Showing posts from category India.
-
Walker’s World: From Warming to Warring: A Review of Cleo Paskal’s New Book
›January 15, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffWilson Center Senior Scholar Martin Walker recently reviewed Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map by Cleo Paskal, for his UPI column, “Walker’s World.”
Excerpts:
The Copenhagen summit showed that climate change is as much about geopolitics and power as it is about the weather. China‘s blunt refusal to accept any binding limits on its carbon emissions, despite the agonized pleas of small island governments facing extinction, demonstrated that this new aspect of the game of nations is going to be played as hardball.
And yet, as Cleo Paskal argues in her pioneering new book “Global Warring,” China is also powering ahead on every aspect of climate change. While protecting its right to pollute (because it depends heavily on coal as its main homegrown energy source), China is using state subsidies to seize the lead in solar power manufacturing….But perhaps Paskal’s most striking story is the way that China is also seeking to become a major player in the arctic. China has acquired an icebreaker, a seat with observer status on the Arctic Council and its own arctic research base at Svalbard. (China also has two research bases in the Antarctic.) …
Paskal’s book is full of such vignettes, illustrating the way that climate change and the intensifying competition for resources is starting to change the nature of power politics. Paskal, a Canadian who is a fellow of London’s prestigious Chatham House think tank and a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy, has been a pioneering scholar of the new terrain where climate change confronts national security, where geopolitics, geoeconomics and global warming all collide. It is not just rivalry for oil and gas supplies and water, but also for fishing rights and undersea mining and mineral rights that may well be up for grabs when some of the lowest-lying Pacific island countries disappear under the rising waves. …
“We need to start thinking about the legal and economic implications of these developments now, before we have to start tackling them in the middle of a crisis or a humanitarian emergency,” Paskal told a seminar at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center Friday. …
Paskal sees China and Russia taking these issues more seriously that the United States and Europe, and her book is not just a wakeup call for Western leaders but is also an arresting and original work on climate change, probably the most important book on the environment to be published this year.
“As pressure is put on food, water supplies and national boundaries, famine and war may become more frequent,” Paskal concludes. “This instability may make populations more tolerant of autocratic governments, especially nationalistic capitalist ones where the political, economic and military sectors combine to protect existing resources and aggressively try to secure new ones. China and Russia already have a head start on this model.” -
2010: Worldwide Year of the Census
›To kick-off the New Year, we’re highlighting CensusInfo 2010—an initiative to help countries distribute their census data in a format that is free, flexible, and customizable to meet diverse public needs. For us, it’s a new tool to access and visualize census data from around the globe.
The CensusInfo software(the program must be downloaded and installed) allows users to create tables, graphs, and color-coded maps depicting indicators such as population density, fertility rate, and sex ratio. The data’s resolution—national, regional, district, or smaller—is up to the user, but limited by the information reported by each country’s census bureau. When older data is available, users can also view trends over time.
The heart of CensusInfo is data presentation. Robust options include: capacity to import new datasets, compatibility with Google Earth and NASA’s World Wind technologies, and the ability to download visualizations as images, “animated flipbooks,” and videos.
Aside from the relatively steep learning curve to master each of its functions, the software is principally limited by the small number of countries in its database: only 10 countries are included in the software’s pre-installed dataset. That number, however, could increase in the near future.
In what CensusInfo 2010 hopes will be a trend, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, as of August 2009, became the first National Office of Statistics to independently incorporate its data into CensusInfo. While a powerful piece of software, CensusInfo’s potential rests on whether others follow suit.
Photo Credit: CensusInfo’s output of population density in India. -
How Copenhagen Has Changed Geopolitics: The Real Take-Home Message Is Not What You Think
›A fascinating and potentially game-changing geopolitical pas-de-deux unfolded in Copenhagen. The international media and punditocracy christened the United States and China the new G2 in reference to the expected preeminent leadership roles the two hold among their respective developed and developing country contingents. What increasingly became clear, however, was that a different G2 was influencing the agenda: China and India.
India demonstrated that, while it wants an alliance with the United States and its Western allies, a subservient allegiance is not an option.
This was clear in the way India approached a key Copenhagen sticking point—verification. India had been down this road before with the U.S.-India nuclear deal, where Washington’s insistence on external verification was seen by some Indian strategists as undermining India’s sovereignty and security, and as a potential excuse to impose costly sanctions.
Indian concerns about verification created an opportunity for China which, despite the vastly different mix of emissions in both countries, was able to entice India into an alliance. India brought along its IBSA partners, South Africa and Brazil, and it was this expanded group, meeting in conclave, that President Obama gatecrashed in his search for solutions.
