Showing posts from category development.
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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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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. -
Weekly Reading
›In a speech last week, National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar hinted at the contents of Global Trends 2025, the intelligence report being prepared for the next U.S. president on future global threats. It predicts that U.S. global dominance will decline over the next several decades, as the world is buffeted by climate change and shortages of energy, water, and food. The intermediate draft of the report was reviewed this summer at a Wilson Center meeting hosted by ECSP.
U.S. Population, Energy and Climate Change, a new report by the Center for Environment & Population, explores how various aspects of U.S. population—including size and growth rate, density, per capita resource use, and composition—affect greenhouse gas emissions.
An extensive Congressional Research Service report compares U.S. and Chinese approaches to diplomacy, foreign aid, trade, and investment in developing countries. “China’s influence and image have been bolstered through its increasingly open and sophisticated diplomatic corps as well as through prominent PRC-funded infrastructure, public works, and economic investment projects in many developing countries,” write the authors.
ICLEI-Europe has released a set of reports designed to help local governments reap the benefits of integrated water resources management. Available in English, Portuguese, and French, the reports are geared toward southern African countries.
“The potential is there with undetermined boundaries and great wealth for conflict, or competition” in the Arctic, says Rear Admiral Gene Brooks, who is in charge of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Alaska region.
Negussie Teffera, former head of Ethiopia’s Office of Population, and Bill Ryerson of the Population Media Center (PMC) discussed PMC’s extraordinarily successful radio soap operas last week on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s program “The Current.” -
“Code Green”: Friedman Calls for an American-Led Revolution in Energy, Environment
›September 12, 2008 // By Will RogersAmerica has a problem and the world has a problem,” argues Thomas Friedman in his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America, set to launch at the Woodrow Wilson Center on September 29 (RSVP). Plagued by inaction, the United States and the rest of the world have watched as “global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable.”
Yet undergirding Friedman’s book is his sense of optimism that renewed American leadership on energy conservation, population, and multilateral cooperation could not only stave off the worst climate change scenarios but also bolster the U.S. economy and improve America’s flagging global reputation. Whether you defend or challenge Friedman’s perspective, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is certain to become a lightning rod in the debates over climate change, energy, and environmental security. Stay tuned to the New Security Beat for a more thorough review of Friedman’s book from ECSP staff.
Photo: Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist of the New York Times. Courtesy of flickr user Charles Haynes. -
Amazon Fund to Target Sustainable Development; Strong First Step, Say Experts
›August 30, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffLast month, in an effort to prevent further deforestation of the Amazon, Brazil announced the creation of the Amazon Fund, which aims to make preserving the world’s largest tropical rain forest more lucrative than destroying it. Norway was the first country to contribute to the initiative, offering a pledge of $100 million. Officials project that the fund may receive up to $1 billion in its first year and may accrue as much as $21 billion by 2121.
By creating an endowment open to international investors, Brazil appears to have shed some of its usual suspicions of foreign encroachment on the Amazon and acknowledged that conservation efforts will only be sustainable with considerable outside support. Yet the funds will still be controlled by Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDES)—which, according to BNDES environment director Eduardo de Mello, means “donors will have no say over the use of [the Amazon Fund’s] resources.” Within BNDES, a steering committee made up of federal and state officials will be in control of the funds. According to the proposal listed online by BNDES, the Amazon Fund will target the following areas: Brazilian sovereignty; infrastructure development; combating deforestation; indigenous rights; sustainable development; and government, business, and civil cooperation.
The Amazon Fund is guided by the Brazilian government’s Plano Amazônia Sustentável (PAS), or Sustainable Amazon Plan, which was issued in May 2008. Carlos Nobre, a senior climate scientist at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, was one of the principal architects of this plan, and presented it to an American audience at a January 16, 2008, conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center. PAS offers a holistic vision for protecting the Amazon that goes beyond conservation efforts, calling for the creation of a new economic paradigm centered on sustainably “globalizing the development capacity of the Amazon and producing value-added goods and services.” Nobre told Reuters that while the Amazon Fund is a positive initial step, it nevertheless “just postpones deforestation…the final fix is to create a new economy that can give jobs to several million people.” This “paradigm shift,” he explained, requires the entrepreneurial capacity to “translate biodiversity wealth into economic wealth.”
