Showing posts by Wilson Center Staff.
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Weekly Reading
›In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement, launched at the climate negotiations this week in Bonn, represents a major step forward in the effort to determine how environmental shocks and stresses precipitated by climate change will compel populations to migrate.
According to Family Planning and Economic Well-Being: New Evidence From Bangladesh, a report from the Population Reference Bureau, “long-term investment in an integrated family planning and maternal and child health (FPMCH) program contributes to improved economic security for families, households, and communities through larger incomes, greater accumulation of wealth, and higher levels of education.”
A YouTube video from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows how Darfuri refugees are struggling to manage scarce natural resources in refugee camps in Chad.
Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health, and Water Security Concepts, the fourth volume of the Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, was launched at a side event to the 17th Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.
The Obama Plan for Energy and Climate Security: Conference Proceedings and Final Recommendations lays out the Center for a New American Security’s recommendations to President Obama for achieving his climate and energy goals. -
Conflict, Cooperation, and Kabbalah: Lessons for Environmental Negotiations
›June 10, 2009 // By Wilson Center Staff
Often during tough negotiations, an “ah-ha” moment transforms the parties’ thinking and enables them to move forward. Recognizing that such moments are also common to many spiritual traditions, Oregon State University Geography Professor Aaron Wolf decided to study several world religions for insights that could be applied to disputes over water resources, and to negotiation processes in general. Although Western cultures tend to view spirituality as a purely private matter—a legacy of the Enlightenment—in a June 3 invitation-only meeting at the Wilson Center, Wolf argued that much of the rest of the world understands spirituality as integrated with all parts of life.
According to Wolf, spiritual traditions can illuminate two aspects of water negotiations:
1. Understanding Conflict- Could addressing the ethical aspect of negotiations supplement the more common focuses on economic development, ecosystem protection, or environmental security, which have shown only partial success?
- How does personal faith impact decision-making; can universal values be more explicitly invoked to facilitate negotiations?
- How does global water management address the spiritual needs of stakeholders?
2. Process Techniques
- Might spiritual transformation have tools or approaches that could improve the difficult dynamics of international environmental negotiations?
- How could the tools of personal transformation—such as guided imagery, prayer, ceremony, silence, and transformative listening—aid the mediation process and/or group dynamics?
Wolf drew parallels between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual), the criteria for water allocations (based on rights, needs, interests, and equity), and the four stages of negotiations (adversarial, reflexive, integrative, and action).
By Comparative Urban Studies Project Program Assistant Lauren Herzer.
Wolf argued that, while semantics may vary, certain concepts’ universality makes them an effective means of communicating across cultures. For instance, the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah highlights the importance of bringing justice (din) and mercy (chesed) together in a partnership that promotes compassion (rachamim): that is, being partly rooted in one’s own needs while having the ability to recognize and care for the needs of others.
This concept of compassion has an important role in Islam, as well. The Arabic word for reconciliation, musalaha, means that hostilities are ended, honor is re-established, and peace (sulha) is restored in the community. Wolf also stressed the concept of tarrahdin—resolving a conflict without humiliating either party—as key to a sustainable negotiation and peace.
But how to apply these spiritual concepts to real-life negotiations? Wolf suggests that mediators employ transformative listening skills and help parties move from a stance based on rights or needs to one based on interests or equity. Wolf also suggests that instead of being seated across from one another, which is the most adversarial arrangement, parties should be seated side by side, in a manner more reflective of prayer than argument. Another effective technique is structuring introductions so that personal narratives are shared, helping create connections between individuals.
Although the union of spiritual and rational processes is a somewhat foreign concept in the West, Wolf hopes that reaching across cultural divides will lead to the more effective resolution of environmental and other disputes. - Could addressing the ethical aspect of negotiations supplement the more common focuses on economic development, ecosystem protection, or environmental security, which have shown only partial success?
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Weekly Reading
›The International Institute for Sustainable Development has released two reports on climate change and security: Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: Climate change and the risk of violent conflict in the Middle East and Climate Change and Security in Africa.
In “The Changing Face of Israel,” a Foreign Policy web exclusive, Richard Cincotta and Eric Kaufmann explain how Israel’s demographics are influencing the country’s politics.
CNN’s Inside Africa reports on a bill in the U.S. Congress that seeks to quell the violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by forcing American companies to disclose the sources of their minerals.
Population Action International’s Kathleen Mogelgaard reports from international climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany, on how climate change disproportionately affects women and the poor.
A Christian Science Monitor op-ed on global demographic trends cites Wilson Center Senior Scholar Martin Walker.
