“The water crisis in Central Asia is due to the way water has been allocated and managed; it is not a crisis of quantity but of distribution,” asserts Jeremy Allouche, a visiting fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies, in “The governance of Central Asian waters: national interests versus regional cooperation,” available in the latest issue of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research’s Disarmament Forum.

The shrinking of the Aral Sea, which began in the 1960s, first drew international attention to the region’s water issues. The Aral Sea has been an ecological disaster, but Central Asia now has another, equally serious hydrological problem: how to divide the region’s limited water among competing countries that need it for irrigation, hydropower, and other uses. Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Krygystan have had largely hostile relations over water distribution since they achieved independence in 1992, and these tensions could boil over into violent conflict unless the countries can implement a functional regional water agreement.

Allouche offers a concise, lucid overview of the challenges of the region’s post-independence water governance system, including analyses of how the water policies of Central Asia’s major players (which also include Afghanistan, China, and Russia) affect regional tensions over water.

Mitigating the effects of global climate change will require an integrated approach, says the UN Development Program’s (UNDP) new report, Human Development Report 2007/2008, which focuses on the human dimensions of a warming planet and highlights the challenges vulnerable populations face in adapting to climatic shifts.

The United States and Israel could garner more meaningful engagement from Syria in the Middle East peace process by proposing the creation of a peace park in the disputed Golan Heights area, say University of Vermont Associate Professor Saleem Ali, a recent speaker at the Wilson Center, and Rabbi Michael Cohen of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel in “Salvaging Peace with Syria,” available on the Carnegie Council’s “Policy Innovations” website. Noting that transboundary conservation areas have helped resolve past conflicts—as with the Cordillera del Cóndor Transboundary Protected Area, established between Peru and Ecuador in 1995—the authors argue that a Golan Heights peace park should be on the agenda at tomorrow’s Middle East peace conference in Annapolis.

Can environmental destruction justify military intervention? Robyn Eckersley, a professor of environmental politics at the University of Melbourne, Australia, explores the morality, legality, and legitimacy of such involvement in “Ecological Intervention: Prospects and Limits,” which appears in the latest issue of Ethics and International Affairs.

Eckersley argues that the United Nations—particularly the Security Council—possesses the authority to assume a larger role in protecting the environment. This idea is not original, however: Klaus Töpfer, former head of the UN Environment Programme, and Mikhail Gorbachev have both called for the creation of a “green helmets” force to respond to environmental crises.

Eckersley identifies three categories of environmental harm that could justify an ecological intervention—which she defines as “the threat or use of force by a state or coalition of states within the territory of another state and without the consent of that state in order to prevent grave environmental damage”—or the launch of an ecological defense—which she defines as “the preventive use of force in response to the threat of serious and immediate environmental harm flowing into the territory of a ‘victim’ state.”

1. A major environmental emergency with transboundary spillover effects. As an illustration, Eckersley hypothesizes a Chernobyl-like nuclear accident in a country that lacks the capacity to cope with the catastrophe but refuses foreign assistance. She argues that the notion of “territorial integrity” inscribed in the UN Charter can readily be interpreted to include “ecosystem integrity”—and therefore justify an intervention by an affected state. Currently, a country affected by another country’s nuclear accident can only hope for monetary reparations.
2. An ecocide—the result of intentional, systematic acts that cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the environment—involving serious human rights violations. Saddam Hussein’s decimation of the marsh region that was home to the Madan, or Marsh Arabs, is a case in point. Eckersley’s legal argument here relies on an expansive interpretation of the UN Charter’s notion of “threat to the peace.”
3. An ecocide involving no serious harm to human beings. An illustration of this situation would be the deployment of troops in the Great Lakes to protect the mountain gorillas. Contending that biodiversity is a “common concern of humankind,” Eckersley argues that states have a responsibility to other states to protect their environment, as the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development suggests.

Eckersley’s proposition, though interesting, suffers from a number of pitfalls. One major problem is that her argument could open the door to an extremely wide range of military interventions. For instance, her call for interventions to protect endangered species is extremely impractical—if not impossible—given the prediction that climate change will threaten the existences of millions of species will be at risk by 2050. One option—though not without serious problems of its own—would be to establish a list of “indispensable” species.

