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Lakis Polycarpou, Columbia Earth Institute
The Year of Drought and Flood
›August 1, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Lakis Polycarpou, appeared on the Columbia Earth Institute’s State of the Planet blog.
On the horn of Africa, ten million people are now at risk as the region suffers the worst drought in half a century. In China, the Yangtze – the world’s third largest river – is drying up, parching farmers and threatening 40 percent of the nation’s hydropower capacity. In the U.S. drought now spreads across 14 states creating conditions that could rival the dust bowl; in Texas, the cows are so thirsty now that when they finally get water, they drink themselves to death.
And yet this apocalyptic dryness comes even as torrential springtime flooding across much of the United States flows into summer; even as half a million people are evacuated as water rises in the same drought-ridden parts of China.
It seems that this year the world is experiencing a crisis of both too little water and too much. And while these crises often occur simultaneously in different regions, they also happen in the same places as short, fierce bursts of rain punctuate long dry spells.
The Climate Connection
Most climate scientists agree that one of the likely effects of climate will be an acceleration of the global water cycle, resulting in faster evaporation and more precipitation overall. Last year, the Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences published a study which suggested that such changes may already be underway: According to the paper, annual fresh water flowing from rivers into oceans had increased by 18 percent from 1994 to 2006. It’s not hard to see how increases in precipitation could lead to greater flood risk.
At the same time, many studies make the case that much of the world will be dramatically drier in a climate-altered future, including the Mediterranean basin, much of Southwest and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the western two-thirds of the United States among other places.
Continue reading on State of the Planet.
Sources: Associated Press, The New York Times, Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences, Reuters, Science Magazine, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Photo Credit: “Drought in SW China,” courtesy of flickr user Bert van Dijk. -
Top 10 Posts for July 2011
›July was a great month for NSB: we launched the blog anew with a new design and better functionality, with the aim of making content better organized, easier to find, and just plain nicer looking. We also continued to see some great traffic on a number of posts, including Richard Cincotta’s dive into Tunisia’s demographics and the Mr. Y “National Strategic Narrative” launch at the Wilson Center.
Newcomers to the top 10 (according to unique pageviews) were posts on the Nature article detailing rare earth finds in the Pacific, the role of water in “land grabs,” profiles on the climate-vulnerability of the Philippines and an ecological tourism outfit in Cambodia, and Geoff’s look at the UN Security Council’s debate about the security threat of climate change.
1. Tunisia’s Shot at Democracy: What Demographics and Recent History Tell Us
2. In Search of a New Security Narrative: The National Conversation at the Wilson Center
3. Rare Earths No More? Mineral Discoveries a Potential Game-Changer for East Asia
4. India’s Maoists: South Asia’s “Other” Insurgency
5. In the Rush for Land, Is it All About the Water?
6. Beat on the Ground: Ecological Tourism and Development in Chi Phat, Cambodia
7. Consumption and Global Growth: How Much Does Population Contribute to Carbon Emissions?
8. Life on the Edge: Climate Change and Reproductive Health in the Philippines
9. World Population Day 2011: The Year of Seven Billion
10. Eye on Environmental Security: UN Security Council Debates Climate Change -
Cynthia Brady, USAID
The Specter of “Climate Wars”
›July 29, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Cynthia Brady, appeared in the June/July 2011 edition of USAID’s Frontlines.
In 2007, many in the advocacy community rushed to categorize the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan as a “climate war” in the wake of a compelling United Nations report that emphasized the ways climate change and environmental degradation can drive conflict.
In 2009, international media focused significant attention on an academic study that analyzed historical linkages between civil war and temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa and suggested there would be a 54-percent increase in armed conflicts by 2030. [Video Below]
In both cases, subsequent research and analyses conducted by prominent scholars countered those original claims of such direct climate and conflict connections, at least based on existing evidence. Those studies are two examples of the recent spate of analyses on the subject and serve as cautionary tales against alarmism and overly simplistic assumptions about specific connections between climate change and stability.
The reality is far more complicated.
The science and practice of analyzing the interaction of climate change risk and conflict risk is new and still evolving. As a result, there is little certainty over exactly how climatic change will manifest in specific locations and what the consequences will be for economic development, political stability, and peace and security.
Around the world, climate change likely will create both risks and opportunities, making it critical that development and relief organizations like USAID consider climate change not as a monolithic threat but rather as an important influence within a complex web of environmental and social factors.
Responding to climate change effectively means taking action to reduce the threats. It also means harnessing opportunities by helping people and institutions to effectively cope with and adapt to change – environmental or otherwise. Climate-focused interventions, if conducted strategically and with sensitivity to local context, can produce outcomes for conflict prevention and sustainable development as well.
