Modern-day slavery, also known as human trafficking, is the third most lucrative form of organized crime in the world, after trade in illegal drugs and arms trafficking. Today, 27 million people are enslaved—mostly as a result of debt bondage. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns found that Brazil is the third-largest source of human trafficking in the Western hemisphere, after Mexico and Colombia. According to the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2008, 250,000-500,000 Brazilian children are currently exploited for prostitution, both domestically and abroad. NGOs estimate that 75,000 Brazilian women and girls—most of them trafficked—work as prostitutes in neighboring South American countries, the United States, and Europe.

When I tell people I have been working on a report about U.S. international water policy, they usually respond with the same sardonic question: “The United States has an international water policy?” The answer, of course, is complicated. Yes, we have localized approaches to water challenges in parts of the developing world, and we have more than 15 government agencies with capacities to address water and sanitation issues abroad. And yes, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development published a joint strategic framework this year for action on water issues in the developing world.

However, the U.S. government (USG) does not yet have an overarching strategy to guide our water programs abroad and maximize synergies among (and within) agencies. Furthermore, the 2005 Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act—which calls for increased water and sanitation assistance to developing countries—has yet to be funded and implemented in a fashion that satisfies lawmakers. In fact, just last week, legislation was introduced in both the House and the Senate to enhance the capacity of the USG to fully implement the Water for the Poor Act.

Why has implementation been so slow? An underlying problem is that water still has no institutional home in the USG, unlike other resources like agriculture and energy, which have entire departments devoted to them. In the current system, interagency water coordination falls on a small, under-resourced (yet incredibly talented and dedicated) team in the State Department comprised of individuals who must juggle competing priorities under the broad portfolio of Oceans, Environment, and Science. In part, it is water’s institutional homelessness that hinders interagency collaboration, as mandates and funding for addressing water issues are not always clearly delineated.

So, what should be done? For the last year and a half, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Global Strategy Institute has consulted with policy experts, advocates, scientists, and practitioners to answer this million-dollar question. In our report, Global Water Futures: A Roadmap for Future U.S. Policy, we conclude that if we are serious about achieving a range of our strategic national interests, water must be elevated as a priority in U.S. foreign policy. Water is paramount to human health, agricultural and energy production, education, economic development, post-conflict stabilization, and more—therefore, our government’s organizational structure and the resources it commits to water should reflect the strategic importance of this resource.

We propose the creation of a new bureau or “one-stop shop” for water policy in the State Department to lead in strategic planning, implementation, and evaluation of international water programs; mobilize resources in support of water programming overseas; provide outreach to Congress and important stakeholders; and serve as a research and information clearinghouse. This would require significant support from the highest levels of government, increased funding, and greater collaboration with the private and independent sectors.

The current economic crisis means we are likely to face even greater competition for scarce foreign aid resources. But I would argue—paraphrasing Congressman Earl Blumenauer at our report rollout—that relatively little funding toward water and sanitation can have a significant impact around the world. As we tighten our belts during this period of financial instability, it is even more important that we invest in cross-cutting issues that yield the highest returns across defense, development, and diplomacy. Water is an excellent place to start.

Rachel Posner is a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Global Strategy Institute.

Photo: Environmental Change and Security Program Director Geoff Dabelko and Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) at the launch of Global Water Futures: A Roadmap for Future U.S. Policy. Courtesy of CSIS.

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Speaking at a Clinton Global Initiative plenary session (webcast; podcast) this morning, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) laid out their proposals for addressing the interconnected problems of global poverty, climate change, and disease. Excerpts from each senator’s speech are below.

Drought, continuing violence, returning refugees, and the spike in global food prices are combining to produce a serious threat to Afghan food security, reports the New York Times. The World Food Program has expanded its operations in Afghanistan to cover a total of nearly 9 million people through the end of next year’s harvest, sending out an emergency appeal to donors to cover the costs.

A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that the global food crisis poses a moral and humanitarian threat; a developmental threat; and a strategic threat. The authors recommend that the United States: modernize emergency assistance; make rural development and agriculture top U.S. foreign policy priorities; alter the U.S. approach to biofuels; ensure U.S. trade policy promotes developing-country agriculture; and strengthen relevant U.S. organizational capacities.

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently issued Fuelling exclusion? The biofuels boom and poor people’s access to land, a report that examines how the biofuels boom is likely to affect access to land. “Policy and market incentives to turn land over to biofuels production will tend to raise land values. While in some cases this could give new opportunities to poor farmers, it could also provide grounds for displacement of poorer people from land,” explain the authors. They conclude that “biofuels are not necessarily bad news for small-scale farmers and land users” but that this depends on the “security of land tenure.”

The Brazilian experience with biofuels and land tenure deserves further attention. Traditionally, land tenure has been fairly insecure in Brazil, as it is difficult for the federal government to exert its authority over the nation’s periphery.

The authors cite evidence that large-scale Brazilian soybean and sugarcane outfits have concentrated their land holdings at the expense of small-scale farmers. These findings are consistent with Brazil’s long-term trend of acreage concentration, which has diminished the participation of small-scale farmers in the country’s agro-industry. Since smaller family farms tend to employ more workers than more-efficient large-scale producers, acreage concentration may increase inequality in Brazil and further strain the provision of public goods and services in urban areas, where displaced farmers tend to migrate. Given the recent surge in biofuel production, this trend is likely to continue.

