Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced an unprecedented joint effort to save the critically endangered mountain gorilla on February 20, 2008. As part of the 10-year Transboundary Strategic Plan, the countries will develop and adhere to a consistent set of conservation policies and laws in Virunga National Park, which overlaps the three countries and is home to more than half of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas.

Today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Colombia’s Macarena National Park is being deforested and polluted by illegal coca farms. After being driven from farmland by U.S.-sponsored aerial fumigation, coca growers have invaded Macarena and other national parks, where fumigation is illegal. In August 2006, six workers manually clearing coca in Macarena were killed by a bomb detonated by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Recently, Colombia has begun to shift away from aerial fumigation toward manual eradication, which is more effective but poses significant risks to the workers and the security personnel guarding them.

Coca farming gives rise to a wide range of negative environmental effects, including “chemical dumping, deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution, a shift to mono-agriculture, bio-diversity loss, and a potential loss of cultural eco-knowledge,” according to American University’s Trade and Environment Database.

A New York Times article from 1989 demonstrates that, sadly, coca trafficking has been causing violence and environmental destruction across South America for decades.

In Dead Water, a report released today by the UN Environment Programme, warns that pollution, overharvesting, invasive species, and climate change pose grave threats to the world’s fisheries and coral reefs. “Fishing for a Secure Future,” a recent meeting series hosted by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP), examined the many challenges facing fisheries—as well as potential solutions.

U.S. officials might have taken more aggressive steps to combat climate change at the recent UN climate change conference in Bali had the Pentagon pressured them more forcefully, argue John Podesta and Peter Ogden in a Financial Times op-ed. According to Podesta and Ogden, climate change will threaten the U.S. military’s ability to effectively perform many of its duties, including responding to natural disasters and stabilizing fragile states.

“While governments continue to rely on the military as a preferred tool of security policy, the nature of many of the world’s intractable conflicts suggests severely misplaced priorities. Research suggests that among the underlying reasons for many tensions today are competition over lucrative resources and the repercussions from environmental degradation,” writes the Worldwatch Institute’s Michael Renner, who argues that UN peacekeeping forces, if given sufficient funds, could do a better job calming unstable regions than militaries. Renner also discussed environment-conflict links at the Wilson Center in June 2007.

Mongolians are moving from the steppes to cities in record numbers, and climate change is one of the drivers of this migration, reports National Geographic. “Reign of Sand,” a multimedia report by the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum and water NGO Circle of Blue, explores how desertification is threatening Inner Mongolians’ traditional livelihoods.

A report by the Population Council examines the impact of the Partners for Food Security project, which aimed to reduce the food insecurity of HIV-infected households in Tororo, Uganda, by fostering collaboration among agricultural, health, and economic development organizations. According to the report, “the coordination of agricultural extension and HIV/AIDS education and awareness can enhance the outcomes of both sets of activities.”

Nigerian Senator David Dafinone argued yesterday that the Nigerian government should abandon plans to allocate 444.6 billion Nigerian nairas in the 2008 budget to security in the conflict-ravaged Niger Delta. “Dedicating such huge amount to policing the Niger Delta will be counter productive because resentment of the state and the oil companies by the people will continue to deepen,” said Dafinone, who hails from the Delta. “There is urgent need to reorder the political, social and economic development of the Niger Delta,” he continued. “The root cause of the crisis in the region remains the denial of the peoples’ right to land and its content.”

Last month, the Brazilian government announced it would step up measures to combat illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, including deploying Brazilian soldiers and police officers to regions that have recently suffered heavy deforestation. Last week, it made good on that promise, as Brazilian police confiscated 353,000 cubic feet of lumber from eight illegal sawmills in the state of Para—one of the biggest loads ever seized.

A paper commissioned by the Institute for Global Dialogue and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa explores the prospects for sharing and jointly managing the water resources of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). “Water resources availability has been and still is high on the national security agenda of most SADC states,” write Daniel Malzbender and Anton Earle.

A report from the Institute for Policy Studies analyzes the disparities between the U.S. government’s FY 2008 spending on military security and climate security.

The United Nations, European Union, and United States each have important roles to play in mitigating climate change’s security threats, argue John Podesta and Peter Ogden in The Washington Quarterly. The article echoes The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change, published jointly last year by the Center for a New American Security, which Podesta heads, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

UNAIDS released a statement earlier this week expressing its concern that the recent violence in Kenya is disrupting efforts to combat the country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In the Global Dashboard blog, David Steven remarks on three “hidden drivers” of instability in Pakistan: the government’s failure to capitalize on the “demographic dividend,” the potential socio-economic benefits of a large working-age population; the rising food, water, and energy scarcity faced by working- and middle-class Pakistanis; and what Steven calls “the worrying role being played by the Pakistan army, once a source of national stability and pride.”

The recent fighting in Chad was partially fuelled by rebels’ resentment over President Idriss Déby’s handling of the country’s oil revenue, reported The New York Times. “They say that he has not managed the country’s growing oil wealth well and that he has given preferential treatment to members of his ethnic group, the Zaghawa.”

Although an agreement with the World Bank states that Chad’s government must devote 70 percent of oil revenue to development, few believe this is occurring, especially given Déby’s recent high levels of military spending. Philippe Hugon, a researcher specializing in African economic affairs, told Agence France-Presse, “The oil wealth has been partially siphoned off and wasted on arms spending and on building up the personal fortunes of people close to Idriss Déby….The rebels want their share.”

Chad’s oil production is tiny when compared with that of some of its neighbors, such as Nigeria; even so, it constitutes a considerable portion of the country’s economy. Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 170th out of 177 countries in the 2007-2008 Human Development Index.

“In Kenya’s highly competitive landscape, land has become the battleground,” argued Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post. Maathai joins a growing group of experts who emphasize that recent violence in Kenya stems not only from ethnic divisions, but also from longstanding tensions over resource allocation. Earlier this year, guest contributor Colin Kahl asserted that the struggles between the Kikuyu, Luo, and Kalenjin tribes are partly based on disparate levels of property ownership.

The media sometimes portray the violence in Kenya as a simple manifestation of ethnic friction, but many commentators note the importance of land distribution and other factors. Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and a visiting public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, told The New York Times, “You have to understand that these issues are much deeper than ethnic. They are political…they go back to land.” In a similar vein, Oxford University’s David Anderson told Newsweek, “If this violence is really driven by ethnic hatred, why is it that violence breaks out in specific places that are utterly predictable? This violence…is provoked in areas that have a history of violence because of other issues, like land.”

Looking forward, Harvard professor Calestous Juma says that if mediation talks are to be effective, they will have to avoid “the template [of thinking] about Africa in terms of ethnic differences.” Similarly, Maathai emphasizes that “ruling elites must devote time, energy and resources to ensuring…equitable distribution of resources.”