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Visualizing Natural Resources, Population, and Conflict
›Environmental problems that amplify regional security issues are often multifaceted, especially across national boundaries. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the natural resource, energy, and security issues facing a region is not fast or easy.
Fortunately, the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC) has created highly informative, easy-to-understand maps depicting environmental, health, population, and security issues in critical regions.
Published with assistance from the United Nations GRID-Arendal, these maps offer policymakers and the public a snapshot of the complex topography of environmental security hotspots in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and the Southern Caucasus.
Some that caught our eye:• Environmental Issues in the Northern Caspian Sea: Overlaying environmental areas and energy production zones, this map finds hydrocarbon pollution in sturgeon spawning grounds, seal habitats in oil and gas fields, and energy production centers and waste disposal sites in flood zones.
• Water Withdrawal and Availability in the Aral Sea Basin: Simple and direct, this combination map and graph contrasts water usage with availability in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan—which stand in stark comparison to the excess water resources of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.• Environment and Security Issues in Belarus: In addition to noting the parts of the country with poor water quality and potassium mining, the map also delineates wildfires that occurred in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl explosion, thus threatening downwind populations.
Maps: Illustrations courtesy of the Environment & Security Initiative. -
VIDEO – Juan Dumas on Natural Resources, Conflict, and Peace
›February 24, 2010 // By Michelle NeukirchenMediation and conflict resolution around natural resources require “long-term engagement, timely interventions, and lots of flexibility,” says Juan Dumas, senior advisor for the Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano in Quito, Ecuador. The Woodrow Wilson Center and the Fetzer Institute hosted Dumas for a roundtable event on Pathways to Peace: Stories of Environment, Health, and Conflict. In this interview with ESCP Director Geoff Dabelko, Dumas shares key lessons learned from his experience with his NGO that specializes in prevention and management of socio-economic conflicts around natural resources.
In order to overcome challenges posed by current funding procedures, the foundation has been trying to establish an “early-action fund” that would provide flexible funding to facilitate conflict resolution dialogue. “With the right capacities at the right time… you can make a difference… you can prevent the escalation of conflict into violence… and create a governance path for that conflict to be addressed in a different way,” Dumas says. -
VIDEO – Ken Conca: Future Faces of Water Conflict
›February 24, 2010 // By Julien Katchinoff“Most of the actual violence around water today is not occurring with armies marching out on the field of battle…[it] is more diffuse, more at the community level, more small scale, but quite real and quite important for us to try to address,” says Ken Conca, professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland during this conversation with ESCP Director Geoff Dabelko. Though the world remains fixated on future “water wars,” we “should not forget the actually existing violence in the world today,” he says.
Conca underscores the need to address the multiple forms of violence around water. Factors that incite these conflicts include lax consultation with local communities over large infrastructure projects as well as changes in access to water due to economic or environmental dynamics.
Conca suggests new principles that promote water as a global human right future may be part of the solution to these drivers of conflict. Such conflicts may be avoided by broadening the current conversation, allowing for new approaches to infrastructure development, and applying techniques of effective dispute resolution, particularly at the international level. -
Patriotism: Red, White, and Blue…and Green?
›“National security often means cyber security, it means energy security, it means homeland security, and more and more…it means environmental security,” says retired U.S. Army Captain James Morin in the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate’s recently released video short, “Climate Patriots.”
“Climate Patriots” calls attention to the nexus between energy, climate change, and national security. The video identifies climate change as a two-fold threat likely to increase the frequency and intensity of humanitarian disasters and political instability. The latter, military analysts believe, will fuel further conflict, fundamentalism, and terrorism.
“Climate Patriots” also touches on military efforts to combat climate change (e.g., reducing energy consumption and shifting to renewable fuel supplies) as well as Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) research on national security, energy, and climate.
“If we don’t take action now,” retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn says, “the options for dealing with the effects of climate change and the effects of energy security become much, much more expensive. In fact, some of the options completely go away over the next 10-20 years if we don’t start taking some prudent actions now.” -
Video—Ken Conca: ‘Green Planet Blues: Four Decades of Global Environmental Politics’
›February 19, 2010 // By Julia Griffin“Much of the conversation about the global environment, frankly, is an elite conversation,” says Ken Conca, professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. “But at the same time there are community-level voices, there are voices of indigenous people, there are voices of the powerless, as well as the powerful…. I think it’s important to capture them and not just limit [the conversation] to the most easily accessible voices.”
