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Loaded Dice and Human Health: Measuring the Impacts of Climate Change
›In a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), “Insights From Past Millennia Into Climatic Impacts on Human Health and Survival,” Anthony McMichael compares scientific literature that reconstructs past climates with epidemiological research and comes away with more than a dozen examples of the influence of climate on human health and survival. “Risks to health [as a result of climatic change] are neither widely nor fully recognized,” McMichael writes, but “weather extremes and climatic impacts on food yields, fresh water, infectious diseases, conflict, and displacement” have led to human suffering across the centuries. Some of the literature reviewed, for instance, links the Younger Dryas (a several centuries long period of cooling) to hunger in the Nile Valley between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago, climatic shifts that expanded the range of disease carrying rats and fleas to the “Black Death” during the mid-1400s, and unusually strong El Niño events to a series of late Victorian-era droughts during the late-1800s.
“Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice,” a working paper from James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy recently submitted to PNAS, uses surface air temperature analysis from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies to examine the impact of global warming on the frequency of extreme weather events. Using measurements from 1951 to 1980 as a baseline, the study finds, first, that the planet has warmed by around half of a degree Celsius since the reference period, and second, that the global area affected by “extreme anomalies” (exceeding three standard deviations from the mean climate) has increased by a factor greater than 10. Affecting approximately 10 percent of global land surface in the last several years, these anomalies, such as the droughts and heat waves observed in Texas in 2011, Moscow in 2010, and France in 2003, “almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of the global warming,” according to the authors.
The study uses this new evidence about the impact of climate change to update the concept of climate change as a “loading of the climate dice.” Where, the “climate of 1951-1980 [is represented] by colored dice with two sides red for ‘hot,’ two side blue for ‘cold,’ and two sides white for near average temperature,” and the dice themselves represent the chance of observing variations on mean temperature. Under this metaphor, today’s climate is best approximated by a dice with four sides red, one blue, and one white, according to the study.
As for the future, the data suggest that with just one full degree of warming, anomalies three deviations beyond the mean will be the norm, and five deviations beyond the mean will become more likely (the latest IPCC projections suggest between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius are likely). In essence, the red side of the die are not only multiplying, but becoming much more extreme. To put this into scale, the Moscow 2010 heat wave, an event that exceeded the three deviations mark, coincided with a doubling of the death rate in the Russian capital. -
Responses to JPR Climate and Conflict Special Issue: John O’Loughlin, Andrew M. Linke, Frank Witmer (University of Colorado, Boulder)
›Complexity, in terms of economic, cultural, institutional, and ecological characteristics, weighs heavily on contemporary attempts to unravel the climate change/variability and conflict nexus. The view that local-level complexity can be “controlled away” by technical fixes or adding variables in quantitative analysis does not sit well with many geographers (though some do try to adopt a middle ground position).
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Book Review: ‘Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction’
›The principal argument of Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction is highlighted by the question mark in the title. In many resource rich countries, natural assets have not led to development. The book advances the hypothesis that “for the depletion of natural assets to be converted into sustained development, a series of decisions has got to be got sufficiently right” (p. 1). That series of decisions is examined in detail through case studies on Cameroon, Chile, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Russia, and Zambia, produced by a diverse group of academic and practicing economists under the auspices of the Center for the Study of African Economies and the Oxford Center for the Economics of Resource Rich Countries (OxCarre).
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Jay Ulfelder, Dart-Throwing Chimp
Public-Health Campaigns as Outsized Threats to Authoritarian Rule
›August 17, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Jay Ulfelder, appeared on his blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.
Are certain forms of popular activism more likely to hasten the fall of dictatorships than others? This question occurred to me after reading a recent Washington Post story describing how one Russian woman, Darya Makarova, has turned her own frustration with the poor health care given to her (now dead) young son into a wider campaign that’s has caught Moscow’s eye:Thousands have turned out for her rallies, written letters, signed petitions or joined in Internet forums. Since Maxim’s death in November, she has raised money to reopen a children’s clinic, with an emergency room, in her community. She has shamed the city into buying three new ambulances, with proper equipment. She has launched a nonprofit organization, Health Care for Children, that has national ambitions. Politicians have sought her out. Pavel Astakhov, who holds the newly created title of children’s ombudsman, came from Moscow to see her – and then appointed her his unpaid deputy, giving her more access and clout. Even officials from the sprawling and notoriously indifferent Health Ministry started to pay attention.
