-
Dispatches From the World Conservation Congress: John Pielemeier
›October 7, 2008 // By John Pielemeier
This has been quite an interesting first day at the World Conservation Congress Forum in Barcelona. Since I’m not a conservation expert (I’m here to participate on a panel on population, health, and environment programs), I’m enjoying the opportunity to view the conference a bit like an anthropologist. Here are a few observations from Day One:
The conference has an interesting structure. In an effort to provide some organization for such a large conference (8,000 participants and 800 panels/events) there are three main “streams,” including “Healthy Environments, Healthy People”—the reason our panel was accepted—along with “A New Climate for Change” and “Safeguarding the Diversity of Life.” The participants are also encouraged to join one of 12 “journeys” (e.g., “Forests Journey,” “Species Journey”) to help bring them together for smaller meetings and social events. I found that I couldn’t get into the Forests Happy Hour this evening because I hadn’t signed up for the “Journey.” Some incentives do matter—if only I had known!
Despite the “healthy” headlines, very few panels discuss the relationships between human or animal health and the environment, and there are no health-related “journeys.” The one bright spot regarding interdisciplinary linkages thus far was an announcement by the Australian national parks director that he would host a major “Healthy Parks, Healthy People” meeting in 2010 where 50 percent of the attendees would be health professionals.
Some sessions are held in the Knowledge Café, a large room where folks join one of 12 round conversation tables based on special topics. The United Nations has funded a special program, called “Poble,” which has brought a significant number of indigenous people, in tribal headgear and colorful traditional dress, to the conference. The Poble meetings are in a large room with a low stage and no chairs; attendees sit or lie on the floor while listening to the presentations of their colleagues. The room has been full every time I have peered in.
Attendance seems to vary considerably among sessions. A Knowledge Café roundtable meeting on climate change attracted mid-career pros from the Global Environment Facility, the European Union, the United Nations, and scientific organizations, and the level of the unmoderated discussion was extremely high. Participants were well-informed about the issues facing the international community over the next few months, and were also familiar with the latest ideas regarding how to address climate change. On the other hand, a panel session on accountability in conservation programs and among environmental NGOs attracted only nine attendees who listened to four (good!) speakers. After tomorrow’s sessions, I’ll have an even better sense of which themes are attracting the attention of the conservation professionals here.
John Pielemeier is an international development consultant. During his 22-year career at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), he served as USAID mission director in Brazil, USAID/Washington office director for South Asia, and as a special assistant in the office of the USAID administrator.
Photo courtesy of Heidi Fancher and the Woodrow Wilson Center. -
‘Time’ Honors Friends of the Earth Middle East With “Heroes of the Environment 2008” Award
›October 3, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarThe leaders of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a joint Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian environmental organization that uses environmental advocacy as a peacebuilding tool, were recently recognized as “Heroes of the Environment 2008” by Time magazine. FoEME understands that “the road to sustainability, like the road to peace, is going to be a slow, messy human project of community organizing, education and trust-building,” says Time correspondent Andrew Lee Butters.
FoEME’s projects include Good Water Neighbors, which uses joint water management to strengthen ties between Israeli and Arab communities on opposite sides of the Jordan River; as well as a plan to build a transboundary peace park on an island in the Jordan River that would attract ecotourism. “We share the same environment, particularly the same water resources,” says Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of FoEME. “And if we don’t start working together, we’re not going to have an environment.”
For more information on FoEME’s environmental peacebuilding activities, see “Rehabilitating the Jordan River Valley Through Cross-Border Community Cooperation” (May 8, 2006) and “Good Water Makes Good Neighbors: A Middle East Pilot Project in Conflict Resolution” (January 22, 2003), two events hosted by the Environmental Change and Security Program. -
Weekly Reading
›The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a paper examining climate change’s likely effects on water resources, as well as how these changes in water resources could affect ecosystems, agriculture, human health, and the economy.
In “Warfare Ecology” (abstract), an article published in the September issue of BioScience, Gary Machlis and Thor Hanson argue that a new, holistic approach to the ecological study of warfare is needed, encompassing preparations for war, combat, and post-conflict activities.
Investing in economic development and education—both at home and abroad—is a more efficient way to prevent violence than investing a similar amount in weaponry or defense infrastructure, argue Representative Danny Davis (D-IL) and Michael Shank of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in The Hill.
This year’s Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting featured a panel devoted exclusively to water and sanitation issues.
“UN demographers projected in 2002 that the population of the Philippines in 2008 would reach between 75 and 85 million. But the population has already overshot the high projection and now stands at 89 million, up from 60 million in 1990. And the country’s forests, as well as its people, are paying the price in terms of urban overcrowding and rural deforestration [sic],” writes Henrylito Tacio.
