Showing posts from category water.
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An Island of Peace in a Sea of Conflict: The Jordan River Peace Park
›Saleem Ali filmed this video on his visit to the “peace island” between Jordan and Israel, which Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) is working to convert into an international peace park.
FOEME co-Director Gidon Bromberg will be at the Wilson Center today to discuss the peace park and other FOEME water cooperation initiatives in more detail as a panelist participating in “Pathways to Peace: Stories of Environment, Health, and Conflict,” an event discussing field-based lessons for addressing environment, health, development, and conflict.
Video: Filmed by Saleem H. Ali (University of Vermont, editor of the MIT Press book Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution) with commentary by Elizabeth Ya’ari (FOEME), January 2010. -
Making the Connections: An Integration Wish List for Research, Policy, and Practice
›January 3, 2010 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoNew York Times columnist Nick Kristof is likely a well-known voice to New Security Beat readers. His ground-level development stories from around the world expose a range of neglected issues that usually struggle for mainstream media coverage: maternal health, microcredit, human trafficking, family planning, sanitation, micronutrients, and poverty, among others.
Kristof brought many of these threads together Half the Sky, a book he coauthored with his wife Sheryl WuDunn. I asked about the challenges of addressing these connected problems when I interviewed the couple and two frontline White Ribbon Alliance maternal health practitioners this fall at the Wilson Center.
Now Kristof is asking readers to suggest topics for him to cover in 2010. My suggestions to him are actually a wish list for the wider development community. In short, how can scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and communities better research and analyze these connected topics and then fashion integrated responses? I posted my comment on Kristof’s blog, On the Ground (and I ask your indulgence for the less than polished writing):I’d love for you [Kristof] to explore the challenge of integration from both problem and response perspectives. People in poverty lead integrated lives (just like we wealthier folks do), face connected challenges, and need integrated or multiple responses. Single-sector programs may deliver quicker, more obvious, and/or more countable impacts (or parallel advantages for single-discipline research endeavors). Yet time and time again we see such approaches only partially meeting needs or not meeting them sustainably. There is also a persist danger of undercutting others’ efforts and/or creating high opportunity costs.
These questions topped my wish list to Kristof last night while procrastinating on other writing. What would be on your wish list for Kristof, the development community, or even just New Security Beat? We at the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) would love to hear from NSB readers so we can keep covering the questions that interest you.
So which integrated research, policy analysis, or field-based programs explicitly recognize that trends that appear to be on the periphery are hardly peripheral? At the same time, if programs try to be all things to all people, they can become bloated, unrealistic, and/or unsustainable.
For example, are the Millennium Villages examples of the former or the latter? How about the much smaller programs under the population-health-environment grouping? What went wrong with Campfire programs to cause so many to abandon the approach? Have the loosened restrictions on what constitutes an appropriate PEPFAR intervention addressed this integration problem, or will politics (exclusion of family planning in PEPFAR, for example) mean we cannot capture the full benefits of integration?
And the big Kahuna: how is the rhetoric and analytical argument around the 3Ds (defense, development, and diplomacy) made real and practicable in the field (as in the United States we anticipated early this year the results of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), and Presidential Study Directive on Global Development Policy (PSD))?
And finally, does our (read donors’) penchant for measuring impact and quantifying results force us to narrow interventions to the point of missing key connections in cause and effect of the problems we are trying to address? Is there a better mix of defining and measuring success that captures the challenges and benefits of integration? -
Climate Reporting Awards Live From COP; Revkin To Quit NYT
›It’s a good news/bad news day for climate-media watchers. The Earth Journalism Awards honor some of the best climate coverage from around the world, while arguably the world’s most respected climate reporter announces he’s leaving journalism.
Earth Journalism Awards
Tune in now to watch the Internews Earth Journalism Awards webcast live from Copenhagen. The spectacularly impressive winning entries span the globe from Kenya, Brazil, Pakistan, and Papua New Guinea.
Two top-notch stories illustrate how nuanced, in-depth reporting can compellingly and accurately portray climate-security links: Lisa Friedman’s 5-part series on Bangladesh for ClimateWire untangles the knotty problem of climate-induced migration, while William Wheeler writes in GOOD Magazine about the increasingly difficult role of Indus Water Treaty in mitigating conflict between India and Pakistan.
The 15 winners are blogging from the summit, as well 40 reporters from 26 developing nations, as part of the Climate Change Media Partnership.
Revkin Frustrated With Journalism; Will Leave NYT
On the bad news side, Yale Forum on Climate Change and Media announced this morning that Andrew Revkin, the NYT’s climate reporter, will leave the paper on December 21. He cites “frustration with journalism,” but will continue writing his popular DotEarth blog.
