I was disappointed but not surprised to receive a recent e-mail from Wilson Center Senior Scholar Murray Feshbach, warning me off visiting St. Petersburg. A demographer who closely tracks environmental and health conditions in the former Soviet Union, Feshbach was instrumental in pulling back the curtain on the Soviet Union’s catastrophic environmental legacy in his co-authored 1993 volume Ecocide in the USSR. Murray’s message contained further evidence of Russian environmental decline. In this case, institutional failings are throwing Russia open for the business of accepting the world’s nuclear waste. Russian civilian and military radioactive waste is now being supplemented by waste from the Netherlands and Germany—and soon, Pakistan, India, and China.

The beginning of a September 26 St. Petersburg Times article gives us a glimpse of this selective Russian embrace of free trade:

Up to 10,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride are expected to travel through St. Petersburg in the next six months, according to the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Bellona….According to official sources, cargos containing depleted uranium hexafluoride arrive in the city on average ten times a month…radioactivity levels near the trains have significantly exceeded the norm on several occasions over the past year.

Environmental and health issues in Russia have not always looked so dire. In the early 1990s, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, two exciting developments came out of northwest Russia from two unlikely sources: the military and civil society. In one of the most militarized regions of the world, the Russian military cooperated with the Norwegian military and eventually the U.S. military on joint assessments of threats posed by nuclear waste. The 1994 trilateral Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation agreement provided a mechanism for addressing radioactive waste and, more broadly, for finding a way for militaries to talk during the Cold War thaw in an example of what is now called environmental peacemaking or environmental peacebuilding.

Health concerns connected to nuclear waste also formed the basis of a blossoming civil society movement in early-1990s Russia. Both Russian and international NGOs were increasingly able to gather data and bring to light nuclear waste’s myriad threats to people and ecosystems. The Norwegian Bellona Foundation and its Russian affiliates were particularly effective in revealing the scope of the problems and prodding governments to take more aggressive action to respond.

But even by the mid-1990s, the tide was beginning to turn back to a secretive and securitized approach to environmental data. The celebrated treason case of former Russian submarine captain Aleksandr Nikitin was merely the most visible example of the recriminalization of sharing environmental data. Nikitin’s “crime” was co-authoring the 1996 Bellona Foundation report The Russian Northern Fleet: Sources of Radioactive Contamination. Following a year of imprisonment and the achievement of Amnesty International prisoner status, Nikitin was released, but his celebrated case was succeeded by the Russian government’s broad-stroke efforts to dial back environmental openness and the rights that came with it. We may be seeing the effects of this return to environmental secrecy in the current row over nuclear waste transportation through St. Petersburg.

Photo courtesy of Woodrow Wilson Center.

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In impoverished Chongzuo, in southern China, biologist Pan Wenshi has partnered with the local community to save the white-headed langur, a highly endangered monkey, by initiating sustainable development projects that lessen their dependence on the forest—and in turn, the pressures on the langur’s habitat.

In the latest issue of Forced Migration Review, 38 articles grapple with how climate change may affect the movement of people—and how communities can best adapt to a changing climate.

“Poverty and habitat loss go hand in hand in Madagascar and in much of the developing world, and only win-win solutions will work for conservation,” says an article in Time magazine about an innovative conservation and livelihoods project in Madagascar.

Two articles (“Economies of Scales”; “A Rising Tide”) in the Economist argue that privatizing fisheries through what are known as individual transferable quotas (ITQs) could help save the world’s dwindling fish stocks. ECSP’s fisheries series, “Fishing for a Secure Future,” highlights a variety of innovative ideas for fisheries governance and reform.

Conservation and Use of Wildlife-Based Resources: The Bushmeat Crisis, a new report from the Center for International Forestry Research, recommends ways to preserve the biodiversity of species eaten as bushmeat while also sustaining local people’s livelihoods.

Speaking at a Clinton Global Initiative plenary session (webcast; podcast) this morning, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) laid out their proposals for addressing the interconnected problems of global poverty, climate change, and disease. Excerpts from each senator’s speech are below.

Human beings have harnessed culture and technology to become the most dominant animals on Earth, said Paul Ehrlich at a September 18, 2008, launch of his new Island Press book, The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment, but “we’re really backward ethically—in terms of how we treat each other and…the environment. And this leads to a lot of problems, not the least of which is we’re destroying our life-support system.”

