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Amid Blizzards, Protests, and Lock-downs, Population Gets Stunning Moments in the Sun in Copenhagen
›The second week of negotiations here in Copenhagen has been marked by dramatic events, as the deadline for a new global agreement to address climate change approaches.
Blocs of negotiators from developing countries have walked out, and returned. Thousands of NGO representatives who have been denied access to the proceedings are shivering in the cold. Observers inside the Bella Center have staged sit-ins. And yet slivers of hope remain for some form of a global deal that is fair, ambitious, and binding as negotiators prepare for the arrival of more than 100 heads of state on Friday.
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Climate Combat? Security Impacts of Climate Change Discussed in Copenhagen
›Leaders from the African Union,the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations have agreed unanimously that climate change threatens international peace and security, and urged that the time for action is now.
In Copenhagen Tuesday, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary-general of NATO; Jean Ping, the chairperson of the Commission of the African Union; and Helen Clark, the administrator of the UN Development Programme, were joined by Carl Bildt and Per Stig Møller, foreign ministers of Sweden and Denmark respectively, to take part in a remarkable public panel discussion organized by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The leaders agreed climate change could hold serious implications for international security, both as a “threat multiplier” of existing problems and as the cause of conflict, under certain conditions.
Møller suggested there is evidence that higher temperatures in Africa could be directly linked to increases in conflict. Ping emphasized that African emissions make up only 3.8 per cent of the climate problem, though Africa will likely suffer some of its most serious impacts. Fogh Rasmussen warned of the dangers of territorial disputes over the Arctic as the sea ice recedes. “We need to stop the worst from happening,” said Clark.
While there was broad agreement on the seriousness of the challenge, the participants differed on what should be done. Responding to a question from the audience, Bildt argued that Europe should not necessarily throw open its doors to climate migrants, but that the bloc needed to help countries deal with climate change so people can stay at home. Clark argued that enlightened migration policy could meet two sets of needs: reversing declining populations in the North while providing a destination for unemployed workers from the South.
Fogh Rasmussen said militaries can do much to reduce their use of fossil fuels. He noted that 170 casualties in Afghanistan in 2009 have been associated with the delivery of fuel. There is no contradiction, he argued, between military efficiency and energy efficiency.
However, the real significance of the climate-security event lay not in what these leaders said, but that they were there to say it at all. Not many issues can gather the heads of the AU, NATO, and the UNDP on the same platform, alongside the foreign ministers of Sweden and Denmark. This event proved that climate change has become a core concern of international policymakers.
The only way to tackle global problems, as Ping argued, is to find global solutions. And a clear understanding of the potentially devastating security implications of climate change might be one way to bring about those global solutions.
“We are all in the same ship, and if that ship sinks, we will all drown,” said Ping.
Oli Brown is senior researcher and program manager at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Read more of IISD’s postings on its blog.
Photo: Courtesy United Nations Photo. -
The Ambivalent Security Agenda in Copenhagen
›To communicate a sense of urgency, the security paradigm is being used to push for self-sufficiency in energy, and hence “national security,” at COP-15. Such a connection, if configured with carbon-free energy sources, could provide a win-win outcome for many.
This argument has been embraced both by the left and the right of the political spectrum in the United States. But compelling as it may be politically, there is a discomforting insularity and isolationism embedded in this approach, as emphasized by the delegations from some countries that export fuels (e.g., OPEC members, emergent oil and gas economies, and uranium exporters such as Namibia and Niger).
The Canadian delegation, which was targeted by activists with a “fossil of the day” award, used the security argument to show how it could send relatively “conflict-free” fuels to the United States by developing its oil, uranium, and bituminous tar sands.
Australia played a similar security card behind the scenes. The former Environment Minister Robert Hill also served as defense minister and is now head of Australia’s Carbon Trust–connections which he suggested were very valuable in an onsite interview with journalist Giles Parkinson.