For example, recent USAID-funded research in the conflict-prone Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda found that engaging local communities in the design and implementation of climate change adaptation activities – for example, promoting shared grazing areas and creating small-scale irrigation systems – holds considerable potential to reduce conflict by building social cohesion and addressing feelings of marginalization and disempowerment among local community members.
Since 2008, USAID has invested in research to better understand how specific climate factors contribute to the risk of conflict and affect the resilience of social structures and institutions. The goal is to build a deeper understanding that will enable the agency and its partners to respond most effectively to climate-related stress, reduce the risk of violent outcomes, and maximize the potential for U.S. foreign assistance to prevent conflict and promote stability.
This knowledge also will help USAID make wise investments as part of meeting U.S. Government commitments under the Global Climate Change Initiative as described in President Barack Obama’s September 2010 Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development.
Climate Change and Conflict Prevention
The research thus far points to climate change as an exacerbating factor in situations where political, economic, and social stresses already exist. The risk of conflict is greatest where there is poor governance and low institutional capacity.
The agency, through its Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM), has identified two basic scenarios under which climate change could combine with other variables and potentially lead to conflict.
First, climate change could intensify existing environmental or resource problems. For example, a series of droughts could reduce the available local water supply, aggravating competition between farmers and pastoralists in already arid regions. Second, climate change could create new environmental or resource problems that contribute to instability. Changing rainfall patterns, for instance, could damage agricultural production in formerly fertile areas, decimating local livelihoods and causing food insecurity.
There is a third area of potential risk for USAID and other donors as well: namely, that climate-related financing, policies, and programs which have not adequately considered local conflict dynamics and context could produce serious unintended negative consequences.
Climate change-related interventions such as incentive payments to stop deforestation – particularly in fragile states and conflict-affected areas – must recognize that both the money and the power to allocate benefits may inadvertently reinforce the social status quo, shift local power balances, or expose governance failures.
In her field work in Nepal, Janani Vivekananda, a researcher with USAID partner International Alert, recently illustrated how certain types of assistance might inadvertently do harm. She explained how a now-defunct village water tap installed in an effort to mitigate the effects of climate variability, did not appropriately consider the local social, political, and conflict context or even basic environmental parameters. In the end, it contributed to local grievance.
The community had requested the tap to be installed during a period of water stress and three consecutive years of drought. The Government of Nepal sponsored the project just before the elections.
Vivekananda explained: “These people are hand-to-mouth farmers. They didn’t know and they wouldn’t know that ground water levels were falling. They wouldn’t know the negative impacts of uncontrolled surface water extraction and so they chased about this tap, and within three months it ran dry. That was the only cash that was injected into the community for development purposes, and it had no impact whatsoever apart from being a stark reminder that the government itself isn’t doing what it ought to.”
This story highlights the reality that local context will define the outcome of peace or conflict and, thus, as CMM’s discussion paper “Climate Change, Adaptation, and Conflict: A Preliminary Review of the Issues” noted, there remains a pressing need for a more robust, fine-grained understanding of the interaction between climate change and the political, social, and economic realities of conflict-prone areas.
To help fill this information gap, USAID is supporting field-based climate change and conflict research in Peru, Uganda, Ethiopia, and the Niger River Basin in West Africa. At the global level, the agency is improving its ability to integrate climate change considerations into conflict early warning models. It is also establishing academic and practitioner partnerships that explore a wide range of environment and security issues.
Today, close to 60 percent of the State Department’s and USAID’s foreign assistance goes to 50 countries that are in the midst of, recovering from, or trying to prevent conflict or state failure. A significant amount of that assistance is slated for Global Climate Change mitigation and adaptation programming. Yet, as CMM’s conflict early warning specialist, Kirby Reiling, observed, “much of that money could be a lost investment if those countries fall into armed conflict.”
With conflict-sensitive development assistance and with smart climate change policies and programs, vulnerable countries will have enhanced opportunities to build stronger societies and more resilient institutions for sustainable development, peace, and security.
Cynthia Brady is a senior conflict advisor in USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation.
Photo Credit: Afghan farmers plow a field guarded by U.S. Marines, courtesy of flickr user isafmedia. -
Watch: Alecia Fields on Population, Health, and Environment Advocacy with the Sierra Club
›July 29, 2011 // By Roza Essaw“The issues of population, health, and environment are pretty foreign to a lot of people,” said Alecia Fields, a recent University of Kentucky graduate who participated in a Sierra Club Global Population and Environment Study Tour of Ethiopia last summer as a student fellow.
“I learned about the program, how to be an effective advocate, and I took those tools back to my university on campus and shared it with young people,” said Fields in this interview with ECSP.
Fields came from a women’s health background but found the connections between population, health, and environment (PHE) compelling enough that she wanted to become an advocate on campus. “At first, people don’t think they have a connection to the issue, but once you start talking with people, they really start to see how they are central to a larger issue,” said Fields.
