Speakers: Aaron Wolf from Oregon State University will be presenting a lunch seminar for our Cross-Cutting Initiative on Environment-Security Linkages. Professor Wolf's Bio

Tuesday May 6th

Lunch will be served.

Following our emergent custom, Geoff Dabelko from the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Project will be with us and has agreed to provide brief initial reactions to Aaron's talk.  Geoff has led an effort at the Wilson Center to examine water conflict issues, some findings of which are available at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1413&fuseaction=topics.publications&group_id=196904. 
 
Please RSVP so that we can plan the food.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11293778Rivers

May 1st 2008 | NAIROBI
From The Economist print edition 

WHEN Ban Ki-moon, the UNsecretary-general, was asked to ponder the future of the world before an audience of powerful businessmen and politicians, at a meeting in Switzerland earlier this year, he could have chosen any topic he liked. What he focused on was both a hoary old favourite, and a newly popular preoccupation, of debates on world affairs: the rising risk of wars over fresh water, as populations increase and the world gets drier.

"As the global economy grows, so will its thirst...many more conflicts lie over the horizon," he said, after deploring the fact that "too often, where we need water, we find guns." Mr Ban wasn't the first to sound the alarm. In 2006 John Reid, who was then British defence secretary, triggered headlines such as "Water wars loom" after disclosing that a unit at his ministry was preparing for a world of battles over life's most basic necessity. And warnings have been issued by people closer to the edge of contested waters. After making peace with Israel in 1979, the late President Anwar Sadat said that henceforth Egypt would not wage war, except over water.

...

Where the doom-mongers do have a point is this: drought, desertification and food shortage are among the factors that foment conflict within states by tipping some areas, at least, into social collapse. The drying up of old grazing lands, once shared by Arab herders and African farmers, is one of the things that pushed Sudan's west into chaos and misery.

But what about war between nations that more-or-less function? For anyone who takes a cynical view of the causes of war, water seems a less likely agent than say, oil or diamonds. For dictators or warlords (the sort who sponsored or prolonged ghastly wars in Congo and Angola), water is less enticing than minerals or gems. It is harder to steal and sell.

But conflicts of interest over water can certainly poison inter-state relations, even when an imbalance of power is so great that the aggrieved party could never consider using force. Mark Zeitoun, a Canadian scholar at the London School of Economics, says rivers provide a perfect case of "asymmetrical co-operation" between countries that are forced to work together on terms dictated by the strongest. Take the Nile, where the main riparian states, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia, or their colonial masters have been watching each other's water use closely for a century at least---and Egypt usually gets its way.

The Nile is vast. Geographers still argue over exactly where the White Nile rises. Its tributaries and tendrils extend over a tenth of Africa's surface, and 160m people live in the river basin, in ten countries. That number is predicted to double within a few decades. These pressures, and Egypt's record of posturing and occasional threats, have been cited by some as a harbinger of war.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0507/p01s01-wosc.htmlBy David Montero| Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the May 7, 2008 edition

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - The military government in Burma (Myanmar) is receiving an outpouring of emergency aid offers from the international community, as the death toll from Saturday's cyclone continues to soar. While some foreign aid workers were told they could enter the country to assess needs and distribute supplies, as of Tuesday - three days after the disaster hit - they were still awaiting visas. The delay raises questions as to how willing the hermit regime is to facilitate relief in the crucial, early stages of this humanitarian emergency.

"We don't know the extent of the damage. We're having trouble contacting our people," says Chris Lom, a spokesman for the UN International Organization on Migration (IOM) in Thailand.

Meanwhile, the regime faced mounting criticism for its alleged neglect in preparing for the disaster. With Burma's tightly controlled state media offering scant details, it was unclear how the government was directing its emergency response.

But the Burmese Army, which mobilized quickly and harshly to suppress democratic protests last September, has been described as slow to offer assistance now by some observers, while state authorities are accused of failing to provide shelter information despite knowing that cyclone Nargis would set down Saturday with destructive force.

"The regime has lost a golden opportunity to send the soldiers as soon as the storm stopped to win the heart and soul of people," a retired civil servant told Reuters. "But where are the soldiers and police? They were very quick and aggressive when there were protests in the streets last year," he said.

State officials confirmed on Tuesday night that 22,000 people were killed by the cyclone, with 41,000 missing, a drastic increase that made the disaster the worst to hit Asia since the 2004 tsunami, which left some 230,000 people dead.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78100 \\

BEIRUT, 8 May 2008 (IRIN) - Ramzi Ali was nearly 13 when his parents took him out of school to work as a motorbike mechanic.