Maybe Revkin’s frustration is with the disintegration of environmental coverage in the mainstream media? The Internews winners demonstrate the high quality of climate coverage at niche publications like ClimateWire or funded by non-profits like the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Let’s hope Revkin finds a more comfortable home and continues his pioneering work on DotEarth, specifically his efforts to cover population, poverty, consumption, and development connections to climate. -
Water Conflicts Enter the Fourth Dimension
›The Pacific Institute has just released an updated version of its renowned Water Conflict Chronology in a new interactive form. The online map depicts water conflicts from the Biblical flood to this year’s December 3 protest in Mumbai, pinpointing their location and chronological order. Pop-up text boxes provide the date, parties involved, basis for conflict, and hyperlinked references.
Since its founding in 1987, the project has continuously collected water conflict data “in an ongoing effort to understand the connections between water resources, water systems, and international security and conflict,” writes Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick in the San Francisco Chronicle.
But now, the data can also be visualized and manipulated in a table with citations, interactive timeline, or Google Earth map. Also of note is the project’s robust water and conflict bibliography search engine.
The Pacific Institute publishes The World’s Water, which offers a broad analysis of water resource trends, from conflict and scarcity, to implications for health and the impacts of climate change. At the Wilson Center launch of The World’s Water, Gleick talked to ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko about “peak water” (video). -
Too Much or Too Little? A Changing Climate in the Mekong and Ganges River Basins
›November 24, 2009 // By Dan Asin“I’m an optimist,” said Peter McCornick, director for water policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, about the future of food and water security in the Ganges and Mekong river basins at the World Wildlife Fund’s recent two-day symposium on water and climate change (video). Although the basins are under threat not only from climate change, but also urbanization, industrialization, development, and population growth, he maintained there are solutions, “as long as we understand what is going on.”
Whereas big-picture discussions of Asia’s glaciers and rivers often start and end with “fewer glaciers = less water,” McCornick argued that the connection is not so simple. Glacial melt “is particularly important in the Indus,” he said, but not so for the Ganges or Mekong.
“The Ganges is basically a monsoon-driven river,” said McCornick, and only 6.6 percent of the Mekong’s waters have glacial origins. Predicting the effects of climate change on monsoons is “extremely difficult.” Periods of heavy and light rains will be more pronounced in the Mekong, and how and when upstream dams will release water—a possibly more serious issue (video)—is unknown.
Food security will be impacted by shifting water supplies in the Ganges and Mekong. Within the Ganges basin, India’s population—already the region’s most water-stressed—could see its yearly water supplies drop by a third, from 1,506 m3 per person today to 1,060 m3 per person by 2025. “This is still a lot of water,” McCornick said, but water efficiency must undergo dramatic improvements if food supplies are to keep up with population growth.
In contrast, the Mekong could have too much water. Eighty-five percent of the Mekong delta, located in Vietnam, is under cultivation and its staple crop and principal food export, rice, is highly susceptible to flooding, which could increase due to extreme rain events, rising sea levels, or dam releases.
The Mekong basin is also the world’s largest freshwater fishery, but the effect of dams on the migratory pattern of the basin’s 1200-1700 fish species is still unknown. The industry is valued at $2-3 billion each year, said McCornick, and declining fish populations will not only harm local food security, but local livelihoods as well.
Adaptation strategies to cope with shifts in water supply brought about by climate change must be implemented by individuals at the local level, said McCornick, who urged that future adaptation research concentrate on sub-basins. Specific adaptation strategies to be explored include:- Flexible water management institutions
- Intelligent use of groundwater resources during times of stress
- Management of the entire water storage continuum—not just that stored in dams, but also water stored in soil moisture and miniature artificial ponds.
Photo: Top, Mekong River Delta; Bottom, Mekong River Delta post-floods from heavy rains. Courtesy NASA. -
Hot and Cold Wars: Climate, Conflict, and Cooperation
›November 23, 2009 // By Sajid AnwarAt an American University event on his new book, Climate Change and Armed Conflict: Hot and Cold Wars, the Center for Teaching Excellence’s James Lee identified some plausible scenarios that the international community will have to face to adequately and peacefully address the security impacts of climate change.
With the loss of glaciers and normal river flows, international boundaries that have long been determined by these natural barriers will be called into question, Lee said, raising legitimate issues of sovereignty, migration, and land rights. How will countries separated by large glaciers or rivers deal with their more open and easily accessible borders? Will people who depend on these resources migrate into other countries in search of water? How will these changes impact countries that share these resources?
In his presentation, Lee argued that climate change will lead to violent conflict, using the historical record of climate change and conflict to prove his point. But most of the cases cited occurred before the 20th century, and the changes in climate then were much different than what we are now facing.