“It is challenging in the United States to see some of the population and environmental issues…but when you go to a developing country, you see the effects right in front of you,” explained Fields. The Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Study Tours bring a select group of student advocates abroad to see PHE projects in the field with the aim of creating pro-active messengers of the importance of integrated development in the United States.
Fields visited various sites and organizations in Ethiopia including the Gauraghe People’s Self-help Development Organization (GPSDO), located in the southwest region. “People in Ethiopia have had tremendous success in connecting population, health, and environment within communities and starting integrated programs that work towards development,” said Fields.
Going to Ethiopia provided Fields with concrete examples of the importance of PHE and allowed her to share her experience with young people through meaningful illustrations and moving stories.
“A lot of it deals with figuring out where people are in their attachment to the subject…and try to figure out how that program can connect to them,” she said. -
Emily Puckart, MHTF Blog
Maternal Health in Kenya From a Human Rights Perspective
›The original version of this article, by Emily Puckart, appeared on the Maternal Health Task Force blog. This is the second post about MHTF and the Woodrow Wilson Center’s trip to Nairobi, Kenya to host a cross-Atlantic web-cast meeting on “Maternal Health Challenges in Kenya: What New Research Shows.” The first is available here along with video of the conference.
“Do you want to be a pregnant woman or a prisoner in Kenya?” asked Dr. Margret Meme, one of speakers in Nairobi at the recent policy dialogue “Maternal Health Challenges in Kenya: What New Research Shows.” She explained that the last prisoner killed in Kenya through capital punishment was over 20 years ago, yet pregnant women continue to die of treatable causes not just in Kenya, but globally.
As Dr. Meme addressed maternal health through the lens of a human rights perspective she highlighted a number of recommendations in order to more adequately address maternal health challenges in Kenya. She was concerned that pregnancy was treated more like a medical disease with purely medical solutions. Dr. Meme urged maternal health advocates to also focus on the cultural, social, gender, and economic factors that influence maternal health and asked that these factors be addressed along with medical solutions in order to truly address maternal health challenges.
Naturally, addressing maternal health challenges can come with a monetary price. However, instead of viewing that cost as a cost that must come after more immediate government priorities such as infrastructure and defense, Dr. Meme argued that cost should be borne as the government would bear any other cost for public goods. As pregnancy builds a nation, Dr. Meme argued that maternal health is a public good, in the same vein as defense. Therefore maternal health should have a budget allocation that is just as important as the budget line for defense.
Of course, pushing for more public funding of maternal health can lead to other complications. If advocates successfully encourage politicians to increase funding for maternal health programs, the work of maternal health advocates cannot simply end there. Advocates should hold governments accountable; not just in putting aside funding for maternal health, but also for actually making sure that the money reaches the intended beneficiaries. Therefore budget accountability tracking mechanisms should go hand and hand with pushing for increased public funding to maternal health programs.
Finally, Dr. Meme addressed the need for men to be more involved in maternal health. As she clearly stated; the role of men in maternal health shouldn’t stop at conception. Men focused programs which clarify reproductive and sexual health rights, as well as educate men on issues of maternal mortality and morbidity should encourage men to respect the rights of women to space their pregnancies and deliver their babies safely.
Emily Puckart is a senior program assistant for the Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF).
Photo Credit: Jonathan Odhong, African Population and Health Research Center. -
Second Generation Biofuels and Revitalizing African Agriculture
›In “A New Hope for Africa,” published in last month’s issue of Nature, authors Lee R. Lynd and Jeremy Woods assert that the international development community should “cut with the beneficial edge of bioenergy’s double-edged sword” to enhance food security in Africa. According to Lynd and Woods, Africa’s severe food insecurity is a “legacy of three decades of neglect for agricultural development.” Left out of the Green Revolution in the 1960s, the region was flooded with cheap food imports from developed nations while local agricultural sectors remained underdeveloped. With thoughtful management, bioenergy production on marginal lands unfit for edible crops may yield several food security benefits, such as increased employment, improved agricultural infrastructure, energy democratization, land regeneration, and reduced conflict, write the authors.The technological advancements of second-generation biofuels may ease the zero-sum tension between food production and bioenergy in the future, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe in his article “Beyond Food Versus Fuel,” also appearing last month in Nature. Graham-Rowe notes that current first-generation biofuel technologies, such as corn and sugar cane, contribute to rising food prices, require intensive water and nitrogen inputs, and divert land from food production by way of profitability and physical space. There is some division between second-generation biofuel proponents: some advocate utilizing inedible parts of plants already produced, while others consider fast-growing, dedicated energy crops (possibly grown on polluted soil otherwise unfit for human use) a more viable solution – either has the potential to reduce demand for arable land, says Graham-Rowe. “Advanced generations of biofuels are on their way,” he writes, it is just a matter of time before their kinks are worked out “through technology, careful land management, and considered use of resources.” -
Emily Puckart, MHTF Blog
Maternal Health Challenges in Kenya: An Overview of the Meetings
›The original version of this article, by Emily Puckart, appeared on the Maternal Health Task Force blog.