"Conditions are hard, and political tensions are destroying the country," said Ali, now 14, as he manned a barricade of burning tyres in central Beirut on 7 May. "My parents just couldn't afford to keep me at school any more."

Anti-government protesters blocked roads with burning tyres across the Lebanese capital on 7 May after Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah, and an allied Christian party, threw their weight behind a general strike called by the country's union federation to demand higher wages and decry high prices.

A pall of smoke hovered above a city of shuttered shops and empty roads, as workers either obeyed the strike call or stayed at home for fear of the sectarian violence that flares up periodically in Beirut and stokes fears of civil war.

Gunmen exchanged fire in central areas of Beirut that are mixed Sunni and Shia Muslim, and therefore divided between supporters of the Sunni Future Movement, part of the pro-Western governing coalition, and the Shia opposition Hezbollah and Amal parties.

The strike was called by labour unions after rejecting a last-minute government increase in the monthly minimum wage from US$200 to $330. Recent research by Lebanese economic consultancy InfoPro found that wages averaged $500 while the actual minimum wage was around $320, making the increase irrelevant to most workers.

Prices up

Prices of basic commodities have spiked over the past month.

....

Personal testimonies

Mahmoud, an unemployed 20-year-old at the barricade who preferred not to give his full name, said rising prices and low wages made it harder for young men to get ahead.

"At this rate, I'll never get married," he said. "You have to work several jobs at once just to make ends meet, and it's hard even to find one... Women don't want to marry a man who can't afford even to rent his own home," he said.

Both young men, who said they were Hezbollah supporters from the mainly Shia Muslim southern suburbs of Beirut, blamed the government for Lebanon's worsening living conditions.
 

BEIRUT, 28 January 2008 (IRIN) -

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76455 

OLD Article,  

Deadly Shia riots in southern Beirut protesting over power and water cuts have occurred because these basic services have become part of the country's increasingly tense political stand-off, said protesters and analysts.

At least eight people were killed and 22 wounded as gunfire and grenades erupted after an official with Shia opposition group Amal was shot dead during a confrontation between angry demonstrators and the army on 27 January.

Opposition protesters, who said they had received only four hours of electricity and water over the past few days, used blazing tyres to block several main roads around south Beirut, including the highway to the airport, burned several cars, threw grenades and smashed shop windows.

"The government is punishing the Shia because we are the opposition," 21-year-old protester Ali Abdullah told IRIN at the scene of the riot in Mar Mikhael, where several people were killed in gunfights and explosions. The fighting began between the army and Amal supporters but spread to include gunmen from the neighbouring Christian-majority neighbourhoods and led to the deaths of several Hezbollah supporters.

"Life in this neighbourhood is very hard," said Abdullah. "We don't have enough power or water and no money and few job prospects."

"Punished"

Ahmed Mousali, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, said basic service provision had become part of the political deadlock that has pitched the Western-backed government against a Shia-and-Christian opposition backed by Iran and Syria, and left Lebanon without a president, parliament or fully functioning cabinet.

"Certain areas of Beirut have been punished by the government by having electricity shortages and the threat of rising bread prices," he said, referring to the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, where several protests have taken place over the past three months against power cuts.

The government denies politicising the electricity supply, arguing that many households in the southern suburbs tap power off the mains system without paying for it, which causes short-circuits and blackouts. 

By Stephanie Nebehay

Source: ReliefWeb

URL: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/PANA-7EGEEZ?OpenDocument 

GENEVA, May 9 (Reuters) - The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world's food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, officials said on Friday.

The rights to adequate food and freedom from hunger are enshrined in international law as basic, universal human rights. The request was submitted by Cuba, Egypt and Pakistan and approved by 41 of the Council's 47 member states.

In a statement, the sponsors said that while middle-class families in the Western world spend about 20 percent of their budgets on food, for families in developing countries it can make up 60 to 80 percent of their incomes.

"This rise in the price of food, in addition to increased logistical costs linked to the price of oil, makes it difficult for the international agencies to meet the demands imposed on them, since the costs of providing food relief have considerably gone up," the sponsors said.

Protests, strikes and riots have erupted in some 40 poorer countries around the world after dramatic rises in the prices of wheat, rice, corn, oils and other essential foods.

