Showing posts from category *Main.
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Weekly Reading
›The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a paper examining climate change’s likely effects on water resources, as well as how these changes in water resources could affect ecosystems, agriculture, human health, and the economy.
In “Warfare Ecology” (abstract), an article published in the September issue of BioScience, Gary Machlis and Thor Hanson argue that a new, holistic approach to the ecological study of warfare is needed, encompassing preparations for war, combat, and post-conflict activities.
Investing in economic development and education—both at home and abroad—is a more efficient way to prevent violence than investing a similar amount in weaponry or defense infrastructure, argue Representative Danny Davis (D-IL) and Michael Shank of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in The Hill.
This year’s Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting featured a panel devoted exclusively to water and sanitation issues.
“UN demographers projected in 2002 that the population of the Philippines in 2008 would reach between 75 and 85 million. But the population has already overshot the high projection and now stands at 89 million, up from 60 million in 1990. And the country’s forests, as well as its people, are paying the price in terms of urban overcrowding and rural deforestration [sic],” writes Henrylito Tacio.
Economist environment correspondent Edward McBride moderates an online debate over whether water should be priced according to its market value. -
How America Gets Its Groove Back: Thomas Friedman Foments a Green Revolution
›October 2, 2008 // By Rachel Weisshaar
“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, discussion of his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How it Can Renew America, sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Division of International Security Studies and Environmental Change and Security Program. “We need to get back to an America that’s about the Fourth of July and not 9/11,” maintained Friedman, who believes the United States needs to assume a more active and less defensive posture in the world. “We get our groove back as a country…by taking the lead in solving the world’s biggest problems,” which he said include climate change, rising energy demand, and biodiversity loss.
The book’s title identifies three major trends of this century: Climate change is warming our planet; the rise of a global middle class is flattening the differences between rich and poor; and a rapidly expanding population is crowding the world. According to Friedman, these converging trends are driving “five global mega-trends” that will determine our future stability:- Energy and natural resource supply and demand: While some countries are taking steps to become more energy-efficient, the explosive growth of developing-country cities is outpacing these gains. Friedman asserts that there are not enough energy and natural resources for everyone to consume at Americans’ current rates and that everyone, Americans included, must address energy supply and demand.
- Petrodictatorship: We are “funding both sides of the war on terrorism,” said Friedman: the U.S. military with tax dollars, and terrorist groups (and the states that sponsor them) with gas dollars.
- Climate change: Friedman emphasized that the pace of climate change is exceeding many scientists’ predictions, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that we have little time to act.
- Energy poverty: The lack of a consistent electricity supply not only cripples 1.6 billion people’s ability to obtain high-quality health care and adapt to the effects of climate change, but also prevents them from accessing the myriad educational and economic opportunities provided by the Internet.
- Biodiversity loss: The Earth is losing species 1,000 times faster than normal, claimed Friedman. “We are the first generation of humans that is actually going to have to think like Noah,” said Friedman, to save rapidly disappearing plants and animals.
Friedman thinks these trends are “a series of incredible opportunities masquerading as impossible and insoluble problems” because all five can be reversed by “abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons” and energy efficiency. The country that becomes the leader in new energy technology (ET) will have the most stable economy and garner the most respect on the international stage, said Friedman. If the United States does not take the lead in the ET revolution, others—China, India, Europe—will, but they won’t do it as fast or as well as the United States, he says.
Friedman believes the market is the key to igniting an ET revolution. “This country has never been more alive in terms of innovation,” he says, but our leaders have not capitalized on it. He thinks the government must play an important role—“for markets to produce innovation, they need to be shaped”—but not by launching a “Manhattan Project” for energy. “We are not going to regulate our way out of this problem; we are only going to innovate our way out of this problem.”Friedman criticized the pop culture environmentalism that claims people can save the Earth by changing their daily lives in small, painless ways. “Easy should not be in the lexicon,” he maintained. But even if an ET revolution will be difficult, it is still achievable: “We have exactly enough time, starting now,” said Friedman.
