Trade, Aid and Security: An Agenda for Peace and Development, a new edited volume arriving in bookstores next week, looks at the ways in which conflict and state failure can arise from inappropriate or misused aid and trade policies, particularly when natural resources are at stake. Richard Auty and Philippe Le Billon contribute a chapter on managing revenues from natural resources, and Ian Smillie discusses the relationship between aid and conflict.

Forward and introduction available from the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Over the next decade China expects to have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women, said a report released last week by China’s State Population and Family Planning Commission. In esponse, Chinese authorities have made new commitments to slow the imbalance by curtailing fetus gender testing and sex-selective abortions. Efforts to promote equality between men and women are also being scaled up in hopes of staving off potential problems noted in the initial report:

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia are two of several countries in the Persian Gulf beginning to invest in the water sector. In anticipation of growing demand for water due to population growth, UAE plans to spend $7 billion over the next seven years, while Saudi Arabia plans to spend $28 billion over the next decade, reports Gulf News. The article does not provide a breakdown of sector spending, but notes that $6 billion of Saudi Arabia’s investment will go toward desalination plants.

Urging a better understanding of the roots of instability, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs on Wednesday said that fighting poverty will provide security benefits to the developing and the developed worlds:

“Instability will grow where poverty festers in an extreme form, that’s what we’re seeing in the Horn of Africa. This isn’t a crisis about Islam, this isn’t a crisis about geopolitics, this is essentially a crisis of extreme poverty.”

He cited mosquito nets, medicine, and fertilizer as three means to improve health and livelihoods among the world’s poor.

Representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia came together with other international partners in Georgia’s capital city of Tblisi today to discuss the impact of environmental concerns on peace in the region.

Regional cooperation may be the solution to problems such as environmental degradation and access to natural resources, according to Ambassador Roy Reeve, head of the OSCE Mission to Georgia.

The meeting is part of the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC).

Environmental problems such as climate and water scarcity pose growing risks to the world’s future, says a new report from the World Economic Forum. Global Risks 2007 offers sobering scenarios of threats quickly coming down the road: over the next 10 years, more than 1 million people in the developing world are expected to die from disease, while loss of freshwater services is projected to claim somewhere between 40,000 and 200,000 lives.

Already the world’s sixth-largest country, Pakistan’s population could double to 300 million people in the next 40 years if the current rate of growth continues. Population and Welfare Minister Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain announced new plans to promote contraception and smaller family norms as a way to stem the tide. This marks a major policy shift for a country where discussion of such measures was once taboo, he noted:

“There was a time when you couldn’t talk about family planning, but now things have changed and we are also bringing clerics on board.”

The outreach plan will focus on urban centers and industrial areas, and include contraception as well as sex education.

A World Economic Forum report ranks 115 countries—together comprising 90 percent of the world’s population—by their relative gender gaps. Countries were ranked by the relative inequality between men and women in economics, education, political status, and health and survival. According to London Business School Dean Laura Tyson, who helped shape the report’s methodology, the rankings reveal a lost economic opportunity:

“Countries that do not fully capitalize effectively on one-half of their human resources run the risk of undermining their competitive potential. We hope to highlight the economic incentive behind empowering women in addition to promoting equality as a basic human right.”

Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland have the smallest gender gaps. The Philippines, at six, is the only Asian country in the top 10. The United States comes in at 22.