Two very important messages were delivered in Copenhagen. First, India told the West it could no longer be taken for granted—it had options. Second, China told India it would be open to a new relationship based on mutual interest.
Going in to Copenhagen, visions for the conference were more varied than many realized. The West primarily thought it was negotiating a trade deal (as evidenced by the drop in EU carbon trading prices after the talks failed to deliver a climate market deal). China, too, was negotiating a trade deal, but remained open to opportunities to gain larger strategic advantages. India, on the other hand, sought a stage to drive home its major geopolitical positions.
Coming out of Copenhagen, the conference’s narrative is clearer: This was geopolitics pure and simple.
India—home to the world’s most populous democracy, a thriving economy, and one of the world’s largest English-speaking populations—is a natural U.S. ally. Its recent experience with the United States on nuclear cooperation, however, has made it wary. Such paranoia gave Beijing an opportunity to entice Delhi into an alliance at Copenhagen. Despite China’s development of Pakistan as a nuclear client state, ongoing border disputes and skirmishes, and other conflicts between the two emerging powers, Beijing succeeded.
If the United States and its Western allies are to coax India (and by extension, a substantial portion of the developing world) into going along with an ambitious emissions reduction program, or indeed any other trade regime, they will need to desist from seeking to impose measures that Delhi regards as protectionist and self-serving.
For the West, moving the world’s most populous democracy to its side, and not China’s, is worth certain concessions. Not just for the sake of a climate deal, but also for larger strategic purposes. At Copenhagen, the West incorrectly lumped India with China, and this mistaken assement proved to be self-fulfilling.
Analysis of India has long suffered from “hyphenation.” First it was India-Pakistan, now India-China. At the beginning the India-China link was competitive, but Copenhagen has shown it has the potential to become cooperative. India should be assessed on its own terms. If geopolitics abhors a stand alone, however, then the time has come to rehyphenate democratic, economically strong, English-speaking India. It would be in the United States and its allies’ benefit to create a new cooperative link: India-U.S.
A longer version of this article was originally published by UPI-Asia.com.
Cleo Paskal is a fellow at Chatham House in London and author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map (Palgrave). Scott Savitt, a former Beijing-based correspondent for United Press International, is the author of the forthcoming memoir Crashing the Party (Atlas). ©Copyright Cleo Paskal and Scott Savitt.
Photo: Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh. Courtesy World Economic Forum. -
Too Much or Too Little? A Changing Climate in the Mekong and Ganges River Basins
›November 24, 2009 // By Dan Asin“I’m an optimist,” said Peter McCornick, director for water policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, about the future of food and water security in the Ganges and Mekong river basins at the World Wildlife Fund’s recent two-day symposium on water and climate change (video). Although the basins are under threat not only from climate change, but also urbanization, industrialization, development, and population growth, he maintained there are solutions, “as long as we understand what is going on.”
Whereas big-picture discussions of Asia’s glaciers and rivers often start and end with “fewer glaciers = less water,” McCornick argued that the connection is not so simple. Glacial melt “is particularly important in the Indus,” he said, but not so for the Ganges or Mekong.
“The Ganges is basically a monsoon-driven river,” said McCornick, and only 6.6 percent of the Mekong’s waters have glacial origins. Predicting the effects of climate change on monsoons is “extremely difficult.” Periods of heavy and light rains will be more pronounced in the Mekong, and how and when upstream dams will release water—a possibly more serious issue (video)—is unknown.
Food security will be impacted by shifting water supplies in the Ganges and Mekong. Within the Ganges basin, India’s population—already the region’s most water-stressed—could see its yearly water supplies drop by a third, from 1,506 m3 per person today to 1,060 m3 per person by 2025. “This is still a lot of water,” McCornick said, but water efficiency must undergo dramatic improvements if food supplies are to keep up with population growth.
In contrast, the Mekong could have too much water. Eighty-five percent of the Mekong delta, located in Vietnam, is under cultivation and its staple crop and principal food export, rice, is highly susceptible to flooding, which could increase due to extreme rain events, rising sea levels, or dam releases.
The Mekong basin is also the world’s largest freshwater fishery, but the effect of dams on the migratory pattern of the basin’s 1200-1700 fish species is still unknown. The industry is valued at $2-3 billion each year, said McCornick, and declining fish populations will not only harm local food security, but local livelihoods as well.
Adaptation strategies to cope with shifts in water supply brought about by climate change must be implemented by individuals at the local level, said McCornick, who urged that future adaptation research concentrate on sub-basins. Specific adaptation strategies to be explored include:- Flexible water management institutions
- Intelligent use of groundwater resources during times of stress
- Management of the entire water storage continuum—not just that stored in dams, but also water stored in soil moisture and miniature artificial ponds.