More than 850 million people worldwide are thought to be facing acute food shortages, and another 2 billion suffering from malnutrition, which the World Health Organisation has said can cause life-long health problems for children.

People in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have been most strongly affected by the food price spikes that economists have linked to factors including drought, high fuel and fertiliser costs, the use of crops for biofuels, and commodity speculation.

Olivier De Schutter, the new U.N. food envoy, last week called for the Council to hold a special session this month to address what he said was a "massive violation" of human rights.

De Schutter said the food crisis was man-made and likened it to a "silent tsunami". He called for a freeze on new investment in biofuels and the abandonment of U.S. and European Union targets on biofuel use.

(Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis, editing by Mark Trevelyan)

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - Cleaner air due to reduced coal burning could help destroy the Amazon this century, according to a finding published on Wednesday that highlights the complex challenges of global climate change.

The study in the journal Nature identified a link between reduced sulphur dioxide emissions from coal burning and increased sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic that boosts the drought risk in the Amazon rainforest.

With the rainforest already threatened by development, higher global temperatures could tip the balance, they said.

"Generally pollution is a bad thing but in this case improving the air may have ironically led to a drying of the Amazon," said Peter Cox, a researcher at the University of Exeter in Britain, who led the study.

"It shows you have to deal with greenhouse gases."

The Amazon -- the world's largest tropical rainforest -- plays a critical role in the global climate system because it contains about one tenth of the total carbon stored in land ecosystems.

For the full article, please visit:   http://www.enn.com/top_stories/commentary/34224

From: Reuters
Published May 14, 2008 09:16 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/36275

GENEVA (Reuters) - Elephants and other wildlife damage millions of dollars' worth of poor farmers' crops each year, which could be avoided with proper fencing and better land use, a leading environmental group said on Wednesday.
The Swiss-based WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, said wild elephants cost Namibian communal farmers $1 million a year, and up to a quarter of the household incomes of poor farming families in Nepal.

Indonesian palm oil companies and other agri-businesses can also lose significant income from elephant encroachment and efforts to keep them off farms, according to WWF.
"Governments could save human lives and millions of dollars in crop and income losses for the rural poor through better consideration of the needs of wildlife," it said in a report describing the competition between wild elephants and people for land, food and water in Nepal, Indonesia and Namibia.
The increasing human population and destruction of animal habitats by globalwarming mean people and wildlife were living closer together than ever before, often creating serious problems.
"When wildlife lose their natural habitats and have reduced access to natural food sources, they eat agricultural crops, livestock, and can destroy property and can injure or kill people," the WWF report found.
Many communities capture or kill animals in retaliation for such damage, threatening biodiversity in already vulnerable and impoverished areas, the conservation group said.
Namibian crop enterprises located near unfenced wildlife habitats can be "entirely economically unviable", the WWF said, recommending that farms be set up as far from such areas as possible. Governments should not offer incentives for farming in areas near wildlife zones, it said.

From: Reuters
Published May 15, 2008 09:29 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/36348

China's deadliest earthquake in decades could cut by up to 5 percent the country's supply of carbon offsets under the Kyoto Protocol over the next 12 months, a market China dominates, Lehman analysts estimated on Thursday.

Rich countries can meet Kyoto greenhousegas limits by investing in emissions cuts in developing countries, earning carbon offsets in return.

China is expected to supply about half of the annual 540 million tonnes of offsets called CERs (certified emissions reductions) developing countries are projected to sell through 2012 and worth more than 25 billion euros ($38.75 billion) on a secondary market.
Some 15 million tonnes of China's annual output were within a 150 kilometer radius of Monday's quake centered in the southwest Sichuan province, Lehman said.
"We counted seven impacted companies among the world's top 20 project developers," said Laurent Segalen, Lehman head of emissions trading, who listed EcoSecurities, Deutsche Bank, Endesa and Mitsubishi Corp among developers with nearby projects.

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/36347

From: Thomas Schueneman, Global Warming is Real, More from this Affiliate
Published May 15, 2008 09:28 AM

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Actpassed the U.S Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last December by a vote of 11---8. (A quick fact sheet on the bill is available here in pdf)

In the coming weeks the legislation will come to a full vote on the floor of the Senate. The bill calls for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 71% below 2005 levels by 2050 — phased in at 4% by 2012 and 19% by 2020.