I can see why government officials would be nervous about this still-modest and outwardly apolitical campaign. Popular activism around matters of public health and safety seems like it should pose a special challenge to authoritarian regimes, like Russia’s, that stake their right to rule on paternalistic claims about their ability to deliver both social welfare and social protection.
Movements organized around failures of public health and safety are threatening to these regimes because they call out the paternalistic state for failing at its own game. Whatever the form of government involved, one of the modern state’s fundamental roles is to protect its citizens from public health threats. Even when they serve this function poorly, most autocrats claim to be trying, and these campaigns reveal that they are not succeeding.
Continue reading on Dart-Throwing Chimp.
Photo credit: “Your Health rests with…,” courtesy of flickr user okeos. -
Managing Our Forests: Carbon, Climate Change, and Fire
›“We cannot manage our planet if we cannot manage our forests,” said William Sommers, a research professor with the Center for Climate and Society at George Mason University, during a recent event at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The event, which coincided with the International Year of Forests, was the fourth in a series co-sponsored by George Mason University and the Environmental Change and Security Program on “Managing the Planet.” Sandra Brown, director and chief scientist of the Ecosystems Services Unit at Winrock International and David Cleaves, climate change advisor to the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, joined Sommers and moderator Thomas Lovejoy, professor at George Mason, to discuss the impact of climate change, carbon, and fire on the world’s forests. [Video Below]
Fire: A “Critical Element”
“Forests have evolved over Earth’s history,” said Sommers, with fire being a “constant shaper” of this evolution. Humans first used fire as a tool about 400,000 years ago, and around 10,000 years ago, we began using fire for agricultural purposes, which, Sommers said, can be considered the beginning of forest management.
The resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been an important consequence of this human intervention, Sommers said. CO2 emissions have an “exceptional persistence” in the atmosphere, which, explained Sommers, “commits us to irreversible warming over the next 1,000 years.”
In order to counteract these warming effects, a replacement for the “business-as-usual” approach is needed, Sommers said. If not, he warned, CO2 concentrations could reach a thousand parts per million by the end of the century: “It has been 30 to 100 million years since Earth experienced that level of atmospheric CO2 concentration, and Earth was extremely warm at that time.”
“Fire remains a critical element of the earth’s system and is highly sensitive to climate change,” said Sommers. The potential feedback relationship between fire and climate change was illustrated in dramatic fashion in the summer of 2010 with the outbreak of wildfires in Russia after the hottest summer temperatures on record.
Time is running short, Sommers warned, to answer the question of whether humans can anticipate and respond to climate change and manage forests in a sustainable manner.
Reducing Emissions & Improving Management
“Logging can be well-planned and well-designed or maybe not so well-planned,” said Brown as she spoke about her research on the logging industry in the tropics. Sustainable forest management in the tropics is still “a bit of the wild west” in some countries, though the situation is improving slightly, she said.
One way to improve management and reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be through the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) program of the United Nations. REDD+ can provide incentives, Brown said, for people to come up with useful innovations and improvements to forest management. But, she warned, “the longer we keep waiting, [the more] forests are diminishing.”
When a tree is felled, Brown said, there is a lot of collateral damage. An estimated one billion metric tons of CO2 are released every year from logging in the tropics of Africa and Latin America, she explained. One-half of these emissions are from the harvesting itself and the other half is from incidental damage and infrastructure, such as from the skid trails and haul roads needed to transport the logs out of the forest.
Therefore, it is important for all possible reduction steps to be taken, Brown said: “Where we have opportunities to produce goods with reducing emissions, we need to take those opportunities. We just can’t keep thinking, ‘That’s too small to worry about.’ If there’s what we call ‘low-hanging fruit,’ why not go for it?”
