The U.S. Global Change Research Program, which integrates federal government research on climate change, released Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States this week. The report examines climate’s likely impacts on various regions of the country.

The Guardian examines ongoing conflicts over natural resources between indigenous people and governments.

In her final dispatch from the Bonn climate negotiations, Population Action International climate director Kathleen Mogelgaard notes the conspicuous absence of demography in international climate discussions.

A webcast is now available of the Johns Hopkins University-Population Reference Bureau symposium “Climate Change and Urban Adaptation: Managing Unavoidable Health Risks in Developing Countries.”

A new policy paper from the World Bank seeks to answer the question, “Do the households in game management areas enjoy higher levels of welfare relative to the conditions they would have been in had the area not been designated as a game management area?”

A Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests, led by John Podesta, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, and Lincoln Chafee, former Republican senator from Rhode Island, has been formed to advise President Obama on how to reduce tropical deforestation through U.S. climate change policies, reports Mongabay.com.

“Indonesia’s forest loss continues more or less unabated, despite global concern for the resource and forest-dependent people, as well as a wealth of knowledge about the problems and solutions: poor governance, corruption, perverse incentives in the industrial sector,” said AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow Steve Rhee. Rhee was joined by Henrik Urdal of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), who also studied the effects of environmental degradation on conflict in Indonesia, for “Demography, Environment, and Conflict in Indonesia and India,” an April 21, 2009 event sponsored by the Environmental Change and Security Program.

Parsing the Patterns: Population, Resources, and Conflict

Urdal argued that case studies have sometimes overstated the links among population, resource scarcity, and conflict. Researchers tend to choose cases where there is conflict and then look for a population or resource dimension. If you look hard enough, “it’s always possible to find some connection,” said Urdal.

However, quantitative studies are also imperfect, cautioned Urdal, because most of them use national-level data, which do not capture local dynamics. In addition, they have a tendency to ignore conflicts in which the state is not involved.

Two Sub-National Studies: India and Indonesia

Urdal sought to avoid these problems by using sub-national data and including political violence and riots, as well as armed conflict, in his quantitative studies of India and Indonesia. From 1956-2002, he found that high rural population growth and density, as well as declining agricultural wages, increased the likelihood of violence in Indian states. Surprisingly, those states with high rates of urban population growth were less likely to experience conflict.

In Indonesian provinces, Urdal and his colleagues found a relationship, albeit a weak one, between population growth and non-ethnic violence between 1990-2003. They also found an increased risk of non-ethnic violence in provinces with high population growth and high levels of inequality between different religious groups. However, there was no relationship between land scarcity and conflict.

Forests, Conflict, and Participatory Mapping in Kalimantan: Unintended Consequences

Forty million Indonesians—one-fifth of the population—depend on forests for their livelihoods, said Rhee. Yet much of Indonesia’s forests have never been surveyed, so the people who live there are considered squatters and receive little or no compensation from the logging and mining industries. This inequity has generated both violent and non-violent conflict between the indigenous dayaks, the government, and extractive-industry companies.

In an attempt to resolve some of this conflict, the Center for International Forestry Research initiated a participatory mapping project in 27 villages in the Malinau district of Kalimantan in 1999. Participatory mapping enables dayaks to establish land rights and negotiate compensation from companies.

Following the 1998 ousting of President Suharto, district governments, rather than the central government, began issuing timber permits. The villages in Malinau often used the maps they had created to justify their claims to the land. But the district government did not cross-check the claims, so this generated inter- and intra-village conflict—roadblocks, protests, and lock-ups of timber equipment.

Although the “cowboy logging” that characterized the late 1990s and early 2000s has largely ceased, Rhee believes it may be replaced by “carbon cowboys” seeking to capitalize on the UN Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) program, which aims to reduce carbon emissions by paying governments to preserve forests. “With climate change, and the link between climate change and forests, Indonesia is very much on the map again,” said Rhee.

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The authors of Asia’s Next Challenge: Securing the Region’s Water Future, a report by the Asia Society, argue that population growth, urbanization, and climate change are converging to make water an important security issue in Asia. The authors argue for including water in policy and development discussions, but warn against “securitizing” the issue.

“Human-animal conflicts have assumed alarming proportions in the region,” Asghar Inayati, a regional wildlife warden in Kashmir, recently told Inter Press Service (IPS) News. Since India and Pakistan gained independence in 1949, both sides have fought for control of the territory. Not only has the decades-long conflict claimed 100,000 lives (by some estimates), it has also displaced animals from their natural habitats, sparking violent encounters with local people and threatening many species’ survival.