The EPA's own analysis states that, despite many opponent's claims of economic ruin, the bill "would not significantly harm the U.S. economy over the next 20 years". (The full EPA analysis — 193 pages — is available in pdf)

The typical right-wing economic alarmism aside, there are serious concerns about the bill from environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Sean Casten gives a good summary of the objections in a post at Grist but the upshot is that many feel the bill doesn't mandate the kind of emissions reduction scientists say is needed to avoid the worst ofglobalwarming (80% below 1990 levels by 2050), is too cumbersome in its implementation, and rewards corporate polluters, in part by directing auction revenues mandated the bill to fossil fuel and automotive industries. (Friends of the Earth has an analysis of these "giveaways" here in, you guessed it, pdf)

However, not everyonethinks it's so bad. The Natural Resources Defense Council calls for a "strengthened" bill but urges that the time is now for decisive legislative action on climatechange. (Ready for another pdf? Here's a guide from the NRDC outlining what they suggest is needed in any effective climate change legislation and a comparison of the various bills before the 110^th Congress)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/asia/16myanmar.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: May 16, 2008
YANGON, Myanmar--- Normally, at this time of year, Burmese farmers in the southern delta of Myanmar would be draining their rice paddies, plowing their fields with their water buffaloes and preparing to plant new seeds for an autumn harvest.
But two weeks ago, Cyclone Nargisdid away with all that. The storm's timing could not have been worse. Tens of thousands of farm families lost their draft animals, their rice stocks and their planting seeds. Now the harvest is in doubt as well.

"I think we're going to miss it, we're going to miss the harvest," said Hakan Tongul, deputy country director for the World Food Program in Myanmar. "Time is short."

Mr. Tongul and other international aid experts with long experience in Myanmar fear the cyclone has disrupted the seasonal cycle of life in the Irrawaddy Delta, once one of the world's most fertile and important rice-growing regions.

Delta farmers lost 149,000 water buffaloes, said Brian Agland, the country director for CARE, and it will be impossible to replace them in time for the plowing season. Instead, CARE and other aid groups will likely be buying what the locals call "iron buffaloes" — small red tractors made in China that go for about $1,000 apiece.

Huge deliveries of new rice seeds are needed, too. Thailand is the likely source for new seeds, Traditionally, delta farmers have used seeds from the rice they grew the year before.

New livestock — pigs, ducks, chickens and fish fingerlings in addition to buffaloes — and seeds are among the priority items for aid groups working in rural development in the delta. "The agricultural cycle is so critical," Mr. Agland said Thursday. "We've got to avoid a hunger gap, and we've got very little time."

On Thursday, the government's count of the dead rose nearly 5,000, to more than 43,000, with 27,838 missing, The Associated Press reported. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has estimated the death toll at between 68,833 and 127,990, The A.P. said.

By Lisa Abend | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor / May 15, 2008 edition

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/05/15/barcelona-floats-creative-solution-to-water-crisis/

With Spain's average rainfall down 40 percent last year, many cities have restricted residents from filling their swimming pools or watering their lawns. But perhaps no municipality has developed such diverse and creative solutions as hard-hit Barcelona, which this week began a €44 million ($68 million) operation to bring in drinking water by ship.

On Tuesday, the first vessel - from the southern city of Tarragona - arrived in Barcelona's port, where firemen discharged the ship's 20 tanks into a pipeline linked to the city's water distribution network. The next day, Barcelona residents were drinking Tarragona water from their taps.

The measure is designed to stave off a water crisis that has been building for some time and has reduced Barcelona's reservoirs to 20 percent of their capacity.

"For the past four years, we've had a shortage of rain," says Narcis Prat, a water expert at the University of Barcelona. "Now we have a shortage of water. Without significant rain, we only have enough to last until December."

Professor Prat points out that the population of Spain's second-largest city has grown by more than 1.5 million in the past 15 years, stretching limited resources further. That means the citizens' "excellent" conservation habits aren't enough, says Barcelona's mayor, Jordi Hereu.

"The area of Barcelona is exemplary in its consumption," he says. "But we're talking about 5.5 million people.... And all of them have a right to water."

...
The debate over the pipeline, which should be completed in October, has become so fierce that it's been dubbed the "water wars."

But even cooler heads see problems with it. "What we need is something that isn't just one-way. What we need is a whole network that guarantees supply ... so that water can circulate throughout the region," says Professor Armengol.

