The International Institute for Sustainable Development has released two reports on climate change and security: Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: Climate change and the risk of violent conflict in the Middle East and Climate Change and Security in Africa.

In “The Changing Face of Israel,” a Foreign Policy web exclusive, Richard Cincotta and Eric Kaufmann explain how Israel’s demographics are influencing the country’s politics.

CNN’s Inside Africa reports on a bill in the U.S. Congress that seeks to quell the violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by forcing American companies to disclose the sources of their minerals.

Population Action International’s Kathleen Mogelgaard reports from international climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany, on how climate change disproportionately affects women and the poor.

A Christian Science Monitor op-ed on global demographic trends cites Wilson Center Senior Scholar Martin Walker.

On Grist, Earth Policy Institute Founder Lester Brown explores the massive migration that would be precipitated by even partial melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa, a study conducted by IIED, FAO, and IFAD, is the first detailed study to examine large land acquisitions in sub-Saharan Africa.

The latest issue of Population and Environment (subscription required) includes articles on land, education, and fertility in Kenya; indigenous women and fertility in the Ecuadorian Amazon; and the impact of chemical exposure on sex ratios in Greece.

A partnership between local villages and the Bonobo Conservation Initiative has led to the establishment of a 1,847 square mile reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reports Mongabay.

A new article in the Encyclopedia of the Earth lists population growth rates (including births, deaths, and migration) by country, based on CIA data.

In the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic, 2008 International Reporting Fellow Delphine Shrank explains how conflict in DRC is harming the local ecosystem and livelihoods.

Oxfam International has released a study (Spanish) arguing that rapidly shrinking glaciers in the Andes are disrupting water supplies and leading to conflict in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

A shortage of clean water is leading to domestic violence in Uganda, report The New Vision and Circle of Blue.

The June 2009 edition of National Geographic includes a special report on food security, agriculture, and population.

“Two decades after its fall, the border between East and West Germany has already become Europe’s biggest nature reserve: an 858-mile ‘ecological treasure trove,’ no longer the Iron Curtain but the Green Belt, and home to more than 600 rare and endangered species of birds, mammals, plants and insects,” reports Tony Paterson for The Independent.

Worldfocus.org’s latest radio show explores the geopolitics of the melting Arctic.

Focus author Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, who founded and directs the Ugandan NGO Conservation Through Public Health, won the Whitley Gold Award (see video of her work) for her efforts to protect the endangered mountain gorillas while improving local communities’ quality of life. The other five finalists were also seeking to reduce human-wildlife conflict in diverse contexts.

In Seed magazine, seven experts—including Peter Gleick and Mark Zeitoun—weigh in on whether “water wars” are a serious menace or an improbable threat, inflated by breathless media coverage of water shortages.

A major report on managing the health effects of climate change, co-authored by University College London and The Lancet, claims that climate change is the biggest health threat of the 21st century.

On his blog, Signs From Earth, National Geographic editor Dennis Dimick has collected a variety of resources about the possibility of “climate refugees.”

It’s not news that the U.S. and U.K. militaries are studying climate change’s potential security impacts, or seeking to increase energy efficiency on bases and in combat zones. But Geoffrey Lean, the environment editor of the Independent, is surprised that legendary Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap has come out against bauxite mining in Vietnam’s central highlands, which he says “will cause serious consequences on the environment, society and national defense.”

Photo: Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka receives the Whitley Gold Award from Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal. Courtesy of the Whitley Fund for Nature.

In Conservation magazine, David Malakoff examines how cellulosic ethanol may threaten biodiversity around the world.

A Comprehensive Approach to Congo’s Conflict Minerals, a report by the Enough Project, argues that ending resource-related violence in the DRC will require:

How Do Recent Population Trends Matter To Climate Change?, from Population Action International, offers the latest research from this constantly changing area of inquiry.

U.S. Global Health and National Security Policy, a timely report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, examines major threats to human health and international stability, including HIV/AIDS, SARS, pandemic influenza, and bioterrorism.

In the coming decades, Russia will confront “accelerated population decrease; a dwindling of the working-age population; the general ageing of the population; the drop in number of potential mothers; a large immigrant influx; and a possible rise in emigration rates,” warns a new report from the UN Development Programme.

In The National Interest and the Law of the Sea, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Scott Borgerson argues that ratifying the Law of the Sea Convention is vital to protecting the United States’ national security, economic, and environmental interests.

David Sullivan of Enough debates Harrison Mitchell and Nicolas Garrett of Resource Consulting Services (RCS) on the links between conflict and mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). RCS recently published a report arguing that mineral extraction is key to DRC’s development and not the primary cause of conflict in North Kivu.

Responding to the ubiquitous Monsanto ads that ask, “9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. Now what?,” Tod Preston of Population Action International responds, “family planning and empowering women, that’s what!”

Water and War, a publication of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), outlines how the ICRC provides access to clean water during conflict and humanitarian disasters.

The authors of Asia’s Next Challenge: Securing the Region’s Water Future, a report by the Asia Society, argue that population growth, urbanization, and climate change are converging to make water an important security issue in Asia. The authors argue for including water in policy and development discussions, but warn against “securitizing” the issue.

“The Arctic could slide into a new era featuring jurisdictional conflicts, increasingly severe clashes over the extraction of natural resources, and the emergence of a new ‘great game’ among the global powers,” argue Paul Berkman and Oran Young, two researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in Science. “However, the environment provides a physical and a conceptual framework to link government interests in the Arctic Ocean, as well as a template for addressing transboundary security risks cooperatively.” In the Washington Times, Paula Dobriansky, former U.S. undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, argues that the Antarctic Treaty offers lessons for dealing with competing territorial claims in the Arctic.