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PODCAST – Discussion with Military Expert on Environmental Security
›October 12, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoAt a recent conference at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA, I had the chance to sit down with one of the most influential military voices on environmental security debates, Dr. Kent Hughes Butts. As both a professor of geography and a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, Dr. Butts has been at the center of the U.S. military’s efforts to grapple with the implications of environmental change. I asked Dr. Butts how he saw the field of environmental security (if we can call it a field) evolving over the last two decades.
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Closing the Floodgates: Reducing Disaster Risk in South Asia
›August 16, 2007 // By Karima TawfikFlooding causes massive damage each year in South Asia, but this destruction will not be diminished without more comprehensive disaster preparedness, says a new report by Oxfam International entitled Sink or Swim: Why Disaster Risk Reduction is central to surviving floods in South Asia. The report comes halfway through a monsoon season that has already harmed the livelihoods of 20 million people in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India, crumbling homes and schools, sweeping away crops, and crippling the region’s already-weak infrastructure.
Current flood control efforts are often ineffective and can even exacerbate the problem, says the report. For instance, poorly designed and broken culverts and embankments often flood roads and downstream areas. One embankment in Bihar, India caused a flood-prone area to expand from 2.5 to 6.9 million hectares over the course of fifty years.
In the report, Oxfam recommends that governments implement local emergency plans; avoid building additional dams and embankments; equip communities with preparedness capacities such as early warning systems and first-aid skills; provide community assets such as flood shelters, raised homesteads, and motorized boats; and mainstream disaster preparedness into government policy. Furthermore, the report urges donors to increase funding for disaster risk reduction, which is a strong long-term investment.
Governments and NGOs should also note that lower-income groups and women are more vulnerable to disasters—and tailor their programs accordingly. Poorly built houses are easily destroyed, the landless have reduced access to post-flood aid, and women struggle with malnutrition and disease in displacement camps. Reducing disaster risk—especially for the most vulnerable members of the population—is an important step in raising the standard of living in South Asian countries afflicted by flooding. -
Biofuels Fueling Conflict: The Need for Solid Research
›August 4, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoThe rush to put biofuels in our gas tanks has given those of us analyzing natural resources and conflict some work to do. How are European and American policy mandates to dramatically increase the use of biofuels affecting the places that grow biofuel inputs? It seems fair to say that little consideration has been given to the potential conflict and equity impacts of this surge in demand for palm oil, sugarcane, and corn.
After President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address, which called for massive increases in biofuels, we heard stories of skyrocketing corn tortilla prices and resulting social disruptions. Now we have stories coming from places like West Kalimantan, a remote region of Indonesia where the rush to plant palm oil plantations is generating conflict with Indonesians who grow rubber trees and other crops on their small plots of land. The NGO Friends of the Earth Netherlands has a new report calling out the unethical practices of some palm oil companies that clear existing crops first and make payouts (maybe) to the farmers who own the land later.
It strikes me that this particular link between natural resource management and conflict offers an avenue for addressing one of the traditional shortcomings of environment and conflict research. Rightly or wrongly (and it has been a little of both), much environment and conflict research has been criticized for neglecting the impact of transnational economic forces on so-called “local” conflicts. For instance, West Africa’s mid-1990s “anarchy” is sometimes portrayed simplistically, without sufficient attention to the role Western timber companies or diamond buyers played in creating demand for the forests and precious stones that helped fuel the conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other countries.
I do not subscribe to the school that says all environment and conflict work falls into this category. And there are big differences between how these issues were presented in the mid-1990s and how they are portrayed today. Our research has gotten better–both that of original contributors and that of new players. Nevertheless, much environment and conflict work can be characterized as focusing on conflict “over there” without drawing the connections to how North American or European (or increasingly Chinese and Japanese) consumer behavior can play a role in those conflicts.
The links between global consumer behavior and “local” conflict are made unavoidably clear, however, when we see Indonesian palm oil plantations sprouting up in response to the EU mandate for biofuels to constitute 10% of its transport fuels by 2020. All of us in the environmental security world would do well to pay greater attention to these connections. The fact that energy and transportation are part of the biofuels story makes incorporating this issue into European and North American policy and research agendas that much easier. Let’s hope the new focus on biofuels shines a spotlight (and not an eclipse) on the social conflict that our energy consumption engenders, often in places that are remote from where the biofuels are used.
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