Showing posts from category conflict.
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Reading Radar– A Weekly Roundup
›February 8, 2008 // By Wilson Center Staff“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. -
Reading Radar– A Weekly Roundup
›February 1, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffUSAID’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.
Three policy papers by the Committee for International Cooperation in National Research on Demography (CICRED)—“Path to Development or Road to Nowhere: Poverty, Migration and Environment,” “Rural populations and agrarian transformations in the global South,” and “Urban Population, Development and Environment Dynamics”—examine the links between population, environment, and development.
An article in the Atlantic Monthly‘s January-February 2008 issue explores how climate change is exacerbating the many security threats already facing Bangladesh. Sound familiar?
The violence that has gripped Kenya following still-contested December 27, 2007 elections has blocked many roads, cutting off small-scale farmers’ access to markets and threatening their livelihoods, reports IRIN News.
Vol. 23, Issue 3 of LEISA magazine explores the links between health and agriculture, focusing on efforts to improve the health and agricultural output of small-scale farmers in the Global South. -
In Davos, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Highlights Water Conflict
›January 24, 2008 // By Karen BencalaYet another world leader is predicting impending water wars. Today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Our experiences tell us that environmental stress due to lack of water may lead to conflict, and it will be greater in poor nations.” Agreed. Water stress may lead to conflict, but a historical analysis shows that it is actually more likely lead to a cooperative outcome than a conflictive one. (For a quick summary of water conflict and cooperation and how water can be a force for peace rather than war, see ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko’s co-authored piece on the subject, “Water Can Be a Pathway to Peace, Not War.”)
While Ban’s call to prepare for water conflict may be a tad alarmist, he did accurately lay out the problem and the need to develop better management practices as part of the solution to increased water stress: “Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst…There is still enough water for all of us, but only so long as we keep it clean, use it more wisely, and share it fairly.” As Ban was speaking in Davos, he made a plug for the role that business can play in addressing the problem, saying that business has for a long time been the “culprit” in water problems, but that now “business is becoming part of the solution, not the problem.”
You can watch today’s entire plenary meeting, “Time is Running out for Water,” on the World Economic Forum’s website. -
New Year Sees Heightened Violence in Niger
›January 18, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiHostility between the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) and the country’s government—brewing since government officials announced a sharp increase in mining project commitments in the northern region of Niger in early 2007—escalated this month. Violence reached Niger’s capital city of Niamey for the first time on January 8, 2008, when a landmine exploded under a car, killing a local radio director. The MNJ, which decries what it perceives as the unequal distribution of profits from uranium mining and oil drilling in Tuareg territory, has killed nearly 50 soldiers since early last year, earning the wrath of the Nigerien government. Although the group vehemently denies any involvement with the January 8 attack, many in Niger are skeptical of this claim.
Ethnic Tuaregs, who live mostly in northern Niger and account for eight percent of the country’s population, make up the majority of the MNJ. Politically marginalized following independence and devastated by the desertification of the Sahel and the droughts of 1968-74 and 1984-85, the Tuareg also suffered from the government’s refusal to assist the drought-stricken territories and government expropriation of international humanitarian aid. Following the droughts, many Tuaregs moved to urban areas, where they found themselves culturally isolated. Others were forced to move into refugee camps, while still others migrated to Algeria and Libya. In Niger, this social divide, coupled with economic hardship, manifested itself in violent rebellion between 1990 and 1995, when a peace deal was brokered in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The peace, however, was neither complete nor lasting.
Recently, lack of access to the economic benefits of oil drilling and uranium mining in Tuareg territory has led to increasingly volatile relations between the Tuareg and Niger’s government. Government spokesman Mohamed Ben Omar’s announcement last May that Niger would seek to triple its uranium production in the near future only increased the tension. In addition, several instances of violence during 2007 have further strained relations between the MNJ and Niger’s government. On April 20, Tuareg rebels attacked uranium prospectors from the French-controlled Areva mining company in northern Niger, calling for increased benefits for the local Tuareg population and better implementation of the 1995 peace accord, which required companies to give preference to the Tuareg in their hiring processes. On July 6, rebels captured and held a Chinese mine employee for four days before releasing him.
