Showing posts from category environment.
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An Island of Peace in a Sea of Conflict: The Jordan River Peace Park
›Saleem Ali filmed this video on his visit to the “peace island” between Jordan and Israel, which Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) is working to convert into an international peace park.
FOEME co-Director Gidon Bromberg will be at the Wilson Center today to discuss the peace park and other FOEME water cooperation initiatives in more detail as a panelist participating in “Pathways to Peace: Stories of Environment, Health, and Conflict,” an event discussing field-based lessons for addressing environment, health, development, and conflict.
Video: Filmed by Saleem H. Ali (University of Vermont, editor of the MIT Press book Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution) with commentary by Elizabeth Ya’ari (FOEME), January 2010. -
VIDEO – Integrating Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) in Ethiopia
›December 4, 2009 // By Sean Peoples“Incorporating environment, population, and health is a timely issue. Unless we focus on integrated approaches, our Ethiopian Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved,” says Negash Teklu, executive director of the Consortium for Integration of Population, Health, and Environment (CIPHE), in this short video.
I interviewed Teklu and three other members of CIPHE in Yirgalem, Ethiopia, where they spoke of the importance of PHE integration; why it is vital to involve the community in development projects; and practical steps for implementing integration at the grassroots level.
Everyone agrees that Ethiopia faces serious challenges. Much of the economy is based on agriculture, but drought is all too common, and the land is exacerbated by continual overuse. High rates of population growth coupled with limited resources and uncertain crop yields leaves many people vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition. In addition, the country’s health system struggles to provide comprehensive care.
To combat these interconnected problems, the members of CIPHE truly believe that an integrated PHE approach that uses multi-sectoral interventions will best serve the needs of their fellow Ethiopians.
“If we follow the integrated PHE approach, economically we can be beneficial,” Mogues Worku of LEM Ethiopia told me. “We can share a lot of resources among the different sectoral organizations. At the same time with limited resources we can attain our goal by integrating the different sectoral offices and organizations, even at the grassroots level.”
This video will be the first of many on population, health, and environment problems and solutions in Ethiopia. Subscribe to our ECSP YouTube channel or the New Security Beat blog to see the latest videos. -
Hot and Cold Wars: Climate, Conflict, and Cooperation
›November 23, 2009 // By Sajid Anwar
At an American University event on his new book, Climate Change and Armed Conflict: Hot and Cold Wars, the Center for Teaching Excellence’s James Lee identified some plausible scenarios that the international community will have to face to adequately and peacefully address the security impacts of climate change.
With the loss of glaciers and normal river flows, international boundaries that have long been determined by these natural barriers will be called into question, Lee said, raising legitimate issues of sovereignty, migration, and land rights. How will countries separated by large glaciers or rivers deal with their more open and easily accessible borders? Will people who depend on these resources migrate into other countries in search of water? How will these changes impact countries that share these resources?
In his presentation, Lee argued that climate change will lead to violent conflict, using the historical record of climate change and conflict to prove his point. But most of the cases cited occurred before the 20th century, and the changes in climate then were much different than what we are now facing.
Today, we live in a world that is truly global in both governance and accountability. Issues such as severe environmental degradation or scarcity can be a factor in conflict within a country, but the potential for climate change to cause an international conflict is not as high as some warn.
There are multiple variables on the causal chain between climate change and conflict that can be addressed now, through national efforts and international cooperation. Countries can start with strong governance initiatives now to ensure that future problems of transboundary water scarcity, migration trends, and border changes do not lead to conflict.
For example, while climate change may lead to water scarcity, declines in agricultural production, and therefore to food insecurity, countries can avoid this outcome by leasing agricultural land in countries that won’t face high levels of water stress.
In addition, countries could avoid future disagreements over territory by negotiating a shared understanding of borders independent of geographic markers such as rivers or glaciers. These and other variables can be addressed now in order to mitigate the risk of future conflicts.
Renegotiating Water, Avoiding Conflict
Uppsala University Professor Ashok Swain, who spoke via Skype, took a different tack than Lee, stating that the links between climate change and conflict lack proper research. He was concerned by the hard security linkages being made with climate change and called for further exploration.
But Swain identified one potential trouble spot: While interactions over shared river systems have been shown to be overwhelmingly cooperative rather than violent, he voiced concern that the changes brought by climate change are not encompassed in the scope of current water-sharing agreements, which could increase the likelihood of conflict, according to Swain.
In the same way that leasing agricultural abroad or negotiating a shared understanding of borders now could help mitigate conflict in the future, so could renegotiating and strengthening current water-sharing agreements to reflect the future effects of climate change.
