“The relationship between natural resources and violent conflict is shaped to a large extent by the quality of the governance of those resources, which in turn is a correlate of good governance in general,” says In Control of Natural Wealth? Governing the resource-conflict dynamic, a report by the Bonn International Center for Conversion. “Furthermore, our results confirm the assumption that good (resource) governance increases state stability and, in countries that had experienced violent conflict, the duration of peace.”

Peri-Urban Water Conflicts: Supporting dialogue and negotiation, a report by the Netherlands’ IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, explores water conflicts on the outskirts of three developing country cities: Cochabamba, Bolivia; Chennai, India; and São Paolo, Brazil.

“Poverty Reduction and Millennium Development Goals: Recognizing Population, Health, and Environment Linkages in Rural Madagascar,” published in Medscape General Medicine, evaluates Madagascar’s progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals and discusses how the government’s plans for the country’s development address the linkages between poverty, population, health, and environment.

According to a study carried out by Michael Ross of UCLA, vast oil wealth tends to diminish women’s rights. “Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions,” writes Ross.

The Economist reports on the global effects of China’s growing hunger for natural resources—including oil, copper, grain, and timber. “Some non-governmental organisations worry that Chinese firms will ignore basic legal, environmental and labour standards in their rush to secure resources, leaving a trail of corruption, pollution and exploitation in their wake.”

Migration and Climate Change, a new report prepared by Oli Brown for the International Organization for Migration, examines current and future migration due to climate change; explores climate change-related migration’s implications for development; and recommends policy responses.

The rapid recovery of nature tourism in Kenya is central to stabilizing the fragile nation, bolstering its economy, and protecting its biodiversity, said UN Environment Programme Director Achim Steiner.

Two articles from Reuters highlight the intertwined environmental, demographic, and political challenges Yemen faces. “Yemen’s painful struggle to build a modern state may be overwhelmed by rampant population growth, dwindling resources, corruption and internal conflicts,” writes special correspondent Alistair Lyon. One of Yemen’s greatest challenges is water scarcity, which is only becoming more acute as the population booms.

“Many argue that demographic trends can interact with other factors such as poverty, poor governance, competition for natural resources, and environmental degradation to exacerbate tensions and contribute to conflict….Family planning will not end conflict, of course, but slowing the rate of population growth can help stabilize a country in turmoil,” writes ECSP’s Gib Clarke on the RH Reality Check blog.

Papers and presentations from “Population, Health, and Environment: Integrated Development for East Africa,” a November 2007 conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that the Environmental Change and Security Program helped organize, are now available online.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

“Cities themselves represent microcosms of the kinds of changes that are happening globally, making them informative test cases for understanding socioecological system dynamics and responses to change,” argue the authors of “Global Change and the Ecology of Cities,” published in today’s issue of Science magazine. The article focuses on changes in land use and cover, biogeochemical cycles, climate, hydrosystems, and biodiversity.

In an op-ed in today’s Washington Post, Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai argues that the country’s post-election violence is partially the result of “the inequitable distribution of natural resources in Kenya, especially land.” Maathai has written extensively on the links between peace and natural resource management.

A joint policy brief by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the World Resources Institute lays out the challenges associated with simultaneously increasing energy security and reducing carbon emissions, and proposes principles to guide these transitions.

Austria has not abided by its promise to crack down on a leather factory that Hungary contends is polluting the transboundary Raba River, said Hungary’s minister of environment, who proposed bilateral talks to resolve the issue.

This mid-term report evaluates progress made by the USAID-funded Okavango Integrated River Basin Management Project, which seeks to strengthen regional water management institutions and preserve the basin’s biodiversity.

“HIV and AIDS affect all people in a community by driving faster rates of resource extraction and use, increasing gender inequality, lowering the general health of the labor force, and impeding an individual’s ability to maintain a viable livelihood,” argue the authors of “Guidelines for Mitigating the Impacts of HIV/AIDS on Coastal Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management,” which suggests ways to combat these challenges.

USAID’s “Adapting to Climate Variability and Change: A Guidance Manual for Development Planning” seeks to help USAID country missions and partners increase their projects’ resiliency to global climate change, though it neglects to mention the links between climate change and population.

The North-South Institute’s Canadian Development Report 2008—Fragile States or Failing Development? (free registration required) assesses reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan; Canada’s contributions to gender equality in Afghanistan and Haiti; and the destabilizing effects development aid and intervention can have in fragile Latin American states.