In order to reduce emissions and improve management, Brown suggested reducing avoidable waste by trimming more off of felled logs to increase volume, creating a management plan wherein felled logs are accurately mapped and skid trails are better planned, and using silvicultural treatments to speed the forest’s recovery.
Integrating Climate Change Into Risk Management
The job of the U.S. Forest Service has always been that of a “stress manager,” said Cleaves. Climate change is likely to ramp up existing stressors, such as drought and wildfires, which is why it is necessary for the Forest Service to integrate climate change adaptation techniques into the existing stress manager role. “We feel that there is no such thing as a separate climate change program,” he said.
Many difficult choices will have to be made to address climate change, Cleaves said: “We can’t afford the scale of the problem; we can’t afford to solve it all. We need to be able to prioritize.” These choices will have to be based on economic, social, and ecological values in order to “manage risks around the full sweep of the elements of sustainability,” he said.
The country’s forests are changing and we have already seen whole system change, Cleaves explained. For example, climate change has altered snow cover patterns leading to the decline of over half a million acres of yellow-cedar forest in Alaska.
Other threats facing U.S. forests include disease (such as white pine blister rust), increased variability of fires, increased housing growth near forested areas, and the possibility of forests turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources. That is to say, as forests are destroyed through fires, clearing, or disease, they release back into the environment the carbon they have absorbed.
Risk must be integrated into the decision-making process of the agency, and to this end the Forest Service has created the National Roadmap for Responding to Climate Change. But in order to meet these climate change challenges, Cleaves said, “we have to get moving.”
Sources: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USA Today.
Photo Credit: “Michigan,” courtesy of flickr user The U.S. Army. -
What “Lost” Cultures Can Contribute to Management of Our Planet
›“Climate change is not a technical problem for indigenous people – it’s a psychological and spiritual problem,” said Wade Davis, explorer-in-residence at National Geographic, at a recent Wilson Center event, the third in a series co-sponsored by George Mason University and the Environmental Change and Security Program. Indigenous people are “being driven out of existence,” as climate change alters landscapes and weather patterns that they have carefully adapted to over centuries, he said. These people are not “failed attempts at being modern…they are unique answers to the fundamental question, ‘what does it mean to be human and alive?’” he said. “It behooves us to pay attention to how they choose to live upon the earth.” [Video Below]
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Book Launch: ‘The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security,’ by Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba
›“Demographic trends by themselves are neither inherently good nor bad. It’s really a state’s ability to address these issues that can determine the outcome,” said Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, the Mellon Environmental Fellow with the Department of International Studies at Rhodes College. At a book launch event at the Wilson Center on March 14 for The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security, Sciubba, along with Deputy Under Secretary Kathleen Hicks of the Department of Defense, discussed the national security implications of demography and its important role in understanding and managing conflicts around the world. [Video Below]
Demography as an Indicator, Multiplier, and Resource
Demography can be thought of in three ways, explained Sciubba: as “an indicator of challenge and opportunity; a multiplier of conflict and progress; and a resource for power and prosperity.”
A country’s age structure can pose a challenge, said Sciubba, because countries with a large percentage of their population under the age of 30 “are about two and a half times more likely to experience civil conflict than states with more mature age structures.” Tunisia’s recent revolution, she said, could be understood as a “story about demography.”
The 26-year-old fruit vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire on December 17 after being hassled by police, was part of one of the largest age cohorts in Tunisia, those aged 25-29. There are some 64 million young men across the Middle East-North Africa region between the ages of 15 and 30, according to UN estimates. “If his death was the spark” for the unrest in the region, Sciubba said, “it’s the underlying demographic trends that were the fodder.”
Yet, Sciubba sees opportunity within this challenge. Citing the work of Richard Cincotta, she said that “states have half a chance – literally 50 percent – of becoming a democracy once their proportion of youth declines to less than 40 percent.” Tunisia has the best chance in the region of becoming a free democracy based on its demography, followed by Libya, where youth aged 15-29 are 43 percent of the adult population.
