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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category urbanization.
  • Harnessing the Power of ‘Other’: Cities Where Human Mobility is not a Threat

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  April 12, 2022  //  By Rachel Locke, Twila Albrecht & Julia Canney

    Juárez,,Chihuahua,,Mexico,03-26-2021,Central,American,Migrants,Cross,The,River

    “This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists. In other words, there is not a single European country now which is afraid of the current wave of refugees.”

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  • Imagine a Future Without Single-Use Plastics

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    China Environment Forum  //  November 18, 2021  //  By Hiroaki Odachi
    Malaysia's Broken Global Recycling System

    If producing plastic waste were a race, Japan would be rushing for the gold medal. Japan and the United States both rank the highest per capita for plastic packaging waste in the world. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration set a goal to reduce Japan’s plastic waste production by 25 percent by 2030 and recent polls show the majority of the Japanese public wants strong actions to reduce plastic waste. Nevertheless, Japan is not doing enough to stem the tide of plastic entering the ocean. If Japan and the rest of the world fail to act more boldly, global oceanic plastic waste could triple by 2040. Current commitments of governments and corporations would only reduce global plastic leakage seven percent below the business-as-usual scenario. Japan’s current waste management system prioritizes recycling and incineration, encouraging a make-take-waste linear model of plastic consumption. Japan needs a circular economy built on a culture of reduction and reuse instead of single-use plastics.

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  • Hitting the Brakes on Plastics in China’s Food Delivery Industry: Q&A with Zheng Xue and Sherry Lu of Plastic Free China

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    China Environment Forum  //  Q&A  //  November 4, 2021  //  By Solange Reppas, Mingwei Zhu, Tongxin Zhu & McKenna Potter
    Shanghai,,China,-,Apr,2,,2020:,Deliveryman,From,Food,Delivery

    In every Chinese city, there is an army of motorcycles and mopeds weaving through the traffic jams, and sometimes even venturing on sidewalks, to deliver millions of food and e-commerce orders each day. Meituan, one of China’s most popular food delivery apps, delivers 30 million orders a day, serving up 100 million plastic containers. According to Greenpeace, e-commerce and express delivery in China generated 9.4 million tons of packaging waste in 2018 and will likely triple to 41.3 million tons by 2025.

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  • Cities are at the Forefront of Climate Change

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    Guest Contributor  //  October 25, 2021  //  By Gad Perry & Michelle DaPra
    New,Brunswick,,Nj,Usa,-,September,2,,2021:,People,Walk

    “The success or failure of cities will shape opportunities and quality of life for a growing share of the world’s population,” says the National Intelligence Council in its recent analysis of security risks the world will likely face by 2040. This is especially true for densely populated coastal and low-lying areas. The western United States continues to suffer extreme drought and fires after breaking heat records this summer. China has experienced significant flooding, highlighting its ill-preparedness for dealing with the effects of climate change. Parts of Brazil are suffering drought while others received unexpected snow and ice. Climate-related disasters have nearly doubled over the last two decades, causing over one million fatalities, affecting nearly 4 billion people, and costing almost 3 trillion dollars. At the heart of these impacts are cities. 

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  • Securing Water for All Is Urgent, but Impossible if We Ignore Housing Inequalities

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    Guest Contributor  //  September 13, 2021  //  By Nazia Hussain & Carmeli Chaves
    Antipolo,City,,Philippines,-,March,14,,2019:,Water,Containers,Waiting

    Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 for safe, sufficient, and available water has always been important. Compounding challenges—from climate change and increasing migration within and across borders to COVID-19 and its multiple variants—makes achieving the human right to water more urgent. But what is often missed in discussions related to water access is that what determines access to safe and sufficient water is about more than gaps in governance or lack of funding—it is intertwined with entrenched inequality in societies, including the planning of urban spaces.

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  • The Challenges of Climate Change in an Urbanizing World

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    Guest Contributor  //  September 8, 2021  //  By Alex Braithwaite & Matthew Cobb
    Ho,Chi,Minh,City,,Viet,Nam-,Oct,18,,2016:,Awful

    The recently released draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lays out in no uncertain terms that we face an insurmountable challenge in addressing climate change and its impacts. One shocking takeaway is that sea-level rise is now thought to be irreversible. Indeed, rising temperatures and changing weather patterns threaten to send some cities under water, while causing others to dry up. These opposing challenges increasingly threaten the lives and livelihoods of people in many countries as rapid urbanization is making cities even more densely populated. Floods and droughts threatening the world’s cities will force governments of the world to reevaluate the quality of their infrastructure, their disaster management strategies, and of course, their environmental footprints.

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  • Displacement, Migration, and Urbanization in the 21st Century

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    Guest Contributor  //  Urban Sustainability Laboratory  //  July 6, 2021  //  By Gad Perry, Chris Upchurch & Laura Cline
    1,000 IDPs at the UN Tomping transit site relocated to POC3

    Over 79 million people are currently forcibly displaced within their own country or across international borders as a result of conflict or natural disaster. As Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, explained in 2020, “resolving forced displacement is not only a moral or humanitarian imperative, but also deals with issues at the heart of the [Security] Council’s mandate to maintain international peace and security.”

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  • Will COVID-19 Accelerate Urban Water Security or Insecurity?

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    Guest Contributor  //  June 8, 2021  //  By Rene Frank, Larry Swatuk & Ellie Leaning
    Collecting,Natural,Spring,Water,With,5,Litre,Plastic,Water,Bottle

    “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Winston Churchill. Like other acute stressors, the COVID-19 pandemic acts as a multiplier of chronic or pre-existing vulnerabilities, such as the challenges of servicing rapidly growing informal populations, particularly in urban settings. This multiplier effect may accelerate water insecurity at unprecedented levels. However, together with UNESCO Intergovernmental Hydrological Program (IHP), we’re reflecting on the possibility that COVID-19 can act as an accelerator of positive action toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 on water. The nexus between issues and urban water security is particularly important.

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