“Some argue that global demographic trends are progressively pushing the world toward greater peace and prosperity. They are wrong. The risks of both chaotic state collapse and neoauthoritarian reaction are rising,” argue Neil Howe and Richard Jackson in “Battle of the (Youth) Bulge,” published in the National Interest.

A recent online discussion with the Population Reference Bureau’s Jason Bremner covered a variety of topics related to environmental change and migration, including climate change migrants, rural-to-rural migration, and disease vectors.

Rising food and fuel prices could trigger turmoil in Guinea-Bissau, says the latest report from the International Monetary Fund. The country already suffers from chronic food insecurity, reports IRIN News.

Four billion people are expected to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics today. But what many people may not know is that in an attempt to highlight Chinese heritage, the medals given to victorious Olympic athletes over the next several weeks will include jade—much of which is mined in terrible conditions in neighboring Burma. Although the Beijing Organizing Committee has publicly stated that the medals and officially licensed products are being made with jade from China’s Qinghai Province, not jade from Burma, Blood Jade: Burmese Gemstones & the Beijing Games, a new report by 8-8-08 for Burma and the All Kachin Students and Youth Union maintains that the “showcasing of jade on the world stage will further escalate the growth in demand.

Despite being internationally and internally reviled, Burma’s ruling military junta has been able to maintain its grip on power by controlling the country’s rich natural resources. Burma exports many types of gems, all of which the junta requires be sold through government auctions, where it takes a cut of the profits. BusinessWeek reported that Burma’s official 2006 jade exports totaled $433.2 million, or 10 percent of the country’s total exports. Official tallies are often unreliable, however, and the black market further obscures the true figures.

“In the mining areas, the companies make their own laws,” says a Burmese citizen quoted in the report. Blood Jade tells of mining companies—sometimes with official military support—beating, torturing, and even killing miners who dig through mine waste for discarded stones or make mistakes on the job. “Jadeite production comes at significant costs to the human rights and environmental security of the people living in Kachin state,” says the report. “Land confiscation and forced relocation are commonplace and improper mining practices lead to frequent landslides, floods, and other environmental damage. Conditions in the mines are deplorable, with frequent accidents and base wages less than US$1 per day.”

In an attempt to keep workers on duty for longer hours and to suppress rebellion, the Burmese government has encouraged drug sales and use. The economic situation is so desperate that many women are forced into the sex trade, which the government also condones. The combination of prostitution and drug use has led to disastrous HIV/AIDS rates. “Today,” Blood Jade reports, “four prefectures in Yunnan Province are regarded as having ‘generalized HIV epidemics.’”

Yet despite the misery they cause, jade and other gems are not even the largest single source of income for Burma’s rulers. According to a 2007 article from Foreign Policy, two other resources rate higher: natural gas and the tropical hardwood teak, which is so valuable that it has “perpetuated violent conflicts among the country’s many fractious ethnic groups.”

Several groups have organized campaigns urging people not to buy jade products, but it is unclear what impact they will have on the trade. Following the junta’s crackdown on anti-government protests by Buddhist monks in November 2007, a representative of Kam Wing Cheong Jewelry in China told BusinessWeek: “We will not stop purchasing stones in Burma because of the political situation. The political chaos did not start with the junta; the country has been plagued by the conflicts with ethnic minorities for years. This is totally out of our control.”

Photo: Man working in a jade factory in China. Courtesy of Flickr user maethlin

Food shortages and high food prices are hot topics of conversation these days, and people are scrambling to uncover the causes and improve the current situation. A recent Financial Times article and multimedia package explore the links between food, water, and land use in Egypt, which has always contended with limited water resources but in recent months has also dealt with the impacts of sharply escalating global grain prices.

The article discusses how Egypt’s crops are grown under two distinct sets of conditions: the reclaimed desert in the West Nile Delta and the fertile Nile River Valley and Delta. In the desert, water is so scarce—and therefore valuable—that farmers are encouraged to conserve as much as possible through modern methods such as drip irrigation, helping the region achieve close to a 75 percent water efficiency rate.

This water-efficient agriculture lies in severe juxtaposition to the practices employed in the water-rich Nile River Valley and Delta. Here, rice is grown using flood irrigation techniques that waste 50 percent of the water. The government is attempting to increase water-use efficiency in order to use this saved water to reclaim more desert land for the production of high-value agricultural goods such as ornamental plants and citrus.