Nuclear energy was prominently discussed as a solution by numerous delegations. At a side event organized by the Danish Federation of Industries, Energy Secretary and Nobel physicist Steven Chu indicated that his biggest concern about nuclear energy was not the waste problem but rather, the potential dangers to national security from the proliferation of radioactive materials.
The other security connection that environmentalists like to make–but is empirically more tenuous–concerns the increased pressures on existing strife in resource-scarce communities potentially inflicted by climate change. I attended a presentation by an OECD research team that empirically considered the impact of climate change on the security of the vulnerable states of the African Sahel. While generally rejecting the direct linkage between climate change and the threat of violent conflict, the OECD study, launched with UK Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, identified three hotspots where existing resource scarcity and population pressure could be exacerbated by climate change, especially agropastoralist communities, who are highly sensitive to any climatic fluctuations.
So far, the rather meandering encounter with the security agenda I’ve witnessed here in Copenhagen could greatly benefit from further integrative work such as that offered by the Wilson Center.
Saleem H. Ali is associate professor of environmental planning at the University of Vermont and the author most recently of Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future. -
Pakistan’s Demographic Challenge Is Not Just Economic
›In a meeting with business leaders in Lahore in late October, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pointedly warned of the potential economic impacts of Pakistan’s rapidly growing population: “There has to be…in any plan for your own economic future, a hard look at where you’re going to get the resources to meet these needs. You do have somewhere between 170 and 180 million people. Your population is projected to be about 300 million as the current birth rates, which are among the highest in the world, continue,” she said.
Pakistan is ranked 141 (out of 182 countries) in the Human Development Index. High rates of unemployment are compounded by low levels of education and human capital. Clinton noted that Pakistani women are more vulnerable to poverty; only 40 percent are literate, compared to 68 percent of men.
The Secretary’s emphasis on the need to provide adequate education, jobs, and resources to motivate economic growth and improve well-being is welcome. But demography also has important political consequences. U.S. policymakers and the Pakistani government should consider the impact of population dynamics on the country’s intensifying instability.
As Pakistan’s population grows rapidly, it is maintaining a very young age structure: in 2005, two-thirds of its population was younger than age 30. Research by Population Action International has shown that countries with very young age structures are three times as likely to experience outbreaks of civil conflict than those with a more balanced age distribution.
The members of a “youth bulge” are not inherently dangerous, but when governments are unable to foster employment opportunities or the prospects of stability, a young age structure can serve to exacerbate the risks of conflict, as recently noted by John O. Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, in a speech on “A New Approach to Safeguarding Americans.”
As Secretary Clinton and her colleagues consider the complex barriers to achieving peace and stability for Pakistan’s people, their humanitarian and development strategies should include demographic issues. When couples are able to choose the number and timing of their children, very young age structures like Pakistan’s, can change.
Family planning and reproductive health services are fundamental human rights, but remain out of reach for many in Pakistan, where one-quarter of all married women (and 31 percent of the poorest) have an unmet need for family planning.
Greater access to family planning would lower fertility rates and increase the share of working-age adults in the population. In this transition, countries can harness the “demographic dividend”—a change that could turn Pakistan’s age structure into an economic opportunity.
However, funding from the United States—the world’s largest single donor for international family planning—has declined by one-third over the past 15 years. The foreign assistance funding priorities of the Obama administration should reflect this recognition of the linkages between population, development, and stability.
By addressing the high unmet need for family planning and reproductive health services of women in countries like Pakistan, the United States could help to create a more balanced age structure in future generations—and promote stability at the same time.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a research associate at Population Action International (PAI). She is the primary author of the 2007 PAI report The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to a Safer, More Equitable World.. -
Climate Engineering is Untested and Dangerous
›The famous mathematician John von Neumann called climate engineering a “thoroughly ‘abnormal’ industry,” arguing that large-scale interventions, including solar radiation management, were not necessarily rational undertakings and could have “rather fantastic effects” on a scale difficult to imagine. Tinkering with the Earth’s heat budget or the atmosphere’s general circulation, he said, “will merge each nation’s affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war may already have done”—and possibly leading to “forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined.”
