Showing posts by Wilson Center Staff.
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A Weekly Roundup
›“Climate change is potentially the greatest challenge to global stability and security, and therefore to national security. Tackling its causes, mitigating its risks and preparing for and dealing with its consequences are critical to our future security, as well as protecting global prosperity and avoiding humanitarian disaster,” says the UK’s first National Security Strategy report.
A water-sharing deal will be essential to achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, reports National Geographic magazine.
In the BBC’s Green Room, Gonzalo Oveido, a senior social policy adviser with IUCN, argues that the global food crisis will only be ameliorated if policymakers put greater emphasis on biodiversity and overall ecosystem health.
USAID has released The United States Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, which outlines the U.S. government’s contribution toward meeting the eight goals by 2015. Fragile states face some of the steepest challenges to achieving the MDGs.
An article in Nature Conservancy magazine asks five conservation experts whether—and if so, how—conservation organizations should contribute to poverty alleviation. -
Weekly Reading
›The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States, the long-awaited report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, was released this week.
The Worldwatch Institute’s Robert Engelman discussed his recent book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.
Saleem Ali urges Pakistan and India to amicably resolve the Sir Creek dispute in an op-ed in Pakistan’s Daily Times.
“Reducing carbon dependency also goes to the heart of our basic security needs for the future,” writes Tony Blair in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
A new guide from the Population Reference Bureau on sexual and reproductive health in the Middle East and North Africa targets journalists. -
Weekly Reading
›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. -
Weekly Reading
›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. -
Weekly Reading
›“Recent studies – including several by the Chinese Academy of Sciences – have documented a host of serious environmental challenges to the quantity and quality of Tibet’s freshwater reserves, most of them caused by industrial activities. Deforestation has led to large-scale erosion and siltation. Mining, manufacturing, and other human activities are producing record levels of air and water pollution in Tibet. Together, these factors portend future water scarcity that could add to the region’s volatility,” says “China, Tibet, and the strategic power of water,” a new multimedia report by Circle of Blue that includes an interview with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko on water and environmental peacemaking.
Twenty years after the release of the seminal Brundtland report Our Common Future, ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko says that global security still depends on the health of our environment. In “An Uncommon Peace: Environment, Development, and the Global Security Agenda,” an article in the May/June 2008 issue of Environment, he reviews the successes and failures of efforts over the last two decades to integrate environmental concerns into national and international security agendas. “We must draw lessons from environmental security’s history if we are to address the multiple threats—and opportunities—posed by environment-security links today,” says Dabelko.
The Population Reference Bureau’s new series of regional profiles of population, health, and environment issues in the Philippines aims to provide more detailed information on these important aspects of well-being, which vary widely among the country’s 7,100 islands.
The Financial Times reports that the Chinese government is likely to approve a Ministry of Agriculture proposal to encourage Chinese companies to acquire farmland abroad—particularly in Africa and South America—to improve food security. Other countries, including Libya and Saudi Arabia, are exploring similar arrangements. -
Weekly Reading
›CIA Director General Michael Hayden identified demographic change as one of three trends that will shape the 21st century earlier this week, noting the “importance of underlying population trends and the factors that influence them…things like fertility rates, life expectancy, the prevalence of HIV, and ease of migration. Clearly,” he said, “there will be many implications for our national security to come out of this, and these trends will contribute to the complexity of the security threats facing America over the next several decades.” Population growth will hit African countries the hardest, he said, and may threaten stability on the continent.
ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko discusses how the environment can be used as a tool for peace today in the concluding program in Chicago Public Radio Worldview’s weeklong “Environmental War and Peace” series.
The U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute has released a collection of the proceedings of a colloquium on “Global Climate Change: National Security Implications,” held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, earlier this year. Contributors agree that climate change is a security issue that merits serious attention and discuss the proper role for the U.S. Armed Forces in addressing it on a global scale.
“Intensifying environmental catastrophes and downturns in living standards caused by interlocking crises of energy, water, food and violent conflict” are likely to characterize the coming century, warns Jeffrey Sachs in Time magazine’s web-exclusive feature, “What’s Next 2008.” But all is not lost; Sachs encourages us to recognize that by “seeking global solutions, we actually have the power to save the world for all, today and in the future.”
As population pressures increasingly strain ecological resources in Madagascar’s biodiversity hotspots, CARE’s Extra Mile Initiative is working in partnership with Madagascar’s government to provide family planning and reproductive health services to six remote communities on the “eighth continent.” A new report discusses the program’s challenges and successes. -
Weekly Reading
›An article in Time magazine surveys the growing awareness of climate change’s links to traditional and nontraditional security threats.
“Unless some way can be found to stop the explosive rise in food prices generally, and rice prices in particular, we will see sharply higher mortality….This will not be mass starvation, with people dying in the streets, but it will be sharply higher infant and child mortality and weakened adults succumbing prematurely to infectious diseases,” said Peter Timmer, an expert on agriculture and development and a current Center for Global Development non-resident fellow, in an interview earlier this week.
A report on “How a Changing Climate Impacts Women,” a high-level meeting sponsored by Council of Women World Leaders, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America, is now available online. Gro Harlem Bruntland and Mary Robinson, among other speakers, explained that women—who constitute the majority of the world’s poor—will be more vulnerable to many of climate change’s expected impacts, including reduced crop yields, the spread of infectious diseases, and increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters. -
Jeffrey Sachs’ Memo to the Next U.S. President
›April 22, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffIn his keynote address at the 5th Annual Unite for Sight International Health Conference, held earlier this month, Jeffrey Sachs argued that world leaders must redouble their efforts to alleviate poverty, protect human and environmental health, and balance economic growth and sustainable development. He advocated many of the same solutions that appear in his new book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, including increasing investment in sustainable technology research and development; hastening the diffusion of sustainable technologies to the poorer regions of the world; and allocating a smaller percentage of the national budget for military spending and instead achieving the international target of 0.7 percent of GNP for foreign aid.
One part of Sachs’ presentation that was not included in his book was a memo to the next U.S. president, consisting of ten objectives to achieve global sustainability. Included in this list were the following recommendations, which illustrate Sachs’ view that human health, the environment, economic growth, and security are all integrally linked:
- “Stop putting food into the gas tank.” Sachs spoke out against the current U.S. subsidies for converting corn into ethanol. He linked the initiative to the recent global increase in food prices and the resulting turmoil in areas such as Haiti and Burkina Faso.
- Create a global forum for the leaders of dry lands. Sachs argued that it is important for leaders of areas such as Senegal, Mali, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and California to discuss water scarcity, its impact on livelihoods, and strategies to ensure human security.
- Immediately send a U.S. envoy around the world to back climate change negotiations. Sachs emphasized the need for the United States to step up as a leader on curbing climate change and its environmental and social impacts, rather than stalling international cooperation and progress, as he believes the current administration has done.
- Increase U.S. funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Sachs disapproved of the U.S. government’s decision to decrease its financial support of the UNFPA, which he argued is instrumental in fueling the voluntary decline of fertility rates in less developed countries. He identified access to contraceptives and reproductive services, the empowerment of girls and women, and the promotion of maternal and child health as crucial strategies for slowing population growth and maintaining resource sustainability.
- Make the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the heart of international development policy. Sachs noted that he had heard President Bush make reference to the MDGs only once during his two terms in office. He hoped the new administration’s approach to foreign relations and international aid would put a stronger emphasis on achieving the MDGs, which aim to increase health, stability, and prosperity worldwide.