One idea proposed to alleviate water scarcity in countries like Egypt is that of “virtual water.” Proponents of virtual water argue that because water is embedded in products that are shipped around the world—particularly food—if water-scarce regions import these products instead of producing them domestically, they can then use their limited water for productive uses besides agriculture.

The Financial Times multimedia package includes an interview with Tony Allan, a professor at King’s College London and the originator of the concept of virtual water, for which he received the 2008 Stockholm Water Prize. He argues that virtual water would be “economically invisible”—as the cost of water is included in the cost of food, which would presumably be lower when imported from a country with plentiful water—and “politically silent”—as it would spare leaders from having to contend with the political fallout from a water shortage.

Unfortunately, as Allan notes, virtual water’s potentially large benefit to water-scarce regions is largely hypothetical, as U.S. and European agricultural subsidies prevent the prices of commodities, including water, from being set at their true levels. In addition, as the rice stockpiling triggered by the recent food crisis has demonstrated, few countries are likely willing to cease domestic food production entirely and entrust the filling of their kitchen cupboards to the global economy.

With more than one billion people lacking adequate access to freshwater, the world is already experiencing a vast set of challenges. In the not-so-distant future, as the global population continues to grow and as the impacts of climate change are felt, the problem will intensify. In this month’s issue of Scientific American, Harvard professor Peter Rogers unpacks the multiple factors contributing to this scarcity and proposes six priority actions to alleviate some of this stress.

Rogers’ key message is: “If a crisis arises in the coming decades, it will not be for lack of know-how; it will come from a lack of foresight and from an unwillingness to spend the needed money.” He points out that it is the combination of climate change and continued population growth that will have a devastating affect on local water scarcity. However, water scarcity is not only driven by demand outweighing supply, but also by the pollution of our water supply and by the wasting of water by individuals, industry, and our water-supply systems.

To address these issues, Rogers proposes six priority recommendations:

1. Set higher prices for water use. In the United States and other developed countries, water is so cheap that “it seems almost free,” so there is little incentive to conserve or reuse. Increasing the price of water supply would drive conservation. For instance, municipalities would be more likely to fix leaks in water-supply systems and to invest in water reuse.
2. Improve irrigation efficiency. With approximately 70 percent of available freshwater going to agriculture, increasing the efficiency of irrigation systems—fixing leaks, creating low-loss storage capabilities, and more efficiently applying water to crops—would create a volume of water that could go to other uses.
3. Supply “virtual water.” “Virtual water” refers to the amount of water used to produce a product. If arid and semiarid areas imported more food or other water-intensive products, this import of virtual water would allow the limited water that is available to go to other uses, such as drinking water or industry. Implementing this recommendation would require the liberalization of trade in farm products and a reduction in tariffs. Given the highly contested debates about farm subsides in the United States and the EU, this seems a far-off proposition.
4. Use dry or low-water devices for sanitation. This would reduce the amount of water used for sanitation and could also reduce the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers if the solid waste were collected and composted for farming purposes.
5. Use desalination to increase supply. Once limited by high costs and high energy demands, desalination technologies are nearing commercial viability.
6. Invest in water. Major investment in existing technologies to conserve water, maintain and replace infrastructure, and construct sanitation systems will be needed to stave off a water crisis. According to the article, Booz Allen Hamilton estimates that a $1 trillion annual investment in these sectors will be required to meet the world’s water needs through 2030.

Rogers lays out a solid set of steps to address our growing water needs, but implementing them will require leadership in the government and beyond, as well as the conscious planning and management of water resources. And while these steps are reasonable for large economies with robust governance systems, the areas of the world that are most affected by a lack of water—places where diarrhea is the leading cause of death for children under five and where women and children are required to walk miles to wells to collect drinking water—will require not only financial support, as Rogers notes, but also long-term technical and legal assistance.

I was lucky enough recently to vacation in Israel—and I still have the jet lag to prove it. On the second day of the trip, as we crossed the Jordan River and entered the Golan Heights, our guide explained that people have fought over water throughout history—especially in the Middle East. “Aha!” I thought to myself. “Another example of how the average person mistakenly believes that water scarcity leads to conflict—whereas, as an Environmental Change and Security Program staff member, I know that interstate ‘water wars’ are actually incredibly rare.”