Cooperation to ensure sustainable access to shared water sources will still be more likely than conflict, simply because it is more cost-effective. If, as Lee writes in his book, climate change will cause a society’s accumulated wealth to decline, then the cost of mitigating the negative effects of climate change by using force to secure a resource would be too high for any nation to pursue.
Photo: Cracked earth, from the lack of water and baked from the heat of the sun, forms a pattern in the Nature Reserve of Popenguine, Senegal. Courtesy United Nations. -
UNEP’s David Jensen on Linking Environment, Conflict, and Peace in the United Nations
›November 16, 2009 // By Sajid AnwarAt the United Nations, “we see more and more interest in looking at natural resources: how do they contribute to a conflict, and how can they contribute to peacebuilding,” says David Jensen of the UN Environment Programme’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch in a video interview with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko.
For example, UNEP experts travel to the UN Peacebuilding Commission’s target countries to examine how natural resources may have contributed to conflict and what role they could play in restoring peace, explains Jensen: “A new module was approved on environment and natural resources. So it’s now integrated within the overall UN post-conflict assessment framework,” which is used by the UN, World Bank, and the European Commission.
Currently, “there are tremendous opportunities,” Jensen says, for environmental security to become a mainstream issue within the United Nations, as exemplified by the Secretary-General’s report, Climate change and its possible security implications. -
Ethiopia: A Holistic Approach to Community Development Blossoms Two Years After Taking Root
›November 12, 2009 // By Sean PeoplesAs evening fell upon Yirgalem, Ethiopia, more than 70 participants from a large cross-section of Ethiopia’s NGO community—as well as a few international participants like myself—gathered in a packed conference room in the Furra Institute for the second annual General Assembly of the Consortium for the Integration of Population, Health, and Environment (CIPHE). -
VIDEO: Carol Dumaine on Energy and Environmental Security in the 21st Century
›November 2, 2009 // By Wilson Center Staff“[W]e’re facing unprecedented challenges, literally things that have never happened in the history of human kind, and that should give us some pause… Not only rising temperatures but dramatic changes in precipitation, possibility of millions of people having to be relocated, and challenges to governance on scales that we perhaps haven’t seen before,” says Carol Dumaine, deputy directory of energy and environmental security at the U.S. Department of Energy, in a conversation with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko.
Dumaine emphasizes that tackling the 21st century’s broad energy and environmental security challenges requires study by experts from a range of fields, including zoology, virology, and information science. To this end, the Department of Energy hopes to leverage its years of investment and research with “the expertise that exists in the private sector and academia and think tanks.”
Looking toward the future, Dumaine identifies global cooperation as key. “The paradigm is a very diffuse, globally distributed risk, and the response must be very diffuse, globally distributed intelligence.” -
Video: Laurie Mazur on Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge
›October 21, 2009 // By Wilson Center Staff“It’s fairly well known that we’re at a pivotal moment environmentally . . . but I think it’s less well known that we’re also at a pivotal moment demographically,” Laurie Mazur, director of the Population Justice Project, tells ECSP’s Gib Clarke.
“Half the population, some three billion people, are under the age of 25,” Mazur says. “Their choices about childbearing will determine whether world population grows from 6.8 billion to as many as 8 or even almost 11 billion by the middle of the century.”
Mazur’s new book, A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge, launches at the Woodrow Wilson Center on October 27. Mazur will be joined by contributors John Bongaarts of the Population Council, Jacqueline Nolley Echegaray of the Moriah Fund, and Roger-Mark De Souza of the Sierra Club.
“These issues, population growth and the environment, are connected in ways that are very complex,” says Mazur.
“Population growth is not the sole cause of the environmental problems we face today, but it does magnify the impact of unsustainable resource consumption, harmful technologies, and inequitable social arrangements. It’s a piece of the pie. Slowing population growth is part of what we need to do to ensure a sustainable future.” -
VIDEO: Geoff Dabelko on Environment and Security at Society of Environmental Journalists Conference
›October 9, 2009 // By Sean PeoplesThe 19th annual Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference began today in the crisp autumn air of Madison, Wisconsin. ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko discusses Al Gore’s keynote address explicitly connecting climate change to national security issues, as well as his questions and expectations as the country’s premier gathering of environmental journalists gets underway.
As evening fell upon Yirgalem, Ethiopia, more than 70 participants from a large cross-section of Ethiopia’s NGO community—as well as a few international participants like myself—gathered in a packed conference room in the 
