Today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Colombia’s Macarena National Park is being deforested and polluted by illegal coca farms. After being driven from farmland by U.S.-sponsored aerial fumigation, coca growers have invaded Macarena and other national parks, where fumigation is illegal. In August 2006, six workers manually clearing coca in Macarena were killed by a bomb detonated by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Recently, Colombia has begun to shift away from aerial fumigation toward manual eradication, which is more effective but poses significant risks to the workers and the security personnel guarding them.

Coca farming gives rise to a wide range of negative environmental effects, including “chemical dumping, deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution, a shift to mono-agriculture, bio-diversity loss, and a potential loss of cultural eco-knowledge,” according to American University’s Trade and Environment Database.

A New York Times article from 1989 demonstrates that, sadly, coca trafficking has been causing violence and environmental destruction across South America for decades.

Nigerian Senator David Dafinone argued yesterday that the Nigerian government should abandon plans to allocate 444.6 billion Nigerian nairas in the 2008 budget to security in the conflict-ravaged Niger Delta. “Dedicating such huge amount to policing the Niger Delta will be counter productive because resentment of the state and the oil companies by the people will continue to deepen,” said Dafinone, who hails from the Delta. “There is urgent need to reorder the political, social and economic development of the Niger Delta,” he continued. “The root cause of the crisis in the region remains the denial of the peoples’ right to land and its content.”

The recent fighting in Chad was partially fuelled by rebels’ resentment over President Idriss Déby’s handling of the country’s oil revenue, reported The New York Times. “They say that he has not managed the country’s growing oil wealth well and that he has given preferential treatment to members of his ethnic group, the Zaghawa.”

Although an agreement with the World Bank states that Chad’s government must devote 70 percent of oil revenue to development, few believe this is occurring, especially given Déby’s recent high levels of military spending. Philippe Hugon, a researcher specializing in African economic affairs, told Agence France-Presse, “The oil wealth has been partially siphoned off and wasted on arms spending and on building up the personal fortunes of people close to Idriss Déby….The rebels want their share.”

Chad’s oil production is tiny when compared with that of some of its neighbors, such as Nigeria; even so, it constitutes a considerable portion of the country’s economy. Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 170th out of 177 countries in the 2007-2008 Human Development Index.

According to The Economist, one similarity between seemingly dissimilar Gaza and Kenya is that they both have “too many young men without either jobs or prospects.” Improvements in health and education—which resulted in more current 15-to-24-year-olds being healthy and relatively well-educated—have not been matched by sufficient growth of economic opportunities, leaving many young people frustrated in their attempts to provide for themselves and their families. Fertility rates have fallen somewhat in both places, from around seven children per woman 20 years ago to approximately five today—but this is still far higher than the 1.6 children per woman average in developed countries.

For a more detailed analysis of the relationships between large youth cohorts and conflict, see Population Action International’s report The Shape of Things to Come. As report author Elizabeth Leahy noted at the Wilson Center in October 2007, “The problem is not that there are too many young people, but that there are too few opportunities and resources available to them….Young people are the most important asset a society has in looking to the future. When young people are educated, healthy, and employed, they are the ones who renew and revitalize a country’s economy and institutions.”

“After decades of mistreatment, abuse, and exploitation, African farmers—still overwhelmingly smallholders working family-tilled plots of land—are awakening from a long slumber,” writes G. Pascal Zachary in the Winter 2008 issue of the Wilson Quarterly. In “The Coming Revolution in Africa,” Zachary argues that sub-Saharan Africa’s small-scale farmers—who constitute 60 percent of the region’s population—are making important gains that could transform them into key economic and political players in their countries.

Today’s Washington Post reports on the discovery of a new species of flowering palm tree in northern Madagascar. The tree—which, when in bloom, sends a 30-foot-tall mass of fruits and flowers sprouting from the top of its trunk—is so unlike any other known palms that it has been assigned its own genus. The discovery of this tree is “helping to highlight the predicament Madagascar faces as population growth, poverty and poor land management conspire to destroy the last vestiges of that island’s ecological magnificence,” writes reporter Rick Weiss. According to the article, approximately 90 percent of Madagascar’s 10,000 plant species are endemic to the island, yet one-third of the country’s unique vegetative cover has disappeared during the past three decades.

But the situation is perhaps not as dire as Weiss makes it out to be. For instance, a successful population-environment program in Madagascar has helped preserve the country’s remaining rainforest while improving the health of the Malagasy people.

In its mission to prevent conflict in Africa, the new U.S. military combatant command in Africa (AFRICOM) will likely address the environmental dimensions of conflicts, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whelan told Inside the Pentagon (subscription required). “To the extent that the Africa Command in its management of our capability and capacity-building training programs enables African forces to be more effective in deterring conflicts, defusing conflicts, responding to local flare-ups that might occur because of some environmentally caused issue—then, yes, you could say that AFRICOM is part of the process of addressing the consequences of environmental change,” said Whelan. She noted that shifting weather patterns and sustained drought helped precipitate the current conflict in Darfur between pastoralists and farmers—echoing an argument UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made in a June 2007 editorial in The Washington Post.

A transcript of an October 2007 interview Whelan gave on AFRICOM is available here. In a New Security Beat post, Department of the Army Senior Africa Analyst Shannon Beebe argues that AFRICOM should implement an environmental security strategy.

In an editorial in The New York Times, noted author and former Wilson Center speaker Jared Diamond argues that the world’s growing population “matters only insofar as people consume and produce.”

A new guide from MEASURE Evaluation provides a set of evidence-based indicators that integrated population-health-environment (PHE) projects can use for monitoring and evaluation.

WomenLead in Peace and Stability, a new publication from the Centre for Development and Population Activities, profiles 15 women from war-torn nations—including Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nepal—who have worked to build sustainable peace in their countries.

Tensions are high between those who support the construction of a new township for former Nairobi slum-dwellers, and those who argue the development will jeopardize the future of Nairobi National Park.