Conca and co-editor Geoff Dabelko include these oft-muted voices in the newly released 4th edition of Green Planet Blues: Four Decades of Global Environmental Politics. “One of the things we were really trying to achieve was to give people a sense of the history,” said Conca. To fully understand the origins of today’s debates, students must go back to the beginning of the last four decades of international environmental politics.
Three key paradigms—sustainability, environmental security, and ecological justice—frame the debates in Green Planet Blues. “Ideas do matter,” says Conca. “They really do change the world, and one of the premises of our work and of the book is to try to understand what sorts of ideas people bring to the table when they think of global environmental problems.” -
VIDEO—Daryl Collins: Portfolios of the Poor—How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day
›February 12, 2010 // By Michelle Neukirchen“The poor face a triple whammy,” Daryl Collins, senior associate at Bankable Frontier Associates and co-author with of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day, tells ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko. The Woodrow Wilson Center hosted Collins and her co-author, Jonathan Morduch, for presentations at the Center and on Capital Hill last September. “They not only have low incomes, they also have very irregular and unpredictable incomes…. The $2 doesn’t come every day. If you did have $2 every day, you’d be solving half of your problems.”
Whether farmers challenged with seasonal incomes or small entrepreneurs fighting to cope with irregular daily wages, Collins has found that the poor strive to actively manage their financial lives. Households, however, often lack the regulated financial tools necessary to do so, sometimes leading to creative, local solutions.
In Portfolios of the Poor, lessons from the field uncovered a social grant system in South Africa that provides old-age pension holders and people with young children dependable monthly income supplements. Through comparison studies with countries without similar grant systems, Collins and her co-authors found the importance of dependable cash-flows staggering. “There was a whole financial engagement that could take off around that regularity,” she said. “You didn’t see [that] in India and Bangladesh.” -
VIDEO—Pape Gaye: Improving Maternal Health Training and Services
›February 12, 2010 // By Julia Griffin“Training is probably one of the biggest interventions in terms of making human resources available,” says Pape Gaye, President and CEO of IntraHealth International, to ECSP’s Gib Clarke in this interview on improving maternal health services in developing countries. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems associated with training.”
Gaye says obstacles to scaling up maternal health services in rural areas include employee gender inequalities, poor coordination of supplemental training, and a tendency to only offer in-service training in urban areas. Properly emphasizing pre-service education, he underscores, could remedy some of the problems associated with service provider training.
Increasing retention of medical practitioners is also critical to improving maternal health services in developing countries, Gaye explains. In his experience, however, attempts to address perceived security and financial compensation inadequacies produced mixed results. Instead, Gaye suggests that positive recognition may be one of the best methods for retaining health care workers. “We’re seeing some very good successes in places where we have just simple ways to recognize the work… because if people feel valued in a community, then they are likely to stick it out.” -
Video—Integrating Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) to Conserve Ethiopian Wetlands
›February 1, 2010 // By Julia GriffinIn our latest video interview about PHE programs in Ethiopia, Zuna–a village elder from the Mettu Woreda region of Ethiopia—describes how an integrated intervention by the Ethio-Wetlands and Natural Resources Association (EWNRA) has benefited her community.
EWNRA aims to raise awareness within Ethiopian communities and governmental organizations of the importance of sustainable wetlands management. The organization also imparts local-level training on resource conservation and wise-use labor techniques.
Zuna recounts how EWNRA provided welcome training in sanitation and housekeeping practices that increased both safety and sustainability within her community. The more efficient, cleaner-burning wood stoves introduced in Mettu Woreda, for example, have improved local air quality while decreasing the frequency of skin burns and amount of harvested fuel required for cooking and other activities.
“We are benefiting from all this and I think the benefits from this intervention are good,” she says through an interpreter. “I want them to keep doing this and hopefully we will improve our activities working with them.”
