Showing posts from category UK.
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Amidst Climate Change and Shifting Energy Markets, New Challenges for Transatlantic Security
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“In the post-Cold War period, the challenges of energy, environment, climate change, and water have become very much a part of our fundamental transatlantic relationship,” said CNA General Counsel Sherri Goodman, launching a new report on U.S.-EU security at the Wilson Center. [Video Below]
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New Support for International Family Planning: The Significance of the London Summit
›December 21, 2012 // By Carolyn LamereAt a major summit in London this summer the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched one of the most significant efforts yet to revitalize commitments around the world towards providing universal access to family planning. More than 220 million women around the world – mostly in developing countries – want to delay or avoid pregnancy but are not using effective methods of contraception. Meeting the unmet needs of these women could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of mothers and millions of infants, not to mention significantly impact the future of human development. But the last decade has been a period of relative neglect by international donors.
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2012 Aid Transparency Index
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Publish What You Fund recently released its 2012 Aid Transparency Index, an annual review of 43 indicators assessing to what degree information about policies, strategies, and individual projects are published for public consumption by aid donors. These indicators include things like disclosing the type of aid given (e.g., grant, loan, export credit, debt relief), the quality of disclosure policies, and the online presence of centralized, public databases of all the organization’s activities.
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After the London Summit on Family Planning: What Happens Now?
›September 21, 2012 // By Carolyn Lamere
People are still talking about this summer’s London Summit on Family Planning, which was hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department of International Development (DIFD) on July 11. On Monday here at the Wilson Center, the Environmental Change and Security Program featured representatives from USAID, DFID, and Gates Foundation for a standing-room only panel discussion of the landmark event.
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Tobias Feakin on the Debate in Europe About Climate Change and the Military
›“We established [the Climate Change Security Program] as a methodology of exposing the defense community in the U.K. and Europe to some of the more nuanced security debates that are going on around climate change, environmental change, and resource shortages,” said Tobias Feakin, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI) in an interview with ECSP.
What they found when they first approached the U.K. defense establishment in 2006, was surprising. “They opened [that] door wide open and said, ‘actually, you know what, we’ve been looking at this, we’ve been concerned about this for a long time, and we’ve already started including it in our long-term planning and strategic thinking.’”
“One of the reasons that the defense community has been looking at this issue is that they have a longer-term vision, if you like, than other departments,” Feakin said. “They have to think about procurement decisions which are going to be stretching out…up to 30 years into the future, so there are bigger demands on them to be thinking about these kinds of strategic issues.”
Feakin co-authored International Dimensions of Climate Change, a 2011 report for the British government which highlights the security threats and challenges, both internal and external, that the U.K. will face as result of climate change.
While the defense community acknowledged the need to include climate change in their planning processes, members of the policymaking community expressed concern that they did not, “have enough detailed understanding of what this [climate change] is going to mean in a security paradigm,” said Feakin. To meet that need, RUSI has been conducting regional and country-based studies in order to determine how things might play out.
Dialogue on the issue has transcended Great Britain and is now taking place among member states of the European Union, although Feakin notes that, “there’s perhaps more hesitancy in terms of framing the debate in the security paradigm and perhaps a slight perception that it might be leading us down the wrong path when mitigation efforts should be at the top of the order of play.”
Despite these ongoing debates, Feakin believes that the security aspect of climate change helps to “make a comprehensive case that we have a situation that does have to be dealt with and there are going to be multiple players in that.” Efforts to address climate change will be civilian-led, but the defense community will play an important supporting role in the future, he said.
“It’s something we have to plan for and we will be part of the response.” -
Fiona Harvey, The Guardian
Re|Source 2012 Conference: Global Fight for Natural Resources “Has Only Just Begun”
›July 18, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Fiona Harvey, appeared in The Guardian.
The global battle for natural resources – from food and water to energy and precious metals – is only beginning, and will intensify to proportions that could mean enormous upheavals for every country, leading academics and business figures told a conference in Oxford on Thursday.
Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, who convened the two-day Re|Source 2012 conference, told The Guardian: “We are nowhere near realizing the full impact of this yet. We have seen the first indications – rising food prices, pressure on water supplies, a land grab by some countries for mining rights and fertile agricultural land, and rising prices for energy and for key resources [such as] metals. But we need to do far more to deal with these problems before they become even more acute, and we are not doing enough yet.”
Countries that are not prepared for this rapid change will soon – perhaps irrevocably – lose out, with serious damage to their economies and way of life, the conference was told.
Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, said that the free market would not necessarily provide the best solution to sharing out the world’s resources. Governments would need to step in, he said, to ensure that people had access to the basics of life, and that the interests of businesses and the financial markets did not win out over more fundamental human needs.
