At the Third National Population-Health-Environment (PHE) Conference in Tagaytay City, Philippines, ECSP editor Meaghan Parker spoke with Joan Castro of PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., who manages the Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management or IPOPCORM project. The Philippines’ rapidly rising population has overwhelmed the fisheries that have traditionally supported the country, but IPOPCORM’s innovative and integrative approach may save families along with the fish and their habitats. In the following podcast, Castro discusses how IPOPCORM’s integrated approach improves reproductive health and coastal resource management more than programs that focus exclusively on reproductive health or the environment—and at a lower total cost. A description of IPOPCORM and its results is available in “Fishing for Families,” the latest issue in our FOCUS series. For more information on population-health-environment connections, please visit our website, www.wilsoncenter.org/phe.

The news is filled with stories of how natural resources—including water—can lead to resentment, unrest, and even violent conflict. But the Good Water Neighbors project, launched by Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) in 2001, seeks to use transboundary water resources as a means to build peace. According to a recently published analysis, the ongoing project, which brings Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian communities together to protect their shared water resources, has significantly improved the local water sector and helped build peace at the local level. For instance, two communities, Tulkarem in the West Bank and Emek Hefer in Israel, are now cooperating over olive mill waste issues. Until recently, waste from the Tulkarem olive mills was dumped into the Alexander River, which flows through Emek Hefer to the Mediterranean Sea. Today, thanks to cooperative transboundary management, “the waste from the mills is placed in a truck and taken to Israel for treatment, reducing to a big extent the pollution of the shared water resource.”

The final results confirm the Maoist victory in Nepal’s historic elections earlier this month, paving the way for the end of the monarchy and the final resolution of the decades-long civil war that led to more than 13,000 deaths. But will they be able to maintain stability after so many years fighting to disrupt the system? The roots of the Maoists’ rise—and the underlying conditions that supported their insurgency—may hold some clues to the future.

“The impact of climate change is going to be most likely so harmful that it would threaten governments,” said 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner and chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra K. Pachauri in an interview with Reuters earlier this week. Pachauri focused his remarks on Africa, whose one billion people are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and whose governments frequently lack the capacity to adapt to the impending changes.

“If the situation in Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world, then if the world has a conscience it has to remove that scar,” Pachauri said. While a number of high-profile conflicts in Africa’s recent history have revolved around natural resources, Pachauri warned that environmental change could soon eclipse the so-called “resource curse” as a driver of conflict, citing research predicting that by 2020, climate change could leave between 75 million and 250 million additional Africans without access to water and could reduce the yields of farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture by half. “Climate change has the potential to be a problem for the maintenance of peace,” he said.

The rapidly worsening global food crisis has hit certain parts of Africa particularly hard—instigating riots in Egypt and Burkina Faso, for example—and with food and water becoming increasingly precious commodities, dire outcomes seem increasingly likely. “The answer,” Pachauri said, “is for developed nations to realize that we are living on one planet. We are all inhabitants of spaceship earth.” But, he conceded, “we are nowhere close yet.”

Earlier this week, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a three-year effort sponsored by a number of UN organizations, released its final report (executive summary; summary for decision makers), which offers guidelines for improving the stability, sustainability, and equity of global food supply.

Indigenous groups from 11 countries met in Manaus, Brazil, last week to develop a plan by which developing countries would be compensated for preserving designated forested areas. The plan, officially known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), could be an important step in distributing both the costs and benefits of tropical forest preservation. It could be a significant boon to indigenous peoples, especially in the Amazon, where native groups have permanent rights to 21 percent of the territory—some 49 million acres. An international carbon-trading plan has been on the table since last year’s climate conference in Bali, and this recent meeting demonstrates indigenous peoples’ commitment to keeping their collective knowledge, voice, and needs on the table.

The vast experience of indigenous people in adapting to changing climates “will not be sufficient—they also need better access to other information and tools,” says Gonzalo Oviedo, a contributing author for the IUCN report Indigenous and Traditional Peoples and Climate. Indigenous groups are often most vulnerable to climate change’s impacts, but their expertise in adapting to climate change has long been overlooked by policymakers. These oversights could prove disastrous, the report warns, as the adverse effects of climate change may overwhelm their capacity to adapt, especially given the marginalization of many indigenous communities. The report describes an “urgent need to help indigenous peoples living in tropical forests to prepare for different climate change scenarios.”

Indigenous groups have already seen the effects of climate change. The frequency of forest fires has increased in Borneo, the Congo basin, and vast tracts of the Southern Amazon basin, while indigenous communities in the Arctic have been affected by changes in the “migration patterns, health, and range of animals” on which they depend for their livelihoods. The IUCN report cautions that while plans like REDD are steps in the right direction, they may benefit corporations and large landowners as much as or more than indigenous peoples.

To address the heavy burdens that climate change will place on indigenous communities, the report makes a number of recommendations, including:

• Actively involving indigenous communities in formulating policies to protect their rights and entitlements;
• Supporting further research of the impacts of climate change on vulnerable cultures;
• Promoting collaboration between indigenous peoples and scientists; and
• Raising awareness of traditional adaptation and mitigation strategies.

The UN Security Council must take quick, decisive action on climate change, argue U.S. Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and George Mason University’s Michael Shank in an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor. “A concerted international strategy, on a par with the seriousness and scope of an UN Security Council resolution, is what’s needed to counter this climate crisis.”

The Environment for Development Initiative, a joint venture by U.S. NGO Resources for the Future and the Environmental Economics Unit at Göteborg University in Sweden, has released a set of discussion papers on environmental management in developing countries around the world. The papers highlight case studies from Kenya, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, and Indonesia.

“New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears,” published earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, examines whether limited quantities of key resources—including arable land, fresh water, and oil—will curb the world’s growing prosperity. “The resource constraints foreseen by the Club of Rome are more evident today than at any time since the 1972 publication of the think tank’s famous book, ‘The Limits of Growth.’ Steady increases in the prices for oil, wheat, copper and other commodities—some of which have set record highs this month—are signs of a lasting shift in demand as yet unmatched by rising supply.”

The Pacific Institute recently released an updated Water Conflict Chronology, which documents instances of conflict over water from 3000 B.C. through the present.

In an article on the Carnegie Council’s Policy Innovations, Saleem Ali of the University of Vermont argues that commentators should not have been so quick to blame the recent violence in Chad on oil, as civil strife in the country predates the discovery of oil by several decades. If oil revenues were managed transparently, he suggests, they could significantly improve stability and quality of life in Chad.

Robert Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute highlights recent population trends—such as declining global fertility but a growing global population—and emphasizes the difficulty of accurately predicting future ones in the latest edition of Vital Signs.

Video, presentations, and photos—as well as an agenda and list of participants—from last week’s NATO Security Science Forum on Environmental Security are now available online.