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Lethal Rockslide in Cairo Slum Reveals Government’s Lack of Preparedness
›September 30, 2008 // By Lauren Herzer RisiEarlier this month, approximately eight boulders weighing 60-70 tons each split from the edges of the Muqattam cliffs and fell onto densely populated Manshiyet Nasr, a slum in eastern Cairo, killing more than 100 people and destroying 30-50 homes. By the next day, security officials outnumbered rescue workers in the area, and locals, outraged by the slow response of the government, were clashing with police. This tragedy and the ensuing conflict between residents and local authorities highlight the need for effective governance and urban planning to alleviate poverty and rapid urbanization and avoid conflict.
Rockslides are not uncommon in Manshiyet Nasr; in 2002, for example, 27 people were killed under similar circumstances in the same area. One local journalist reported that “the reason the rocks keep falling is because there is no sewage system and their wastewater is eating away at the mountain.” This lack of basic sanitation services is a common characteristic of the informal settlements and slums that are growing exponentially worldwide. This year, for the first time, more than half of the global population lives in cities; it is forecast that by 2030, 81 percent of the urban population will reside in the cities of developing countries, which are unplanned, underserved by services like sanitation, and unable to cope with continually growing demand for these services. The rockslide in Manshiyet Nasr is a stark example of what can happen when a city’s infrastructure and government are unprepared to deal with rapid urbanization and increasing poverty, and how these challenges are exacerbated by poor government response. (For more on Cairo’s informal settlements, see the Comparative Urban Studies Project’s Urban Studies in Cairo, Egypt.)
A recent Human Development Report analyzing Egypt’s progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals noted that the poverty rate in Cairo, a city of 16 million people, is expected to almost double between now and 2015. This growth in poverty is attributed to “increasing numbers of residents in vulnerable areas and increasing rates of internal migration.”
It is important to note, however, that migration alone does not account for increasing poverty. In Global Urban Poverty, a publication of the Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Loren Landau argues that “public responses to migration and urbanization—including the absence of a conscious coordinated response—have tended to exacerbate mobility’s negative effects on all of the Millennium Development Goals.”
The Egyptian government’s initial response to the rockslide in Manshiyet Nasr was to hold the residents accountable for living in an illegal settlement in a dangerous area. Yet 70 percent of Cairo residents live in informal communities like Manshiyet Nasr. In addition to a severe housing shortage and lack of urban planning, a history of slow government response to disasters is intensifying accusations of government neglect and incompetence.
Except for an 18-month break in 1980-81, Egyptians have lived under emergency law since 1967. This law prohibits public gatherings, restricts speech, permits searches without warrants, and enables the police to detain citizens without charge or trial. After promising to repeal the law during his 2005 presidential campaign, Hosni Mubarek, who has been in power since 1981, extended the law in 2006 and again in May of this year. While proponents of the law (and of Mubarek) claim that the state of emergency has helped stabilized the country, human rights groups argue that the law violates human rights and sanctions the government’s oppression of political rivals.
Egypt’s history of extreme law and unchecked police powers has stunted the development of a system of governance that responds to the most basic needs of Egyptians. Manshiyet Nasr residents’ angry reaction to the poor government response to the rockslide is evidence of their smoldering desperation. -
The More Things Change…Russia Embraces Free Trade (in Nuclear Waste)
›September 29, 2008 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoI was disappointed but not surprised to receive a recent e-mail from Wilson Center Senior Scholar Murray Feshbach, warning me off visiting
The beginning of a September 26 St. Petersburg Times article gives us a glimpse of this selective Russian embrace of free trade:Up to 10,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride are expected to travel through St. Petersburg in the next six months, according to the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Bellona….According to official sources, cargos containing depleted uranium hexafluoride arrive in the city on average ten times a month…radioactivity levels near the trains have significantly exceeded the norm on several occasions over the past year.