Response to the Amazon Fund has been generally positive, albeit guarded. According to Paulo Gustavo Prado, environmental policy director of Conservation International’s (CI) Brazil program, the Fund is a helpful move in the fight to combat deforestation in the Amazon, but is still a work “under construction” (e-mail exchange with Alan Wright). For instance, it is possible that the resources will be used to fill “gaps in governance”—in other words, to fund additional enforcement actions against illegal logging in the Amazon—and therefore have little direct impact on Amazonian society as whole. He observed that the prospect for private-sector involvement seems limited by the fact that funders will have no influence over the use of funds, so the initiative is unlikely to draw money for carbon-offset projects. Prado remarked that by reducing the cost of conservation-related activities, it appears that the Amazon Fund will encourage the work of organizations such as CI. He also stressed CI’s commitment to see that the Fund will be made available to researchers and scientists, and that indigenous and local communities and state and municipal governments will be involved in the decision-making process.
It remains to be seen how other issues—such as the ambitious Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA), lingering land rights issues, and Brazil’s commodity export boom—will affect the Amazon Fund’s overall efficacy.
By Brazil Institute Program Assistant Alan Wright and Brazil Institute Intern Matthew Layton.Photo: Area deforested for agricultural use in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Courtesy of flickr user leoffreitas.
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“Adapt we must”: Joshua Busby on the Climate-Security Connection
›August 29, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiIn “The Climate Security Connection: What it Means for the Poor,” Joshua Busby (listen to ECSP podcast with Busby) discusses the security implications of climate change for the developing world. In this paper, written for “Development in the Balance: How Will the World’s Poor Cope With Climate Change?,” the fifth annual Brookings Blum Round Table, held earlier this month, Busby explains that “[d]eveloping countries are most vulnerable, partly as an accident of geography, but also because vulnerability is made worse by poverty, bad governance, and past conflict.”
Busby compares the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which pounded Burma in May 2008, to that of an armed attack, describing both as causing “widespread suffering, destruction of infrastructure, mobilization of the military, and the movement of refugees.” In fact, between 1991 and 2005, natural disasters led to as many deaths as armed conflict, as Busby notes. The subsequent political battles around outside efforts to deliver aid “gave people around the world a visual image of the potential future,” says Busby, and offered a glimpse of “the security risks when affected countries lack the capacity or will to respond.”
The economic consequences of natural disasters can also be crippling. In absolute terms, the developed world suffers larger financial losses, but as a share of GDP, the damage to developing countries is far greater. Additionally, though the death toll of natural disasters continues to fall, the total number of affected people is on the rise, which means that many more people are relying on government services to regain their footing in the wake of natural disasters.
These consequences have long-term security implications for a world in which natural disasters are becoming more frequent and severe. “Post-disaster environments are going to be dangerous moments,” Busby predicts, “when mishandled or inadequate disaster response can give way to the kinds of lingering grievances that can motivate people to take up arms.” To prevent this, he advocates an international focus on adaptation and risk-reduction strategies, and cautions against narrowly focusing on the causal relationship linking climate change to violent conflict. By doing so, policymakers and practitioners overlook what Busby says is the more likely outcome, in which large-scale disasters sap government resources by creating humanitarian emergencies that require military mobilization in response. In “Gathering Storm – the humanitarian impact of climate change,” the UN’s Integrated Regional News Networks (IRIN) explores how climate change has altered the face of global humanitarian crises.
Offering a sharp critique of the reactive strategy of many governments, Busby suggests that a modest investment in prevention would be more efficient and more effective. A joint assessment by the World Bank and the U.S. Geological Survey, for example, found that a $40 billion investment in natural-disaster prevention could have prevented $280 billion in damages worldwide during the 1990s. The reactive approach also threatens to politicize the carefully guarded neutrality of aid workers and organizations; engender international friction where inadequate government response leads to international intervention; and sap government resources through costly responses to humanitarian crises.
Busby envisions a system where “the poor bear less of the brunt of half-hearted and partial reactive measures” in response to climate change. Noting Paul Collier’s finding in The Bottom Billion that past conflict is an accurate predictor of future poverty, Busby argues that reducing the potential for violence in post-disaster situations will improve development prospects for countries worldwide. An enlightened approach, emphasizing prevention over reaction, will not only insulate vulnerable regions from the immediate dangers of natural disasters, but will also protect them from more indirect, long-term threats to their prosperity and security.