At the other end of the age structure, some of the world’s most powerful countries, such as Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, and China, are rapidly aging. This aging will “somewhat decrease the ability of these states to project political, economic, and military power” due to a shortage of labor and a smaller pool of funding, said Sciubba.
Countries with transitional age structures, such as India, Brazil, and South Africa, face different security challenges. With a majority of their populations between 15 and 60 years old, there are more people contributing to the economy than are taking away, which could bolster these countries economically and politically (the “demographic dividend”). Global institutions will have to reform and include these countries, she advised, “or else become irrelevant.”
But the defining trend of the 21st century, said Sciubba, is urbanization. While great sources of economic growth, cities are also quite vulnerable to natural disasters and terrorism because of their concentrations of people, wealth, infrastructure, and bureaucracy.
In looking to the future, Sciubba called for continued support for family planning initiatives. “At least 90 percent of future world population growth will take place in less developed countries,” which are least equipped to handle the demands of that growth, she said. In addition, Sciubba recommended that the United States seek out partnerships with countries that have transitional age structures, particularly India, which could be a stabilizing force in a tumultuous region. She also called on the United States to partner with states in the Western Hemisphere and remain open to migration.
Defense and Demography
“Understanding population is critical to our success in being able to prevent conflict, and also managing conflict and crises once we’re involved,” said Hicks, describing the Department of Defense’s (DOD) interest in demography. However, the DOD does not “treat demographics as destiny,” she said, but instead as “one of several key trends, the complex interplay of which may spark or exacerbate future conflicts.”
Recent world events, such as those in the Middle East and North Africa, “have demonstrated how critical our understanding of population is for security practitioners,” said Hicks. Similarly, the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan dramatically illustrate the vulnerability of large urban areas. Echoing Sciubba’s comments on population aging, she cited “incredible divestments in defense” in Europe, which, she said, “puts us, as a key partner in NATO, at a thinking stage.”
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy is “deeply interested” in demographic issues, said Hicks. She identified other demographic areas of great interest for her office: the youth bulge in Pakistan, urbanization in Afghanistan, the role of highly educated women in Saudi Arabia, the Chinese diaspora in the Americas, Russia’s shrinking population, and various trends in China, including aging, gender imbalance, urbanization, and migration.
Image credit: “Iraq,” courtesy of flickr user The U.S. Army.
Sources: ECSP Report 12, Financial Times, The New York Times, Population Reference Bureau, UN Population Division. -
Governing the Far North: Assessing Cooperation Between Arctic and Non-Arctic Nations
›November 12, 2010 // By Ken CristDespite fears of an unregulated race for Arctic territory and resources, there is currently considerable international cooperation occurring to address key issues in the Far North, said Betsy Baker of the Vermont Law School at an event hosted by the Canada Institute in collaboration with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Kennan Institute, and the Environmental Change and Security Program. The program provided a timely forum to discuss efforts by Arctic and non-Arctic nations to cooperate on key environmental, security, and economic issues, and foster discussion on pressing Arctic governance questions. The event’s first panel was moderated by Don Newman, former senior parliamentary editor, CBC News.
Assessing Cooperation Among Arctic Nations
The United States, said Baker, is currently engaged in international cooperation in a number of areas including, shipping, emergency response and rescue, science, seabed mapping, and joint military exercises. The majority of U.S. Arctic initiatives are conducted via the Arctic Council, an institution that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton favors strengthening. Baker maintained that the most effective form of Arctic governance would be a “bottom up” approach. Governing structures closest to the end users, she explained, are the most effective means of ensuring economic development and environmental security.
Baker noted that the lack of infrastructure and search and rescue capabilities represent the most pressing security concerns in the Arctic. Until this occurs, the international community will not be able to adequately respond to a potential oil spill or grounded vessel in the region. While some analysts have expressed concern over the militarization of the Arctic, Baker and other panelists downplayed the possibility of military conflict in the Far North as a significant concern. She suggested that science-based diplomacy would be the best means to peacefully resolve disputes in the region.
