Category: Article

The International Peace & Security Institute (IPSI), in collaboration with The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Conflict Management Program, hosted a high-level panel discussion and networking reception on Wednesday, August 17.  The event, “Why Here, Not There? Investigating emerging nonviolent movements,” examined the dynamics that enable nonviolent movements to occur in some regions and not others at specific moments in time.  The event was broadcast live nationwide and on the internet by C-SPAN.

Watch the video here: IPSI

Image source: Al Jazeera English

Accelerating climate change and competition for limited supplies of water, food and energy are poised to ignite long-simmering conflicts in fragile states, monopolising the world’s military resources and hampering development efforts, security experts say.

Defusing these new 21st century conflicts – or at least preparing governments and citizens to cope with them – will require a broad range of innovative interventions, a gathering at Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) heard earlier this month.

Mitigation measures include borrowing business risk-management strategies, getting military officials to talk publicly about the constraints they face, building capable institutions in unstable countries, and ensuring billions in climate aid go to the right places and aren’t lost to corruption, experts said.

Putting the right strategies in place will require bringing together disparate groups – economists, military strategists, aid workers – and working out fresh approaches to the emerging problems, they said.

Climate change and resource scarcity are “setting a new challenge that we are not very good yet at handling”, said Dan Smith, secretary general of International Alert and one of the organisers of the “Dialogue on Climate Change, Conflict and Effective Response”.

In Yemen, for example, severe water shortages – the result of water mismanagement and changing climatic conditions – are hurting crop production and feeding into growing political strife that could unseat longtime ruler, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and even break the country apart.

The pressures have important military implications, not least because Saleh has cooperated with Washington to dismantle an arm of Al Qaeda in Yemen, and because food and water shortages appear to be contributing to recent violence.

TIPPING POINTS

Worsening climate impacts and resource shortages could similarly aggravate simmering conflicts from Pakistan to fragile regions like the Niger River basin, which includes parts of Mali, Niger and Nigeria, said Smith, whose independent organisation works on peace and conflict issues.

“Twenty-first century conflict will be different from 20th century conflict, and our institutions are set up for 20th century conflict,” he warned.

One problem with dwindling resources, experts at the discussion noted, is that they push countries to put their own needs first, making them less likely to cooperate with neighbours and more likely to conflict with them. Resulting political tensions make international institutions less effective, just when they are most needed to tackle international problems like climate change.

Another problem countries face is growing uncertainty stemming from climate change. There could be potential “tipping points” that threaten to abruptly increase sea level or global temperatures, or wipe out food crops, forcing up prices.

Countries – particularly fragile ones – need to develop greater resilience and capacities to deal with unexpected problems, the security experts said. That usually involves things like creating state institutions that work and giving people new skills.

“Understanding how to strengthen national institutions is crucial,” said Neil Bird, a researcher on environmental policy and international funding mechanisms at the London-based Overseas Development Institute.

‘CLIMATE FINANCE ORPHANS’

But money to help countries prepare – including a planned $100 billion a year for climate-vulnerable nations by 2020 – could miss those that need it most precisely because they don’t have capable institutions in place to handle the funds in a transparent and accountable way.

Fragile states could end up as “climate finance orphans”, Bird warned.

Addressing all these looming problems will require a high degree of innovation, as well as input from diverse fields, the experts said. Business people and market traders, for instance, are usually good at assessing risk and hedging things like commodity prices – skills politicians and others may need to adopt too.

Persuading military officials to “tell the world what they cannot do, even if they have a gazillion-pound defence budget” may also be useful, Smith said. They may be best placed to explain how spending on climate mitigation and adaptation could be cheaper and more effective than trying to control resource-driven conflicts or large-scale environmental migration further down the line, he added.

Both rich and poor countries have a stake in limiting conflict driven by climate change and resource scarcity, not least because it will likely be costly to lives, budgets and development efforts, the security experts said.

Climate change, together with associated shortages of food, water and energy, “are one of the gravest threats to our security and prosperity”, warned Sarah Cullum, head of the climate change and energy group at Britain’s Foreign Office.

 

This article originally appeared on AlertNet. 