Photo: Tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers were mobilized in response to the May 12th earthquake. As climate change makes natural disasters more frequent and more severe, this will likely become an increasingly common sight. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Alex and Jerry.
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Population Growth, Environmental Degradation Threaten Development in Uganda
›August 28, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiClimate change, increasing population, and overuse of land, fisheries, and water supplies threaten to undermine development in Uganda, writes Pius Sawa for the Africa Science News Service. Olive Sentumbwe Mugisa, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) population and health advisor in Uganda, warns that Uganda’s economic growth is not keeping pace with its population growth, which is among the fastest in Africa, due to a fertility rate of 6.7 children per woman.
Native Ugandan Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka spoke about the interconnectedness of population, health, and environment issues in Uganda in two events at the Wilson Center in May of this year. Kalema-Zikusoka is the founder and director of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), which works to conserve the habitat of the endangered mountain gorilla by strengthening community health services and providing communities with information about the benefits of family planning.
Kalema-Zikusoka is also the author of an upcoming issue of Focus, the Environmental Change and Security Program’s series of occasional papers featuring Wilson Center speakers. Her piece describes CTPH’s work in and around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, where it has found great success in addressing health, conservation, family planning, and livelihood issues in an integrated fashion.
Photo: Woman and children in southern Uganda. Courtesy of flickr user youngrobv. -
“New Demography” Drives World Bank Population Policy in Africa
›August 26, 2008 // By Sonia Schmanski“African elites have long had the perception that rapid population growth was not an issue because of the vastness of Africa, abundance of resources, relatively low population densities and, more recently, the threat of HIV/AIDS,” but as rapid population growth becomes a more urgent problem across the continent, that view is increasingly falling out of favor, said World Bank lead demographer John May in a recent interview with the African Press Organization. As governments work to improve their population programs, the World Bank is adopting “new demography” principles that examine age structures, dependency ratios, human capital investments, and the demographic dividend to craft cross-sectoral approaches to population policy.
Current demographic trends, the result of reduced infant and child mortality and slowly falling fertility rates, will double the population of Africa by 2036 if left unaddressed, said May. The security implications of this population growth are readily apparent. Rapid population growth has been identified as a factor in increasing resource scarcity and can help lead to conflict. In Sudan, for example, the pressures of overgrazing, desertification, ongoing drought, and escalating competition between pastoralist and agriculturalist communities have contributed to violence. Kenya presents a similar scenario: Rapid and uneven population growth led to land scarcity in the late 1980s, exacerbating latent political and ethnic tensions. The violent conflict that erupted between 1991 and 1993 was fueled in part by natural resource scarcity. More recently, insecure land tenure, shaky property rights, and competition over natural resources have triggered violence across East Africa. Population pressures also play a part, and some argue that demographically-induced land scarcity was at the heart of violence in Kenya earlier this year.
May lamented that far less attention has been paid to population than to humanitarian crises, good governance, and climate change—despite compelling evidence that population growth is likely to negatively impact the chances for peace. Sexual and reproductive health, for example, form 20 percent of the global disease burden, and there is compelling evidence that good reproductive health leads to poverty reduction. He reminds us that demographic issues are inextricably tied to larger development issues, and must be addressed together.
Some countries have successfully reduced fertility rates, May noted. In the 1960s, the Tunisian government introduced a program to reduce fertility rates through increased education for girls, government provision of family planning services, and legal reforms to increase the economic status of rural women and girls. Today, the country boasts a replacement-level fertility rate. Efforts to improve gender equity are highly effective in reducing unsustainable population growth: “It could be argued that the population issue in sub-Saharan Africa is in essence a gender issue,” said May, who argued that “[e]conomic and social development is of course the best contraceptive.”
“The task ahead is huge and difficult, however some concrete results have already been obtained,” said May. He offered a simple suggestion to governments wondering how to craft population policies: “let people, especially women, decide for themselves and…provide them with the means to exert their choices.”
“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, 
America has a problem and the world has a problem,” argues Thomas Friedman in his new book, 
Last month, in an effort to prevent further deforestation of the Amazon, Brazil announced the creation of the 
In “