The violence seems set to continue: On January 10, 2008, Nigerien Energy and Mines Minister Mamadou Abdulahi announced that Niger would award 100 new mining exploration permits over the next two years and seven new oil exploration licenses in 2008, and on January 13, Areva announced plans to undertake the largest industrial mining project ever in Niger. Areva will invest more than €1 billion in the project, which will produce nearly 5,000 tons of uranium a year.
The Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) has long explored the connections between natural resources and security. ECSP’s January 9, 2008, meeting, “Innovative Partnerships for Peace: The Role of Extractive Industries in Resource-Based Conflict Prevention and Mitigation,” was the first in a series that will explore the links between conflict, natural resources, and human health. -
AFRICOM Attentive to Security Implications of Environmental Change, Says Pentagon Official
›January 16, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarIn 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. -
PODCAST – Climate Change and National Security: A Discussion with Joshua Busby, Part 1
›January 14, 2008 // By Sean PeoplesBy destabilizing environments, global climate change can exacerbate existing security challenges and contribute to the creation of new ones. A widely publicized November 2007 report by the Council on Foreign Relations examines the linkages between climate and security and proposes a manageable set of policy options to adapt to and reduce the impacts of an inevitable global change in climate. The report, entitled “Climate Change and National Security,” was written by Joshua Busby, an assistant professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. In Part 1 of a two-part podcast series, ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko speaks with Busby about the report and his recommendations for action.
Climate Change and National Security: A Discussion with Joshua Busby, Part 1: Download. -
Reading Radar– A Weekly Roundup
›January 11, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffThe National Interest sponsored an online debate on the links between natural resources and conflict featuring David Victor, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Michael Klare, Sherri Goodman, and Paul Kern.
Georgetown University’s Colin Kahl argues that Kenya’s present strife is largely due to deep-seated ethnic land grievances, while a Council on Foreign Relations brief claims that it is partially the result of demographic factors—the country’s “youth bulge,” for instance.
“Weathering the Storm: Options for Framing Adaptation and Development,” a new report from the World Resources Institute, reviews climate change adaptation efforts from throughout the developing world, and explores how adaptation activities intersect with poverty, environmental degradation, and other challenges.
An article from IRIN News examines whether or not the extraction of Mozambique’s mineral resources—including heavy metals, coal, natural gas, and perhaps oil—is likely to reduce the country’s widespread poverty.
Thousands of people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi have fled the flooding caused by the overflowing Zambezi River, reports BBC News. “Damage to crops and roads has raised fears of food shortages, and aid agencies have also warned of increased risk of waterborne diseases and diseases caused by poor sanitation.” -
Kenya’s Ethnic Land Strife
›A story in yesterday’s New York Times describes an expanding campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kikuyu tribe in western Kenya. We’ve seen this story before. In my 2006 book States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, I explained how rapid population growth, environmental degradation, and historical land grievances collided with multi-party elections in the early 1990s to provide opportunities for Kenyan elites to gain power and wealth by violently mobilizing ethnic groups against one another. The ensuing violence pitted the Kalenjin and other smaller tribal communities engaged in pastoral activities against the Kikuyu, Luo, and other traditional farming communities in the fertile Rift Valley, leaving more than a thousand Kenyans dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.
Sound familiar? Demographically and environmentally induced ethnic land competition—at the heart of the 1990s conflicts—remains problematic today. Deep-seated grievances emanating from struggles over scarce farmland provide ample opportunities for elites across the political spectrum to mobilize tribal supporters to engage in violence and ethnic land cleansing during times of electoral instability—especially in rural areas, where strong group identification facilitates such mobilization. This didn’t happen during the last presidential election, in 2002, because elites bought into the democratic process and the elections were viewed as fair. In addition, the Kenyan Electoral Commission and the international community, in an effort to prevent a repeat of the strife in 1992 and 1997, closely scrutinized electoral behavior in 2002.
This time, the apparent rigging of the election by the Kibaki regime—which many minority tribes view as having used its political power to unfairly benefit its own Kikuyu tribe—unleashed the latent grievances against the Kikuyu still present in Kenyan society. “You have to understand that these issues are much deeper than ethnic,” Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, told the Times. “They are political…they go back to land.”
Colin Kahl is an assistant professor in the Security Studies Program at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a regular ECSP contributor.