Land clashes lie at the heart of a recent outbreak of violence at the foot of Mount Elgon in western Kenya that left at least a dozen people—including several children—dead. Although President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga reached a power-sharing agreement last week, BBC News reports that post-election strife continues to reignite pre-existing conflicts over land and livelihoods in the country. Regions with longstanding violent feuds over land have been hit worst by the latest bloodshed.

According to Bernard Muli, a local police chief, the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) is responsible for the latest wave of attacks. The SLDF seeks to avenge alleged discrimination against the Soy clan in the government’s Chebyuk Settlement Scheme, which redistributed land in the area. The SLDF is one of the most powerful and best-armed non-state groups in Kenya, according to the International Crisis Group.

Many analysts have noted the links between historical land grievances in Kenya and the violence that followed the country’s multi-party elections in the 1990s. In a recent blog post on the New Security Beat, Colin Kahl notes how this unresolved issue resurfaced again during the latest elections.

In “An End to One-Child Families in China?,” a recent post on his blog, Dot Earth, New York Times science reporter Andrew Revkin comments on reports that China is considering ending its one-child policy. But a few of Revkin’s assumptions about population and its relationship to climate change are a tad oversimplified:

1. Revkin writes, “Demographers I consulted today said this [relaxing of the one-child policy] could overturn predictions of an imminent end to global population growth.”

Who’s predicting an imminent end to population growth? The latest UN mid-range projections predict the global population will continue to grow over the next several decades—to 9.2 billion by 2050. Furthermore, even without China abandoning its one-child policy, many already consider the UN mid-range projections optimistically low, since they assume that funding for family planning will continue to increase and the total fertility rate will continue to fall (neither of which is guaranteed). If fertility rates remain the same as they are today, the world population will be 11.9 billion in 2050.

2. Revkin also writes, “Urbanization is likely to help [reduce human impact on the environment] more than hurt.”

But according to Brian O’Neill, a scientist who studies the relationships between demographic variables and climate change at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, preliminary projections of future urbanization in China show higher levels of urbanization correlating with an increase, not a decrease, in carbon emissions. (For more on O’Neill’s findings, click here.) 2008 will mark the first time in history more people have lived in urban areas than in rural ones, and the UN Population Division estimates that by 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will reside in cities. Given that the vast majority of future population growth—including urban population growth—will be in developing countries, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly design in developing country cities will be crucial in the coming decades.

Uncovering the numerous variables that can influence global climate change can be daunting. Brian O’Neill and his colleagues are improving our understanding of some of these factors by modeling how demographic shifts—such as aging or urbanization—could impact climate change. O’Neill is a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Institute for the Study of Society and Environment in Boulder, Colorado, and also leads the Population and Climate Change (PCC) Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. Researching population-environment interactions and the science and policy of global climate change led to O’Neill’s recent work as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s Fourth Assessment Report. In this podcast, O’Neill describes how shifting demographic patterns could influence a changing climate.

Norman Borlaug’s innovative plant breeding techniques—which he used to develop varieties of wheat resistant to stem rust—spawned the Green Revolution and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. An article in MIT Technology Review (free registration required) discusses why the Green Revolution did not spread to Africa and which policies and techniques could strengthen African agriculture.

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.”