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Population, Climate, and Politics—A New Phase is Emerging
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For some time, it has been clear that a global population imbalance is emerging. High income countries, including nearly all of the Americas, Europe, and most of East and parts of South and Southeast Asia, have seen a dramatic, sustained fall in fertility. Already, this is resulting in shrinking labor forces and the oldest mean age populations seen in history. At the same time, the low income countries and even some lower middle-income countries—mainly in Africa but also in Central America, the Middle East, and parts of South and Southeast Asia—continue to have relatively high fertility. This is now, and even more in the coming decades, producing fast-growing labor forces and relatively young populations. -
Unsung Sheroes, Climate Action, and the Global Peace and Security Agendas
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“We’re fighting for our lands, for our water, for our lives,” said an indigenous woman from Colombia, describing her work as an environmental defender. She spoke at a December 2019 workshop on Gender, Peace and the Environment held in Bogotá, Colombia, that brought together social, environmental, and legal scholars and practitioners—including indigenous women—to discuss women, peace, and security issues.
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Environmental Science and National Security: Overcoming Barriers to Connecting Research with Policy
›Beginning with the end of the Cold War, a relatively small but growing number of scholars began to investigate the connections between environmental change, conflict, peace, and changing notions of security. The recognition of these linkages wasn’t new, but as the heavy weight of superpower confrontation lifted and new foreign policy dynamics unfolded across the globe, an expanded range of research questions and tools emerged.
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It’s Time We Think Beyond “Threat Multiplier” to Address Climate and Security
›If you have even a passing familiarity with the climate and security literature, you undoubtedly have come across the phrase “threat multiplier.” The phrase conveys the idea that climate change intersects with other factors to contribute to security problems. It’s used as short-hand to avoid the charge of environmental determinism, that climate change somehow on its own causes negative security outcomes.The 2007 CNA Military Advisory Board (MAB) report on climate security introduced this formulation and, at the time, it served the purpose of recognizing that there is a link between climate change and security. But research on climate security has progressed and so must our framing of the risks and needed interventions.
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Great Power Resource Competition in a Changing Climate: New America’s Natural Security Index
›Late last year, Reuters reported that the U.S. Defense Department plans to fund mining and processing operations for rare earth elements—a class of minerals for which China dominates the global market, producing over 80 percent of the world’s supply. In the past, China has restricted exports of rare earths, and recently threatened to do so again. Even with a phase one trade deal hammered out between the United States and China, natural resources are likely to remain a point of geopolitical tension.
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Beware the Dark Side of Environmental Peacebuilding
›Environmental peacebuilding is a good idea. As a practice, it aims to address simultaneously environmental problems and challenges related to violent conflict. Examples include the promotion of environmental cooperation between rival states, conflict-sensitive adaptation to climate change, and restoring access to land and water in post-conflict societies. As a concept, environmental peacebuilding directs researchers’ and politicians’ attention to cooperative adaptation as a response to environmental stress. It thus helps to correct one-sided narratives about environment-conflict links.
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Community Input Improves Climate Change-Induced Resettlement Effort
›In the Global South, climate change-induced resettlement requires a holistic and integrated approach, involving all stakeholders—state institutions, local customary and civil society institutions—and in particular respectful engagement with local traditional actors and networks. In a policy brief for the Toda Peace Institute, we examined climate change-induced resettlement from the Carteret Islands in the Pacific, a case which encompasses a broad range of issues relevant to future relocation efforts elsewhere. Those who seek to make this type of resettlement possible would do well to heed these lessons.
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To Help Save the Planet, Stop Environmental Crime
›Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humans have so vastly altered Earth’s systems that we’re now in the midst of what many are calling the Anthropocene Epoch. Human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment, inflicting changes that may persist for millennia.We are razing the planet’s last intact wild lands, degrading, deforesting, carving up, and destroying huge swathes of habitat. We’re overfishing and poisoning our rivers and oceans. We continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, raising CO2 levels and hastening climatic changes that are already affecting all life on Earth.
Showing posts from category security.
For some time, it has been clear that a global population imbalance is emerging. High income countries, including nearly all of the Americas, Europe, and most of East and parts of South and Southeast Asia, have seen a dramatic, sustained fall in fertility. Already, this is resulting in shrinking labor forces and the oldest mean age populations seen in history. At the same time, the low income countries and even some lower middle-income countries—mainly in Africa but also in Central America, the Middle East, and parts of South and Southeast Asia—continue to have relatively high fertility. This is now, and even more in the coming decades, producing fast-growing labor forces and relatively young populations.
If you have even a passing familiarity with the climate and security literature, you undoubtedly have come across the phrase “
Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humans have so vastly altered Earth’s systems that we’re now in the midst of what many are calling the 
