Showing posts by Geoff Dabelko.
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The Kids Aren’t Alright: Surveying Pakistan’s Youth
›November 24, 2009 // By Geoff DabelkoA new survey of Pakistani youth shows why the country is Exhibit A for taking seriously the potent combination of demography and lack of education and employment. Funded by the British Council, the survey shows how Pakistan’s “youth bulge” can be both threat and opportunity.
If it is coupled with investment in education and employment, the large youthful population can be a dynamic force: the much-heralded “demographic dividend”.
But without effective investment, a “demographic disaster” is more likely. The survey found that 1 in 4 young people are illiterate and only 1 in 5 have full-time jobs. Only 15 percent believe their country is headed in the right direction. Their faith is placed in their religion, not their government.
I might add Pakistan’s poor resource base to the perils of illiteracy, unemployment, and age structure. And let’s not ignore the other big problems of water, economics, and agriculture.
But one thing is certain: the population will continue to grow. The current and projected median projections are 180 million today, 246 million projected in 2025, and 335 million in 2050.
Those making big decisions in U.S. policy toward Pakistan and the region should consider all these underlying factors–and more.
Photo: Brave children of Bakalot, courtesy Flickr user amir taj. -
The Campus Beat: Using Blogs, Facebook, to Teach Environmental Security at West Point
›November 17, 2009 // By Geoff Dabelko
The lecture was only a few hours away. In desperation, I turned to Facebook. “I’ve got just 50 minutes with the cadets at West Point today to talk water, conflict, and cooperation. What are the most compelling examples you would use to make both hard security and human security points, both threat and opportunity points? I ask in part because it is proving harder to decide what to leave out than what to put in!”
Within seconds, experts from the Departments of State and Energy, USAID, and National Geographic responded with examples, including the Tibetan plateau and glacial melt, the lower Jordan River, and more. I used these cases and others to break through to an audience that included both those skeptical of “treehugger” issues and those eager to learn. The map of Chinese current and planned hydro projects produced audible gasps and wide eyes among the class of future officers.
While at West Point, colleague Meaghan Parker and I met with geography faculty to better understand how and what they are teaching on environmental security and demographic security. The professors on the banks of the Hudson face similar challenges to their non-military brethren; today’s students have shorter attention spans and lack experience conducting in-depth research (or getting beyond Google).
But some challenges are unique to the service academies: isolation from academic peers; the need to make sure the material is relevant to future military l
eaders; and most of all, the physical and mental demands on cadets’ time placed by army training. I saw it as a sign of success that I only had three stand up during my lecture, the military’s sanctioned way to keep yourself awake in class. (LTC Lou Rios USAF, one of the faculty members we met with, wrote about teaching environmental security at West Point previously on New Security Beat.)
Video, blogs, and other new media seem like a way to bridge some of these gaps. We’re especially excited that the cadets in at least three courses will be using the New Security Beat as part of their classes by reading posts, commenting, and proposing a post on a topic of their choosing. We’re looking forward to a cadet joining us next summer for internship with ECSP.
All of these outreach efforts are part of our strategy to both understand how all types of actors—including future army officers—come to understand environment and security links while providing insights and analysis to that same diverse group.
Photos by Geoff Dabelko and Meaghan Parker -
Bringing the Climate Fight to New Battlefields
›October 23, 2009 // By Geoff DabelkoThis picture brings the 350 ppm carbon dioxide message to another kind of battlefield. It illustrates the increasing role of the military in bringing non-traditional voices to the political debates over action against climate change. There are plenty of ties, if one scratches the surface and gets into the climate-security field.
The CNA Military Advisory Board, a group of distinguished retired flag officers, has been the most prominent manifestation, but this picture suggests it isn’t just the senior officers with an opinion on climate. President Barack Obama gave a shout out in his MIT speech to Operation Free, a group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans currently on a bus tour campaigning for energy independence.
Equally important, if not as prominent in this political season, are the present or anticipated impacts of climate on the availability of certain resources (sometimes too much, sometimes too little) and how they might affect economic and political stability. And there are a wide range of reasons for the military to adopt the precautionary principle approach to climate change.
Right now, there is a strong focus on climate-security links in both the research and policy arenas. The challenge is to raise attention, perhaps most productively in a risk framework, without resorting to hyperbole that ultimately produces a backlash.
Photo courtesy of 350.org and Agent Slim. Thanks to Andy Revkin for flagging the picture. -
Send in the Scientists: Finnish MP Calls for Assessing Toxic Waste Threats in Somalia
›October 22, 2009 // By Geoff Dabelko“If there are rumors, we should go check them out!” declared Finnish MP Pekka Haavisto about barrels of toxic waste that supposedly washed ashore in Somalia after the 2004 tsunami. I spoke with Haavisto in Helsinki last month as he took a break from marathon budget meetings.
“I think it is possible to send an international scientific assessment team in to take samples and find out whether there are environmental contamination and health threats. Residents of these communities, including the pirate villages, want to know if they are being poisoned, just like any other community would.”
In April this year, Haavisto flew commercial to Mogadishu to meet with Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed (who narrowly escaped assasination today), and African Union (AU) peacekeepers. In August Haavisto visited Puntland state to speak with President Abdirahman Mohamed Mohamud and other government representatives.
“Parliamentarian” is only one of Haavisto’s jobs. He also works as Finland’s special envoy for the Horn of Africa and, after playing a similar role within the EU as special representative for Sudan. From 1999-2005, he headed the UN Environment Programme’s Disaster and Conflicts Programme (then called the Post-Conflict Assessment Unit), which specializes in objective scientific environmental assessments in war-torn countries.
