On May 13, 2008, renowned environmental defender Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, resigned from her post after losing yet another political battle for control of environmental policies within the federal government. The “last straw” was President Luiz Inácio da Silva’s decision to place Minister of Strategic Affairs Roberto Mangabeira Unger, a Harvard law professor with limited experience with Amazon affairs, in charge of the highly publicized Sustainable Amazon Plan (PAS), withdrawing it from the auspices of the Ministry of Environment. Silva’s decision has had major negative repercussions and has exposed the shortcomings of Brazil’s Amazon policy.

The daughter of poor rubber tappers who became a successful politician and a champion of the Amazon, Silva was one of the most recognized and admired members of President Lula’s government. While a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party in the 1980s, she led the Association of Rubber Tree Tappers with Chico Mendes, a pioneer of the Brazilian environmental movement who was murdered in 1988. That same year, Silva was elected to the state legislature of Acre. In 1994, she was elected to the Senate on the Worker’s Party (PT) platform, and was re-elected in 2002. During her eight years in Congress (1995-2002), Silva became a well-respected expert on sustainable development and national environmental protection issues.

Yet during her tenure as Minister of Environment, Silva lost many important battles and was rapidly becoming a merely symbolic figure. Particularly contentious was the alleged obstructionism of Brazilian Institute for Environment and Renewable Resources (IBAMA) technicians, who refused to issue environmental permits for large development projects—especially hydro-electric projects—in the Amazon region. In response, President Lula reduced Silva’s power by splitting IBAMA into two agencies and separating environmental protection from the issuance of environmental licenses. IBAMA personnel reacted with a strike.

Silva’s resignation has already had significant domestic and international ramifications. All second- and third-echelon employees in the Ministry of Environment and IBAMA resigned in solidarity with her. Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, vice president of Conservation International-South America, called Silva’s departure a “disaster”; Anthony Hall, a development and environment specialist at the London School of Economics, noted that “her resignation will be interpreted as a weakening in the government’s concern with the environment and forest conservation.”

The day after Silva’s resignation, President Lula confirmed that she would be replaced by Carlos Minc, a well-known environmental activist and university professor who was one of the founders of Brazil’s Green Party. Minc previously served as Rio de Janeiro’s state secretary for the environment. His appointment has apparently been well-received: Agência Brasil reports that Silva is “satisfied” with her replacement.

It remains to be seen how Minc will use his new position. His love of the limelight—he follows his own dress code, which does not include a necktie, and has described himself as a “performer”—has cost him politically in his first days on his new job, as President Lula rejected public demands he made to strengthen the Ministry of Environment’s authority. Minc’s first actions as Minister of Environment suggest that he will be a vocal figure. He warned “polluters” that they should fear his ministry’s oversight. He also instigated a public fight with the governor of the state of Mato Grosso, Blairo Maggi, an influential soybean farmer, declaring—a bit sarcastically—that most of the recent increase deforestation in the Amazon has taken place in Mato Grosso. On the issue at hand, however—the issuance of environmental licenses for major development projects in the Amazon—the new minister promised to move faster and more efficiently than his predecessor.

Despite Minc’s aggressive rhetoric, questions about his effectiveness remain. They will be answered by the substance, rather than the style, of his tenure as minister. Back in the Senate, serving the remainder of her term as a representative for Acre until the end of 2010, Silva will continue to be an important voice in the ongoing debate in Brazil over how to reconcile the country’s dual objectives of promoting economic development and protecting the Amazon.

Paulo Sotero is the director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Brazil Institute Program Assistant Alan Wright contributed to this posting.

Natural Security: Protected areas and hazard mitigation, a new report from WWF and Equilibrium, explores how protected areas might have prevented some of the worst impacts of recent floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

The Economist reviews Matthew Connelly’s new book, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, which Connelly discussed recently at the Wilson Center, and weighs in on Malthus, calling him a “false prophet.”

The Council on Foreign Relations has a new Daily Analysis that takes Malthusian worries of food and energy shortages more seriously.

In an article featuring recent ECSP speaker Brian O’Neill, Nature explores whether a smaller global population would help solve the challenge of climate change.

Carl Ganter is a journalist with a mission. We tend to think journalists are supposed to be impartial observers, but much good reporting is done by journalists who are passionate about their subjects. And Carl is that—passionate about water, in its many forms, locations, and roles. Water and human health. Water and politics. Water and conflict. Water and food. Water and girls’ education. Water and ecosystems. Water and…

The National Library of Medicine’s newest exhibit, “Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health,” examines the “revolution in global health” that has transformed communities over the past several decades. In addition to acknowledging the vast achievements in health and science, the exhibit also aims to raise public awareness of the various factors that cause illness, from economic and social inequality to conflict.