I attended the two day Nairobi meeting on “Maternal Health Challenges in Kenya: What New Research Evidence Shows” organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center and the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). [Video Below]
First, here in Nairobi, participants heard three presentations highlighting challenges in maternal health in Kenya. The first presentation by Lawrence Ikamari focused on the unique challenges faced by women in rural Kenya. Presently Kenya is still primarily a rural country where childbearing starts early and women have high fertility rates. A majority of rural births take place outside of health institutions, and overall rural women have less access to skilled birth attendants, medications, and medical facilities that can help save their lives and the lives of their babies in case of emergency.
Catherine Kyobutungi highlighted the challenges of urban Kenyan women, many of whom deliver at home. When APHRC conducted research in this area, nearly 68 percent of surveyed women said it was not necessary to go to health facility. Poor road infrastructure and insecurity often prevented women from delivering in a facility. Women who went into labor at night often felt it is unsafe to leave their homes for a facility and risked their lives giving birth at home away from the support of skilled medical personnel and health facilities. As the urban population increases in the coming years, governments will need to expend more attention on the unique challenges women face in urban settings.
Finally, Margaret Meme explored a human rights based approach to maternal health and called on policymakers, advocates, and donors to respect women’s right to live through pregnancies. Further, she urged increased attention on the role of men in maternal health by increasing the education and awareness of men in the area of sexual and reproductive health as well as maternal health.
After these initial presentations, participants broke out into lively breakout groups to discuss these maternal health challenges in Kenya in detail. They reconvened in the afternoon in Nairobi to conduct a live video conference with a morning Washington, DC audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center. It was exciting to be involved in this format, watching as participants in Washington were able to ask questions live of the men and women involved in maternal health advocacy, research and programming directly on the ground in Kenya. It was clear the excitement existed on both sides of the Atlantic as participants in Nairobi were able to directly project their concerns and hopes for the future of maternal health in Kenya across the ocean through the use of video conferencing technology.
There was a lot of excitement and energy in the room in Nairobi, and I think I sensed the same excitement through the television screen in DC. I hope that this type of simultaneous dialogue, across many time zones, directly linking maternal health advocates around the globe, is an example of what will become commonplace in the future of the maternal health field.
Emily Puckart is a senior program assistant at the Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF).
Photo Credit: MHTF. -
Edward Carr, Open the Echo Chamber
Drought Does Not Equal Famine
›July 27, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Edward Carr, appeared on Open the Echo Chamber.
After reading a lot of news and blog posts on the situation in the Horn of Africa, I feel the need to make something clear: The drought in the Horn of Africa is not the cause of the famine we are seeing take shape in southern Somalia. We are being pounded by a narrative of this famine that more or less points to the failure of seasonal rains as its cause…which I see as a horrible abdication of responsibility for the human causes of this tragedy.
First, I recommend that anyone interested in this situation – or indeed in food security and famine more generally, to read Mike Davis’ book Late Victorian Holocausts. It is a very readable account of massive famines in the Victorian era that lays out the necessary intersection of weather, markets, and politics to create tragedy – and also makes clear the point that rainfall alone is poorly correlated to famine. For those who want a deeper dive, have a look at the lit review (pages 15-18) of my article “Postmodern Conceptualizations, Modernist Applications: Rethinking the Role of Society in Food Security” to get a sense of where we are in contemporary thinking on food security. The long and short of it is that food insecurity is rarely about absolute supplies of food – mostly it is about access and entitlements to existing food supplies. The Horn of Africa situation does actually invoke outright scarcity, but that scarcity can be traced not just to weather – it is also about access to local and regional markets (weak at best) and politics/the state (Somalia lacks a sovereign state, and the patchy, ad hoc governance provided by Al Shabaab does little to ensure either access or entitlement to food and livelihoods for the population).
For those who doubt this, look at the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) maps I put in previous posts here and here (Editor: also above). Famine stops at the Somali border. I assure you this is not a political manipulation of the data – it is the data we have. Basically, the people without a functional state and collapsing markets are being hit much harder than their counterparts in Ethiopia and Kenya, even though everyone is affected by the same bad rains, and the livelihoods of those in Somalia are not all that different than those across the borders in Ethiopia and Kenya. Rainfall is not the controlling variable for this differential outcome, because rainfall is not really variable across these borders where Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia meet.
Continue reading on Open the Echo Chamber.
Image Credit: FEWS NET and Edward Carr.
A Publication of the Stimson Center.