Today, we live in a world that is truly global in both governance and accountability. Issues such as severe environmental degradation or scarcity can be a factor in conflict within a country, but the potential for climate change to cause an international conflict is not as high as some warn.
There are multiple variables on the causal chain between climate change and conflict that can be addressed now, through national efforts and international cooperation. Countries can start with strong governance initiatives now to ensure that future problems of transboundary water scarcity, migration trends, and border changes do not lead to conflict.
For example, while climate change may lead to water scarcity, declines in agricultural production, and therefore to food insecurity, countries can avoid this outcome by leasing agricultural land in countries that won’t face high levels of water stress.
In addition, countries could avoid future disagreements over territory by negotiating a shared understanding of borders independent of geographic markers such as rivers or glaciers. These and other variables can be addressed now in order to mitigate the risk of future conflicts.
Renegotiating Water, Avoiding Conflict
Uppsala University Professor Ashok Swain, who spoke via Skype, took a different tack than Lee, stating that the links between climate change and conflict lack proper research. He was concerned by the hard security linkages being made with climate change and called for further exploration.
But Swain identified one potential trouble spot: While interactions over shared river systems have been shown to be overwhelmingly cooperative rather than violent, he voiced concern that the changes brought by climate change are not encompassed in the scope of current water-sharing agreements, which could increase the likelihood of conflict, according to Swain.
In the same way that leasing agricultural abroad or negotiating a shared understanding of borders now could help mitigate conflict in the future, so could renegotiating and strengthening current water-sharing agreements to reflect the future effects of climate change.
Cooperation to ensure sustainable access to shared water sources will still be more likely than conflict, simply because it is more cost-effective. If, as Lee writes in his book, climate change will cause a society’s accumulated wealth to decline, then the cost of mitigating the negative effects of climate change by using force to secure a resource would be too high for any nation to pursue.
Photo: Cracked earth, from the lack of water and baked from the heat of the sun, forms a pattern in the Nature Reserve of Popenguine, Senegal. Courtesy United Nations. -
The Campus Beat: Using Blogs, Facebook, to Teach Environmental Security at West Point
›November 17, 2009 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoThe lecture was only a few hours away. In desperation, I turned to Facebook. “I’ve got just 50 minutes with the cadets at West Point today to talk water, conflict, and cooperation. What are the most compelling examples you would use to make both hard security and human security points, both threat and opportunity points? I ask in part because it is proving harder to decide what to leave out than what to put in!”
Within seconds, experts from the Departments of State and Energy, USAID, and National Geographic responded with examples, including the Tibetan plateau and glacial melt, the lower Jordan River, and more. I used these cases and others to break through to an audience that included both those skeptical of “treehugger” issues and those eager to learn. The map of Chinese current and planned hydro projects produced audible gasps and wide eyes among the class of future officers.
While at West Point, colleague Meaghan Parker and I met with geography faculty to better understand how and what they are teaching on environmental security and demographic security. The professors on the banks of the Hudson face similar challenges to their non-military brethren; today’s students have shorter attention spans and lack experience conducting in-depth research (or getting beyond Google).
But some challenges are unique to the service academies: isolation from academic peers; the need to make sure the material is relevant to future military leaders; and most of all, the physical and mental demands on cadets’ time placed by army training. I saw it as a sign of success that I only had three stand up during my lecture, the military’s sanctioned way to keep yourself awake in class. (LTC Lou Rios USAF, one of the faculty members we met with, wrote about teaching environmental security at West Point previously on New Security Beat.)
Video, blogs, and other new media seem like a way to bridge some of these gaps. We’re especially excited that the cadets in at least three courses will be using the New Security Beat as part of their classes by reading posts, commenting, and proposing a post on a topic of their choosing. We’re looking forward to a cadet joining us next summer for internship with ECSP.
All of these outreach efforts are part of our strategy to both understand how all types of actors—including future army officers—come to understand environment and security links while providing insights and analysis to that same diverse group.
Photos by Geoff Dabelko and Meaghan Parker -
Reporting From Kenya: U.S. Editors Cover Health, Environment, and Security
›November 4, 2009 // By Sajid AnwarThe global recession has “been very hard on journalists,” explained Andrea Crossan, radio producer for BBC’s “The World”. “With these kinds of cutbacks, you really feel it when it comes to foreign coverage.” Along with Stephanie Hanson, associate director and coordinating editor of CFR.org, and Margaret McElligott, senior producer for washingtonpost.com, Crossan spoke about the International Reporting Project’s (IRP) Gatekeeper trip to Kenya at a Wilson Center event sponsored by the Environmental Change and Security Program.
“You’ve seen a lot of areas of the world that just aren’t getting the coverage these places deserve, and Africa is one of those places,” said Crossan, partly due to the expense of travel, security, and satellite equipment. IRP, a project of The Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, aims to fill gaps in foreign reporting left by extensive budget cuts by offering U.S.-based editors and journalists opportunities to report on international stories.