Economist environment correspondent Edward McBride moderates an online debate over whether water should be priced according to its market value. -
In Kashmir, Diplomacy Soothes Friction Over Water Resource Management
›October 3, 2008 // By Will RogersThe conflict over resource-rich Kashmir has sparked renewed tension between India and Pakistan, this time over access to one of Asia’s most indispensable commodities: water. The latest dispute erupted on September 13, 2008, with allegations by Pakistan that India had violated a 2005 World Bank agreement over the operational schedule of the Baglihar Dam, which lies on the Chenab River, just inside Indian-administered Kashmir. That agreement “required that filling [of the dam] should take place between June 21 and Aug 31 with prior consent of Pakistan and subject to a condition that river flows should not drop below 55,000 cusec inside Pakistan at any time,” according to Dawn. India continued to fill the dam well into September, provoking outrage from Pakistan, despite guarantees that water flow into Pakistan would not diminish. Pakistani officials reported that “Pakistan had been losing up to 15,000 cusec of water every day because of India’s action.”
Regional water disputes are no anomaly in Central, East, and South Asia, where population growth and increases in per capita consumption have led to competition over water resources. In recent years, Indiahas invested in hydroelectric projects—such as the Baglihar Dam, projected to generate 450-900 megawatts of electricity—to satisfy a burgeoning middle class hungry for energy. With the dam just up the river from the Pakistani border, Pakistanis have long worried that the dam would severely limit the region’s water and curtail farmers’ ability to irrigate crops. Since construction began in 1999, Pakistani officials have objected to the project, arguing that the more energyIndia attempts to generate from the dam, the less water will reachPakistan.
Last week, Pakistanissued a formal protest to the Permanent Indus Commission, a body formed by the 1960 treaty, over the reduction of Chenab River flows and asked for an emergency meeting with the governing body in order to address the danger posed to Pakistani rice farmers who rely on water flow to irrigate their crops. Since then, prospects for diplomatic resolution have warmed: Pakistani President Asif Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met on the “sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly” last week to discuss the issue. Meanwhile, the Permanent Indus Commission is schedule to meet this month, following an invitation from India to Pakistan’s Indus Water Commissioner to meet to resolve the issue.
Fortunately, water disputes have been one area where Pakistan and India have been able to manage their grievances and find resolution through diplomacy rather than force. By working together on environmental issues—whether water resource management, transboundary forest conservation, or endangered species protection—where cooperation is often possible, even longtime foes can move closer to resolving their larger conflict.
Photo: The Chenab River, flowing here through Himachal Pradesh in the Indus Basin, provides farmers and local populations with the water required to meet their sustainable needs. Courtesy of flickr user Motographer. -
Energizing Investors and Innovators to Think Outside the Grid
›October 2, 2008 // By Will Rogers“The issue of our time is the combination of energy security and climate change,” said former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert at “Thinking Outside the Grid: An Aggressive Approach to Climate and Energy,” a September 23, 2008, forum co-sponsored by Wilson Center On the Hill and the Environmental Change and Security Program. Boehlert noted that the energy security-climate change nexus has received more attention lately, due to record gas prices; successful advertisement campaigns like that of Texas oil magnate-turned-wind farm entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens; and bestselling books like Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America.The Ice Thins and the Plot Thickens: Climate Change Impacts
Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, pointed to the faster-than-expected melting of Arctic ice as an indicator of the severity of the climate crisis. Last year, an ice sheet the size of the
Investing in Technology to Create a Sustainable Future
We may be able cut carbon emissions enough to prevent the Tibetan glaciers and
Brown believes we can create a sustainable energy future by increasing our investments in existing alternative technologies, including wind, solar, and geothermal projects. One of the leading generators of wind energy, Texas currently has more than 4,000 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity, enough to meet the energy needs of` more than 1 million households.
While skeptics claim it would take decades to restructure
Industry and Government: Each Must Play a Role
Melanie Kenderdine, associate director of MIT’s Energy Initiative, noted that energy companies such as BP and Shell are gradually investing more money in cleaner technologies, and that venture capitalists have also put funds into renewable alternatives. Still, Kenderdine emphasized that “the enemies of urgency are many,” so governments must exercise leadership on energy innovation. Ninety percent of the U.S. Department of Energy’s budget “is not for energy, has nothing to do with energy,” decried Kenderdine. “And if we don’t fix that, we’re not going to be able to rapidly develop the technologies and do it in the right way with the right incentives, right sequencing of investments that we need in order to deal with the climate issue—we won’t be able to accomplish it.”
-
How America Gets Its Groove Back: Thomas Friedman Foments a Green Revolution
›October 2, 2008 // By Rachel Weisshaar“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, discussion of his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How it Can Renew America, sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Division of International Security Studies and Environmental Change and Security Program. “We need to get back to an America that’s about the Fourth of July and not 9/11,” maintained Friedman, who believes the United States needs to assume a more active and less defensive posture in the world. “We get our groove back as a country…by taking the lead in solving the world’s biggest problems,” which he said include climate change, rising energy demand, and biodiversity loss.