If Pakistani householders look carefully at their electricity bills, they will find they have been charged an extra amount for NJP – the Neelum Jhelum Project. It has been going on for years and is an attempt by the Pakistani government to raise money for a hydroelectric project on the Neelum River, a tributary of the Jhelum in Kashmir.

But while Pakistan – unable to get loans for the project from international agencies due to the ongoing terrorism problem – is still raising money, India is diverting the water upstream, meaning there will not be enough of it in the Neelum for Pakistan to build the project it wanted.

India is within its legal rights to do this. Under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT), it is allowed to build run-of-the-river projects as long as it delivers all the water to Pakistan at the end of it. And that is exactly what India is doing; channeling the water for its own hydroelectricity project, before releasing it directly into the Jhelum further downstream. Pakistan is so incensed that, in late April, it announced it would approach the World Bank, which is the arbitrator under the IWT, in an effort to stop the Indian project.

Water is rapidly overtaking the territorial dispute over Kashmir to become the biggest bone of contention between India and Pakistan. And the rhetoric in Pakistan is getting uglier by the day. One of the first questions this Indian reporter faced in Islamabad in late March was: “Why is India stealing our water?” The question came from a Pakistani journalist at the start of a workshop on precisely this topic, which brought together journalists from India and Pakistan as well as water experts. After two days of discussion, the Pakistani journalist said: “Now I know India is not stealing our water and that it is sticking to the treaty. But does it not realise we need more water? How can we survive without it?”

Much of the reportage in the Pakistani media is not so nuanced, and charges of water theft by India – the upper riparian country – are bandied about regularly. There is no doubt that India has built and is continuing to build hydroelectric projects in the upper reaches of the rivers that flow into Pakistan. But it has been scrupulous in sticking to the IWT, which says India can build run-of-the-river projects on the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab rivers, as long as the quantity of water that flows into Pakistan through these waterways is not reduced. The treaty also allows India to store 3.6 million acre feet (MAF) of this water, before the rivers flow into Pakistan.

Whenever Pakistani government officials are asked about the water dispute, they agree that India is sticking to the IWT. But that is not the way it is reported in much of the Pakistani media, and even one of Pakistan’s Islamic fundamentalist groups recently said its ire against India was partly a result of it “stealing our water”.

This perception has grown due to “lack of transparency and lack of timely data from India”, said Danial Hashmi, senior engineer at Pakistan’s Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA). “That leads to lack of trust. We have to keep asking them for water flow data that should be coming to us automatically, and without delay.”

The origins of the water dispute lie back in the nineteenth century, when Britain ruled the subcontinent and British engineers started to build what became the world’s largest canal irrigation system in the Indus river basin. That became a huge issue when Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947, splitting the river basin and its canals. As it was located upstream, India had control of the rivers and there were repeated disputes over water flow until the World Bank mediated the IWT, giving the three eastern rivers – Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – to India and the other three to Pakistan.

India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, Sharat Sabharwal, has repeatedly said: “The IWT has served both countries well and has been operational even in times of war. It assigned to Pakistan 80% of the water in the Indus system of rivers.”

John Briscoe, a water expert who has worked in the subcontinent for 35 years, was the World Bank adviser involved in choosing the neutral expert to adjudicate between India and Pakistan on the Baglihar dam in the Indian part of Kashmir. (Read John Briscoe’s article for chinadialogue here: “Bankrolling change”). Briscoe says that the IWT could be a “stable basis for cooperation if India and Pakistan had normal trustful relations. [Then] there would be a mutually-verified monitoring process which would assure that there is no change in the [water] flows going into Pakistan.”

Since both countries agree that India is sticking to its part of the IWT, why is less and less water available to farmers in Pakistan? Daanish Mustafa, an academic in the geography department at King’s College, London, said it was partly because the planners had not foreseen how there would be less water flowing down these rivers due to changes in the Himalayan environment.

Deforestation in the catchment area of the Indus basin means more and more silt is flowing down these rivers, choking the channels and reducing water flow. Another key issue is the dependence of these rivers on the Himalayan glaciers. While it has now been established that these glaciers are in no danger of disappearing in the next few decades, there is no doubt that they are receding due to global warming. A detailed satellite-based study by the Indian Space Research Organisation came to the conclusion this March that Himalayan glaciers have shrunk by 16% in the last 50 years.

