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Environmental Security Along the U.S.-Mexico Border
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In 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began the construction of a massive earthen, concrete, and metal security barrier along much of the U.S.-Mexico border, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
Framing it as an issue of national security, DHS used provisions in the Real ID Act to waive environmental laws and citizen review for the controversial infrastructure project.
Unfortunately in Imperial Beach, California – my corner of the U.S.-Mexico border – the poorly engineered barrier has caused serious environmental mishaps and damage. In 2009 the Voice of San Diego reported that DHS circumvented numerous local and state laws in the course the barrier’s construction:Were it anyone else’s project, state regulators would’ve required irrigation to ensure that plants grew. But the federal government is responsible for the $59 million effort to complete and reinforce 3.5 miles of border fence separating San Diego and Tijuana. The Department of Homeland Security exempted itself from eight federal laws and any related state laws that would have regulated the project’s environmental impacts.
The Voice goes on to report that state water regulators also have no jurisdiction over the project since it has been exempted from the federal Clean Water Act.
“They did better engineering in 8th century China,” said Joe Sharkey of The New York Times, whom I took on a tour of the border, about the massive amphitheater of dirt that DHS dumped in Smuggler’s Gulch a few miles from the Pacific.
Ironically, while DHS has focused its efforts on the massive earthen and concrete wall, the agency has virtually ignored the tidal wave of polluted sewage water and garbage that flows across this section of the U.S.-Mexico border, a problem that makes the very people charged with safeguarding our security – border patrol agents and even Navy Seals – often unable to carry out their mission.
Over the past 20 years, border patrol agents have become ill from contact with the region’s polluted rivers, as well as the Pacific Ocean. In the Calexico-Mexicali region, border patrol agents worked directly with the Calexico New River Committee to clean up the New River – a drainage canal turned toxic hot spot.
Navy Seals based in Coronado, California, about 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, train in an area of the ocean that is directly impacted by polluted water flowing across the border from Mexico, bypassing the vaunted concrete and metal border barrier.
The organization I run, WiLDCOAST, is now working with U.S. agencies such as the International Boundary and Water Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency along with agencies in Mexico (e.g., CONANGUA and the state of Baja California) to reduce the threats to our military personnel and federal employees as well as border residents from cross-boundary pollution.
This cooperation has required a significant investment on the part of both the Mexican and U.S. governments in developing real solutions to our environmental security crisis on the border. Unfortunately the massive Berlin Wall-style barrier on our southern border is of little assistance in this effort.
Solving complex transboundary issues sometimes requires ignoring the cacophony of politics from distant capitals and instead working on the ground with colleagues from both nations who are experts in their shared geography. It appears the Obama administration is now slowly trying to repair some of the damage done to local communities, the cross-boundary relationship with Mexico, and our fragile shared environment.
But much more work and investment is needed to safeguard those we entrust to protect our security along the borderlands, as well as the residents of the region, from pollution that ignores international divisions and concrete walls. We must remember not only the national security component of our border-strengthening efforts but also the effect on human and environmental security as well.
Serge Dedina is the executive director of WiLDCOAST. He grew up and still lives on the U.S.-Mexico border in Imperial Beach, California. He is the author of Saving the Gray Whale and the forthcoming Wild Sea: Eco-Wars and Surf Stories From the Coast of the Californias.
Sources: Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Protection Agency, University of Arizona, Voice of San Diego, WiLDCOAST.
Photo Credit: Serge Dedina. -
Climate Science, Military and Gender Roles, and the Tibetan Plateau
›September 14, 2010 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoHere are some useful links to environment, population, and security work that recently crossed my desk.
• Need a break from the raging debate set off by Halvard Buhaug’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences quantitative-based critique of climate and African civil war linkages (or lack thereof)? Check out some of the correlations Cullen Hendrix and Idean Salehyan of University of North Texas find in their piece “After the Rain: Rainfall Variability, Hydro-Meteorological Disasters, and Social Conflict in Africa.”
• A German military think tank report worries about the economic and political implications of peak oil over a relatively short time frame.