The book’s title identifies three major trends of this century: Climate change is warming our planet; the rise of a global middle class is flattening the differences between rich and poor; and a rapidly expanding population is crowding the world. According to Friedman, these converging trends are driving “five global mega-trends” that will determine our future stability:- Energy and natural resource supply and demand: While some countries are taking steps to become more energy-efficient, the explosive growth of developing-country cities is outpacing these gains. Friedman asserts that there are not enough energy and natural resources for everyone to consume at Americans’ current rates and that everyone, Americans included, must address energy supply and demand.
- Petrodictatorship: We are “funding both sides of the war on terrorism,” said Friedman: the U.S. military with tax dollars, and terrorist groups (and the states that sponsor them) with gas dollars.
- Climate change: Friedman emphasized that the pace of climate change is exceeding many scientists’ predictions, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that we have little time to act.
- Energy poverty: The lack of a consistent electricity supply not only cripples 1.6 billion people’s ability to obtain high-quality health care and adapt to the effects of climate change, but also prevents them from accessing the myriad educational and economic opportunities provided by the Internet.
- Biodiversity loss: The Earth is losing species 1,000 times faster than normal, claimed Friedman. “We are the first generation of humans that is actually going to have to think like Noah,” said Friedman, to save rapidly disappearing plants and animals.
Friedman thinks these trends are “a series of incredible opportunities masquerading as impossible and insoluble problems” because all five can be reversed by “abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons” and energy efficiency. The country that becomes the leader in new energy technology (ET) will have the most stable economy and garner the most respect on the international stage, said Friedman. If the United States does not take the lead in the ET revolution, others—China, India, Europe—will, but they won’t do it as fast or as well as the United States, he says.
Friedman believes the market is the key to igniting an ET revolution. “This country has never been more alive in terms of innovation,” he says, but our leaders have not capitalized on it. He thinks the government must play an important role—“for markets to produce innovation, they need to be shaped”—but not by launching a “Manhattan Project” for energy. “We are not going to regulate our way out of this problem; we are only going to innovate our way out of this problem.”Friedman criticized the pop culture environmentalism that claims people can save the Earth by changing their daily lives in small, painless ways. “Easy should not be in the lexicon,” he maintained. But even if an ET revolution will be difficult, it is still achievable: “We have exactly enough time, starting now,” said Friedman.
-
Lethal Rockslide in Cairo Slum Reveals Government’s Lack of Preparedness
›September 30, 2008 // By Lauren Herzer RisiEarlier this month, approximately eight boulders weighing 60-70 tons each split from the edges of the Muqattam cliffs and fell onto densely populated Manshiyet Nasr, a slum in eastern Cairo, killing more than 100 people and destroying 30-50 homes. By the next day, security officials outnumbered rescue workers in the area, and locals, outraged by the slow response of the government, were clashing with police. This tragedy and the ensuing conflict between residents and local authorities highlight the need for effective governance and urban planning to alleviate poverty and rapid urbanization and avoid conflict.
Rockslides are not uncommon in Manshiyet Nasr; in 2002, for example, 27 people were killed under similar circumstances in the same area. One local journalist reported that “the reason the rocks keep falling is because there is no sewage system and their wastewater is eating away at the mountain.” This lack of basic sanitation services is a common characteristic of the informal settlements and slums that are growing exponentially worldwide. This year, for the first time, more than half of the global population lives in cities; it is forecast that by 2030, 81 percent of the urban population will reside in the cities of developing countries, which are unplanned, underserved by services like sanitation, and unable to cope with continually growing demand for these services. The rockslide in Manshiyet Nasr is a stark example of what can happen when a city’s infrastructure and government are unprepared to deal with rapid urbanization and increasing poverty, and how these challenges are exacerbated by poor government response. (For more on Cairo’s informal settlements, see the Comparative Urban Studies Project’s Urban Studies in Cairo, Egypt.)
A recent Human Development Report analyzing Egypt’s progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals noted that the poverty rate in Cairo, a city of 16 million people, is expected to almost double between now and 2015. This growth in poverty is attributed to “increasing numbers of residents in vulnerable areas and increasing rates of internal migration.”
It is important to note, however, that migration alone does not account for increasing poverty. In Global Urban Poverty, a publication of the Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Loren Landau argues that “public responses to migration and urbanization—including the absence of a conscious coordinated response—have tended to exacerbate mobility’s negative effects on all of the Millennium Development Goals.”
The Egyptian government’s initial response to the rockslide in Manshiyet Nasr was to hold the residents accountable for living in an illegal settlement in a dangerous area. Yet 70 percent of Cairo residents live in informal communities like Manshiyet Nasr. In addition to a severe housing shortage and lack of urban planning, a history of slow government response to disasters is intensifying accusations of government neglect and incompetence.
