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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category oil.
  • The Environmental Collateral Damage of the South China Sea Conflict

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  October 13, 2020  //  By Ryan McNamara

    shutterstock_1503568094

    Tensions in the South China Sea increased last April when a Chinese coast guard ship sank a Vietnamese fishing boat near the Paracel Islands—a fiercely disputed territory in the South China Sea. Disputes over island territories in the region have endured for decades, with China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei all making overlapping territorial claims. The region is rich in natural resources and biodiversity, holding vast fish stocks and an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 cubic feet of natural gas.

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  • Where the Oil Runs Deep, Water Turns Foul

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    Guest Contributor  //  August 31, 2020  //  By Elena Bruess
    A farmer with his animals near the Gir Zero facility on Rmeilan oil fields

    This article originally appeared on Circle of Blue.

    When Farhad Ahma returned to his native country last year on a work trip, his first thought was of his small daughter back home. The air around him was so thick with pollution, he couldn’t imagine she would survive the climate in this region of northeastern Syria. Ahma himself struggled to breathe almost as soon as he arrived, nauseated by the heavy smell within a couple hours. He was born and raised nearby, in a city called Qamishli, but he had lived in Berlin for some time now. Returning was a shock to his system.

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  • China’s Risky Gamble on Coal Conversion

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    China Environment Forum  //  Choke Point  //  January 9, 2020  //  By Richard Liu, Zhou Yang & Xinzhou Qian
    Header

    At the September 2019 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Climate Summit, the U.S. delegation, under the shadow of intended withdrawal from Paris, did not volunteer a speaker. Attention instead focused on China. As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China was poised to assert leadership on the climate crisis.  However, perhaps lacking the sibling rivalry pressure that brought the U.S. and China together in 2014 on a joint climate agreement, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi offered no new commitments: no carbon tax, no increased investment in renewables, and no announcement to set a more ambitious coal consumption cap.

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  • Without the Enforcement of Environmental Laws, Petroleum Infrastructure Projects in Timor-Leste Come at a Cost

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    Guest Contributor  //  December 3, 2019  //  By Adilsonio da Costa
    Road Crossing

    Ignoring environmental laws in Timor-Leste to build a petroleum infrastructure project could mean serious problems for communities including environmental destruction, loss of land, and loss of livelihoods. Communities are already facing some of these problems because project proponents haven’t fulfilled their legal obligations to do extensive environmental research and planning to mitigate any damage to the local environment. The supporters have also failed to meaningfully involve local communities, including interested experts, academics, and civil society groups, in this process.

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  • America Must Act on the North and South Poles

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    Guest Contributor  //  September 28, 2018  //  By David Balton

    Aurora borealis is observed from Coast Guard Cutter Healy Oct. 4, 2015, while conducting science operations in the southern Arctic Ocean. Healy is underway in the Arctic Ocean in support of the National Science Foundation-funded Arctic GEOTRACES, part of an international effort to study the distribution of trace elements in the world's oceans. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Cory J. Mendenhall. US Coast Guard

    The original version of this article, by Wilson Center Senior Fellow David Balton, appeared on The National Interest.

    The two poles of our planet—the Arctic and Antarctica—demand greater attention right now. For decades, the United States has played a leadership role in both regions, a responsibility that it must continue to fulfill as a warming climate and other drivers of change are creating new challenges and opportunities. Regrettably, the Trump Administration has not devoted the resources or high-level attention necessary to maintaining American leadership position on these critical matters.

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  • Like Water and Oil: Fish as a Geostrategic Resource

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    Guest Contributor  //  August 7, 2018  //  By Johan Bergenas

    090309-N-0000X-004 SOUTH CHINA SEA (March 8, 2009) A crewmember on a Chinese trawler uses a grapple hook in an apparent attempt to snag the towed acoustic array of the military Sealift Command ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS-23).  Impeccable was conducting routine survey operations in international waters 75 miles south of Hainan Island when it was harassed by five Chinese vessels.  (U.S. Navy photo/Released)

    Access to and competition over natural resources has been one of the most common triggers for conflict. Throughout the centuries, countries and communities have fought over productive agricultural land, trade routes, spices, textiles, opium, and oil, to name just a few. But the battle over one natural resource—fish—has long been overlooked. As trends in the global fish industry increasingly mirror the conflict-ridden oil sector, fish may become the newest addition to the list of resources driving geopolitical competition. There are five parallels between oil and fish that call for increasing the sustainability of the fishing industry, or we might find ourselves facing what U.S. Coast Guard Captain Jay Caputo has called “a global fish war.”

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  • China’s Ready to Cash In on a Melting Arctic

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    China Environment Forum  //  May 10, 2018  //  By Sherri Goodman & Lyssa Freese
    Xue_Long,_Fremantle,_2016_(11)-1

    This article by Sherri Goodman and Lyssa Freese originally appeared in Foreign Policy.

    Put simply, “the damn thing melted,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer explained in recent testimony, referring to Arctic ice melt as the trigger for the new U.S. Navy Arctic Strategy that is to be released this summer. What the Navy planned as a 16-year road map is in need of updates after only four years, in part due to receding polar ice caps, which are “opening new trade routes, exposing new resources, and redrawing continental maps,” but also in part due to the rise of China as an “Arctic stakeholder” and increasing important player in the region.

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  • An Unholy Trinity: Xinjiang’s Unhealthy Relationship With Coal, Water, and the Quest for Development

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    China Environment Forum  //  November 1, 2017  //  By Meredith Peng

    A desert road near Kuqa. Photo credit Meredith Peng, 2016.

    Sitting shotgun in a beat-up vehicle en route to Tashkorgan a small town in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, I soaked in the magnificence—or what I could see through the dust-coated windshield. The unpaved and rocky road, which carves through the precipitous Karakorum pass, will be (when finished) a key link in China’s “One Belt One Road”  plan to connect China to Pakistan. China’s ambitious plans for westward expansion will demand an almost inconceivably enormous amount of energy and resources, and water-scarce Xinjiang will play a central role. With plans like these, how can China meet its water needs?

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