Showing posts from category Asia.
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Developing a Blueprint for Addressing Glacier Melt in the Region
Changing Glaciers and Hydrology in Asia
›“Glacier melt is part of larger hydrologic and climate systems, so effective programs will be cross-sectoral and yield co-benefits,” said Elizabeth L. Malone, senior research scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, speaking at the Wilson Center on November 16. “Looking more closely at glacier melt, we come to understand that upstream actions and choices have a potentially huge effect on downstream communities,” added Kristina Yarrow, health advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Asia and Middle East Bureaus.
Malone and Yarrow were joined by Mary Melnyk, senior advisor for natural resource management at USAID’s Asia and Middle East Bureaus, to discuss the agency’s new report, “Changing Glaciers and Hydrology in Asia: Addressing Vulnerabilities to Glacier Melt Impacts,” prepared by Malone in collaboration with CDM International and TRG. “This report is a move towards mainstreaming climate change across the development portfolio to ensure enduring success of our investments,” Melnyk said.
Mainstreaming Climate Change
Providing information about the science, vulnerabilities, and current efforts to respond to environmental change and glacier melt in Asia, the new report also features a number of practical, cross-sectoral approaches to addressing glacial retreat in Asia that, if implemented well, could produce multiple benefits. The report highlights the complexity of the issues surrounding glacier melt in the region, and the critical need to prepare today for future environmental changes.“Climate change in general, and glacier melt specifically, can potentially impact all sectors: economic growth, governance, and health,” Melnyk said. Because there is a lack of scientific knowledge on glacial retreat in Asia and limited financial and human resources to address these issues, it is critical to maximize results through programs that will provide environmental, health, and development co-benefits.
“The challenge is that, in practice, addressing issues of climate change and other environmental security issues still are not a part of the day-to-day business across sectors,” Melnyk said. This report is a first step in the right direction to raise awareness and action on these issues and “although there is uncertainty, we need to move forward – the time to act is now,” she concluded.
Multiple Sectors, Multiple Benefits
“Cross-sector collaboration and programs, when done correctly, can have a much greater impact than when doing a vertical program within a specific sector,” Yarrow said, stressing the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to address environment, health, and development issues. Understanding the health impacts of climate-related environmental change now can help prepare us to address these specific impacts in the future.“On a global scale, there is indeed a relationship between population growth, environmental change, and development,” Yarrow said. In Asia, stress on water resources due to climate change and rapid population growth will likely exacerbate health problems caused by lack of clean water. Proactively expanding and improving programs that address the causes and effects of diarrheal disease and under-nutrition can help address these vulnerabilities and make communities more resilient.
“Finding innovative ways to improve access to and integrate family planning messages and services into climate adaptation programs will also yield some important co-benefits,” Yarrow said. Family planning can slow population growth, which could help reduce projected demand for water supplies, as well as potentially reduce the amount of water pollution.
Yarrow also added that “population growth affects glacier melt indirectly through the consumption of resources that exacerbate black carbon.” Black carbon, which is produced by cooking and heating with biomass fuels, contributes to regional climate change and severe health problems, including respiratory illness and pneumonia. Accompanied by efforts to promote alternative fuels, family planning could reduce black-carbon emissions, significantly improve health, and strengthen community resilience to climate change.
“Though challenging, integrating across sectors is absolutely essential – we’re not experts yet, but we’re definitely getting better,” Yarrow said. “Understanding and addressing the multiple issues like climate change, poor health, poverty, dependence on natural resources, and governance challenges that these communities are dealing with in a comprehensive and holistic fashion will improve results.”
Responding to Glacier Melt
“We simply do not have the kind of broad-scale knowledge that we would like to have,” Malone said. Current data on glacier melt is scarce and very few direct measurements of glacier volume exist, making calculations of glacier retreat difficult. Moving forward, it is critical to respond to this lack of information by improving regional scientific cooperation on glaciers, snowpack, and water resources in High Asia, and strengthening climate and water monitoring capacity.“Even the smallest amounts of glacier-melt contribution correspond to the regions of the highest population, so any change in water supply has large implications,” Malone said. Glaciers may not be disappearing as fast as had been previously thought, but “climate change is happening in the Himalayas and is having an effect.”
“If systems – both human and ecological – are already stressed, they are less able to be resilient in the face of changes. But the good news is that we can take actions now that will be crucially important to how societies can respond in the future,” Malone said.