Yet our guide proceeded to describe several water-related conflicts between Israel and its neighbors before and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. So when I returned to the States, I was inspired to look up these events in the Pacific Institute’s Water Conflict Chronology and in Oregon State University’s Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database. I found that Israel and its neighbors were frequently engaged in violent conflict with one another over water during the 1960s and early 1970s. For instance, after Syria began diverting the headwaters of the Jordan River in 1965—a project that would have deprived Israel’s National Water Carrier of approximately 35 percent of its water and the country as a whole of around 11 percent of its water—Israel responded with a series of military strikes against the diversion works. The back-and-forth attacks helped instigate the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Another example: In 1969, Israel, which believed that Jordan was overdiverting the Yarmouk River, bombed Jordan’s East Ghor Canal. The United States mediated secret negotiations in 1969-1970, and the Jordanians were allowed to repair the canal in exchange for abiding by Johnston Plan water quotas and expelling the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Jordan.

So how do we explain the apparent disconnect between the numerous instances of violent conflict over water in the Middle East and political scientists’ insistence that water rarely leads to interstate conflict? I think the answer is twofold. First, I happened to be standing in the region of the world that is by far the most prone to conflict over water. There were only 37 violent interactions over water between 1946 and 1999, and 30 of these were between Israel and a neighbor. Water experts recognize that the Middle East is the exception to the general pattern of water disputes leading to cooperation, not conflict. But to Middle Easterners like my Israeli guide, it may indeed seem that water frequently leads to conflict.

Second, the devil is in the definitions. The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database classifies events according to its Water Event Intensity Scale, which runs from -7 (“formal declaration of war”) to 7 (“voluntary unification into one nation”). The East Ghor incident is classified as -6 (“extensive war acts causing deaths, dislocation or high strategic cost”). Events classified as -6 can include “use of nuclear weapons; full scale air, naval, or land battles; invasion of territory; occupation of territory; massive bombing of civilian areas; capturing of soldiers in battle; large scale bombing of military installations; [and] chemical or biological warfare,” so they seem to differ from war only in that war has not been formally declared.

Perhaps this is where much of the confusion comes from: Political scientists studying water conflict use a very narrow definition of war—probably a lot narrower than that of most non-experts. So while the average interested citizen would likely call the 1965-1967 conflict between Israel and Syria over the National Water Carrier and the Headwater Diversion project a war—or at least a high-level interstate conflict—the political scientist studying water conflict and cooperation would not.

Now, as a general principle, I’m all in favor of precise language and definitions. But formal declarations of war seem to have gone out of fashion over the past half century; the United States, for instance, has not formally declared war against another country since World War II. If the current war in Afghanistan were over water—which it decidedly is not—would it still merit only a -6 on the Water Event Intensity Scale because the United States has not formally declared war against the Taliban? It seems that requiring a formal declaration of war to classify a conflict as a war is perhaps defining the term too narrowly.

But although political scientists may be to blame for clinging to a somewhat outdated definition of war, the media are perhaps at fault for using the word too broadly in an attempt to make their headlines more enticing. This editor concludes—only somewhat self-servingly—that we would all benefit from using language more precisely. I welcome your responses.

Photo: The Golan Heights landscape still bears scars from the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Courtesy of Rachel Weisshaar.

MORE

In the third installment of its series of reports addressing national security issues (see New Security Beat coverage of the first and second reports), the Center for American Progress offers a blistering critique of America’s foreign assistance approach, arguing that American foreign policy during the second half of the 20th century helped create some of today’s security concerns. For instance, the authors maintain that if the United States had used more foresight while dispensing $24 billion in aid to Pakistan over the last 25 years, “[w]e might not be talking today about the extremism taught in many madrassas, or debating the best course of action for defeating the Taliban.” The United States leads the world in humanitarian assistance, write authors Natalie Ondiak and Andrew Sweet, and they argue that the United States need not contribute more, only more wisely.

According to Ondiak and Sweet, one of the major problems is that the United States spends “more on treating the symptoms of a crisis…than on the development programs that support crisis prevention.” This failure to prevent crises has resulted in dramatically higher long-term costs for the United States, they say. Pakistan and Afghanistan provide particularly striking examples of the shortcomings in America’s foreign aid strategy.