“I’ve traveled a fair amount with the BBC, and I’ve seen some really difficult living conditions for people. I’ve never seen anything like I’ve seen in Kibera,” said Crossan. “We can look at all of the things we are talking about today”—environment, health, security—“through what’s happening in Kibera.”
Poverty and Pirates
At a meeting at the University of Nairobi, a student criticized foreign reporting of Kenya, saying that it “only seems to cover poverty and pirates,” said Crossan. That’s a slight improvement over previous years, when U.S. coverage focused on “witches and war,” noted an audience member.
McElligott, who previously worked for AllAfrica.com, agreed that U.S. media coverage of Africa is becoming richer, with fewer instances of racism accompanying reporting. “The world is so much smaller now,” with email, Facebook, blogs, and video providing additional venues and in-country contacts, she said.
The Kenyan press is the “most trusted institution” in the country, said Hanson. They expose corruption, report on health issues, and call the government to task. With the decline in U.S. journalists posted abroad, the support and stories provided by Kenyan reporters is crucial to getting coverage in the international media.
While pitching international stories to U.S. audiences might be a hard sell, “if it’s a good, compelling story, it will go up in a prominent place” with or without a U.S. angle, said McElligott. “It’s just about telling human stories,” said Crossan.
Kenya on the Edge: Drought and Conflict“In the last months we’ve seen the food crisis grow in Kenya,” said McElligott. On the group’s visit to Laikipia, she noted the impacts of soil degradation, unsustainable water extraction from rivers, and the lack of governmental regulation. Lack of land and water is forcing pastoralists to travel miles away from home in order to feed cattle and goats.
“We’re desperate for water here,” said Laikipia resident Niyok Npanyaki in an IRP video report. “We’ve decided that if water is cut off, we’ll go to the water source on Mount Kenya, even if the government doesn’t let us. Otherwise we will die. People don’t start wars for no reason. If I am hungry, but if you have food, I’ll come to you and find it.”
“Loss of natural resources puts people under extreme pressure and people will go to extreme lengths in order to get those fundamentally important natural resources,” says Dr. Anthony King, director of Laikipia Wildlife Forum, in the video. Adding to the tension between farmers and pastoralists is the easy access to firearms in the Horn of Africa. “Almost every pastoralist will have an automatic weapon,” says King.
The IRP fellows visited the headquarters of the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi, but found it difficult to gauge the effectiveness of UNEP at addressing Kenya’s drought and deforestation. According to Crossan, UNEP has invested in a number of local programs, but the UNEP officials they spoke with seemed frustrated that the Kenyan government was not more involved in tackling the country’s environmental problems.
“Something I struggle with in my own work is trying to understand what actual effect these large multilateral agencies have on the ground. What is the World Bank actually doing in Ghana? What are they actually doing in Kenya?” said Hanson. “Does the money get distributed? Who does it go to? Having more Kenyans or Ghanaians who could report on these things and look into them in terms of transparency and accountability would be incredibly helpful.”
Malaria: A Disease of the Poor“Malaria was, to be honest, not a disease that was really on my radar,” said Hanson. “I had, in a way, discounted its importance to what has happened on the continent.” At a children’s critical care unit in Nyanza Province, one of the poorest areas in Kenya with one of the highest rates of HIV and malaria, she saw beds filled with sick children. “This was shocking to me.”
When a family member is stricken with malaria, the burden of care is typically falls upon the mother, who often must travel long distances to the nearest hospital—“some of them had walked hours with a sick child,” said Hanson—leaving their other children at home and farms largely untended.
“When these women have to leave their farms to come to the clinic, they’re losing work days on the farm,” said Hanson. “That just means that their farms are less productive. They have less money to send their children to school, give their children medical care, and feed their children.”
“These macro-political issues—disputed elections, post-election violence—are actually connected to daily issues like malaria infections, hospital capacity rates, agricultural yields, and without a government that can address those things it is very difficult to see how a place like Kenya can move forward,” concluded Hanson.
Drafted by Sajid Anwar and Meaghan Parker.
Edited by Meaghan Parker.
The global recession has “been very hard on journalists,” explained 
“In the last months we’ve seen the food crisis grow in Kenya,” said McElligott. On the group’s visit to Laikipia, she noted the impacts of soil degradation, unsustainable water extraction from rivers, and the lack of governmental regulation. Lack of land and water is forcing pastoralists to travel miles away from home in order to feed cattle and goats.
“Malaria was, to be honest, not a disease that was really on my radar,” said Hanson. “I had, in a way, discounted its importance to what has happened on the continent.” At a 
