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From the Wilson Center
Biofuels: Food, Fuel, and Future?
The Wilson Center’s Program on America and the Global Economy (PAGE) together with the Brazil Institute, have held a series of conferences focused on the field of biofuels and its impact both internationally and domestically. As part of the series, PAGE has published the results of a conference held last July on the current “state-of-play” for the biofuels industry in the United States.MORE
In the brief, Biofuels: Food, Fuel, and Future?, C. Ford Runge and Robbin S. Johnson, of the University of Minnesota, and Calestous Juma, of Harvard University, provide context on the various federal mandates, subsidies, and policies that affect the U.S. biofuels market. They also present recommendations to improve what is now a not-so-new market, with the aim of reducing damaging effects on food prices and creating more international competition. The brief was edited by PAGE Director Kent H. Hughes and Elizabeth A. Byers.
Read more from PAGE on their blog, America and the Global Economy, and download the full brief and other PAGE publications from their website at the Wilson Center. -
Guest Contributor
Forest Conservation Method a Fit for Canada’s Oil Sands?
MOREIn Wednesday’s speech on U.S. energy security, President Obama stated clearly that the United States would continue to rely on oil imports from Canada and other stable nations. But serious environmental concerns continue to dog the Canadian oil sands industry. Could an agreement reached by Canada’s Forest Products Association provide a model for a way forward?
In May 2010, the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) was signed by 21 members of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and nine major environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, without government involvement. The three-year agreement represents the largest forest conservation plan in history and protects more than 72 million hectares of Canada’s Boreal Forest. It also ended a long “do not buy” campaign of FPAC products, previously spearheaded by environmental organizations.
The CBFA essentially commits FPAC to the highest environmental standards of forest management and conservation, as well as the suspension of logging in environmentally sensitive areas, in part to protect endangered caribou populations. In return, environmental organizations agreed to support FPAC members.
The oil sands industry faces a similar challenge. In both cases, industry and environmental NGOs have clashed in a long and bitter battle over industry practices and their impact on the environment. The difference is that FPAC realized that directly engaging environmental groups in reasoned discussion might be a more intelligent approach to resolving environmental challenges than shouting back and forth at one another. FPAC also believes that buyers will be attracted to their newfound reputation for sustainable practices and higher ethical standards.
Model Agreements
Oil sands producers have much to gain by engaging the environmental community in new and innovative ways Should the CBFA model be followed, the oil sands industry may be able to negotiate an agreement with environmental organizations and voluntarily agree to higher environmental standards in return for recognition and support of their efforts from key environmental organizations.This wouldn’t be the first initiative where creative engagement between environmental organizations and industry served to mutually benefit both sides. For instance, in 1999, WWF and Unilever created the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a program that rewards fisheries employing environmentally sustainable practices by recognizing their efforts through MSC certification and eco-labeling. Member fisheries maintain that MSC labeling has helped them retain existing markets, expand into others, and in some cases obtain a price premium for their product.
Such an initiative would go a long way to allow oil sands producers to shed their damaging reputation for producing “dirty oil.” Even if an agreement could not be reached, the oil sands industry would be viewed at the very least as willing to listen to the concerns of environmental organizations and take such issues seriously.
Not Perfect, But It’s a Start
The CBFA model may not be a perfect fit for the oil sands but it demonstrates that environmental groups and industry can find common ground on extremely contentious issues.
Finding this common ground must begin with accepting that the oil sands will never be “green.” According to a study by the Royal Society of Canada, in 2008, oil sands mining and development operations covered an area roughly the size of the state of Illinois and was responsible for emitting nearly 37 million tons of CO2. The study also found that there are legitimate concerns regarding the impact of oil sands development on the quality and quantity of regional freshwater supplies.
Nevertheless, the oil sands also represent a critical source of stable energy supplies for Canada and the United States, and calls by some environmental NGOs to halt oil sands production are unrealistic. More than 20 percent of U.S. oil is sourced from Canada, making it the United States’ leading supplier, and roughly half of that comes from the oil sands.
