Showing posts from category *Main.
-
Environment, Population, Conflict Scholar to Washington
›March 26, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoThose of you following the new analysis of environment, conflict, and security will know Dr. Colin Kahl’s work, principally his 2006 book States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World. Those of us in the Washington, DC area were pleased to learn recently that Colin will take up an appointment this fall at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service. He has been a regular writer and speaker for the Environmental Change and Security Program.
Using Kenya and the Philippines as cases, Colin has pushed ahead our understanding of environmental scarcity and conflict links in a number of ways. He showed how top-down exploitation of environment and population linkages pitting one group against another (Moi in Kenya) must be added to our traditional conceptions of bottom-up grievance-based causal connections. He proposed a notion of “groupness” to explain why Moi in the early 1990s was able to use environmental (land) and population concerns to stir up violence in rural areas where tribal affiliations were stronger while lower levels of tribal affiliations or “groupness” in urban areas meant that violent conflict was largely absent between the same groups. Colin also presents a strong critique of the alleged “scarcity versus abundance” dichotomy when explaining resource connections to conflict. His review of Paul Collier et al’s oft-cited treatise on the abundance side of the ledger forcefully argues for viewing scarcity versus abundance as a false dichotomy while taking to task Collier’s operationalization of abundance.
Perhaps a bit of insider baseball but let me just urge those interested in really understanding these links to check out Colin’s work and say those of us working in DC welcome the opportunity to call on him as a local. -
Climate Change Possible Culprit of Darfur Crisis
›March 15, 2007 // By Karen BencalaWhile the crisis in Darfur is often characterized as an ethnically motivated genocide, Stephan Faris argues in April’s Atlantic Monthly (available online to subscribers only) that the true cause may be climate change. Severe land degradation in the region has been blamed on poor land use practices by farmers and herders, but new climate models indicate that warming ocean temperatures are the culprit behind the loss of fertile land.
Faris says:“Given the particular pattern of ocean-temperature changes worldwide, the models strongly predicted a disruption in African monsoons. ‘This was not caused by people cutting trees or overgrazing,’ says Columbia University’s Alessandra Giannini, who led one of the analyses.”
Furthermore, Faris points out that the violence is not necessarily merely between Arabs and blacks, but between farmers (largely black Africans) and herders (largely Arabs). Historically, the two groups shared the fertile land. Now, however, farmers—who once allowed herders to pass through their land and drink from their wells—are constructing fences and fighting to maintain their way of life on the diminished amount of productive land.
If climate change is the real cause of the conflict, Faris concludes, the solution must account for this reality and address the environmental crisis in order to make peace. And he calls on all of us to accept some of the blame for the crisis:“If the region’s collapse was in some part caused by the emissions from our factories, power plants, and automobiles, we bear some responsibility for the dying. ‘This changes us from the position of Good Samaritans—disinterested, uninvolved people who may feel a moral obligation—to a position where we, unconsciously and without malice, created the conditions that led to this crisis,’ says Michael Byers, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia. ‘We cannot stand by and look at it as a situation of discretionary involvement. We are already involved.’”
That said however, researchers at the African Centre for Technology Studies an international policy research organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, say that while environmental changes have decreased agricultural production, these problems must be examined within the wider context of a long history of discrimination and governance problems: “The legacies of colonialism, political discrimination, and lack of adequate governance in Darfur should not be underestimated in favor of an environmental explanation-particularly as it serves the interests of some actors to use environmental change as a non-political scapegoat for conflict.” (forthcoming ECSP Report 12) -
African Diplomat Discusses Regionalism and AIDS
›March 12, 2007 // By Julie DohertyK.Y. Amoako, distinguished diplomat, former Wilson Center African Scholar, and former executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, will discuss regionalism as a major movement in world politics—particularly in Africa—on the Wilson Center’s radio show Dialogue this week.
Drawing on his experience at the United Nations Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa (CHGA), Amoako will explore regionalism’s potential to accelerate progress and strengthen stability, as well as improve Africa’s campaign against HIV/AIDS.
Created in 2003 by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, CHGA’s mandate was twofold: to clarify data on HIV/AIDS’s impact on state structures and economic development; and to assist governments in consolidating the design and implementation of policies and programs to help govern the epidemic. In the process, CHGA consulted more than 1,000 Africans. -
A Diversified Agenda for the New Africa Command
›March 5, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoBuilding things rather than blowing them up is how New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof describes a primary approach of one U.S. military base in the Horn of Africa. In his March 3 column, Kristof, who regularly writes on humanitarian, poverty, health, and development issues in the region, writes approvingly of the recognition within the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) that force and fear alone are not going to win the war on terror. As evidence Kristof cites the actions and words of the U.S. military.“The U.S. started to realize that there’s more to counterterrorism than capture-kill kinetics,” said Capt. Patrick Myers of the Navy, director of plans and policy here. “Our mission is 95 percent at least civil affairs. … It’s trying to get at the root causes of why people want to take on the U.S.”