Implementing cross-sector projects can help to target places where environmental, economic, health, and even security issues overlap. Focusing on water resource management, ecosystems, and the needs of high-mountain communities, as well as mitigating climate change by reducing emissions of black carbon, can help reduce both direct and indirect vulnerabilities and improve resilience to future changes.
“The results of this report allow USAID and others to grasp the complexity of these issues, understand the critical gaps, and to respond to the changes in the glaciers to come,” Melnyk said. The next step is applying the knowledge gathered in the report to practitioners in the field and in policy discussions.
“A crucial role USAID can play is to link partners in the government and private sectors to build capacity and spark synergies among new initiatives to really integrate new initiatives with concerns about glacier melt,” Malone concluded.
Photo Credit: “Nepal Sagamartha Trek,” courtesy of flickr user mckaysavage. -
Food and Environmental Insecurity a Factor in North Korean Shelling?
›November 24, 2010 // By Schuyler NullJust two days before dozens of North Korean artillery shells fell on the island of Yeonpyeong off the west coast of Korea, a UN study reported that the DPRK was facing acute food shortages heading into the winter.
In a New York Times report, Choi Jin-wook, of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, called food “the number one issue.” While Choi just last month praised the resumption of food aid from the South to the North as a “starting point of a new chapter in inter-Korean relations,” she told the Times Wednesday that the North is “in a desperate situation, and they want food immediately, not next year.”
North Korea’s motives are notoriously indecipherable and this latest incident is no exception, but the regime has in the past sought to distract from domestic problems by inciting the international community (the sinking of the Cheonan being the other latest prominent example).
Infrastructure has always been primitive in the North under the DPRK regime, but the country’s tenuous food security situation was made worse this last year by an unusually long and severe winter followed by heavy flooding in the summer. Flooding was so bad during August and September, that the normally silent regime publically announced details of rescue operations around the northern city of Sinuiju. The joint FAO/WFP report put out by the UN does not predicate production will significantly recover in the next year and estimates an uncovered food deficit of 542,000 tons for 2010/11.
“A small shock in the future could trigger a severe negative impact and will be difficult to contain if these chronic deficits are not effectively managed,” Joyce Luma of the World Food Program told The New York Times.
For more on the severe weather events of this summer, including the flooding that impacted the DPRK and pushed the Three Gorge Dam to its stress limits in China, the impact of scarcity and climate change on the potential for conflict, and the intersection of food security and conflict elsewhere, see our previous coverage on The New Security Beat.
Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Food and Agriculture Organization, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, UN, Washington Post, World Food Program.
Image Credit: Google Maps. -
Rare Earths Intrigue: In Response to Chinese Ban, Japan and Vietnam Make a Deal
›November 2, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe BBC is reporting that Japan has reached an agreement with Vietnam that will help provide a secure supply of rare earth minerals, after China reportedly stopped exports to Japan during an ongoing territorial dispute last month.
China produces nearly all (97 percent, according to the GAO) of the rare earth minerals used around the world, minerals that are used in many advanced electronics including mobile phones, missiles, and key components of cleaner energy tech. Japanese companies are expected to gain exclusive exploration and mining rights in northwest Vietnam in exchange for technical assistance on nuclear reactors.
China’s reported export freeze on rare earths raised warning flags in the region as well as in Washington, where fears over exclusive supply of the crucial minerals have been growing for some time – particularly in the defense community. (Although Bloomberg reports a new Pentagon study says it’s not such a big deal after all.) Control over and access to resources has become an important concern in East Asian diplomacy, as population and consumption in the region rises. For more, check out The New Security Beat’s coverage of the many diplomatic fault lines at play between the lower Mekong countries, China, and the United States, rare earth minerals and green energy, and the conflict potential of future resource scarcity.
Sources: BBC, Bloomberg, Government Accountability Office, The New York Times, TechNewsDaily.
Image Credit: Adapted from “The Huc Bridge, Hanoi,” courtesy of flickr user -aw-. -
PATH Foundation’s ‘Population, Health, and Environment Leadership as a Way of Life’
›PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI) just released a short documentary, Population-Health-Environment (PHE) Leadership as a Way of Life in All Walks of Life. The video features interviews with peer educators and local government officials who have partnered with PFPI on integrated coastal resource management in the Philippines that combines family planning and reproductive health services with environmental services.