• Militaries’ humanitarian responses to extreme weather events rather than actual shooting wars are the focus of “The Coming Conflicts of Climate Change,” by U.S. Navy Foreign Area Officer Michael Baker. Baker is writing for the Council on Foreign Relations as one of their International Affairs Fellows.
• Oxfam America and IUCN staff experts call for greater consideration of different gender roles in addressing climate change. UN climate institutions are targeted in the IPS story.
• Journalist Steve Solomon highlights the high politics of transboundary water in Asia with a piece in Forbes. China’s control of the Tibetan water tower with massive dam building amps up the pressure in South and Southeast Asia.
• Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann’s book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? breaks down relative population growth rates between the religious and the secular. One is high, one is below replacement level. So far the book is only published in Europe but you can get it from Amazon UK.
• The highly respected science journal Nature editorializes against the rising tide of loud anti-science demagoguery. Strong words on the U.S. political context.
Follow Geoff Dabelko (@geoffdabelko) and The New Security Beat (@NewSecurityBeat) on Twitter for more population, health, environment, and security updates. -
Yemen: Population, Environment, and Security Collide
›September 14, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe Middle East is home to some of the fastest growing, most resource-scarce, and conflict-affected countries in the world. New Security Beat’s “Middle East at the Crossroads” series takes a look at the most challenging population, health, environment, and security issues facing the region.
Yemen is one of the most kinetic intersections of human and environmental security in the world. At the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, it is a natural gateway for those fleeing hardship in the conflict-wracked Horn of Africa, but observers are concerned it may soon resemble something much less than a haven.
Increased local resistance to a corrupt regime in Sanaa and an influx of Al Qaeda influence recently caused the CIA to reassess the franchise in Yemen as a more urgent threat to national security than the core Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In addition to these traditional security challenges, Yemen faces a bevy of population and environment-related problems. With its 22.8 million people, Yemen is growing faster than any other country in the Middle East – by 2050, it will rival Spain in total population. It is home to nearly a million impoverished migrants from East Africa, is almost totally reliant on groundwater that is being drained faster than can naturally be replenished, has an unemployment rate approaching 40 percent, the lowest rating in the world for gender equity, and almost no source of income besides oil exports, which have declined 56 percent since 2001 and are expected to continue sliding, barring any major new discoveries.
Beyond its more covert commitments, the United States has pledged over $210 million to Yemen for military, economic, and development assistance for this year alone. Is it enough to stave off collapse in one of the Middle East’s most troubled states?
For more see The New Security Beat’s full feature, “Demographics, Depleted Resources, and Al Qaeda Inflame Tensions in Yemen,” published earlier this summer.
Sources: Associated Press, Association for the Study of Peak Oil – USA, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Old Town Sanaa – Yemen 53,” courtesy of flickr user Richard Messenger. -
The Dead Sea: A Pathway to Peace for Israel and Jordan?
›September 7, 2010 // By Russell SticklorThe Middle East is home to some of the fastest growing, most resource-scarce, and conflict-affected countries in the world. New Security Beat’s “Middle East at the Crossroads” series takes a look at the most challenging population, health, environment, and security issues facing the region.
Amidst the start of a new round of Middle East peace negotiations, the fate of the Dead Sea — which is divided between Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank — may not seem particularly relevant. But unlike the perpetually thorny political issues of Israeli settlement policy and Palestinian statehood, the Dead’s continuing environmental decline has sparked rare consensus in a region beset by conflict. Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians all agree that something must be done. The much more difficult question, however, is what. But no one is lacking for ideas.Who Stole the Dead’s Water?
Some 1,400 feet below sea level, the shoreline of the Dead Sea lies at the lowest dry point on the planet. Since the 1970s, this ancient inland saltwater sea has been changing, and fast, with the water level dropping at a rate of three feet per year. The region’s stifling heat and attendant high evaporation rates have certainly played their part. But the real culprits are irrigated agriculture and household water demand, spurred by population growth, which have siphoned off much of the precious little water that once flowed into the sea.