The exhibit is divided into six sections: Community Health, Food for Life, Action on AIDS, The Legacy of War, Preventing Disease, and Global Collaboration. Each section reveals how doctors and nurses, advocates, and communities have joined forces to overcome public health challenges. For instance, “The Legacy of War” highlights the Nobel Peace Prize-winning work of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which worked to inform policymakers and citizens of the consequences of nuclear war, and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which advocated successfully for the passage of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. The exhibit’s website features compelling photographs, guest columns by leading public health experts, and a range of interactive features.

Although numerous research projects have found that environmental change can contribute to conflict “through its impact on social variables such as migration, agricultural and economic decline, and through the weakening of institutions, in particular the state,” very few analysts have systematically addressed the relationship between natural disasters and violent civil conflict, write Philip Nel and Marjolein Rightarts in “Natural Disasters and the Risk of Violent Conflict,” published in the March 2008 issue of International Studies Quarterly (subscription required). Criticizing political scientists’ tendency to diminish the importance of geography and environmental factors in assessing violence, they argue that it has become critically important to “correct this oversight.”

The narrow window of opportunity to address climate change makes it imperative that we “remove our heads from the proverbial sand,” writes editor Carolyn Pumphrey in “Global Climate Change: National Security Implications,” released by the U.S. Army War College earlier this month. The report aggregates the presentations given at a 2007 colloquium by the same name in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and features contributions from several authors who have worked recently with ECSP, including Kent Hughes Butts, Joshua Busby, and John T. Ackerman (who has also been a guest contributor to the New Security Beat).

The risks associated with climate change include the spread of disease, severe drought, and coastal flooding, which could lead to decreased agricultural output, mass migration, and other challenges. Pumphrey writes that while social scientists are not in full agreement that violence will result from these developments, conference participants agreed that climate change presents a serious threat, “compounded by a context of rapid population growth, increasing economic appetite, pockets of extreme violence, and global interdependence.” By inflaming latent tensions, climate change will “complicate American foreign policy in a wide variety of ways,” says Pumphrey.

Since the Senate Armed Services Committee called environmental destruction a “growing national security threat” in the late 1990s, some effort has been devoted to crafting a U.S. response, but politicians have hesitated to act on uncertain scientific data, says Pumphrey, arguing additionally that the creeping dangers associated with climate change have only recently begun to captivate the public imagination, and that attempts to spice them up can lead to inaccurate exaggeration. Finally, Pumphrey says, pervasive overconfidence in the ability of “American ingenuity” to outpace emerging dangers has hindered decisive action.

Pumphrey calls for a three-pronged strategy that includes “better intelligence, better science, and better understanding of the relationships between such things as violence, society, and climate change.” She maintains that we must slow the rate of climate change and prepare for unavoidable changes, take action to alleviate international social distress, and prepare to address potential conflicts. And, she notes, this is “a job for everyone,” not just the military.

Growing demand for palm oil is contributing to civil strife in Colombia, argue the authors of “Fuelling Fear: The human cost of biofuels in Colombia,” a report published by U.K. NGO War on Want (video here). Global demand for the crop has doubled in the last decade, largely due to the increasing use of biofuels, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has made increasing biofuel production one of his administration’s priorities. The United Kingdom is one of the largest consumers of Colombian palm oil, which is also a common ingredient in baked goods and cosmetics. “[I]t is now time to question the role played by the UK government and other investors in propagating further violence and bloodshed against the Afro-Colombian communities,” insists Sue Branford, chair of War on Want, in the preface of the report.

“There is an emerging pattern of displacement and human rights violations against Afro-Colombian communities connected to palm oil cultivation,” states the report. The U.K. is accused of turning a blind eye to the land grabs, forced evictions, and other disturbing impacts palm oil cultivation has had on these communities. War on Want estimates that as much as 70 percent of the population of a mountain range in Nariño, located in the southwest corner of the country, has been forcefully evicted from their lands by paramilitaries since October 2007.

A report commissioned by GTZ, the German government-owned technical assistance agency, examines how it can address the new challenges to development posed by climate change.

In the May/June 2008 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jürgen Scheffran provides an overview of climate-security links.

An article in Time examining population and environmental degradation highlights Robert Engelman’s new book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, presented recently at the Wilson Center.

Jody Williams and Wangari Maathai, who won Nobel Peace Prizes in 1997 and 2004, respectively, recently discussed climate change, environmental degradation, human security, and women’s leadership on Living on Earth.