Continue reading on The Guardian.
Photo Credit: “Aerial view of the Jonah natural gas field, upper Green River valley, Wyoming, 2001,” courtesy of flickr user SkyTruth and Peter Aengst/The Wilderness Society. -
Gates Foundation Spearheads London Summit on Family Planning
›July 12, 2012 // By Carolyn Lamere
“Given the option, [women in developing countries] will have fewer children,” said Melinda Gates in a TEDxChange talk in April. “The question is: are we going to commit to helping them get what they want now? Or are we going to condemn them to some century-long struggle, as if this were still revolutionary France and the best method was still coitus interruptus?”
Wednesday, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation followed through on Gates’ pledge, helping to raise more than $2.6 billion at the London Summit on Family Planning as part of an ambitious goal of helping 120 million additional women in developing countries gain access to contraception by 2020. The summit was co-hosted by the UK Department for International Development and garnered support from other foundations and governments, including the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Australia.
To quote the Population Institute’s Robert Walker on Dot Earth, this is a big deal:Many of the challenges that we face (hunger, severe poverty, energy, food, carbon emissions) are seemingly intractable. Population growth, which is a challenge multiplier, is not intractable. Far from it. There are proven highly cost-effective means of lowering fertility rates: providing access to contraceptives, keeping girls in school, ending child marriage practices, and changing social norms (including attitudes toward women and desired family size) through entertainment media.
The focus on family planning for the Gates Foundation – one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world – is relatively new (though their commitment to global health and development is not). Melinda Gates announced a commitment to maternal health in 2010, and the foundation first issued a family planning strategy in April of this year.
The move has been unwelcome by some, particularly some Catholic institutions who object to family planning. But Gates has been adamant that contraceptives “should be a completely non-controversial topic.” She argues that 90 percent of Americans find contraceptives “morally acceptable,” including herself and many other Catholics, so there is no reason for the taboo around international aid for family planning to continue.
“We’re not going to agree about everything, but that’s OK,” said Gates in a recent interview with CNN.
In the TEDxChange talk, which helped launch this year’s push, she credits her upbringing for instilling a strong sense of social justice. During her travels with the Gates Foundation, one woman from a slum in Nairobi told her, “I want to bring every good thing to this child before I have another.” That statement resonated with Gates: “We all want to bring every good thing to our children,” she said. “But what’s not universal is our ability to provide every good thing for our children.” Gates pointed to contraception as a way for families to plan for their future and manage their resources. She recognized the controversial history of family planning as population control, but argued that this new initiative is about providing choices to individuals, not imposing values.
Gates remains confident that as long as the foundation makes its mission clear, people will rally behind the cause.
“We’re not talking about abortion. We’re not talking about population control. What I’m talking about is giving women the power to save their own lives, to save their children’s lives, and to give their families the best possible future.”
Sources: BBC, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CNN, Catholic Family and Humans Rights Institute, Catholics For Choice, Dot Earth.
Video Credit: TEDxChange. -
Migration and Environmental Change, Minority Land Rights and Livelihoods
›Migration and Global Environmental Change: Future Challenges and Opportunities, from the UK Government Office for Science’s Foresight Programme, looks at how environmental change, including climate change, land degradation, and the degradation of coastal and marine ecosystems, over the next 50 years will affect migration trends. The report emphasizes that migration is a complex and multi-causal phenomenon, which makes it difficult to differentiate environmental migrants as a distinct group. Nevertheless, research suggests that global environmental changes will affect the drivers of migration, particularly economic forces, such as rural wages and agricultural productivity.
Though Foresight finds that many will use migration as an adaptation strategy that improves resilience to environmental change, they also point out that some affected individuals may become “trapped” in vulnerable situations, lacking the financial capacity to respond to environmental changes, while others may be able to move but will inadvertently enter more exposed areas, particularly, at risk urban centers. For recommendations, they stress the importance of strategic, long-term urban planning, and recognition within adaptation and development policies that migration can be part of the solution.A study, released on December 5 by Minority Rights Group International, finds that minority communities in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan face significant challenges around access to and control of critical natural resources. The report, Land, Livelihoods, and Identities: Inter-Community Conflicts in East Africa, shows how rapid population growth, climate change, and globalization are increasing competition for land, water, and forest and mineral resources in territories traditionally occupied by minority groups. These pressures can undermine livelihoods and trigger multiple and overlapping conflicts, especially where ownership has not been formalized in law. The study also notes that women are doubly vulnerable as their access to land and resources is frequently mediated through customary law, which depends on their communities retaining control over traditional territory. Although the report makes national-level legal and policy recommendations, the authors note that some of the most effective resource management and conflict resolution strategies adapt traditional cultural practices to the current circumstances of communities.