A CBFA-style agreement could help oil sands producers secure the U.S. market, which currently takes 99 percent of Canada’s oil exports, by quelling campaigns in the United States to stop imports from the oil sands. And under an agreement similar to the CBFA, the environmental community could have a larger say in how it is developed and extracted
As it stands, both industry and the environmental community remain engaged in a heated war of words, with neither side really listening to the other. Until they are willing to sit down and engage each other in new ways, both groups are likely to continue to talk over one another and make little progress on striking an environmental and economic balance that could ultimately benefit both sides.
Ken Crist is a program associate with the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Sources: Sources: The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, National Resources Defense Council, The New York Times, Royal Society of Canada, Vancouver Sun.
Photo Credit: “Athabasca oil sands digger,” courtesy of flickr user . Shell, and “Boreal forest 2009,” courtesy of flickr user Gord McKenna. -
Reading Radar
The Impact of Environmental Change and Geography on Conflict
MORE“Environmental Change, Strategic Foresight, and Impacts on Military Power,” published in Parameters by Chad M. Briggs, the Minerva Chair of Energy and Environmental Security at the Air University, USAF, tackles the changing definition of “environmental security” and how the concept can help planners better prepare for the effects of climate change and an elevated focus on energy security. New potentially destabilizing issues like glacial melt, sea-level rise, and Arctic ice melt are on the horizon, writes Briggs. China and others are already planning for these events, and it’s important that the United States does the same, starting with a greater appreciation for the impact of environmental security on vulnerability and risk. “Due to past practices and bureaucratic stovepipes, implementation is limited more by initiative and imagination than actual resources,” he writes.Clionadh Raleigh of Trinity College Dublin and the International Peace Research Institute finds in “Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Does Physical Geography Affect a State’s Conflict Risk?” that a region’s geography does not have a uniform effect on its likelihood of experiencing conflict. Raleigh’s conclusions, published in International Interactions, run counter to traditional histories which often emphasize the importance of physical geography, specifically with regard to civil war and insurgencies. Focusing on the Great Lakes region of Africa, Raleigh finds that other factors – like how populated an area is and its proximity to valuable natural resources – correlate higher with an area’s propensity for violence than any other factor. -
Integrated Approach Helps “Model Farmers” Increase Productivity in Ethiopia
March 24, 2011 // By Schuyler NullMORETo reach the village of Grar Gaber from Addis Ababa, you drive up over the Entoto Mountains overlooking the capital then motor down two hours of new Japanese-built highway to the town of Fiche. From there it’s 20 minutes on a broken dirt road across rocky hills. I was joined there by about 20 others from the PHE Ethiopia Consortium’s general assembly (see day one and day two coverage here) and Population Action International, to visit an integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) development program run by LEM Ethiopia.
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The Continuing Challenges of Integrated Development
March 20, 2011 // By Schuyler NullMORE“How are we going to feed all these mouths?” asked Bekele Hambissa, director of the Environmental Protection and Development Organization in Addis, on day two of the PHE Ethiopia Consortium general assembly (read about day one here). Environmental resources are directly tied to Ethiopia’s population growth, said Hambissa, during a discussion of balancing efforts to address population growth, environment, and livelihoods. While poverty alleviation is an important goal of population, health, and environment integration (PHE), it must be environmentally sustainable, he said.
Topics: Africa, agriculture, community-based, cooperation, development, Ethiopia, From Ethiopia, PHE, population, poverty, water -
“Better Bang for the Buck”: Blogging From Ethiopia’s Population, Health, and Environment General Assembly
March 18, 2011 // By Schuyler NullMOREHello from Addis Ababa, where I am blogging from the 5th annual general assembly of the Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) Consortium of Ethiopia (see further coverage here). Along with the Philippines, Ethiopia is the largest PHE programmer in the world, both in terms of number of programs and people affected, and for good reason: The country combines dire need, willing donors, and a great deal of local capacity and will.
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From the Wilson Center
Make Sure Women Can Lead in the Middle East
MOREIn Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia, and elsewhere, women have stood with men pushing for change. In Libya, Iman and Salwa Bagaighif are helping lead, shape, and support protesters. And in Egypt, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, one of the oldest and most well-known non-governmental organizations in Egypt, estimated that at least 20 percent of the protesters were women.