The city of Rio de Janeiro’s plan to erect a 650-meter long, three-meter high concrete wall between the 7,500 residents of the Dona Marta slum and the surrounding rainforest signals the government’s reluctance to address the underlying causes of environmental degradation. Although it is heralded by authorities as an “eco-barrier” that will protect the rainforest and “improve living standards and protect slum residents from the armed gangs that control many of Rio’s 600 or so slums,” the wall does not address the issues of acute poverty and lack of access to affordable housing that keep many Brazilians living in slums, harvesting resources from the rainforest.

Without access to decent housing and living-wage jobs, many slum residents will continue to encroach on the hillsides, warn Brazilian environmentalists. “It is hypocrisy to talk about protecting the Atlantic rainforest without considering the issues of housing and transport to take the pressure off the forest,” said Sergio Ricardo, a leading environmental campaigner in Rio de Janeiro, in an interview with the Jornal do Brasil.

Slums have often stalled Rio’s efforts to improve its environmental report card, as slum residents tend to be focused more on daily survival than on the environmental consequences of their actions. But slums do not have to be a thorn in the side of the government’s eco-friendly image. In fact, Rio’s previous attempts to reverse deforestation through grassroots reforestation projects have been extremely successful.

According to a 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, municipal reforestation projects around Rio employed several hundred slum residents to plant millions of trees surrounding their communities. The projects “resulted in the return of dozens of species of birds, monkeys and other animals—many not seen in decades,” as well as cooler air temperatures, writes William Bennett. At the same time, the municipal projects became a source of steady work for residents. “Before this job, I worked as a day laborer; one day I would have work—the next day nothing,” said Carlos Alberto Ribeiro, a reforestation worker who earned about $200 a month planting trees. By 2005, community reforestation projects had employed 914 slum residents in 93 projects that had restored a total of 4,500 acres of native-species trees to the region.

Rather than segregating slum residents from the rest of the city in what some critics have called “social apartheid,” perhaps Rio should scale up community forestry projects, employing greater numbers of slum residents to improve the health of the Atlantic rainforest. While the government still has far to go in providing affordable housing, a steady wage could help residents secure access to adequate housing and reduce pressure on the region’s delicate environment.

Photo: Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest slums with an estimated 200,000 residents, is one of hundreds of slum neighborhoods surrounding Rio, putting extreme pressure on the region’s environment. Courtesy of flickr user andreasnilsson1976.

Though the floodwaters have finally receded, Gonaives—Haiti’s third-largest city—remains buried in 2.5 million cubic meters of mud, one in a long list of miseries plaguing those desperate for relief. Four major storms have ravaged Haiti since August, and recovery and reconstruction are projected to span several years and cost upwards of $400 million. While the international community has committed $145 million in disaster relief—nearly $32 million from the United States alone—the price tag for long-term development assistance could well exceed these early estimates as the extent of the damage becomes clearer. But reconstruction efforts could be moot if Haiti fails to adopt environmentally sustainable development practices.

In a recent nationwide Roper Poll commissioned to study the U.S. public’s attitudes toward population, barely 50 percent of respondents believed there is a strong link between global population growth and climate change, reported Thomas Prugh of World Watch magazine at the September 30, 2008, launch of World Watch’s population issue co-sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute and the Environmental Change and Security Program. People need to learn about population growth’s impact on climate change and other indicators of environmental health, said Prugh.

To Grow or To Shrink? That Is the Question

Historically, governments viewed population growth as a sign of a nation’s vitality; some promoted it by offering incentives to have more children. Prugh noted that such pronatalist attitudes are far from obsolete: “Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared September 13^th a national holiday for conceiving children. And couples who delivered a baby nine months later, which not coincidentally would have been on Russia Day, got refrigerators for that accomplishment,” he said. In contrast, many governments are now promoting voluntary family planning rather than population growth. But a lack of political urgency has limited their success. “Support and funding for family planning is actually flat or in decline,” Prugh emphasized.

Empowering Women and Expanding the Discourse

Population has always been an “incredibly gendered issue,” argued Robert Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute, which is one reason for the lack of public discourse on the subject. He called for a broader discussion of population and urged women who work in the sexual and reproductive health and rights fields to actively participate. If you “don’t talk about population from your perspective and from what you know about these issues, others will,” he warned, “and they may not know as much as you do about it.” For Engelman, providing access to family planning and placing population decisions in the hands of women “is natural—this is understandable—and in general, it’s a very good thing.”