Historically, the Jordan River and its tributaries have contributed roughly 75 percent of the Dead’s annual inflow, or about 1.3 billion cubic meters per year. Even though the Jordan isn’t a large river system, it is an economic lifeline in this parched region. The basin’s waters have been tapped to the point of exhaustion by businesses, farms, and households in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and, father afield, Syria and Lebanon. With the cumulative population of those areas projected to increase by 68 percent between now and 2050 (or from 44.9 million today to 75.4 million by mid-century), strain on the region’s water supply will only increase with each passing year.
Already, the Jordan and its tributaries are far worse for the wear. Pollution is an ongoing concern thanks to untreated wastewater entering the river system, while a sprawling network of dams and other irrigation diversions to “make the desert bloom” has carried with it a hefty environmental price tag. The Jordan now delivers a scant 100 million cubic meters to the Dead each year, with up to 50 percent of that flow likely contaminated by raw sewage due to inadequate wastewater treatment upstream.
Meanwhile, water depletion rates in the Dead have been exacerbated by mineral-extraction companies on the sea’s southern reaches, which rely heavily on evaporation ponds to remove valuable minerals from the saltwater.
Tapping the Red
Attempts to internationalize the environmental dilemmas facing the greater Dead Sea region range from a proposed transborder “peace park” in the Jordan River valley to a global, internet-driven campaign to vote the Dead Sea as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. But by far the most ambitious — and controversial — idea for restoring the Dead Sea’s health is to build a 186-mile canal to bring in water from the Red Sea.
The plan has been around for decades, but has not gotten off the drawing board due to its large scale and costs. The project’s centerpiece would be a waterway built through the Arava Desert Valley along the Israeli-Jordanian border. Proponents on both sides of the border say the canal could help raise the Dead’s surface level, helping restore the area’s struggling ecosystems. And given the canal’s substantial elevation drop from sea level to shoreline, its waters could likely be harnessed for hydroelectricity, powering desalination plants that would provide new fresh water for the region.
The project could also harness cross-border environmental issues to transcend long-standing political and religious divisions between the region’s Jewish and Arab populations. “People are saying that water will cause wars,Dr. Hazim el-Naser in a 2002 interview on the canal project, when he served as Jordanian minister of water and irrigation. “We in the region, we’re saying, ‘No.’ Water will enhance cooperation. We can build peace through water projects.” Currently, the canal proposal is the subject of a World Bank feasibility study expected to be completed in 2011.
Deep Skepticism Remains
Still, as diplomatically and environmentally promising as a Red-Dead canal may seem, not everyone is on board with the proposed project. Environmentalists’ concerns run the gamut from unintended ecological impacts on the Dead Sea’s delicate chemical composition, to a sense that, even after decades of on-and-off consideration, the project is being pushed at the expense of other possible policy options.
The New Security Beat recently contacted Mira Edelstein of the international environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth Middle East via email to discuss some of the group’s concerns about the canal. Edelstein highlighted some of the potential pitfalls of — and alternatives to — a canal link to the Dead:
New Security Beat: How have population growth and the corresponding rise in food demand in Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank affected the Dead Sea’s health?Mira Edelstein: The Jordanian and Israeli agricultural sectors still enjoy subsidized water tariffs, making it easy to continue growing water-intensive crops. But this depletes flows in the lower Jordan River system, and directly impacts the Dead Sea.
NSB: Why is your organization opposed to the idea of a Red-Dead canal link?ME: Friends of the Earth Middle East does not support a Red Sea link, as this option carries the risk of irreparable damage. We believe that this option will not only damage the Dead Sea itself — where the mixing of waters from two different seas will surely impact the chemical balance that makes the Dead Sea so unique — but also because we are worried that pumping such an enormous amount of water from the Gulf of Aqaba will likely harm the coral reefs in the Red Sea itself.
NSB: What steps do you propose to improve environmental conditions in the Dead Sea and the Jordan River valley?