For example, the 26-year-old co-founder of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, Asmaa Mahfouz, mobilized thousands of youth in support of the protest through her impassioned YouTube video. In Yemen, a 32-year-old mother of three, Tawakkul Karman, helped organize protests against the current government.
History of Frustration
Yet women’s leadership is not a new phenomenon. In Iran, women have for many years successfully pushed for greater freedom in personal status law and greater employment and educational opportunities. Many Iranian women have been imprisoned simply for endorsing the Million Signature Campaign, which seeks equal rights and the repeal of laws that discriminate against women.
Women have been using social media and leveraged communications technology to pursue greater social and political openness since before the arrival of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Notwithstanding a rich history of non-violent activism and extraordinary leadership, women have rarely been involved in political decision-making in the Middle East and North Africa region.
At an even more basic level, women do not feel confident that their rights will be preserved under the systems emerging from recent political transformations.
In Iraq, there have been female judges since the 1950s and thus many of women’s rights have been protected since 1978 by a personal status law. Yet in 2003, the new Iraqi Governing Council sought to strip women of these rights. Only in the face of domestic petitions, letter writing, and face-to-face advocacy were women successful in ensuring their rights were preserved. Iraqi women continue to face efforts to reduce their freedoms and each time they have defeated the assault.
Already Egyptian women are risking similar marginalization. There are no women on the committee revising the constitution. In an almost uncanny parallel to the struggle of Iraqi women after former President Saddam Hussein, Egyptians have drafted a petition, endorsed by over 60 local organizations, decrying women’s absence from transitional political bodies.
Bias embedded in the new draft constitution suggests that these concerns may be real.
“Prerequisite for an Arab Renaissance”
The international community and the new generation of progressive, democracy-minded leaders in the Middle East need to see women as critical partners for change. The evidence is indisputable. The 2005 UN Arab Human Development Report cautions that under-employment and under-investment in women severely drains overall well-being and concludes that “the rise of women is in fact a prerequisite for an Arab renaissance, inseparably and causally linked to the fate of the Arab world.”
The world has an unprecedented opportunity to transform nations held down for decades by oppressive regimes. We must make sure that this opportunity is open to all citizens, including women.
Women’s role must be honored in the struggle and protected against the fundamentalist push. Most importantly, their involvement will be key to enabling pluralistic, economically thriving societies to emerge in a region where progress has been stalled for generations.
The window is small but the time is now and the opportunity is enormous. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, let’s remember how critical advancing the status of women will be to success.
Carla Koppell is director of The Institute for Inclusive Security. Haleh Esfandiari is director of the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program. This article was originally written for the Common Ground News Service.
Sources: UN Development Programme, Women Living Under Muslim Laws.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Just Passing Through,” courtesy of flickr user Alexbip. -
Watch: Roger-Mark De Souza on the Scaling Advantages of Population, Health, and Environment Integration
March 11, 2011 // By Schuyler NullBy integrating population, health, and environment (PHE) efforts, development programs can make a difference in people’s lives in a real and meaningful way – one which they understand, appreciate, and desire, said Roger-Mark De Souza in this interview with ECSP. De Souza is the vice president of research and director of the Climate Program at Population Action International.MORE
The PHE approach “allows itself to be applied at different levels,” said De Souza. “It’s easily implemented at the level of a village, or a town, or a city where a number of individuals can say ‘these are concrete results and outcomes that we want in our lives and that we want to live our lives in an integrated way.’”
PHE interventions not only provide tangible results to individuals, said De Souza, but they also help accomplish broader policy objectives, including improving health and alleviating poverty.
“There are lessons to be learned from different areas of integration, not just population, health, and environment,” De Souza said. For example, initiatives that integrate food security and HIV/AIDS deal with issues “similar to the ones we deal with in integrating population, health, and environment,” he said. Lessons and experiences need to be shared between these communities, but they also share similar advantages: From a cost-efficiency stand point, integration simply provides greater “bang for the buck,” he said.
A Publication of the Stimson Center.