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A Response to Will Rogers’ “Budgeting for Climate”
›I have a few responses to Will Rogers’ thoughtful critique of my report, “Military vs. Climate Security: Mapping the Shift from the Bush Years to the Obama Era.”
Rogers says that “the report could be read as inferring that the Department of Defense (DoD) has an unnecessarily oversized budget”: that’s true. I think a single country that spends 43 percent of the world’s total military budget—more than the next 14 countries put together—and whose spending has nearly doubled since FY 2000 to the highest level in real terms since World War II, could find some ways to provide for the common defense with less money.
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How Family Planning Meets Development Goals
›“Knowing is not enough; you must act and let your government know that family planning is a right and saves lives,” said Maurice Middleberg of the Global Health Council at a recent event in Chapel Hill.
The other panelists at “How Can Family Planning Efforts Help Us Achieve the Millennium Development Goals?” (Dr. Martha Carlough of UNC, Dr. Ward Cates of Family Health International, and Pape Gaye of IntraHealth International) all provided compelling statistics demonstrating the effectiveness of family planning as an intervention that addresses the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
MDGs 4, 5, and 6 – reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, respectively – all have obvious connections to health and woman’s reproductive health. An unmet need for family planning, which is measured as the percentage of women of reproductive age who desire to space or limit their births but are not using contraception, can undermine the achievement of these goals.
For example, very early motherhood not only increases the risk of dying in childbirth, it also jeopardizes the well-being of surviving mothers—and their children, too. A child born to an adolescent mother has a greater risk of dying in infancy or childhood.
“Contraception is the best-kept secret in HIV prevention,” said Dr. Cates, who cited research that found that “current contraceptive use in sub-Saharan Africa prevents an estimated 577,200 unplanned births to HIV-infected mothers” and thus prevents the birth of an estimated 173,000 HIV-infected infants each year.
Family planning can help meet the other MDGs, including ending poverty and hunger (Goal 1); providing universal primary education (Goal 2); and promoting gender equity (Goal 3). Young mothers frequently miss out on education and socio-economic opportunities. Being able to make their own decisions about family planning and reproductive health can empower women and improve gender equity. When women are given equal opportunities for education, health, and employment, they are more likely to invest in the education and care of their children. This helps them break the cycle of poverty, hunger, and disease.
Although the MDGS don’t include any formal targets for sexual and reproductive health, the UN Millennium Project has stated that the MDGs cannot be achieved in low-income countries without access to sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning. The panelists agreed that family planning is a cost-effective intervention that provides broader positive benefits for development.
But the real strength of their presentations lay in the personal stories behind the statistics. Middleberg closed the discussion with a story about a woman in Latin America who told him that she loves her husband but was afraid of him every time he touched her. Now, after having undergone sterilization, she no longer worries and can love her husband with no fear of becoming pregnant.
A mother of six interviewed in a 2009 news article about the Philippines’ new family planning bill said, “How can one keep on having children? We don’t earn enough to feed them, much less send them to school.” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof interviews a Haitian woman with 10 children in a dramatic video interview, “Saving Lives with Family Planning.”
Underlying all of these facts and stories is the belief that one’s health and well-being, including access to family planning, is a right. But as Middleberg said, believing is not enough.
EngenderHealth, an international reproductive health organization working to improve the quality of health care in the world’s poorest communities, is asking Americans to create a video explaining why we should care about international family planning. Contribute your thoughts on YouTube’s Video Volunteers project.
Lisa Basalla, MPH, is a research associate with the Carolina Population Center. She graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a MPH focusing on reproductive and adolescent health. She has worked with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Communications Programs on its reproductive health knowledge management project as well as a HIV-prevention behavior change communication project in Malawi.
Photo: A billboard promoting family planning in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. Courtesy flickr user olerousing. -
Budgeting for Climate
›Update: Read a response by Miriam Pemberton
“The Obama administration…has identified the task of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions as one of its top priorities,” writes Miriam Pemberton in a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “Military vs. Climate Security: Mapping the Shift from the Bush Years to the Obama Era.”
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