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Environmental Security: A Guide to the Issues (Book Preview)
›I remember the first moment when my interest in national security came crashing into ecological reality. I was on a U.S. government trip to Central Asia to inspect uranium mines in the newly-independent states of the former Soviet Union. The Cold War security imperative to achieve nuclear superiority had done a number on the environment there: Uranium was leached from the ground with sulfuric acid, transformed into a uranium oxide powder called yellowcake, and shipped off to be enriched for nuclear reactor fuel or weapons. The generals in Moscow who issued these orders did not see the collateral damage that their idea of security wreaked on the environment in Central Asia. In their attempt to out-weaponize the United States, they laid waste to the groundwater, agriculture, and public health of their own citizens.
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Dale Lewis on Combating Poaching in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley Through Integrated Development
›June 28, 2013 // By Jacob Glass“We did something very special for the community and the resources these farmers live with. We sat down with local leaders and promised to stop spending so much time caring about the elephants, and instead create a company that will try to address community needs,” said Dale Lewis in an interview at the Wilson Center. “The deal was they had to put down their snares and guns.”
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Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian
The Anarchy of Syria’s Oilfields
›June 27, 2013 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, appeared on The Guardian.
A northern wind had been blowing since early morning, lifting a veil of dust that had blocked the sun and turned the sky the color of ash. Abu Zayed was sitting on the porch of his unfinished concrete home, watching the storm build. He loved sandstorms. They reminded him of Dubai, where he had lived before the war. He admired the people there for turning a desert into a paradise. They had vision, he told his followers.
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Wilson Center Roundtable on ‘Backdraft’: The Unintended Consequences of Climate Change Response
›As President Obama readies a new road map for addressing climate change in the United States, experts warn that poorly designed and implemented initiatives, especially in already-fragile parts of the world, could unintentionally provoke conflicts, rather than diffuse them.
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The Farmer’s Dilemma: Climate Change, Food Security, and Human Mobility
›“Most of the world’s poor are farmers; they share the same profession and the same challenges,” said One Acre Fund’s Stephanie Hanson at a recent Wilson Center event on small-scale farming, climate change, food security, and migration. They are tasked with growing enough food to support their families with only tenuous access to land and natural resources, the most basic of tools, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns to deal with. [Video Below]
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Susan Bradley on Feed the Future: Solving Hunger Requires Cross-Cutting Development Initiatives
›“Sustainable food security means that food production has to be climate smart,” says Susan Bradley in this week’s podcast. “In order to achieve climate smart food security, we are going to have to build resilience and adaptive capacity into agriculture.”
Bradley, division director for the USAID’s Bureau for Food Security, is working to implement the U.S. government’s Feed the Future Initiative. Unveiled by the Obama Administration in 2009, the $3.5 billion “whole of government” initiative aims to alleviate hunger and increase food security around the world.
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From Dakar to Abidjan, Population Finally Finding Its Place in Food Security Assessments
›June 20, 2013 // By Kathleen MogelgaardA woman sat crouched on the side of a busy road in Dakar, a baby in a sling on her back and a basket of peanuts in front. I know only a little French, and no Wolof, but I decided to try anyway. “Bonsoir,” I said, and smiled at the toddler beside her. “Combien?” I asked, pointing at the peanuts.
She smiled back at me, we negotiated a sale, and in exchange for the coins in my pocket I walked away with a few bags of the small, tasty nuts that are grown throughout the “peanut basin” of central Senegal.
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What’s Worth Saving? Maoists, Forests, and Development in India’s Western Ghats
›Arrayed along India’s southwest coast is a 1,600-kilometer-long mountain chain with forests older than the Himalayas: the Western Ghats. The mountains are one of the top biodiversity hotspots in the world, and UNESCO recently recognized the region as a World Heritage site. They’re also one of the tensest of India’s emerging battlegrounds between development and conservation and a potential recruiting ground for its Maoist insurgency, called the country’s “greatest threat to internal security.”
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