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China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas
Chinese Rail Export’s Environmental Dilemma: Economic Gains or Green?
China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas // October 19, 2023 // By Keren ZhuMany developing countries today face the dual challenges of development and decarbonization, racing against climate change that makes the latter increasingly urgent. This dilemma brings China’s railway investments in Africa under the spotlight. Can stakeholders of these megaprojects achieve the goal of boosting host countries’ economies while mitigating the socio-environmental risks of these ventures? -
Eye On
ECSP Weekly Watch | August 21 – 25
A window into what we are reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program
Deforestation Dynamics in Colombia: The Role of Armed Groups
A 29% drop in deforestation in Colombia in 2022 was labeled as a victory for President Gustavo Petro. Yet there is another reason behind the decrease. Armed groups, such as the Estado Mayor Central (EMC), have imposed logging bans in areas under their control, and levy fines amounting to 251 dollars per hectare.
Topics: adaptation, climate change, development, disaster relief, environment, environmental security, extreme weather, Eye On, foreign policy, Indigenous Peoples, international environmental governance, loss and damage, meta, mitigation, natural resources, risk and resilience, security, water security -
Guest Contributor
Climate Change and National Security Strategies: Assessing a Growing Trend
It is uncomfortably easy to find connections between environmental change and security around the globe. 2023 began with heat records in Europe, a deadly cyclone in New Zealand, and military deployments in response to forest fires ravaging Canada. An untimely early heatwave scorched Spain and endangered its agricultural production. Cyclone Mocha destroyed the livelihoods of thousands in northwestern Myanmar, and Typhoon Mawar caused “significant damage” to a terminal building on Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base.
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Dot-Mom // On the Beat
Lancet Series Launch: Breastfeeding and the Fight Against Formula Marketing
“Too many children are dying in the first month of life,” said Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet at a recent launch event for the 2023 Lancet Series on Breastfeeding, hosted by The Royal Society of Medicine, London. Indeed, the global numbers are staggering. Horton observed that 2.3 million children died in the first month of life in 2021—that’s more than 6,000 newborns dying every single day.
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China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas
Slow Down? Environmental Regulators Tap the Brakes on China’s High-Speed Rail
China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas // December 15, 2022 // By Xiao MaChina’s high-speed railway (HSR) is the most recent poster child for the country’s rapid development, with more HSR tracks than the rest of the world combined. Since 2004, the Chinese government has invested more than 10 trillion RMB to build a 40,000-kilometer (km) network of trains that zip between stations at speeds reaching 350 km/hr (or 220 miles per hour). Not to be outdone, by 2035 the government aims to expand this train network by 75 percent to help the country reach its transport connectivity and low-carbon transportation goals.
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Guest Contributor
Warfare and Global Warming
The world has plenty of reasons to avoid conflict already. Yet attendees at the recently-concluded COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt were presented with another compelling argument: Warfare is bad for global warming. So much so, in fact, that Ukraine’s delegation to the conference organized a special session at the conference of parties on “War Related Emissions,” bringing along a tree trunk bearing scars from Russian shell fragments as tangible evidence.
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China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas
Buen Vivir in Ecuador: An Alternative Development Movement for Social and Ecological Justice
China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas // December 8, 2022 // By Yiran NingEarlier in 2022, Ecuador’s capital was left “virtually paralyzed” after some 14,000 people, mainly Indigenous Ecuadorians, participated in 17 days of sometimes violent nationwide protests. The actions forced the Lasso government to the negotiating table for a 90-day dialogue with Indigenous leaders. By early September, the parties signed a temporary moratorium on the development of oil blocks and the allocation of new mining contracts.MORE -
China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas
High Stakes: China’s Leadership in Global Biodiversity Governance
China Environment Forum // Guest Contributor // Vulnerable Deltas // November 3, 2022 // By Jesse RodenbikerAs countries prepare to gather for the Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in December 2022, the stakes for global biodiversity couldn’t be higher. Over the last half century, global wildlife population sizes plummeted by 60 percent. A 2019 UN report, one among many, warned that the current global response to this accelerating loss of species is insufficient and that “transformative changes are needed to restore and protect nature.”