In the entire Himalayan ranges, glacier melt is responsible for less than 10% of the annual flows in these rivers. But that is not the case in the Indus basin. As the westernmost of the river basins formed by the Himalayas, it gets much less of the monsoon rain than the eastern Himalayas and is consequently far more dependent on the glaciers.

So Pakistan is asking India for water in an environment where the total water flow is shrinking all the time. This had not been foreseen when the IWT was signed 50 years ago, but today it threatens to become the major flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in south Asia, despite conciliatory messages from parts of the Pakistani establishment. “This is a problem that can be solved only through cooperation and not confrontation,” Pakistan’s environment minister Hameed Ullah Jan Afridi pointed out at the March workshop, which was organised by the voluntary organisation LEAD Pakistan and sponsored by the British government.

India is the upper riparian country in the Indus basin, but the rivers do not start in India. They start in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Unless China is brought to the discussion on how to control deforestation in the basin’s catchment area and how best the dwindling water supplies can be shared in a situation where glaciers are retreating due to global warming, the water-related tension between India and Pakistan can only get worse. Eminent Pakistani lawyer Tariq Hassan recently said: “Water is the most strategic issue facing the subcontinent. If there is a war here in the future, it will be over water.”

Independent experts like Briscoe say that, while India is sticking to the IWT, it needs to be more generous because of the “great vulnerability and legitimate concern of Pakistan” over water scarcity, which has already ensured that the Indus, the mother river of the subcontinent since pre-history, no longer even flows to the Arabian Sea but instead trickles to its death in the sands of Sindh.

 

About the author: Joydeep Gupta is a director of the Earth Journalism Network at Internews and secretary of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India.
Source: China Dialogue

Image Source: Sanju

A year on from the election of Barack Obama as United States president, the conflicts that dominated Washington’s concern under his predecessor are still raging – and even increasing in intensity. This is particularly true of the arc of insecurity that stretches from the middle east through to southwest Asia, where – from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Israel-Palestine and Iran – the reality and potential of violence have hardly been diminished as a result of the change of administration.

Moreover, alongside the high-intensity conflicts where Washington is directly or by proxy involved in this region, there are other slow-burn insurgencies that often receive less attention than they deserve. The persistent rebellion in India of the Maoist guerrilla movement known as the Naxalites is one such. A reason for paying more heed to this issue is that the evolving nature of the Naxalite conflict – including the Indian government’s approach in attempting to combat the movement – may represent a more accurate indicator of future trends in global insecurity even than the al-Qaida network.

A potent legacy

The internal United States debate about its future strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular has as much of its specific focus the current status of al-Qaida, and whether it still represents a major threat to US security interests.

The argument over whether (and by how much) to increase US deployments in Afghanistan – prompted by General Stanley A McChrystal’s request for at least 40,000 more troops – is now complicated further by the political fallout of the now aborted rerun of Afghanistan’s presidential election. The effect of the confirmation of Hamid Karzai as the election winner and thus president for a third term in office (after the withdrawal on 1 November 2009 of his rival, Abdullah Abdullah) makes it even harder for the pro-”surge” advocates to make their case (see Charles A Kupchan & Steven Simon, “Pull the Plug on the Afghan Surge”, Financial Times, 3 November 2009).

Many of those who oppose such a move argue that the US is making a strategic mistake by seeing the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups as the main focus of its efforts. These are so embedded in local societies on either side of the border that they cannot, so the argument goes, be defeated in the conventional sense. It is far more important in this view to concentrate specifically on the al-Qaida leadership and that movement’s most determined adherents. By doing so, the US military will lead the task of defeating terrorism and making the world a safer place.

This argument, though yet to be won, can be seen as a significant departure from the dominant thinking of George W Bush’s “war on terror” – especially its tendency to describe any radical paramilitary group anywhere in the world as “terrorist”. The logic of this view, embraced with glee by the neo-conservatives that provided the Bush administration’s ideological fuel, was the radical division of the world into two absolutely polarised sides: with us or against us, there is no room for doubt or compromise.