According to those interviewed, an integrated approach is the best way to alleviate food insecurity in the area. “We cannot separate population, health, and environment, they should be implemented hand in hand,” said Marlyn Alcanises, a Fisheries and Coastal Resource Management program officer. “Even if we manage our coastal resources well, if there are many children due to high fertility and population growth, many people are hungry.”
The comprehensive program has been successful in addressing the social and environmental problems in the Verde Island Passage of the Philippines, one of Asia’s most densely populated regions, as well as a marine biodiversity hotspot and sea lane for many commercial ships.
The program uses community-based distribution of contraceptives to increase access to family planning, micro-credit schemes to finance sustainable livelihoods and alleviate poverty, and advocacy campaigns to increase government support for integrated health and environment programs.
Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator Cecilia Zulueta praised the integrated approach, saying “it can slow down population growth, decrease the number of malnutrition cases, lessen the number of out-of-school youth, and it can also decrease the crime rate, because if one does not have a stable source of income it may force him to engage in illegal activities.”
In ECSP’s FOCUS Issue 15, “Fishing for Families: Reproductive Health and Integrated Coastal Management in the Philippines,” Joan Castro and Leona D’Agnes demonstrated that PFPI’s Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management project (IPOPCORM) was more cost-effective and had a greater impact on the wellbeing of both human reproductive health and coastal resources than non-integrated programs. In a study measuring the impacts of integrated versus single-sector reproductive health (RH) or coastal resource management (CRM) programs, they found the integrated approach met or exceeded single-sector outcomes for 26 out of 27 indicators.
Reducing high fertility rates reduces pressure on natural resources, decreases high rates of malnutrition, crime and HIV/AIDS, and preserves local fisheries, “making life sustainable for both humans and nature,” as PFPI puts it in the documentary. The hope is that the community leaders featured in the documentary will inspire others in similar situations to take the lead on integrated issues in their communities.
“Even if we are doing environmental conservation through population management in our province but the others are not, it will still create conflict somehow,” said Alcanises. “I believe that whatever program is being done in one province should also be done in other provinces, in order to avoid conflict and promote balance in program implementation.”
Julio Lopez, president of the Galera Association of Managers and Entertainers said, “this land is ours, and we are responsible in taking care of it.”
PFPI, along with the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resource Center and Conservation International, is part of the BALANCED project, which last year launched the PHE Toolkit as a resource for PHE professionals. For more on PFPI’s IPOPCORM program, see ECSP’s interviews with Joan Casto and Leona D’Agnes on our YouTube channel: “Joan Castro – Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management (IPOPCORM)” and “Leona D’Agnes on Population, Health, and Environment.”
Video Credit: “Population-Health-Environment (PHE) A Video Documentary,” courtesy of YouTube user PATHFoundationPhils.
Sources: Population Reference Bureau. -
UNFPA State of World Population 2010
›Today marks the release of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) annual State of the World Population Report. But the 2010 edition, “From Conflict and Crisis to Renewal: Generations of Change,” is unlike those that have come before. In lieu of the traditional statistic-driven report, this year’s edition has enlisted another tool to document living conditions across the world — storytelling. In addition to demographers, the UNFPA looked to journalists to fan out across the world to gather stories on the ground and paint a portrait of the challenges and opportunities facing today’s global population that goes beyond the numbers, with particular focus on gender issues and human insecurity.
For more on the UNFPA report, be sure to listen to The New Security Beat’s interview with one of its authors, Barbara Crossette, who talks about her experiences dealing with family planning around the world, as part of our ongoing Pop Audio series.
Video Credit: UNFPA. -
The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
›The latitudinal tenth parallel — located 700 miles above the equator — constitutes a “faith-based fault line” between Islam and Christianity, said Eliza Griswold at the launch of her latest book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam at the Wilson Center on September 16, 2010. The former Wilson Center public policy scholar traveled more than 9,000 miles to six countries along the line. One quarter of the world’s Muslim population lives north of the line, while one-fourth of the world’s Christian population lives south of it.
Religious Conflict and Environmental Peacemaking
The tenth parallel is vulnerable to intense religious conflicts, exacerbated by the imposition of colonial-era national borders. Griswold collected stories from tribal leaders, presidents, and missionaries that reveal subtle linkages between religious conflict, politics, and environmental change. “Every single religious conflict I saw had a worldly trigger, whether land, oil, or water,” she said, because these groups tend to self-identify along lines of religion, “even over any kind of ethnicity.”