Another weakness of Eckersley’s article is that it neglects the role of incentives, focusing instead on the use of force, even though governments are often more receptive to the former. The army is probably not the organization best-suited to protecting coral or chimpanzees. Troop deployments are both financially and morally costly: Developing countries might view an increasing number of interventions by the Security Council as a violation of their sovereignty or a new form of colonization. Furthermore, it will take far more than military interventions to ensure the health of the environment.

Additional flaws in Eckersley’s argument include her attempt to build the case for ecological interventions on that of still-controversial humanitarian interventions, and her wish to saddle the United Nations with additional responsibilities.

Ecological intervention and ecological defense are interesting concepts, anticipating the future importance of the environment in foreign policy. However, Eckersley’s argument goes too far. Few countries would send troops into hostile territory solely to protect the local environment or wildlife. The necessary intermediate step is to continue studying the links between conflict and the environment, biodiversity, and climate change. That research will make possible the development of pragmatic, environment-centered conflict-prevention and conflict-resolution strategies.

For years, some experts have predicted that the depletion of global oil reserves—and the resulting rising price of oil—would make U.S. dependence on foreign oil economically untenable. Calls to address American energy consumption are nothing new. Yet technology has expanded the industry’s ability to find and extract oil: The National Petroleum Council estimates the total proven reserves at 1.2 trillion barrels—38 years of supply at current rates of consumption. It is likely that another trillion barrels of undiscovered oil exist, as well as 1.5 trillion barrels of “unconventional” reserves of heavy oil, according to the federally chartered advisory committee. As Vijay Vaitheeswaran argues in Foreign Policy magazine, “the world is simply not running out of oil. It is running into it.”

Recently, then, many advocates of oil independence have shifted from an economic argument, which has become hard to sustain at a time when governments are paying $98 a barrel for oil, to a security argument—although this is not to say that national security was not a concern at all previously. Besides the failure of alarmist predictions, two factors explain the shift from an economic to a security discourse: climate change and terrorism. The growing awareness of the causes and extent of climate change has tarnished the image of fossil fuels. According to a BBC poll, 50 percent of the world population favors higher taxes on fossil fuels.

Even more than climate change, however, it is the links between oil and terrorism that cause concern among policymakers. At a conference at the Brookings Institution, former CIA director James Woolsey argued that oil revenue often flows to Islamist regimes that finance madrassas, which educate the next generation of terrorists. Oil can be a source terrorism, but it can also be a target. Oil convoys are one of the main concerns of U.S. troops in Iraq, as they are frequently attacked by terrorists. In addition, the oil fields of the Niger Delta are often attacked by rebel groups.

In his book Freedom from Oil, David Sandalow, an expert on energy policy and climate change, explores what could happen if the next president prioritized oil independence– which he defines as reducing U.S. oil consumption to the point that imports are minimal. [For Sandalow’s response, read comments below.] He believes the transportation complex should be the target of future policies, and that biofuels and plug-in cars are part of the solution. Indeed, as Vaitheeswaran notes, “this year, two-thirds of U.S. oil consumption—and half of global oil consumption—will be sucked up by cars and trucks. Reinventing the car is the only serious way to wean the world off oil.”

Observers typically view the race to lay claim to territory in the Arctic as a competition for oil and gas resources or an exercise in national sovereignty. But for Russia, there could be a third reason to try to claim the North: identity. “The parallel with Stalin’s triumphalist propaganda campaign of ‘conquering the North’ launched in 1936-1939 on the background of severe internal repressions is too obvious to miss,” argues Pavel Baev, research professor at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), in “Russia’s Race for the Arctic and the New Geopolitics of the North Pole,” an occasional paper published by the Jamestown Foundation. According to Baev, Russia’s entire Arctic campaign—including the planting of the titanium flag on the sea floor and the flights of Tu-95MS strategic bombers over Arctic waters—is intended to bolster Russians’ nationalism.

