While the negotiators failed to reach a comprehensive agreement in Copenhagen, the population and reproductive health community might find a silver lining in the stormclouds that derailed COP-15.

Developing countries’ strong protests of their lack of culpability for the climate problem, on one hand, and the dramatic examples of their vulnerability on the other, have focused the world on the problems of poor people—and on potential solutions, including family planning.

Africa’s elephants and black rhinos—already at risk—are increasingly threatened as the price of black market ivory rises, global markets contract, and unemployment rates rise. To fight poaching of these tusked animals, Ian Craig, founder of the Lewa Conservancy in Kenya and the brains behind the Northern Rangelands Trust, takes a unique approach to conservation that involves both local community members and high-level government officials, as well as private and public sector investors.

In the 1970s the black rhino population was at about 20,000. Less than three decades later, it had fallen to 200. Today, the population is about 600, of which 79 live in the Lewa Conservancy. The vast regions of Kenya covered by the Northern Rangelands Trust and the Lewa Conservancy are difficult to govern, so the conservancies partner with local communities to ensure the security necessary to protect the animals from poachers. By investing in community institutions, the conservancies create long-term sustainability and self-sufficiency.

But why should local communities—often beset by poverty, disease, and hunger—care about saving elephants or rhinoceroses rather than killing them for their tusks or meat? Revenue from tourism can total hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially because of the high cost and exclusive nature of tourism facilities in the area. This money is then injected back into community programs to improve adult literacy, school nutrition, health care, micro-credit, water and irrigation systems, community livestock and agriculture, and forestry and aquaculture.

In some politically volatile areas, the conservancy serves not only as a platform for ecological security, but also as a mediator of disputes. Where livestock theft is rampant, multi-ethnic anti-poaching teams have been able to act as intermediaries. Community elders and other traditional leaders serving on the conservancies’ boards have bi-annual meetings to further intra- and inter-regional cooperation. Along with regular managerial and council meetings, the board meetings set standards for good practices, open dialogue for policymaking and cooperation, and act as a unique platform for communication between different ethnic and regional groups.

Community members understand they have a stake in protecting not only the animals, but in ensuring security and building trust within the country. With its unique combination of local-level engagement, the cooperation and support of the Kenyan Wildlife Service and the national government, and with the resources available to the conservancies as a group, the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy hopes to create a model of conservation that can be used across Africa and in other at-risk regions.

The future is shaky: ivory prices continue to rise, the migration of animals has facilitated poaching, and small arms are abundantly available. However, the new community-focused approach has helped to create positive attitudes that aren’t just about saving animals, but about developing the nation.

Justine Lindemann is program assistant with the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Photo: Elephants in Lewa Conservancy area, courtesty Flickr user Mara 1

The Copenhagen COP-15 was not a stand-alone event. It was a product of years of ongoing work around the globe, from the trenches of climate research laboratories to the highest levels of government. As a result, apart from anything else, it gave valuable insight into the current state of two of the most dynamic and overarching issues of the coming decades: the science of environmental change (and in particular the potential impacts) and dynamics of shifting geopolitics.

In both cases, based on what was seen in Copenhagen, the situation is disconcerting.

In terms of the science, the COP-15 had a dangerously narrow focus. Carbon emission-related issues, the main topic of the COP, are just one component of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Other include, for example, livestock-related methane emissions and the release of exponentially potent industrial GHGs.

Due to feedback loops and other factors now in play, anthropogenic GHG emissions themselves are just one component of changing atmospheric GHG concentrations. Others include, for example, methane released from thawing permafrost and CO2 saturation in the oceans.

Meanwhile, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are themselves just one potential component of major environmental change. Others include, for example, massive changes in consumption patterns, soil exhaustion, and groundwater depletion. Even without climate change, those factors alone are destabilizing.

While unquestionably important, from a scientific point of view, what was on the table at Copenhagen was severely limited. This was acknowledged by those involved, many of who talk in terms of a 2 degree C temperature rise as being a win.

The implications are staggering. Already, critical energy infrastructure, for instance, is feeling the effects of environmental changes. In some cases, such as French nuclear power stations, U.S. Gulf Coast infrastructure, and Indian hydroelectric installations, environmental change periodically severely affects production.

If an infrastructure that is as well-designed and funded as the energy sector is starting to feel the effects, it is hard to imagine the potential for disruption that the science now tells us is inevitable.

Meanwhile, geopolitically, the conference quickly took on the developed-versus-developing world framing that has increasingly paralyzed other global negotiations. As one Zambian delegate told me, “This is even worse than the WTO.”

While the Financial Times called Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese head of the G-77 group of developing countries, “belligerent,” the largest circulation English language newspaper in the world, the Times of India, ran a headline reading: “India suspects foul play on draft declaration.”

In some cases the day-to-day management of the COP incited and inflamed the feeling of fragmentation. The location itself was criticized from the start: Copenhagen is lovely, but very expensive. Many stakeholders from the developing world could not afford to attend, assuming they could get visas.

Once they did arrive, the long registration lines in the cold took a toll on those just off long flights from the tropics, and some just gave up as coughs set in. It is worth noting that on several key days, members of negotiating parties had to wait in line with the NGOs, severely limiting their ability to contribute to the work going on inside.