Although the report itself is fairly neutral, some of the specific claims the authors make regarding biofuels, land concentration, and violence in Brazil are undermined by weak supporting evidence. The report’s section on violence and land concentration in Brazil cites Van Gelder and Dros’ (2006) description of a 2004 labor inspection raid that “freed an unknown number of slaves” who worked in soy fields. Yet Van Gelder and Dros lack a citation for this event and provide no information regarding whether or not these soy fields were being used to produce biodiesel. We also don’t know whether this soy farm was on newly acquired land (i.e., we don’t know if it relates to the expansion of biofuel production). Slave labor exists in Brazil and is a serious problem, but it is not identical to the violent land conflicts generated by the expansion of biofuel production—the subject of this report.

Moreover, the authors of Fuelling exclusion? cite another source regarding land concentration and violence—Noronha et al. (2006)—that seems a bit questionable. A rural exodus from certain parts of Brazil is well-documented, but Noronha et al. try to argue that biofuel expansion has driven this migration, relying on macrodata showing increasing urbanization and decreasing rural populations. There is certainly some overlap between increases in biofuel production and this internal migration, but these data are not sufficient to substantiate a causal relationship. Even more troubling is that Noronha et al. maintain that over a 12-year period, there were 16 assassinations linked to the biofuels industry, citing an op-ed written by a union leader as their source. Yet the op-ed only cites the occurrence of 13 deaths—and not by assassination, but from illnesses possibly related to working in the fields. It’s not that there haven’t been deaths associated with the biofuels industry, it’s just that the sources cited by the authors of Fuelling exclusion? don’t prove as much.

There are real concerns about the social consequences of increased ethanol production in Brazil, particularly for the workers who harvest sugarcane by hand. Nevertheless, ethanol production has given Brazil a unique degree of energy independence and economic vitality. To the extent that this vitality is responsible for Brazil’s ability to (thus far) weather the latest international economic storm, it is possible to argue that it is at least indirectly responsible for the nation’s economic stability and the recent rise of the middle class. Yet until the government uses this stability to provide better land security for its rural population, the benefits of biofuels are likely to continue to accrue mainly to Brazil’s middle and upper classes.

By Brazil Institute Program Assistant Alan Wright and Brazil Institute Intern Matthew Layton.

Photo: Sugarcane plantation near Capixaba in Acre, Brazil. Courtesy of Flickr user visionshare.

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India’s Punjab region faces a host of troubles: In the last 10 years, 100,000 of India’s desperate farmers—many of them Punjabi—have been driven to suicide by their inability to repay loans; half a century of heavy fertilizer use in Punjab has led to soaring cancer rates; water tables in the region sink as much as 100 feet per year, the result of decades of rice production in a naturally dry area; overwatering has brought salts to the soil’s surface, making large tracts of land unusable; and by some accounts, 40 percent of Punjab’s youth and nearly half of its agricultural workforce are addicted to heroin. In a series of reports from Punjab published in Slate magazine, Mira Kamdar argues that the economic, security, and environmental problems facing India can ultimately be traced back some 40 years to the policies of the Green Revolution. The drive to feed India’s rapidly growing population put enormous pressure on Punjab’s land and left consideration for sustainability on the back burner, according to Kamdar, who argues that these issues now threaten to paralyze India’s agricultural sector.

The Green Revolution alleviated the chronic famines that historically plagued India. Hybrid seed varieties, extensive irrigation schemes, and the heavy-handed use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides transformed Punjab into an agricultural powerhouse. It comprises only 1.5 percent of India’s territory, but it produces 60 percent of the country’s wheat and 45 percent of its rice. Yet Kamdar wonders whether India will be able to “feed a growing population in the face of environmental collapse and growing political instability fueled by scarcity.”

With little hope for economic stability, Punjab’s youth are increasingly turning to the drug trade for income, and Punjab’s impoverished citizens, many of whom feel exploited and left behind by the Indian government, are attractive recruits for separatist groups. “Conditions affecting the livelihood of the majority of people in poor countries [or regions] are at the heart of the internal violence” so often found there, according to a report from the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO).

Due to the effects of climate change, the 400 million additional people projected to live in India by 2080 may have to make do with a nearly 40 percent decline in agricultural production during the same period, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Current policies will do little to alleviate the pressures colliding in Punjab. The government—as well as the World Bank, international agriculture corporations, and Indian companies—favors privately funded, large-scale industrial operations. Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s minister of finance, is focused on developing India’s agricultural capacity, and is not terribly concerned with the consequences for the environment, security, or human health. Small-scale farming is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Many countries face the challenge of feeding a growing population with diminishing output, and find doing so in an ecologically responsible manner difficult. Ultimately, though, the case of India shows that increasing output at such dramatic cost to human and environmental health is unsustainable, as it quickly creates complex and intractable problems of its own.

Photo: Punjabi farmers transport fertilizer from a nearby village. Courtesy of Flickr user Aman Tur.

Desertification is a serious problem for the land bordering—one might say being swallowed up by—the Sahara desert. But help is on the way for this huge swath of the continent. Three years after the idea was initially floated, the Great Green Wall project, which is intended to slow the Sahara’s southward march, is underway, after being formally approved at the Community of Sahel-Saharan States summit in Benin last month.

The first phase of the project will last for two years and will, with a $3 million budget, create a tract of trees 7,000 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide. Planting will begin in September 2008 and will involve representatives and consultants from a number of affected countries, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Nigeria. The second planting phase will take place on the eastern part of the continent and will be undertaken in partnership with Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, and Djibouti. This second phase has not been formalized yet, but it is expected that some arrangement will be reached through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Horn of Africa.