Additionally, the Arava Desert Valley, where the pipes will be laid, is a seismically active region. Any small earthquake might damage the pipes, causing seawater to spill and polluting underground freshwater aquifers.ME: It all has to do with the water policies in the region. The governments [of Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank] desperately need to reform our unsustainable policies, and at the top of this list is agriculture. This means removing water subsidies and changing over from water-intensive crops to more sustainable crops appropriate for the local environment.
Sources: Friends of the Earth Middle East, Israel Marine Data Center, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Geographic, the New York Times, Population Reference Bureau, United Nations, Washington Post, Waternet, the World Bank.
In addition, wastewater treatment plants need to be built throughout all of the Jordan valley region so that only treated wastewater is used for agriculture. Some of that treated water, and of course fresh water, should be brought back into the Jordan River system that will later flow into the Dead Sea…In addition, ecotourism projects should be encouraged, as they are an economic stimulus that can help support greater environmental conversation in the region.
Photo Credit: “Dead Sea Reflection,” looking east across the Dead Sea to the Jordanian shore, courtesy of flickr user Mr. Kris. -
Water, Power, Trash, and Security: Interview with Mishkat Al Moumin, First Iraqi Minister of the Environment
›August 31, 2010 // By Schuyler NullAs the final American combat brigade pulls out of the country, the prevailing opinion in the United States about Iraq at the moment seems to be one of “bad politics are better than no politics,” and that despite continued violence (albeit significantly lessened from 2006-2007 levels), the American mission is largely finished. However, serious challenges remain, one of the most significant being the government’s continued inability to supply basic services to a growing population.
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Historic Floods Plague Pakistan
›August 19, 2010 // By Shawna Cuan“Staggered by the scale of destruction from this summer’s catastrophic floods, Pakistani officials have begun to acknowledge that the country’s security could be gravely affected,” reports the Washington Post. The Pakistani government – already cash-strapped between fighting “the war on terror” and trying to prevent an economic collapse – now faces recovering from the worst flooding in over 80 years.
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Flooded With Food Insecurity in Pakistan
›The floods sweeping across Pakistan have caused widespread destruction, ruined livelihoods, displaced millions, and sparked a food crisis. Food prices have skyrocketed across the country as miles of farmland succumb to the deluge, including 1.5 million hectares in Punjab province, Pakistan’s breadbasket and agricultural heartland.
Food insecurity is now rife across the country — yet even before the floods, millions of Pakistanis struggled to access food. Back in 2008, the UN estimated that 77 million Pakistanis were hungry and 45 million malnourished. And while many developing nations have begun to recover from the global food crisis of 2007-08, Pakistan’s food fortunes have remained miserable. Throughout 2010, Pakistan’s two chief food staples, rice and wheat, have cost 30 to 50 percent times more than they did before the global food crisis. Drought, rampant water shortages, and conflict have intensified food insecurity in Pakistan in recent months.
A new edited book volume published by the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, Hunger Pains: Pakistan’s Food Insecurity, examines the country’s food insecurity. The book has already been the subject of a news story and an editorial in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. The book, edited by Michael Kugelman and Robert M. Hathaway, is based on the 2009 Wilson Center conference of the same name. It assesses food supply challenges, access issues, governance constraints, social and structural dimensions, gender and regional disparities, and international responses.
The book makes a range of recommendations. These include:- Declare hunger a national security issue. Since some of Pakistan’s most food-insecure regions lie in militant hotbeds, hunger should be linked to defense, and food provision projects should be given ample public funding.
- Diversify the crop mix so that Pakistan’s agricultural economy revolves around more than wheat and rice. The country should accord more resources to crops that are less water-intensive and more nutritious.
- Give schools a central focus in food aid and food distribution. Using schools as a venue for food distribution gives parents powerful incentives to send their children to school.
- Tackle the structural dimensions. Strengthening agricultural institutions, improving infrastructure and storage facilities, and injecting capital into a stagnant farming sector are all key to making Pakistan more food-secure. Yet unless Pakistan deals with poverty, landlessness, and entrenched political interests in agriculture, food insecurity will remain.