U.S. assistance to Pakistan has run hot and cold over the past 40 years, spiking early in the Cold War, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and rising to its highest level immediately following September 11, 2001. Ondiak and Sweet characterize the relationship as “consistently inconsistent.” Since 2001, Pakistan has been the recipient of $10.5 billion in assistance (excluding covert funds), but just 2 percent of this has been dedicated to development assistance. As a result, half of the population remains illiterate, job growth cannot keep pace with population growth, and extremist groups operating in the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas have become increasingly attractive to the one-third of Pakistanis still living in poverty.

In a major foreign policy speech attended by several New Security Beat contributors, Senator Barack Obama noted that he is sponsoring a bill, along with Senators Joe Biden and Richard Lugar, to triple non-military aid to Pakistan for 10 years. “We must move beyond a purely military alliance built on convenience,” he said.

Closely linked with the fortunes of Pakistan is Afghanistan, a country Ondiak and Sweet describe as “a good illustration of what happens when our ‘aid reaction’ is driven by geopolitical interests shaped by the ebb and flow of foreign policy priorities.” U.S. assistance to Afghanistan dropped off sharply following its conflict with Russia during the 1980s, leaving the country struggling to rebuild itself after fully one-third of its citizens had left the country as refugees. This disengagement cost us “the opportunity to consolidate the gains borne of the end of occupation,” argue the authors, instead allowing Afghanistan to lapse into state failure. Today, Afghanistan is the poorest country outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Half of its citizens live in absolute poverty, 70 percent are illiterate, and life expectancy is 43 years.

Ondiak and Sweet call it a “tragic irony” that the lack of public support for peacetime capacity-building assistance leads to a much greater need for emergency aid down the road. “Turning the aid spigot on and off,” they write, “rarely yields long-term, sustainable results.” Their recommendation is simple: The United States must prioritize development and crisis prevention and provide long-term aid packages. This will only be possible if the mindsets of politicians, policymakers, and the public shift to recognize that “what is true in our own lives is true on the international stage—an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

“[O]ver the last three decades, approximately 75% of new emerging human infectious diseases have been zoonotic”—transmitted between humans and animals. So states the final report of the One Health Initiative Task Force, warning that “[o]ur increasing interdependence with animals and their products may well be the single most critical risk factor to our health and well-being with regard to infectious diseases.” The One Health Initiative was established by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) in 2006, and the task force was assembled in early 2007 to articulate its goals and vision. Released last month, the report stresses that “[b]y working together, more can be accomplished to improve health worldwide, and the veterinary medical profession has the responsibility to assume a major leadership role in that effort.”

In our interconnected world, human, animal, and environmental health are linked in numerous and complex ways. One organization tackling these connections is the Ugandan NGO Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH). Founded and directed by Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, CTPH works to bolster human and animal health in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), home to half of the world’s remaining mountain gorilla population. Zoonotic disease transmission is especially prevalent in remote areas like BINP, where people frequently live in close proximity to animals, and is exacerbated by the fact that these remote areas are often woefully underserved by government services like health care. “They’re the last people the government thinks about,” said Kalema-Zikusoka in a presentation at the Wilson Center on May 8, 2008.

The One Health Initiative demonstrates that people are starting to think seriously about the intersections between human, animal, and environmental health. “We are standing at the precipice of a health care transformation,” said Task Force Chair Lonnie King. “[D]isease prevention and health promotion in people, animals and our environment have become a critical strategic need.”

Speaking at the Wilson Center in November 2005, King expressed a desire for a program like the One Health Initiative. “We have to build infrastructures in health systems in developing countries,” he said, “not just human health, but animal health, too.” At the same event, William Karesh, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Field Veterinary Program, said, “[t]he concept we have is ‘one world, one health.’ There is the division of human health and wildlife health. But really, there’s only one health.” The idea of integrated health finally seems to be catching on.

“The term ‘climate refugees’ implies a mono-causality rarely found in human reality,” argue the authors of a report on climate change and forced migration released by the Norwegian Refugee Council. The report’s authors urge additional research on the links between climate change, migration, and conflict, and strongly emphasize the importance of helping developing countries adapt to climate change’s impacts.

According to a report released by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian Refugee Council, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) reached 26 million in 2007, despite an overall decline in the number of violent conflicts around the world.

The Philippine government reached a deal with a Muslim rebel group that will expand an autonomous region in the southern Philippines. “The proposed homeland will be entitled to a large share of the resources in the area,” reports the BBC.