The Good, The Bad: Urbanization

“This is the first year, 2008, in which half of us have become city-dwellers,” said Karen Hardee of Population Action International, a development that will have both positive and negative consequences. Urban populations have better access to family planning and education. However, urban growth can outpace local governments’ ability to enforce environmental regulations, treat hazardous and solid waste, and limit air pollution. At the same time, Hardee argues, technological innovation, access to information, efficient land and energy use, and better living conditions—as well as economies of scale—can limit urbanization’s negative environmental impacts. “Urbanization is inevitable, and it’s also accelerating, with most of the growth in the population in developing countries,” she stated.

Population and the Changing Nature of Security

“To be sure, rapid population growth does not have a simple causal relationship with conflict. And to suggest so would fail to take into account additional aggravating factors, such as poverty, poor governance, competition over natural resources, and environmental degradation,” said Sean Peoples of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program. But population dynamics can fuel instability and increase the risk of a country falling victim to intrastate violence. According to The Shape of Things to Come, a report by Peoples’ co-author, Elizabeth Leahy, countries with youthful age structures—where 35 percent of the population is younger than 15—have a 150 percent greater chance of seeing conflict erupt than countries with more balanced age structures, due to pervasive joblessness, lack of education, and competition over resources.

Since countries with very young and youthful age structures represent a great challenge to international stability, population should be included in national security discussions. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said, “We also know that over the next 20 years certain pressures—population, resource, energy, climate, economic, and environmental—could combine with rapid cultural, social, and technological change to produce new sources of deprivation, rage, and instability.” But there is hope of avoiding insecurity: “Progress toward more balanced age structures occurs when health care improves, leading to lower mortality rates and longer life expectancies, and when fertility rates fall, which happens when women and men have access to the services they need to choose their own family size,” said Peoples.

Photo: Thomas Prugh. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

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Earlier this month, approximately eight boulders weighing 60-70 tons each split from the edges of the Muqattam cliffs and fell onto densely populated Manshiyet Nasr, a slum in eastern Cairo, killing more than 100 people and destroying 30-50 homes. By the next day, security officials outnumbered rescue workers in the area, and locals, outraged by the slow response of the government, were clashing with police. This tragedy and the ensuing conflict between residents and local authorities highlight the need for effective governance and urban planning to alleviate poverty and rapid urbanization and avoid conflict.

Rockslides are not uncommon in Manshiyet Nasr; in 2002, for example, 27 people were killed under similar circumstances in the same area. One local journalist reported that “the reason the rocks keep falling is because there is no sewage system and their wastewater is eating away at the mountain.” This lack of basic sanitation services is a common characteristic of the informal settlements and slums that are growing exponentially worldwide. This year, for the first time, more than half of the global population lives in cities; it is forecast that by 2030, 81 percent of the urban population will reside in the cities of developing countries, which are unplanned, underserved by services like sanitation, and unable to cope with continually growing demand for these services. The rockslide in Manshiyet Nasr is a stark example of what can happen when a city’s infrastructure and government are unprepared to deal with rapid urbanization and increasing poverty, and how these challenges are exacerbated by poor government response. (For more on Cairo’s informal settlements, see the Comparative Urban Studies Project’s Urban Studies in Cairo, Egypt.)

A recent Human Development Report analyzing Egypt’s progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals noted that the poverty rate in Cairo, a city of 16 million people, is expected to almost double between now and 2015. This growth in poverty is attributed to “increasing numbers of residents in vulnerable areas and increasing rates of internal migration.”

It is important to note, however, that migration alone does not account for increasing poverty. In Global Urban Poverty, a publication of the Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Loren Landau argues that “public responses to migration and urbanization—including the absence of a conscious coordinated response—have tended to exacerbate mobility’s negative effects on all of the Millennium Development Goals.”

The Egyptian government’s initial response to the rockslide in Manshiyet Nasr was to hold the residents accountable for living in an illegal settlement in a dangerous area. Yet 70 percent of Cairo residents live in informal communities like Manshiyet Nasr. In addition to a severe housing shortage and lack of urban planning, a history of slow government response to disasters is intensifying accusations of government neglect and incompetence.

Except for an 18-month break in 1980-81, Egyptians have lived under emergency law since 1967. This law prohibits public gatherings, restricts speech, permits searches without warrants, and enables the police to detain citizens without charge or trial. After promising to repeal the law during his 2005 presidential campaign, Hosni Mubarek, who has been in power since 1981, extended the law in 2006 and again in May of this year. While proponents of the law (and of Mubarek) claim that the state of emergency has helped stabilized the country, human rights groups argue that the law violates human rights and sanctions the government’s oppression of political rivals.

Egypt’s history of extreme law and unchecked police powers has stunted the development of a system of governance that responds to the most basic needs of Egyptians. Manshiyet Nasr residents’ angry reaction to the poor government response to the rockslide is evidence of their smoldering desperation.