Kristof describes the possibility of the traditional warfighting mission coexisting alongside increased humanitarian roles.The 1,800 troops here do serve a traditional military purpose, for the base was used to support operations against terrorists in Somalia recently and is available to reach Sudan, Yemen or other hot spots. But the forces here spend much of their time drilling wells or building hospitals; they rushed to respond when a building collapsed in Kenya and when a passenger ferry capsized in Djibouti.
Kristof suggests this muscular humanitarian mission should be central to the new Africa Command the U.S. military recently announced. Standing up this regional command will mean breaking most of sub-Saharan Africa out of European Command where most of it save the Horn and North Africa has historically been situated. While some may question whether outside military interventions aren’t more the problem than the solution, the emphasis on a military humanitarian role recognizes security and stability as a necessary precondition for lasting development.
Rear Adm. James Hart, commander of the task force at Camp Lemonier, suggested that if people in nearby countries feel they have opportunities to improve their lives, then “the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if not completely, diminishes.”
For the historically inclined, it is worth remembering that General Anthony Zinni, the Marine four star who headed CENTCOM just before the war in Iraq, had internalized these lessons and practiced humanitarian and development engagement to support his stability missions. Unfortunately it was thinking like his that was jettisoned when the Iraq war started. -
Good Env, Conflict, & Cooperation Resource
›March 2, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoWe all are subscribed to plenty of listservs, but if you are interested in tracking scholarly and policy developments in environment, conflict, and cooperation, check out the webpage with the same name: The ECC Platform.
Run by experienced ECC hands, Alexander Carius and his colleagues at the Berlin-based Adelphi Research, the ECC Platform provides a range of new research, conference, and stories links. Sitting in the midst of European ECC efforts, the ECC Platform is particular good for tracking the ups and downs of EU and European governments’ efforts to integrate ECC considerations into their foreign policy, foreign assitance, and even European programs.
You can subscribe here to the monthly newsletter. -
WHO Article Explores Family Planning-Poverty Link
›March 2, 2007 // By Alison WilliamsA new article in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization concludes that higher fertility and lower contraceptive use among poorer segments of society should be considered an inequity—a product of the poor being prevented from achieving their desired fertility to the same degree as wealthier segments of society. The analysis conducted by the authors—Johns Hopkins’ Duff Gillespie, Saifuddin Ahmed, and Amy Tsui; and Scott Radloff, director of USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health—reveals that family planning can help level the playing field between rich and poor:“Family planning…is an effective way for individuals and groups to lower their fertility if they so desire; and reducing inequality in access to modern contraception will also reduce the inequality in fertility… Our analysis suggests that looking at family planning and fertility through an equity lens is justified for those countries with joint inequalities in unwanted fertility and access to family planning.”
ECSP held a meeting in January 2006 on a related topic—the impact of family planning on poverty alleviation. The speakers, George Washington University’s Thomas Merrick and Meg Greene, had recently conducted a study on this relationship and found that reproductive health interventions in poor populations have the strongest impact on overall health, followed by education, with household well-being the most weakly affected.
Merrick and Greene’s conclusions will be published in a forthcoming issue of ECSP’s FOCUS on population, environment, and security series. -
March Conference on Population, Development, and the Environment
›February 28, 2007 // By Gib ClarkeCICRED is organizing an international conference on population, development, and environment in the South, March 21-23, 2007 in collaboration with UNESCO, as part of the Programme for International Research on the Interactions between Population, Development, and Environment (PRIPODE).
The conference will last two and a half days. Beyond the dissemination of the PRIPODE findings, this conference will also create an arena for dialogue between scholars, actors, and decision-makers from the South and the North, and it will aim to strengthen the links between research and action in the field of sustainable development.
For further information, please visit the Conference website. -
Water Stress Increasing; Management Still the Answer
›February 15, 2007 // By Karen BencalaThe United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said yesterday that by 2025 some 1.8 billion people will be living in areas of absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population may be water-stressed. The leading factors prompting FAO to sound the alarm are population growth and increased water use, especially in the agriculture sector, which sucks up roughly 70 percent of all freshwater withdrawals (the figure is even higher in several developing countries where drip irrigation and water-conservation measures have yet to be implemented).
None of this is news to most of us in the water world, but the FAO deserves credit for recommending proper management—the right answer, but not a revolutionary one. Integrated water resource management (IWRM)—a coordinated and participatory way of developing and managing water resources—has been the favored solution to water problems around the world for many years. Yet little action has been taken so far; water is a field full of experts, each with his own interests and concerns—fish in the stream, health of individuals, capacity of governments, etc.
The success of IWRM depends on including all stakeholders and illustrating how this comprehensive look can benefit everyone now and as well as in the future. With health, livelihoods, the environment, and much more at stake, developing a management plan is not an easy process. But as Pasquale Steduto, chief of FAO’s Water, Development and Management Unit, noted, progress is possible:“Sound water resource management at all levels can help countries adopt flexible approaches that allow more people to have the water they need while preserving the environment. The global community has the know-how to cope with water scarcity, but we have to take action.”
Effective action doesn’t have to be large-scale or technology–intensive, as shown by The New York Times story about farmers plowing around trees in their fields instead of chopping them down. We should all take note. IWRM doesn’t necessarily mean big. Bottom-up can work. Small can be beautiful.