Environmental and health issues in Russia have not always looked so dire. In the early 1990s, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, two exciting developments came out of northwest Russia from two unlikely sources: the military and civil society. In one of the most militarized regions of the world, the Russian military cooperated with the Norwegian military and eventually the
Health concerns connected to nuclear waste also formed the basis of a blossoming civil society movement in early-1990s
But even by the mid-1990s, the tide was beginning to turn back to a secretive and securitized approach to environmental data. The celebrated treason case of former Russian submarine captain Aleksandr Nikitin was merely the most visible example of the recriminalization of sharing environmental data. Nikitin’s “crime” was co-authoring the 1996 Bellona Foundation report The Russian Northern Fleet: Sources of Radioactive Contamination. Following a year of imprisonment and the achievement of Amnesty International prisoner status, Nikitin was released, but his celebrated case was succeeded by the Russian government’s broad-stroke efforts to dial back environmental openness and the rights that came with it. We may be seeing the effects of this return to environmental secrecy in the current row over nuclear waste transportation through St. Petersburg.
Photo courtesy of Woodrow Wilson Center. -
Senators McCain, Obama Announce Priorities for Alleviating Poverty, Tackling Climate Change at Clinton Global Initiative
›September 25, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarSpeaking at a Clinton Global Initiative plenary session (webcast; podcast) this morning, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) laid out their proposals for addressing the interconnected problems of global poverty, climate change, and disease. Excerpts from each senator’s speech are below.
Senator McCain:
“We can never guarantee our security through military means alone. True security requires a far broader approach using non-military means to reduce threats before they gather strength. This is especially true of our strategic interests in fighting disease and extreme poverty across the globe.”
“Malaria alone kills more than a million people a year, mostly in Africa….To its lasting credit, the federal government in recent years has led the way in this fight. But of course, America is more than its government. Some of the greatest advances have been the work of the Gates Foundation and other groups. And you have my pledge: Should I be elected, I will build on these and other initiatives to ensure that malaria kills no more. I will also make it a priority to improve maternal and child health. Millions around the world today—and especially pregnant women and children—suffer from easily prevented nutritional deficiencies….An international effort is needed to prevent disease and developmental disabilities among children by providing nutrients and food security. And if I am elected president, America will lead that effort, as we have done with the scourge of HIV and AIDS.”
“America helped to spark the Green Revolution in Asia, and…[we] should be at the forefront of an African Green Revolution. We should and must reform our aid programs to make sure they are serving the interests of people in need, and not just serving special interests in Washington. Aid’s not the whole answer, as we know. We need to promote economic growth and opportunities, especially for women, where they do not currently exist. Too often, trade restrictions, combined with costly agricultural subsidies for the special interests, choke off the opportunities for poor farmers and workers abroad to help themselves. That has to change.”
Senator Obama:
“Our security is shared as well. The carbon emissions in Boston or Beijing don’t just pollute the immediate atmosphere, they imperil our planet. Pockets of extreme poverty in Somalia can breed conflict that spills across borders. The child who goes to a radical madrassa outside of Karachi can end up endangering the security of my daughters in Chicago. And the deadly flu that begins in Indonesia can find its way to Indiana within days. Poverty, climate change, extremism, disease—these are issues that offend our common humanity. They also threaten our common security….We must see that none of these problems can be dealt with in isolation; nor can we deny one and effectively tackle another.”
“Our dependence on oil and gas funds terror and tyranny. It’s forced families to pay their wages at the pump, and it puts the future of our planet in peril. This is a security threat, an economic albatross, and a moral challenge of our time.”
“As we develop clean energy, we should share technology and innovations with the nations of the world. This effort to confront climate change will be part of our strategy to alleviate poverty because we know that it is the world’s poor who will feel—and may already be feeling—the effect of a warming planet. If we fail to act, famine could displace hundreds of millions, fueling competition and conflict over basic resources like food and water. We all have a stake in reducing poverty….It leads to pockets of instability that provide fertile breeding-grounds for threats like terror and the smuggling of deadly weapons that cannot be contained by the drawing of a border or the distance of an ocean. And these aren’t simply disconnected corners of an interconnected world. And that is why the second commitment that I’ll make is embracing the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. This will take more resources from the United States, and as president, I will increase our foreign assistance to provide them.”