Photo: Top, Mekong River Delta; Bottom, Mekong River Delta post-floods from heavy rains. Courtesy NASA. -
Glaciers, Cheetahs, and Nukes, Oh My! EP in the FT
›August 7, 2009 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoFinancial Times South Asia Bureau Chief James Lamont has written a flood of environment-as-political-dialogue stories this week! (Well, only two, but that constitutes a deluge in the world of environmental peacebuilding.)
On Monday he wrote about India and China’s agreement to work together to monitor Himalayan glacial melt. The potential decline in water availability from seasonal snow and glacier melt is finally seeping into the consciousness of policymakers outside the climate world, including the diplomatic and security communities. Lamont frames the step as a rare instance of cooperation in a strategically sensitive area at the center of a 1962 territorial war between the countries.
While it would be easy to make too much of such an agreement, it is a tangible recognition of the importance of the ecological unit rather than the national one. It highlights how environmental interdependence across national boundaries can force cooperation in the face of politically difficult relations.
On Wednesday Lamont used cheetah diplomacy between India and Iran as an entry point for his story on international attempts to address Iran’s nuclear proliferation threat. India is asking Iran to help reintroduce cheetahs on the subcontinent, where they are now extinct. In what Lamont said would be an “unusual” example of “high-profile cooperation” for the two countries, diplomats are arranging for talks ahead of a regional wildlife conference. This baby step in relations could be even more significant since the United States publicly acknowledged that India may be able to play an interlocutor role with Iran on the hot button nuclear program question.
While both of these developments are relatively small in the scheme of the larger strategic relationships, they are fundamentally aimed at (re)building relationships between countries by establishing patterns of cooperation where interdependence is obvious and necessary. Such efforts are just one tool in the often-neglected toolbox of environmental peacebuilding.
Photo: Yawning cheetah cub courtesy Flickr user Tambako. -
A Good Woman Is Hard To Find
›August 30, 2007 // By Gib ClarkeThey say that a good man is hard to find. But in some countries, the opposite is true: a good woman is hard to find—because it’s hard to find women at all. According to a recent article by the BBC, the Chinese city of Lianyungang has eight men for every five women. Ninety-nine cities in China have gender ratios as high as 125 (125 men for every 100 women, or a 5:4 ratio).
But China is not alone. India has a gender ratio of 113, and the ratio in Asia as a whole is 104.4. In the United States, by contrast, the rate is 97, meaning that there are more women than men.
Gender imbalances are caused by cultural and economic preferences for male children, which contribute to sex-selective abortion and female infanticide. Over 60 million girls are “missing” in Asia as a result of these practices.
Furthermore, some government policies may intensify these gender preferences. China’s one-child policy, for example, may cause concern among parents, particularly in rural areas, that having a female child endangers their family’s future. Government policies intended to combat skewed gender ratios, such as bans on prenatal ultrasounds for the purpose of determining the baby’s sex and bans on sex-selective abortion, have proven ineffective.
Unbalanced gender ratios have consequences that reach beyond just the mothers and children involved. According to Valerie Hudson, high gender ratios leave many men without prospects for marriage, which may mean these men have fewer incentives to contribute peacefully to society. The men with the slimmest prospects for marriage are likely to be unemployed, poor, and uneducated, so they are already at increased risk for violent behavior. Hudson cites statistical evidence showing links between high gender ratios and higher rates of violent crime, drug use, trafficking, and prostitution.
Hudson and co-author Andrea den Boer cover these links in greater detail in their book Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. In the 11th issue of the Environmental Change and Security Report, Richard Cincotta takes issue with some of the statistical methods that Hudson and den Boer use. He argues that what is important is not nationwide gender ratios, but the number of “marriage-age men” (25-29 years old) and “marriage-age women” (20-24).
While there may be some debate over whether the relationship between gender ratios and violent behavior is a causal one, there is little doubt about what causes the gender imbalances in the first place. An end to preferences for female children will be beneficial not only to girls and women, but to societies as a whole.
Photo Credit: A subway in China, courtesy of flickr user 俊玮 戴.
The 
A fascinating and potentially game-changing geopolitical pas-de-deux unfolded in Copenhagen. The international media and punditocracy christened 
Financial Times South Asia Bureau Chief James Lamont has written a flood of environment-as-political-dialogue stories this week! (Well, only two, but that constitutes a deluge in the world of environmental peacebuilding.)