Michael Kugelman is program associate with the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Photo Credit: “Chitarl, Pakistan” where floods damaged the way over Lawari pass and killed five in August 2006. Courtesy of flickr user groundreporter -
Population Reference Bureau Releases New Projections
Seven Billion and Counting
›August 6, 2010 // By Russell SticklorThe Population Reference Bureau recently released its annual World Population Data Sheet, and lo and behold, the world is getting more crowded. By next year, the global total is expected to top seven billion, as we march toward upwards of nine billion by mid-century.
Much of that growth, of course, will be unfolding across Asia — China and India already account for more than 35 percent of the world’s population, and the two countries will continue to drive global demographic change. But the PRB report emphasized that Africa will also contribute significantly to world’s shifting demographics in the coming decades. By 2050, the continent’s population is slated to double, reaching the neighborhood of two billion. In that time span, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia are expected to knock Russia and Japan off the list of the world’s top 10 most populous nations.
The Young Continent
Africa’s population growth through 2050 could actually be even greater than PRB predicts, since current projections assume that total fertility rate in sub-Saharan Africa will drop from 5.2 to 2.5 in that time span. The assumption is that as the region’s countries travel farther down the path to economic modernization, access to family planning services will become more widespread, resulting in smaller average family sizes—a trend well-documented in other parts of the developing world.
A slower than expected decrease in total fertility rate (TFR) across sub-Saharan Africa over the next 40 years could render current predictions inaccurate, however. While TFR has dropped significantly over the past 50 years in countries like Ghana (where it is now 4.0), just 17 percent of married women in sub-Saharan African utilize a modern type of family planning. That is one of the reasons Africa as a whole maintains a high average TFR of 4.7 children per woman, and why countries like Niger and Uganda sport some of the highest TFRs in the world (at 7.4 and 6.5, respectively).
According to the 2010 PRB Data Sheet, Africa is also notable for its demographic youth bulge. Of the world’s 10 countries with the highest percentage of their populations aged 15 or younger, nine of them—Niger, Uganda, Burkina Faso, the DRC, Zambia, Malawi, Chad, Somalia, and Tanzania—are on the continent. The question facing these countries is whether their young populations will yield a “demographic dividend” during the coming decades, whereby the large youth bulges translate into a sizeable and productive workforce. Harnessing the economic potential of the younger generation could help accelerate the development process in many of the region’s nations, but it will require significant investment in health and education infrastructure—funding that may prove hard to come by for many cash-strapped governments.
Persistent Divides
Other findings featured in the report involved sanitation and wastewater treatment, where some headway is being made at the global level. The PRB Data Sheet reveals that 43 percent of urban populations in sub-Saharan Africa (and 24 percent of the region’s rural populations) now have access to improved sanitation, while 86 percent of urban populations (and 55 percent of rural populations) have better sanitation services in Latin America and the Caribbean. The figures highlight progress, but reveal the significant divide that persists between urban and rural areas in terms of access to quality sanitation. According to the PRB, some 2.7 billion people—40 percent of the world’s total—still do not enjoy adequate sanitation facilities, and most live in rural areas of the developing world.
Finally, an interesting trend that will impact developed and developing nations alike involves elderly support ratios, or the number of active workforce members between the ages of 15 and 64 available to support a nation’s non-working, 65-and-older population. While rapidly growing countries in the developing world will continue to enjoy high elderly support ratios, a number of countries across the developed world will face a potential financial crisis, as comparatively low support ratios combine with rapidly aging populations to strain available financial resources earmarked for covering pension payments and healthcare infrastructure costs. To make up for the shortfall over the coming decades, the PRB report predicts that some developed nations may be inclined to further throw open the doors to immigration to bolster workforce ranks—a step recommended by Jack Goldstone in ECSP Report 13.
Sources: New York Times, Population Reference Bureau, Population Council, PR Newswire, United Nations Population Division, WHO/UNICEF Jointing Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation
Photo Credit: “Famine in Niger, Africa,” courtesy of flickr user liquidslave.
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