Drought, continuing violence, returning refugees, and the spike in global food prices are combining to produce a serious threat to Afghan food security, reports the New York Times. The World Food Program has expanded its operations in Afghanistan to cover a total of nearly 9 million people through the end of next year’s harvest, sending out an emergency appeal to donors to cover the costs.

The World Bank cancelled a deal with Chad to help finance a $4.2 billion, 665 mile-long oil pipeline, citing evidence that Idriss Déby’s government had not used oil profits to alleviate poverty, as had been stipulated in the agreement.

“Emergency aid to Africa continues to be made available too late, is too short-term and targeted too heavily on saving lives rather than protecting vulnerable livelihoods….food aid only addresses the symptoms of the emergency—hunger—and fails to address the real reasons for the crisis, which include a range of social, political and economic factors such as access to land and basic services, social marginalisation, climate change and poor governance,” argues a new report from CARE.

A report from swisspeace examines the role of the United Nations in linking the environment and conflict prevention.

According to Michael Shank of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, the conflict between Georgia and Russia last month “was chiefly, if not solely, spurred by the desire for mastery over natural resources.”

The World Resources Institute has released a number of new publications on the structure and implications of natural resource decentralization, including Protected Areas and Property Rights: Democratizing Eminent Domain in East Africa and Voice and Choice: Opening the Door to Environmental Democracy.

Niger Delta militants destroyed Royal Dutch Shell’s Orubiri flow station on Tuesday and blew up a major oil pipeline near Rumuekpe on Wednesday, according to statements from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the main insurgent group. On Monday, militants attacked other Shell oil facilities, killing a guard and forcing nearly 100 workers to evacuate. Clashes between the militants—who demand a larger share of the oil revenue and greater political autonomy for Niger Delta residents—and the Nigerian army have reduced the country’s crude oil output by more than 20 percent since 2006. The conflict is “perhaps the most significant, most volatile, and potentially dangerous in that part of the world,” says Wilson Center Africa Program Director Howard Wolpe, who is part of a working group formed to advise policymakers on the issue.

On Wednesday, MEND announced it was broadening the scope of its land attacks beyond Rivers state, the heart of the Niger Delta, and would also seek to target offshore oil rigs. On September 14, MEND declared an all-out war on the Nigerian government for the first time—only three days after its declaration of a cease-fire. The cease-fire came in response to the Nigerian government’s announcement of the creation of a new ministry to accelerate infrastructure development, job creation, and environmental cleanup in the impoverished region.

Perhaps the declaration of both cease-fire and war within the space of three days is not so surprising, given the disagreement among Niger Delta leaders over the new ministry. In an online statement, MEND said,

The people of the region should receive this latest dish with apprehension and not allow the over five decades of starvation to rule our emotions as this is not the first time such ‘palatable’ offers have been served to the region from the late 50’s to date. Creating a ‘Ministry’ is not the coming of the much awaited messiah. Nigeria has in existence, ministries over 40 years old which have not positively impacted on the people. It will be yet another avenue for corruption and political favoritism.

Yet People’s Democratic Party Chief Okotie-Eboh had a different take: “It is a very good measure and it shows the sincerity of President Yar’Adua to resolving the Niger Delta crisis. We should give him a chance. This ministry will get allocations like other ministries to tackle the problems of the Niger Delta.”

Although views on the new ministry vary widely, all agree that the Niger Delta faces several grave security, economic, and environmental threats. For instance, an International Crisis Group report recently concluded that one “major issue that has to be dealt with in the context of reconciliation [between the Ogoni people and Shell] is environmental clean-up. No significant study has been conducted to determine reliably the precise impact of oil industry-induced environmental degradation on human livelihoods in the area, but there are indications of severe damage.”

Yet the Delta must also contend with the longer-term implications of its demographic challenge. Forty-five percent of Nigeria’s population is younger than 15, which amounts to a serious youth bulge. The government’s chronic inability to provide these young people with education, health care, and jobs is likely contributing to instability in the Delta.

Photo: MEND fighters and hostages. Courtesy of Dulue Mbachu and ISN Security Watch.

In the new video “Water Wars or Water Woes? Water Management as Conflict Management,” Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) Director Geoff Dabelko explains that although newspapers and politicians constantly warn of impending “water wars,” water rarely leads to interstate violence. By focusing on “water wars” – which evidence shows are extremely rare – we “are missing a lot of what is important around conflict management around water,” argues Dabelko.