, and Environment senior program officer Cara Honzak. By providing basic family planning services, women in these communities are able to control the growth of their families. With this opportunity, it is easier for communities to support and manage themselves, and reduced population pressures on the environment help maintain their local forest ecosystems.

Programs such as these are popular and effective, because by considering both human and natural needs, both sides can be winners. Said the manager of an initiative in Namibia, “When communities can earn as much – or more – by conserving wild land as they can by burning and planting it, potential conflicts can be turned into win-win situations for both people and wildlife.”

“If you want fast money and are willing to take the risk, that’s the only way to get it,” says Abdullah Dieng, a fisherman in Bissau, Guinea, in a new IRIN article, “Fishermen turn to trafficking as fish profits drop.” Fishermen in Guinea have a problem: No one is buying their fish. “The lack of decent roads into the interior of the country, combined with prohibitive fuel prices, makes it too difficult for fish-sellers to transport fish any further than Bissau, creating a saturated market,” reports IRIN. As an alternative, the fishermen are turning to illegal trade in drugs and humans. By smuggling, they can earn much more money.

“The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates several hundred kilograms of cocaine go through the country each week, while according to 2004 figures from the International Office of Migration, one million West and Central Africans head clandestinely to Europe every year,” reports IRIN.

Fisheries are collapsing all over the world, but especially in Africa. The New York Times article “Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow” reports that there is almost no regulation of Bissau’s fishery, like most fisheries along the African coast. “Creating the Enabling Environment for Effective Fisheries Enforcement,” an event in the Environmental Change and Security Program’s fisheries series, explored some of the challenges associated with fisheries management. One of the most basic problems is a lack of information. Vladimir Kacyznski, a marine scientist with the University of Washington, told the Times that “no one has comprehensively studied the nation’s coastal waters for at least 20 years.” As a result, both local and European fishers have mostly stripped the area of its fish.

The lack of oversight is largely due to a lack of attention, and thus a lack of money. IRIN reports that “The fishing ministry receives just 5 percent of the government’s paltry annual budget, despite fishing bringing in 40 percent of the country’s annual revenues, and most of this money can only cover staff salaries.” Without increased funding and attention, it is unlikely that a solution will emerge to the environmental and economic problems that force fishermen to turn to illegal and dangerous activities. As the source of their livelihoods disappears, they have fewer and fewer options. Said one consultant quoted in the Times story, “The sea is being emptied.”

In the Central Albertine Rift, which runs from the northern end of Lake Albert to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, “environmental factors are increasingly an underlying cause of instability, conflict and unrest,” says a new report from the Institute for Environmental Security, Charcoal in the Mist, which outlines environmental security issues and initiatives in the Albertine Rift region.

Part of the larger Great Rift Valley, the Central Albertine Rift encompasses portions of Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The area is one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, but is also a geopolitical hotspot, producing critical natural resources for a number of nations recently emerging from devastating civil wars. Lake Victoria, the birthplace of the Nile River, sits in this region, which means that the watchful eyes of its riparian states are trained at all times on the politics of the area. The Albertine Rift is also home to Africa’s Great Lakes, each of which straddles multiple nations and provides significant income to surrounding communities. Questions of access to these waters only heighten existing geopolitical tensions.

Charcoal in the Mist cites armed rebels, illegal mining, and a growing population’s increasing demands for food and energy as threats to regional environmental security. Virunga National Park, an internationally prized wilderness preserve in the DRC, has fallen victim to these pressures. Rampant poaching and illegal mining, as well as conflicts in the DRC and Rwanda, have left park authorities unable to protect the 7,800 square kilometer park. A timeline from National Geographic dramatically illustrates how violent conflict has disrupted conservation efforts in Virunga.

The “interconnectedness between natural resources, development and security” in the Central Albertine Rift region reinforces the need for innovative approaches to address these issues. For example, according to the report, population density around protected areas in this region is far higher than in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and the continually growing population already exceeds the capacity of local resources. The area’s population swelled with thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war in Rwanda in the 1990s, and simmering tensions continue to push people away from conflict zones and toward the relative calm of the Albertine Rift. Similarly, conflict stemming from the civil war in DRC, which lasted from 1998 until 2003, has beset North Kivu province. Rebel armies continue to clash in the region, restricting the ability of development organizations to work there and limiting the livelihoods of the local population.

The authors of Charcoal in the Mist call for more comprehensive mapping and monitoring of the Central Albertine Rift ecosystem in order to promote effective policies to address the region’s challenges. They also advocate for enhancing property rights to address fundamental conflicts over land, strengthening environmental law, dampening the illegal natural resource trade, and more aggressively protecting Virunga National Park. They believe that transboundary environmental cooperation has the potential to preserve both the ecological integrity and political stability of this important region.

“Women are key to the development challenge,” says Strategies for Promoting Gender Equity in Developing Countries, but “gender mainstreaming has been associated with more failures than gains.” Detailing findings from an April 2007 conference co-sponsored by the Wilson Center and the Inter-American Foundation, the report calls for a redesigned approach operating on multiple fronts. Blogging about the report, About.com’s Linda Lowen dubs the gap between women and men in developing countries a “Grand Canyon-like divide” compared to the “crack in the sidewalk” faced by Western women.

A Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder on Angola—now Africa’s leading oil producer—tackles the familiar paradox of extreme poverty in resource-rich countries. Burdened by “an opaque financial system rife with corruption,” Angola’s leaky coffers are filling up with Chinese currency. As Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos put it, “China needs natural resources, and Angola wants development.” FastCompany.com’s “Special Report: China In Africa” criticizes the overwhelming Chinese presence in Africa: “The sub-Sahara is now the scene of one of the most sweeping, bare-knuckled, and ingenious resource grabs the world has ever seen.”

In Scientific American’s “Facing the Freshwater Crisis,” Peter Rogers writes that the demands of increasing population, along with increasingly frequent droughts due to climate change, signal rough waters ahead, and calls for major infrastructure investments to prevent catastrophe. Closer to home, Circle of Blue reports on a new era of water scarcity in the United States, and director Jim Thebaut’s documentary “Running Dry: The American Southwest” takes a look at the hard-hit region.

Pastoralists are socially marginalized in many countries, making them highly vulnerable to climate change despite their well-developed ability to adapt to changing conditions, reports the International Institute for Environment and Development in “Browsing on fences: Pastoral land rights, livelihoods and adaptation to climate change.” The paper notes that the “high rate of development intervention failure” has worsened the situation, and calls for giving pastoralists “a wider range of resources, agro-ecological as well as socio-economic,” to protect them.