On Grist, Earth Policy Institute Founder Lester Brown explores the massive migration that would be precipitated by even partial melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. -
Weekly Reading
›Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa, a study conducted by IIED, FAO, and IFAD, is the first detailed study to examine large land acquisitions in sub-Saharan Africa.
The latest issue of Population and Environment (subscription required) includes articles on land, education, and fertility in Kenya; indigenous women and fertility in the Ecuadorian Amazon; and the impact of chemical exposure on sex ratios in Greece.
A partnership between local villages and the Bonobo Conservation Initiative has led to the establishment of a 1,847 square mile reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reports Mongabay.
A new article in the Encyclopedia of the Earth lists population growth rates (including births, deaths, and migration) by country, based on CIA data. -
Weekly Reading
›In the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic, 2008 International Reporting Fellow Delphine Shrank explains how conflict in DRC is harming the local ecosystem and livelihoods.
Oxfam International has released a study (Spanish) arguing that rapidly shrinking glaciers in the Andes are disrupting water supplies and leading to conflict in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
A shortage of clean water is leading to domestic violence in Uganda, report The New Vision and Circle of Blue.
The June 2009 edition of National Geographic includes a special report on food security, agriculture, and population.
“Two decades after its fall, the border between East and West Germany has already become Europe’s biggest nature reserve: an 858-mile ‘ecological treasure trove,’ no longer the Iron Curtain but the Green Belt, and home to more than 600 rare and endangered species of birds, mammals, plants and insects,” reports Tony Paterson for The Independent.
Worldfocus.org’s latest radio show explores the geopolitics of the melting Arctic. -
Weekly Reading
›Focus author Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, who founded and directs the Ugandan NGO Conservation Through Public Health, won the Whitley Gold Award (see video of her work) for her efforts to protect the endangered mountain gorillas while improving local communities’ quality of life. The other five finalists were also seeking to reduce human-wildlife conflict in diverse contexts.
In Seed magazine, seven experts—including Peter Gleick and Mark Zeitoun—weigh in on whether “water wars” are a serious menace or an improbable threat, inflated by breathless media coverage of water shortages.
A major report on managing the health effects of climate change, co-authored by University College London and The Lancet, claims that climate change is the biggest health threat of the 21st century.
On his blog, Signs From Earth, National Geographic editor Dennis Dimick has collected a variety of resources about the possibility of “climate refugees.”
It’s not news that the U.S. and U.K. militaries are studying climate change’s potential security impacts, or seeking to increase energy efficiency on bases and in combat zones. But Geoffrey Lean, the environment editor of the Independent, is surprised that legendary Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap has come out against bauxite mining in Vietnam’s central highlands, which he says “will cause serious consequences on the environment, society and national defense.”
Photo: Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka receives the Whitley Gold Award from Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal. Courtesy of the Whitley Fund for Nature. -
Weekly Reading
›In Conservation magazine, David Malakoff examines how cellulosic ethanol may threaten biodiversity around the world.
A Comprehensive Approach to Congo’s Conflict Minerals, a report by the Enough Project, argues that ending resource-related violence in the DRC will require:- Making the consumer-electronics supply chain transparent;
- Pinpointing and securing strategic mines;
- Reforming and expanding governance; and
- Providing miners with economic opportunities.
The New Agriculturalist describes how some African farmers are adapting to climate change.
Worldchanging features an interview with Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. -
Weekly Reading
›How Do Recent Population Trends Matter To Climate Change?, from Population Action International, offers the latest research from this constantly changing area of inquiry.
U.S. Global Health and National Security Policy, a timely report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, examines major threats to human health and international stability, including HIV/AIDS, SARS, pandemic influenza, and bioterrorism.
In the coming decades, Russia will confront “accelerated population decrease; a dwindling of the working-age population; the general ageing of the population; the drop in number of potential mothers; a large immigrant influx; and a possible rise in emigration rates,” warns a new report from the UN Development Programme.
In The National Interest and the Law of the Sea, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Scott Borgerson argues that ratifying the Law of the Sea Convention is vital to protecting the United States’ national security, economic, and environmental interests.
David Sullivan of Enough debates Harrison Mitchell and Nicolas Garrett of Resource Consulting Services (RCS) on the links between conflict and mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). RCS recently published a report arguing that mineral extraction is key to DRC’s development and not the primary cause of conflict in North Kivu.
Responding to the ubiquitous Monsanto ads that ask, “9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. Now what?,” Tod Preston of Population Action International responds, “family planning and empowering women, that’s what!”
Water and War, a publication of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), outlines how the ICRC provides access to clean water during conflict and humanitarian disasters.