Some of those who braved the lines, including an Indian journalist colleague, got inside and to the registration desk after hours only to find that their accreditation had been unilaterally cancelled.

The restrictions on NGOs hit the developing world particularly hard, as many of the government negotiating teams were actively supported by think tanks and others who were registered as NGOs.

In an atmosphere already rife with distrust, those sort of organizational issues were not helpful, to say the least, and they fed into conspiracy theories about a deliberate concerted effort by the developed world to bulldoze through secret drafts. It doesn’t matter if it is not true, what matters is that it is now widely believed – and on the front page of the Times of India.

The implications are troublesome. The government officials and negotiators involved will be sitting across the table from each other in a wide range of other treaties and agreements. The distrust resulting from COP15 will feed into existing geopolitical tensions and will be carried in the hearts and minds of those involved for years.

This is not good. When we combine the two trends – a failure to manage (or even acknowledge) the scientific importance of non-carbon environmental change factors and increasingly polarized geopolitics – it is easy to see some very unsettling times on the near horizon.

As we start to experience accelerating problems with everything from water scarcity (including in the United States and Europe) to infrastructure failure (including along the U.S. coasts), we are all going to need as many friends as we can get. If the Titanic is going down, it doesn’t help to compete over who can steal the most silverware.

The sort of behavior on show in Copenhagen may suit some narrow interests, but unless the full complexity of environmental change is addressed, those interests will lose out—as will we all.

Cleo Paskal is a fellow at Chatham House, a consultant to the Department of Energy’s Global Energy and Environment Strategic Ecosystem (GlobalEESE) and author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map.

“One of the shortcomings of the entire debate on natural resources, climate security, and conflict is the question of empirical evidence,” Adelphi Research co-director Alexander Carius told ECSP’s Geoff Dabelko in a video interview.

The second week of negotiations here in Copenhagen has been marked by dramatic events, as the deadline for a new global agreement to address climate change approaches.

Blocs of negotiators from developing countries have walked out, and returned. Thousands of NGO representatives who have been denied access to the proceedings are shivering in the cold. Observers inside the Bella Center have staged sit-ins. And yet slivers of hope remain for some form of a global deal that is fair, ambitious, and binding as negotiators prepare for the arrival of more than 100 heads of state on Friday.

Integrating maternal health and HIV/AIDS services “includes organizing and providing services that meet several needs simultaneously…focusing not only on the condition, but also the individual,” argued Dr. Claudes Kamenga, Senior Director of Technical Support and Research Utilization at Family Health International, during the first event of the Advancing Policy Dialogue on Maternal Health series co-convened by the Wilson Center’s Global Health Initiative, Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and technical support from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Joined by Michele Moloney-Kitts, assistant coordinator at the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, and Harriet Birungi, a program associate with the Population Council in Kenya, the panelists discussed how integration of HIV/AIDS and maternal health services not only improves health outcomes, but also increases program efficiencies, strengthens health systems, and saves money.

Leaders from the African Union,the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations have agreed unanimously that climate change threatens international peace and security, and urged that the time for action is now.

To communicate a sense of urgency, the security paradigm is being used to push for self-sufficiency in energy, and hence “national security,” at COP-15. Such a connection, if configured with carbon-free energy sources, could provide a win-win outcome for many.

This argument has been embraced both by the left and the right of the political spectrum in the United States. But compelling as it may be politically, there is a discomforting insularity and isolationism embedded in this approach, as emphasized by the delegations from some countries that export fuels (e.g., OPEC members, emergent oil and gas economies, and uranium exporters such as Namibia and Niger).

The Canadian delegation, which was targeted by activists with a “fossil of the day” award, used the security argument to show how it could send relatively “conflict-free” fuels to the United States by developing its oil, uranium, and bituminous tar sands.

Australia played a similar security card behind the scenes. The former Environment Minister Robert Hill also served as defense minister and is now head of Australia’s Carbon Trust–connections which he suggested were very valuable in an onsite interview with journalist Giles Parkinson.

Nuclear energy was prominently discussed as a solution by numerous delegations. At a side event organized by the Danish Federation of Industries, Energy Secretary and Nobel physicist Steven Chu indicated that his biggest concern about nuclear energy was not the waste problem but rather, the potential dangers to national security from the proliferation of radioactive materials.

The other security connection that environmentalists like to make–but is empirically more tenuous–concerns the increased pressures on existing strife in resource-scarce communities potentially inflicted by climate change. I attended a presentation by an OECD research team that empirically considered the impact of climate change on the security of the vulnerable states of the African Sahel. While generally rejecting the direct linkage between climate change and the threat of violent conflict, the OECD study, launched with UK Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, identified three hotspots where existing resource scarcity and population pressure could be exacerbated by climate change, especially agropastoralist communities, who are highly sensitive to any climatic fluctuations.

So far, the rather meandering encounter with the security agenda I’ve witnessed here in Copenhagen could greatly benefit from further integrative work such as that offered by the Wilson Center.

Saleem H. Ali is associate professor of environmental planning at the University of Vermont and the author most recently of Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future.