“Disease stands in the way of progress on so many fronts. It can condemn populations to poverty, prevent a child from getting an education, and yet far too many people still die of preventable illnesses….When I am president, we will set the goal of ending all deaths from malaria by 2015. It’s time to rid the world of a disease that doesn’t have to take lives.” -
Paul Ehrlich: Human Technological Achievement Has Outpaced Ethical Evolution
›September 25, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarHuman beings have harnessed culture and technology to become the most dominant animals on Earth, said Paul Ehrlich at a September 18, 2008, launch of his new Island Press book, The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment, but “we’re really backward ethically—in terms of how we treat each other and…the environment. And this leads to a lot of problems, not the least of which is we’re destroying our life-support system.” -
Drought, War, Refugees, Rising Prices Threaten Food Security in Afghanistan
›September 23, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarDrought, continuing violence, returning refugees, and the spike in global food prices are combining to produce a serious threat to Afghan food security, reports the New York Times. The World Food Program has expanded its operations in Afghanistan to cover a total of nearly 9 million people through the end of next year’s harvest, sending out an emergency appeal to donors to cover the costs.
According to a report published earlier this year by Oxfam UK,[W]ar, displacement, persistent droughts, flooding, the laying of mines, and the sustained absence of natural resource management has led to massive environment degradation and the depletion of resources. In recent years Afghanistan’s overall agricultural produce has fallen by half. Over the last decade in some regions Afghanistan’s livestock population has fallen by up to 60% and over the last two decades, the country has lost 70% of its forests.
A post-conflict environment assessment conducted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2003 confirms these dire trends in further detail. “In some areas, we found that up to 95 percent of the landscape had been deforested during the conflict—cut for fuel, bombed to remove cover, or removed to grow crops and graze livestock. Many people were fundamentally dependant on these forests for livelihoods. Without them, and without alternatives, Afghans were migrating to the cities or engaging in other forms of income generation—such as poppy production for the drug trade—in order to survive,” writes UNEP’s David Jensen in a forthcoming article in ECSP Report 13.
Despite the fact that agriculture has traditionally employed or supported approximately 80 percent of Afghans, says Oxfam, donors have vastly underinvested in the sector, spending only $300-400 million over the past six years directly on agricultural projects—a sliver of overall aid to Afghanistan.
Not only does hunger have negative impacts on health and economic growth, it could also make the security situation worse. “Development officials warn that neglecting [agriculture and development in] the poorest provinces can add to instability by pushing people to commit crimes or even to join the insurgency, which often pays its recruits,” reports the Times. In addition, an Oxfam International survey of six Afghan provinces found that land and water were the top two causes of local disputes.
To head off greater food insecurity and potential threats to overall stability, Oxfam UK recommends the development of a comprehensive national agricultural program; improved land and water management capacities; and greater support for non-agricultural income-generating activities, such as carpet-making.
Photo: An irrigated area near Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan. Courtesy of UN Environment Programme (source: Afghanistan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment). -
Weekly Reading
›The World Bank cancelled a deal with Chad to help finance a $4.2 billion, 665 mile-long oil pipeline, citing evidence that Idriss Déby’s government had not used oil profits to alleviate poverty, as had been stipulated in the agreement.
“Emergency aid to Africa continues to be made available too late, is too short-term and targeted too heavily on saving lives rather than protecting vulnerable livelihoods….food aid only addresses the symptoms of the emergency—hunger—and fails to address the real reasons for the crisis, which include a range of social, political and economic factors such as access to land and basic services, social marginalisation, climate change and poor governance,” argues a new report from CARE.
A report from swisspeace examines the role of the United Nations in linking the environment and conflict prevention.
According to Michael Shank of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, the conflict between Georgia and Russia last month “was chiefly, if not solely, spurred by the desire for mastery over natural resources.”
The World Resources Institute has released a number of new publications on the structure and implications of natural resource decentralization, including Protected Areas and Property Rights: Democratizing Eminent Domain in East Africa and Voice and Choice: Opening the Door to Environmental Democracy.
“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, 
I was disappointed but not surprised to receive a recent e-mail from Wilson Center Senior Scholar 
Human beings have harnessed culture and technology to become the most dominant animals on Earth, said Paul Ehrlich at a 