Danila Bochkarev of the EastWest Institute in Brussels said that the development of sea routes (particularly the Northern Sea Route), border protection, and infrastructure development are among Russia’s top Arctic priorities. Bochkarev noted that the Arctic region has increased in economic importance to Russia and currently represents 11 percent of its GDP and 80 percent of the country’s discovered industrial gas. Aside from economic opportunities, melting Arctic ice has also allowed increased access to Russian territory, which is also viewed as a security concern by Russian officials. Other looming Russian concerns, noted Bochkarev, include the increasing internationalization of Arctic governance, competing claims for the Arctic continental shelf, and challenges to Russia’s sovereignty claim over the Northern Sea Route. He maintained that Russia has committed to following the principles of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to peacefully resolve any territorial disputes.
Joël Plouffe of the Université du Québec à Montreal noted that Canada’s recently published “Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy” highlights the Harper government’s desire to bolster economic development, protect the environment, strengthen its sovereignty claim, and improve governance in the Far North. Plouffe said that the Arctic policy document also shows Canada’s commitment to foster bilateral relationships among Arctic nations, particularly the United States. He noted that Canada has always promoted international cooperation in the Arctic and was one of the founding members of the Arctic Council. Canada’s Arctic policy, said Plouffe, also serves to fill a security gap in the Far North, an area of particular concern to the United States.
While Canada has demonstrated a willingness to engage coastal Arctic states on key environmental, security, and economic issues in the Far North, the Canadian government’s willingness to work with non-Arctic states is less clear, said Plouffe. Canada, he remarked, has yet to decide whether it would like to create an exclusive neighborhood of Arctic states to resolve governance issues, or if it is willing to include non-Arctic nations in international meetings and Arctic forums.
The Perspective of Non-Arctic Nations
“[W]e cannot be indifferent to a region whose melting ice sheet, volumes of water, and temperatures have a direct impact on Germany and Europe,” said Franz Thönnes, SPD Member of the German Bundestag. He explained that Germany and the European Union’s interest in the Arctic stem in part from the importance the EU places on the principles of stability and sustainability. EU interests in the Arctic also extend to the economic realm. Of particular interest, said Thönnes, are untapped Arctic oil and gas reserves and potential new shipping routes. He noted that the shipping route from Hamburg to Shanghai would be cut from 25,200 km to 17,000 km should the Northwest Passage become accessible. Given that Germany operates the world’s largest container fleet, access to such routes would be of major importance to Germany and other European maritime countries.
Ted McDorman of the University of Victoria stated that from an international law perspective, the Arctic Ocean is legally no different than any other ocean. Like other oceans, noted McDorman, there are significant gaps in governance that will require international cooperation to address. These include setting standards for shipping vessels passing through Arctic water and waterways, collaboration on marine science, and how to manage the Arctic marine ecosystem sustainably. According to McDorman, while some aspects of Arctic oil and gas development, such as drilling, will fall under domestic jurisdictions, international standards will still need to be negotiated to address potential oil spills or other environmental repercussions that may affect other countries. McDorman questioned whether an international treaty modeled after the Antarctic treaty would make sense for the Arctic region and he echoed comments by others that the idea is not supported by key Arctic players and is unlikely to move forward.
The Scandanavian countries vary in their level of Arctic engagement, said Timo Koivurova of Finland’s University of Lapland. Finland is currently developing a new Arctic strategy, and Iceland remains adamantly opposed to an exclusive Arctic Five governance structure while supporting active EU involvement in Arctic affairs. On the other hand, Sweden remains relatively inactive on the Arctic policy front. Koivurova noted that there are a growing number of non-Arctic nations – including China, South Korea, and Japan – that are seeking to become a part of the Arctic Council.
Koivurova closed by asking whether the Arctic Council could be reformed in a manner that allowed Arctic nations to retain their status while allowing greater representation for non-Arctic nations. Such reform, said Koivurova, may be necessary given the increasing desire and number of countries vying for a voice on Arctic governance.
Ken Crist is program associate with the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Photo Credit: “Arctic Sunrise,” courtesy of flickr user drurydrama (Len Radin).
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