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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category Middle East.
  • Grains and Hydrocarbons: The Middle East and the War in Ukraine

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    May 3, 2022  //  By Achref Chibani
    Ukrainian,Sapper,Clears,Mines,At,The,Site,Of,Recent,Fighting

    This article is adapted from an article previously published in the Middle East Program’s Viewpoint Series. 

    The war in Ukraine is likely to have immediate effects on many countries in the MENA region. Ukraine is an important global producer of sunflower oil and grain, and alongside Russia, it provides a third of the world’s wheat and barley. Russia’s invasion also will severely disrupt food transport logistics within Ukraine and across its borders due to the suspension of shipping from Ukraine’s commercial ports.

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  • Sustainable Responses to Human Mobility, Climate Change, and Conflict

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    On the Beat  //  October 19, 2021  //  By Alice Chang
    Afghanistan,/,Sheberghan,-,January,2018,-,A,Father,And

    “We should not see people moving as a security threat. People do not move if they’ve got a better option. As a community, one of our responsibilities is to provide people with the options,” said Andrew Harper, Special Advisor to the UNHCR High Commissioner for Climate Action, at a discussion on human mobility, climate change, and conflict hosted at the 2021 Berlin Climate and Security Conference. “We need to ensure that projects and activities that have been put in place are not short term, but are geared up to be addressing the challenges that the world will be facing within five to ten years’ time.” 

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  • Why Water Conflict is Rising, Especially on the Local Level

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    Guest Contributor  //  March 2, 2021  //  By Peter Schwartzstein
    Karachi,,Pakistan,-,Dec,30:,Residents,Of,Baldia,Town,Are

    This article originally appeared on the Center for Climate and Security.

    That future wars will be fought over water, rather than oil, has become something of a truism, particularly with regard to the Middle East. It’s also one that most water experts have refuted time and time and time again. But while this preference for cooperation over conflict may (and emphasis on may) remain true of interstate disputes, this blanket aversion to the ‘water wars’ narrative fails to account for the rash of other water-related hostilities that are erupting across many of the world’s drylands. As neither full-on warfare nor issues that necessarily resonate beyond specific, sometimes isolated areas, these ‘grey zone’ clashes don’t seem to be fully registering in the broader discussion of water conflicts. In failing to adequately account for the volume of localized violence, the world is probably chronically underestimating the extent to which water insecurity is already contributing to conflict.

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  • How We Misunderstand the Magnitude of Climate Risks – and Why That Contributes to Controversy

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    Guest Contributor  //  January 12, 2021  //  By Peter Schwartzstein
    shutterstock_79914109

    For years, analysts have disputed the extent of climate change’s role in conflict. But the nature of climate risks can stifle those looking to define them.

    The Syrian civil war has raged for almost a decade now, and in the climate security community it can feel as if we’ve spent at least that long arguing about its causes. For every claim about the impact of extreme drought in the lead up to 2011, there’s been blowback, with some scholars arguing that the climate angle has been exaggerated at the expense of other causes of the conflict. And for every argument about rural-to-urban migration, there have been suggestions that its impact in precipitating protests has been overstated. Amid some overly forceful media assertion about the significance of climate change—and valid fears that invoking the environment might be seen as absolving guilty parties, despite efforts to highlight the regime’s ultimate culpability—climate security analysts have struggled to fully pinpoint climate’s precise contribution to the conflict. Cue uncertainty, controversy, and sometimes fierce academic polemics.

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  • Wim Zwijnenburg on Using Data to Visualize the Impacts of Conflict on the Environment

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    Friday Podcasts  //  February 21, 2020  //  By Wania Yad

    Wim podcast imageThrough open source information, remote sensing, and existing data, we can have a better sense of how conflict impacts the environment and how it then impacts people depending on the environment, said Wim Zwijnenburg, a Humanitarian Disarmament Project Leader for the Dutch peace organization, PAX, in this week’s Friday Podcast. Wim sat down for an interview with ECSP’s Amanda King at the first International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding, hosted at the University of California, Irvine, in October 2019.

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  • Dr. Mishkat Al-Moumin on the Importance of Women & the Environment to Sustainable Peace

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    Friday Podcasts  //  February 14, 2020  //  By Mckenna Coffey

    mishkat“I believe if you acknowledge women as primary users of environmental resources, if you draft the policy with women [at] the table, offering you their unique perspective and unique feedback, you’re going to have a more stable policy. A policy that gets implemented,” says Mishkat Al-Moumin, scholar in residence at the Environmental Law Institute, in this week’s Friday Podcast, and second in a series of interviews recorded at the First International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding.

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  • Population, Climate, and Politics—A New Phase is Emerging

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    Guest Contributor  //  Uncharted Territory  //  February 5, 2020  //  By Jack A. Goldstone

    Goldstone-645x430For some time, it has been clear that a global population imbalance is emerging. High income countries, including nearly all of the Americas, Europe, and most of East and parts of South and Southeast Asia, have seen a dramatic, sustained fall in fertility. Already, this is resulting in shrinking labor forces and the oldest mean age populations seen in history. At the same time, the low income countries and even some lower middle-income countries—mainly in Africa but also in Central America, the Middle East, and parts of South and Southeast Asia—continue to have relatively high fertility. This is now, and even more in the coming decades, producing fast-growing labor forces and relatively young populations.

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  • The Environment Has Become a Hostage of Armed Conflict

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    Guest Contributor  //  November 6, 2019  //  By Wim Zwijnenburg
    Syria_BurningCrop_FB

    This year, 2019, marked a new nadir for the environment that may reflect an ominous trend in warfare: Environmentally sensitive targets are being weaponized and taken hostage. Farmland went up in flames and burning oil tankers dominated the headlines, serving as a stark reminder of conflict’s ripple effects.

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