Local officials and the regional water authority argue that the multiple efforts will guarantee supplies in both the short and long term.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4313

Another week, another deadly natural disaster. China is struggling to dig survivors out from its worst natural disaster in three decades, and Burma's cyclone death toll continues to spiral upward due to sluggish rescue efforts. FP spoke to disaster expert Art Lerner-Lam about the world's disaster hot spots and the million-casualty earthquake that keeps him up at night.

...

ALL: We're all concerned about major, disastrous earthquakes. In particular, I'm worried about disastrous earthquakes in Asia. Large cities are built near faults, and there are cities that haven't seen earthquakes in 500 years but are due. It is entirely conceivable that we could see an earthquake kill a million people this century. It would not surprise seismologists.

On a more persistent basis, I am very worried about tropical cyclones---Myanmar just being the latest example. I think there's inadequate preparation for them, especially given the technology available to track them and give people prior warning. And the thing that my climate-scientist colleagues are worried about is the long-term climate trends that are going to lead to increasing drought. Drought is so intimately linked to the success of agriculture, and we already have a world food crisis. I worry about the potential for exacerbated drought, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Art Lerner-Lam is director of the Center for Hazards and Risk Research at Columbia University's Earth Institute.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7405439.stm

By Mike Thomson
BBC News

Getting aid staff and relief supplies into Burma is already difficult. Criticise the country's generals and it threatens to become impossible.

This belief has prevented foreign aid agencies from airing problems they encounter with local authorities.

However, deepening concern about the fate of tens of thousands of people who have yet to get help, along with my promise of anonymity, has persuaded one senior aid agency worker to speak out.

...

This may come as a surprise to many, given that the regime is insisting that the cyclone relief operation is now over, even though thousands of people in the worst areas have yet to receive any help at all.

This bizarre claim comes at a time when Britain's Foreign Office estimates that 217,000 people may already have died, a figure that rises by the day and may soon surpass the number killed in 2004's tsunami.

One of the biggest concerns following Cyclone Nargis has been the Burmese junta's reluctance to help their own people whilst simultaneously rejecting most help from outside.

But James insists that it is still possible to get around the generals.

From: National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration.
Published May 20, 2008 09:37 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/36568

A new model simulation of Atlantic hurricane activity for the last two decades of this century projects fewer hurricanes overall, but a slight increase in intensity for hurricanes that do occur. Hurricanes are also projected to have more intense rainfall, on average, in the future.

"This study adds more support to the consensus finding of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange and other reports that it is likely that hurricanes will gradually become more intense as theclimate continues to warm," said Tom Knutson, research meteorologist and lead author of the report. "It's a bit of a mixed picture in the Atlantic, because we're projecting fewer hurricanes overall."

...

Large-scale environmentalchanges in circulation, such as wind shear, as well as possibly moisture, are likely the dominant factors producing the reduced storm frequency. These results support recent research showing that the primary driver of the recent increase in Atlantic hurricane numbers was the warming of the tropical Atlantic relative to the other tropical basins.

These results are also consistent with a number of previous modeling and theoretical studies that have examined the influence of global warming from increasing greenhouse gases on hurricane intensity. An increase in hurricane intensities globally is assessed as "likely" in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report issued in 2007.

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/05/29/is-water-becoming-%e2%80%98the-new-oil%e2%80%99/ 

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / May 29, 
 2008 edition

Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there's a 
 €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you're caught watering your flowers. A tanker    
 ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh 
 water - and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to    
 slake public thirst.                                                      
                                                                           
                                                                           
 Barcelona is not alone. Cyprus will ferry water from Greece this summer.  
 Australian cities are buying water from that nation's farmers and building
 desalination plants. Thirsty China plans to divert Himalayan water. And 18
 million southern Californians are bracing for their first water-rationing 
 in years.                                                                 
                                                                           
                                                                           
 Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum 
 in February, "is the oil of this century." Developed nations have taken   
 cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population    
 growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as  
 "blue gold."                                                              
                                                                           
                                                                           
 Water's hot-commodity status has snared the attention of big equipment    
 suppliers like General Electric as well as big private water companies    
 that buy or manage municipal supplies - notably France-based Suez and Aqua
 America, the largest US-based private water company.                      
...                             

Water and war: Will scarcity lead to conflict?                            
                                                                           
                                                                           
 Cherrapunjee, a town in eastern India, once held bragging rights as the   
 "wettest place on earth," and still gets nearly 40 feet of rain a year.   
 Ironically, officials recently brought in Israeli water-management experts
 to help manage and retain water that today sluices off the area's         
 deforested landscape so that the area can get by in months when no rain   
 falls.