Haavisto is an enthusiastic advocate for environmental missions that may improve the desperate conditions resulting from violent conflicts. “We should be talking with all the factions,” he told me, to investigate the toxic waste charges. Such a thorough and objective assessment could provide a rare and potentially valuable avenue for addressing underlying suspicions and grievances some Somalis hold against those whom they claim dump waste off shore and overfish their waters.
Using environmental dialogue to build confidence is a top objective of Haavisto’s former colleagues at UNEP—and an idea that is gaining more traction within the wider UN family. For example, UNEP is now working directly with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) to provide “green advisors” to their blue helmets, lowering their environmental bootprints and establishing green, self-sufficient bases, including one in Somalia for AU troops.
Assessing the tsunami’s possible toxic legacy in Somalia may provide an avenue for dialogue by addressing first-order concerns for local populations. The dialogue could ultimately support action on front-burner problems outside Somalia, such as piracy, poverty, internal conflict, and terrorism.
Photo: IDPs outside Mogadishu, courtesy of Flickr user Abdurrahman Warsameh and ISN Security Watch. -
Steady Drum Beat for Climate and Security Linkages
›October 14, 2009 // By Geoff DabelkoThis week Sweden, the current holder of the European Union Presidency, will convene a conference for EU member states on environment, climate change, and security. The Ministry of Defence and the Swedish Defence Research Agency are serving as organizers, yet they are constructing the conference in broad and inclusive terms. The objective is to highlight and address the links between climate change and security in the “broadest sense of the term.” This framing is perhaps less surprising when one remembers the Swedes have been leaders in both lightening the military’s environmental bootprint and supporting international development through the Swedish International Development Agency’s investments in water, development, and peace. Right now it is the European Union, the UK, the Germans, the Finns, and the Danes joining the Swedes to drive policy action on climate and security links.
The climate security topic remains on the edges of the Copenhagen process, according to Adelphi Research’s Alexander Carius, but there is a constant flow of conferences in Europe and the United States nevertheless.
Committee Two of the UN General Assembly tackles it with a panel October 19th in New York (I’m fortunate enough to be making remarks). And the draft of the Secretary-General’s report on climate and security called for by this summer’s non-binding UNGA resolution is circulating for comment.
The Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs speaks at Chatham House the next day, presumably covering some of the same threat multiplier themes he highlighted September 19th> in Copenhagen.
The Holland-based Institute of Environmental Security brings its international group of military officers to engage Washington audiences October 29th after having had their European meetings in
CNA follows in November, including roll-outs of country-specific work on Colombia and China, made possible with support from the UK Foreign Commonwealth Office.
After that scholars convene at the University of Hamburg, and then on to Trondheim, Norway, next June for a PRIO -organized conference.
And the beat goes on for climate and security. Critically important will be whether the interest in climate and security links extends beyond Copenhagen, demonstrating it is more than just a slogan from a non-traditional climate audience aimed at nudging the negotiations at COP15. No doubt it will, with other milestones including the February 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review from the US Department of Defense and other processes yet to come. -
When Talking Copenhagen, Think Pinch, Not Scoop
›September 21, 2009 // By Geoff Dabelko
For everyone preparing to converge on Denmark’s capital for the next round of climate change negotiations, I offer a helpful hint that you won’t find in any IPCC assessment.
It’s CopenHAYgun, not CopenHAAgen. (Watch the video for a demonstration.)
As we have seen with Kyoto and the 1997 negotiations, the Danish capital will become shorthand for success, failure, or futility. So whether you say it with a hopeful lilt or a cynical slur, at least pronounce it correctly.
Don’t think Häagen-Dazs. The Danes are quick to remind you that CopenHAAgen is the German pronunciation.
Growing up in southeastern Ohio actually prepared me well for this challenge. Plenty of fellas in my high school liked just a pinch of CopenHAYgun brand chewing tobacco between their cheek and gum.
So while it might be more appealing to dip into a quart of ice cream on the rocky road to December’s negotiations, instead think of dippin’ from a can of snuff. It’ll help you win the good graces of the hosts and also keep you awake during any snooze-inducing panels. -
Video: Roger-Mark De Souza on The Integration Imperative
›August 18, 2009 // By Geoff Dabelko“I have had a woman say to me, ‘This PHE [population-health-environment approach] makes sense to me because I do not live my life in silos. I live my life in a way that all these things are integrated, and what you are saying to me makes sense, because my life is one of integration,’” said the Sierra Club’s Roger-Mark De Souza, in his lilting Trinidadian baritone.
De Souza, whom I interviewed recently about his contribution to ECSP’s Focus series, is a great storyteller. Whether recounting his conversations with a tsunami survivor in Thailand, a mayor of a small Filipino community, or a Tanzanian journalist, De Souza brings to life their daily struggles to meet basic needs. His tales are packed with lessons for development practitioners tackling multiple and overlapping challenges in poor rural communities.
“When I see communities have a better understanding of how these issues interact and have an impact on their lives, they become very energized, and very enthusiastic and want to make a difference,” De Souza told me.
His latest article, “The Integration Imperative: How to Improve Development Programs by Linking Population, Health, and Environment,” summarizes the advantages of integration. “PHE offers a step in the right direction—a flexible, innovative way for policies and programs to keep pace with today’s rapidly changing world—and lays the foundation for empowering our children to manage these changes for generations to come.” -
Glaciers, Cheetahs, and Nukes, Oh My! EP in the FT
›August 7, 2009 // By Geoff Dabelko
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.)
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.