Baev believes that oil alone cannot explain Russia’s actions in the Arctic. First, no one is sure just how extensive the Arctic’s oil reserves really are, because minimal exploratory drilling has been carried out. Moreover, Russia currently lacks the technology to develop offshore oil and gas fields in harsh conditions, and does not seem interested in developing that technology. “The underlying proposition for claiming exclusive economic rights for the seabed beyond the 80°N latitude is that 30-50 years from now hydrocarbons would still be in such high demand that production at enormous costs will be economically efficient. What follows logically is that Russia is not particularly worried about the climate change and has few thoughts about alternative energy sources,” writes Baev.

According to Baev, oil is a motivation for Moscow, but only in the long term. Oil reserves, combined with other strategic interests—such as maritime shipping routes, which have historically been a significant concern for Russia—pushed the Kremlin to take steps to assert Russia’s claims to significant Arctic territories. Three factors contributed to Russia’s Arctic strategy: a growing awareness of climate change; the goal of deterring other nations from asserting their claims to the territory; and a desire to strengthen Russians’ national pride. “Putin’s spin-masters have stumbled upon rather than invented the Arctic theme,” concludes Baev.

Today marked the release of The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). This morning’s launch of the report featured commentary by a few of the report’s many high-profile contributors, including John Podesta, who served as former President Clinton’s chief of staff, Leon Fuerth, who served as former Vice President Gore’s national security adviser, and James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA.

The Age of Consequences analyzes the effects three different climate scenarios could have on foreign policy and national security: an expected scenario (based on a 1.3ºC average global temperature increase by 2040); a severe scenario (a 2.6ºC increase by 2040); and a catastrophic scenario (a 5.6ºC increase by 2100). Leaders and policymakers must strive to understand and plan for the potential geopolitical impacts of climate change, said the report’s authors, despite inherent uncertainty regarding the precise severity and timing of those impacts.

Podesta described the expected scenario—which is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) medium-range scenario—as the “best we can hope for, the least we should be prepared for.” This least-dramatic scenario still anticipates a plethora of effects stemming from climate change, including a sharp rise in internal and international migration, the spread of infectious diseases, and growing tensions over the distribution of dwindling natural resources. Podesta emphasized that leaders must prepare for climate impacts to interact with one another and cause cascading geopolitical implications. For better or worse, he said, the United States is already viewed as the world’s first responder to natural disasters, and even under the mildest climate scenario, the American military’s disaster response role can be expected to grow.

While presenting the severe climate scenario, Fuerth reminded the Washington policymaker audience that extreme nonlinear environmental changes will likely generate dramatic institutional changes with far-reaching geopolitical implications—but that the trigger point for these changes is always hard to predict. He also argued that the United States and other wealthy countries have a responsibility to take action to mitigate climate change’s harmful global effects. Inaction by the United States over the next 30 years in the face of severe climate change impacts in the developing world would be akin to “kicking people away from the lifeboats,” he said. The report emphasizes that poorer countries will be disproportionally affected by climate change under all scenarios, in part because they lack the resources to cope with changing conditions. However, even for developed countries, says the report’s Executive Summary, the “collapse and chaos associated with extreme climate change futures would destabilize virtually every aspect of modern life.”

Woolsey emphasized that a catastrophic climate scenario would seriously threaten both ecosystems and infrastructure systems. The debate should not become mired in whether catastrophic climate events may occur in 2050 or 2100, said Woolsey—just as it is useless for a heavy smoker to debate whether he will contract lung cancer at age 49 or 53. As a society, he argued, we are effectively “smoking six packs a day.”

Woolsey stressed that both the “treehugger” interested only in reducing carbon emissions and the “hawk” interested only in security vulnerabilities want many of the same things. For instance, they both wish to move away from a carbon-based economy—the treehugger to mitigate climate change, and the hawk to reduce the nation’s dependency on unstable overseas regimes and its energy infrastructure’s vulnerability to terrorist attack. Woolsey will expand on this coincidence of interests with a future publication featuring an imagined conversation between the ghosts of “treehugger” John Muir and “hawk” General George Patton.

ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko, who attended this morning’s briefing, noted, “The Age of Consequences is an important report that brings together a wide range of experts and succeeds at bolstering the significance of climate change as a serious long-term security concern.” Dabelko believes the next steps are “deriving specific action items for a range of actors from this report” and from similar reports, including the April 2007 CNA Military Advisory Board report, the forthcoming Council on Foreign Relations report by Joshua Busby, and the National Intelligence Council’s National Intelligence Estimate, which is expected in early 2008.

ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko contributed to this report.

“The possibility of a world transformed by climate change is not a science fiction image of a post-apocalyptic society; it is not a road warrior movie. It is happening now. There is another holocaust now in Darfur.” Brad Miller (D-NC), chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology, chose strong words to open the subcommittee’s September 26, 2007, hearing “The National Security Implications of Climate Change.”

The first witness was General Gordon R. Sullivan (USA Ret.), chairman of the CNA Corporation’s Military Advisory Board, which wrote the groundbreaking report National Security and the Threat of Climate Change. Sullivan reminded the congressmen of the potential destabilizing impacts of climate change—reduced access to freshwater, impaired food production, the spread of diseases, land loss due to flooding, and population displacement, among others—and their potential security consequences, which include an elevated risk of state failure, the growth of terrorism, mass migrations leading to regional and global tensions, and conflicts over resources.

China’s geopolitical importance should make it of particular concern to policymakers, said Alexander Lennon, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. According to Lennon, two-thirds of China’s cities are currently experiencing water and food shortages. These environmental issues already cause unrest among the population, and the combined effects of climate change and rapid urbanization could increase tensions. A destabilized China, however, is only one of the various climate-related problems the United States could face in the future. Climate change could also foster terrorism, Lennon said. Rampant poverty, growing economic inequality, state failure, and ethnic tensions form a fertile substrate for terrorist groups.

James Woolsey, vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton and former director of the CIA, argued that the threats posed by climate change and terrorism should not be isolated from one another. Indeed, “terrorists may exploit vulnerabilities in our energy production and distribution or other weaknesses in our infrastructure,” he said. Fuel convoys in Iraq, for instance, are a primary target for insurgents. Woolsey encouraged policymakers to opt for a plan that would reduce both threats simultaneously. His solution: improving U.S. energy efficiency.

As the nation’s largest single consumer of oil (1.8 percent of the U.S. total), the Department of Defense (DoD) is already working on improving energy efficiency, said Kent Butts, director of National Security Issues at the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership. More generally, he continued, DoD is devoting considerable attention to the destabilizing impacts of climate change, although there is no overarching directive that guides these efforts. The Navy, for instance, is currently analyzing the security implications of shrinking ice sheets in the Arctic.

U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) shared his concerns regarding the military’s efforts to increase vehicles’ efficiency. Focusing too much on climate change, he argued, could be harmful to U.S. troops’ security. “If we decide to produce lighter vehicles in order to consume less oil, soldiers will be less protected. Aren’t our troops more important than climate change?” he asked. Sullivan responded that if lighter vehicles were produced, they would be designed so they protected soldiers as well as today’s heavier vehicles do.

Andrew Price-Smith, a professor of political science at Colorado College, emphasized another potential area of impact: global health. He explained that an increase in temperatures and precipitation could favor the proliferation and geographical expansion of infectious diseases such as cholera and malaria. The spread of deadly diseases to new areas could in turn undermine the economy (through absenteeism, increased medical costs, and premature deaths) and foster political instability.

Finally, several representatives shared their skepticism concerning climate change. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who said they did not believe human activities have contributed to climate change, argued that the United States should not try to mitigate climate change, but instead try to adapt to it. “Fostering a more robust economy is our strongest defense against climate change,” said Sensenbrenner. “Because it is too late to prevent rising temperatures, the best response is to ensure that our economy is strong enough to adequately respond.” In other words, he was suggesting that we should not try to reduce carbon emissions, because doing so would slow economic growth. He concluded on an optimistic note: “Everyone agrees that the wealthiest countries and individuals will be the least affected by global warming. Putting more people in a position to afford air conditioning will actually save lives.” Needless to say, not everyone in the room shared his view.