In the town of Abiay, Sudan, Griswold described a fight “over who’s going to get that oil, and how they’re going to divide themselves. Religion comes in as an overlay, because the north pushes the people of the south farther south by saying, ‘Guess what? We need that land, and why? Because our Muslim people need that land for their cattle,’ but underneath that land runs a river of oil.”
But in these origins of conflict Griswold finds an avenue to peace: “Environmental challenges seem to work well in areas of religious conflict” as a neutral meeting ground, she said.
For example, in the Nigerian city Kaduna, where Christians and Muslims have clashed violently, two former mortal enemies and self-avowed fundamentalists work together to deprogram the youth they trained to protect their faith through violence. At the Interfaith Reconciliation Center, Pastor James (who lost an arm to a group of Muslims) and Imam Muhammed Nurayn Ashafa use practical aspects of living to encourage interfaith dialogue. During Griswold’s visit, it was fuel-efficient cookstoves, “because that’s one of the things Christians and Muslims fight about…whether land, water, oil.”
Such concrete examples of environmental peacemaking offer future policy options for mitigating conflicts in other areas. “The tenth parallel is one of the most sensitive environmental zones in the world…so do I think it’s replicable? Absolutely,” said Griswold.
The Changing Demographics of Religion
Today, “four out of five of the world’s one billion Muslims don’t live in the Middle East; they live in Africa and they live in Asia. More than half of them live along the tenth parallel, and about half of the world’s two billion Christians also live along the tenth parallel,” sais Griswold.
She explained that the migration of Islam to Africa stopped along the tenth parallel because of the tsetse flies and the devastating sleeping sickness they carried.
Later, colonial-era European missionaries arrived, many with “the express purpose of stopping Islam from winning Africa, from spreading south of the tenth parallel,” she said. For example, Britain’s division of Sudan restricted Muslims to the north and Christians to the south, where missionaries developed and constructed the southern Sudanese state.
“Many of these places are failed states…and religion has come in largely to fill the gaps,” said Griswold. “The world is breaking down on tribal lines and religion is the largest tribe there is, more so than ethnicity, more so than other global markers.”
Based on population projections, Griswold pointed out that “the center of Christianity, in 2050 will be on the tenth parallel…in Muslim Nigeria.”
Historical Echoes
Historically, aid and development work along the tenth parallel “was not a secular enterprise,” Griswold said, since most of the aid workers were Christian missionaries. “So there is a very long history and a very strong association between the West and Christianity in many, many places,” she pointed out.
This history has long affected American foreign policy and perceptions of the United States abroad. According to Griswold, “foreign policy [has] come to reflect the interests of selective groups of Americans.” For that reason, “we really need to call for caution in how we allow ourselves to be represented and in the diversity of voices that get out there,” she advised.
For example, the evangelical preacher Franklin Graham met with Bashir in 2003 to ask for the right to proselytize in northern Sudan. In exchange, Bashir hoped to avoid being added to “the American ‘hit list’ after Afghanistan and Iraq,” reported Griswold. Graham told her that in response he took out a George W. Bush re-election pin and said, “Mr. President, I understand you’ll be talking to my president later today. Why don’t you tell him you’re his first voter here in the Sudan?”
In the same vein, Griswold cautioned against perpetuating American ignorance of Muslim culture:We, especially in America, are extremely aware of this fight over who speaks for God. Because I think, when we see what’s happening on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial or at Ground Zero, we’re looking at a struggle inside of a broader Christian context between Franklin Graham and Barack Obama over who a true Christian is. And Islam becomes the easiest bogeyman. The quickest way to whip up fear in followers is to create a shared enemy.
“The single most important finding of the book,” Griswold concluded, “was that the clashes within religions, the clashes between Christians and Christians, Muslims and Muslims, over who has the right to speak for God, are the most important and most overlooked religious conflicts going on today.”
Shawna Cuan is an intern with the Environmental Change and Security Program. Edited by Meaghan Parker.
Photo Credit: “Farmer Harvests Sorghum Seeds in Sudan,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo. -
U.S. v. China: The Global Battle for Hearts, Minds, and Resources
›September 22, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThis summer, Secretary Clinton gave a speech at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Hanoi that Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi called “in effect an attack on China.” What did Clinton say that prompted such a direct response? She called for negotiations over the rights to resource extraction in the South China Sea to be multilateral rather than bilateral:
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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