Except for an 18-month break in 1980-81, Egyptians have lived under emergency law since 1967. This law prohibits public gatherings, restricts speech, permits searches without warrants, and enables the police to detain citizens without charge or trial. After promising to repeal the law during his 2005 presidential campaign, Hosni Mubarek, who has been in power since 1981, extended the law in 2006 and again in May of this year. While proponents of the law (and of Mubarek) claim that the state of emergency has helped stabilized the country, human rights groups argue that the law violates human rights and sanctions the government’s oppression of political rivals.
Egypt’s history of extreme law and unchecked police powers has stunted the development of a system of governance that responds to the most basic needs of Egyptians. Manshiyet Nasr residents’ angry reaction to the poor government response to the rockslide is evidence of their smoldering desperation. -
Exploring Brazil’s Urucu Natural Gas Fields Sustainably: An Impossible Task?
›September 29, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffWhat does the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) have in common with Brazil’s Urucu natural gas fields? They both epitomize the struggle to balance energy independence and environmental conservation.
Located in the southern Amazon region and discovered in 1978, the Urucu fields are the largest onshore natural gas reserves in Brazil. Exploration began in 1988, but not without controversy. The Amazon rainforest, like ANWR, is a sensitive, biologically unique environment. Plans for exploration of the Urucu fields sparked heated debate over the extent of the environmental damage caused by such exploration—much like the current debate over oil drilling in ANWR.
Conservationists’ arguments revolved around two main issues: preservation of the environment and local communities’ livelihoods. The extraction complex will consist of three pipelines (map): Urucu-Coari (in existence); Urucu-Manaus; and Urucu-Porto Velho. The two new pipelines, which will total 621 miles of additional pipe, will also require the clearing of a 65-foot-wide strip along the entire pipeline. For the pipeline to reach Manaus, it needs to cross the six-mile wide Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon river. The project’s critics argue that even a small oil spill, especially in the stretches of the pipeline in the river, would harm the region’s biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous communities and others who depend on the river.
Petrobrás has sought to assuage activists’ concerns over the pipeline’s impact on local communities by assuring them that the Urucu gas fields will employ at least 3,800 local workers. In addition, Petrobrás is sponsoring community development projects to stimulate alternative economic activities.
Bolivia’s political crisis triggered Brazil’s decision to build the gas extraction pipelines, in spite of environmentalists’ misgivings. The December 2006 “nationalization” of natural gas in Bolivia, which provided Brazil with approximately half of its natural gas supply, made energy security and diversification of energy suppliers priorities for the government, and prompted Petrobrás to jumpstart a natural gas independence project in which Urucu features prominently.
While environmentalists may not have succeeded in stopping the development of the Urucu fields, their efforts have forced Petrobrás to significantly diminish the project’s environmental footprint. In conjuction with local universities and research centers, Petrobrás carried out an impact and risk analysis (Piatam) that led to the implementation of several environmental precautions. For example, the pipeline must be built eight feet under any river it crosses and permanently monitored by a cable embedded within the pipes. In addition, the extraction wells are very small, taking up very little forest area, and a remote control center that tracks any leaks in the pipeline is able to isolate and disable leaking pipes or valves, according to Jeff Hornbeck, an international trade and finance specialist at the Congressional Research Service (via email).
Moreover, all equipment is transported to the site by helicopters in order to avoid building roads, which frequently open up areas to logging and wider-scale development. Petrobrás also plans to use robots to monitor changes in environmental conditions, including the level of oil in the water; and to gather information to help prepare for emergency situations (e.g., flooding or other natural disasters) that threaten to damage the pipelines.
If Petrobrás executes the development of the Urucu fields successfully—with minimal negative consequences for communities and the Amazon—it could serve as an example for other energy projects in sensitive habitats. As growing energy needs increase demand for more exploration, environmentally conscious projects will become even more important.
By Brazil Institute Intern Ana Janaina Nelson.
Video: You can glimpse unspoiled forest outside the window of a plane landing at the Urucu fields, the product of Petrobrás’ efforts to minimize damage to the Amazon.
Subscribe:
This has been quite an interesting first day at the 
The conflict over resource-rich Kashmir has sparked renewed tension between India and Pakistan, this time over access to one of Asia’s most indispensable commodities: water. The latest dispute erupted on September 13, 2008, with allegations by Pakistan that India had violated a 2005 World Bank agreement over the operational schedule of the Baglihar Dam, which lies on the Chenab River, just inside Indian-administered Kashmir. That agreement “required that filling [of the dam] should take place between June 21 and Aug 31 with prior consent of Pakistan and subject to a condition that river flows should not drop below 55,000 
“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, 