The search for a more nuanced and targeted approach reflects a degree of new thinking from Barack Obama. The problem he faces is that the mentality of the “war on terror” has proved so influential, including by other states facing their own domestic insurgencies, that it is very difficult to change course.

A hidden rage

A case in point is the New Delhi government’s developing assault on the Naxalite rebels in India.

The Naxalite movement has its origins in a land dispute near the village of Naxalbari in the northern part of West Bengal in 1967. This lasted several years and appeared to have been brought under control. But later, a number of leftist groups fired by a Maoist ideology made links with disadvantaged peoples in parts of rural eastern India; in the early 2000s, this coalesced into a renewed movement (see Ajai Sahni, “India and its Maoists: failure and success”, 20 March 2007)

Since then, the Naxalites have grown in power and influence. They are often brutal in their methods but have managed to win support from huge numbers of marginalised people, in part because of the great brutality inflicted by security forces in the areas the guerrillas control. The Indian authorities are increasingly concerned at the threat the movement poses to the country’s internal security – and even its much-vaunted economic miracle. For the state, and much of the economic elite, the Naxalite/Maoist rebels are simply terrorists who must be put down with whatever force is necessary (see “A world in revolt”, 12 February 2009).

Since then, the Naxalites or Maoists have grown in power and influence, as part of a conflict with the authorities in which there has been great brutality on both sides. They are reported to be active in 220 of India’s 602 districts across fifteen of India’s twenty-eight states.

Much of the activity is spread across India’s so-called “red corridor”, which stretches from the Nepalese border down to the southern state of Karnataka. A current report says: “With a force of 15,000 armed cadres, they control an estimated one-fifth of India’s forests. They are also believed to have 50,000 underground activists. Around 100,000 people, including the intelligentsia, are associated with various front organisations in different parts of the country” (see Prakash Nanda, “India’s deadly war within”, UPI Asia Online, 4 November 2009).

The problem with this view is that the guerrillas draw on the genuine injustices inflicted on poor Indians in rural areas, including (for example) the many thousands dispossessed of their lands and livelihoods by mining corporations and new industries (see Arundhati Roy, “The heart of India is under attack”, Guardian, 30 October 2009). These injustices are part of the entrenched and increasing disparities in wealth and poverty that India’s breakneck race for growth has created.

The war between the Indian state’s security forces (including the armed militias it has organised) and the Naxalites is taking place amid this landscape of desperate poverty and inequality. The rebels’ tactics include the use of roadside-bombs and ambushes, which have helped them kill over 900 Indian security personnel in 2006-09. In the period from April-June 2009 alone, they killed 112 security personnel in four key regions of combat: Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa; over three days in early June, twenty police lost their lives in two attacks (see Divy Khare, “Naxalites strike again, kill 10 cops in Jharkhand”, Times of India, 13 June 2009). In Maharashtra, two Naxalites lured a police patrol into a trap and in an hours-long fight, seventeen policemen died (see Jim Yardley, “A growing Maoist rebellion vexes India”, International Herald Tribune, 31 October 2009).

The authorities are now being shocked by years of accelerating conflict into raising the level of their response. New Delhi is mounting a large-scale operation – Operation Green Hunt – that is expected to involve some 70,000 paramilitary forces. The aim is partly to counter the spread of Naxalite influence beyond the most densely forested areas that have been their core domain into open countryside; Operation Green Hunt seeks to force the rebels back into the forests where they can (it is supposed) be more easily contained (see Anuj Chopra, “Jungle lair of the Maoist rebels”, 5 November 2009).

The carefully planned operation could take several years to complete. At its root is the firm belief that the target groups, however strong their support, constitute a threat to the emergence of the new India as a global economic power. In such circumstances, strategic ores must be mined and factories built on suitable land. Those in the way – leftist rebels or local villagers – simply cannot be allowed to interfere with India’s onward march to western-style modernity (see “China and India: heartlands of global protest”, 7 August 2008).

It is especially pertinent to note that this rebellion has caught India somewhat by surprise. At the very time that India has finally embraced the consumer society, when burgeoning cities are replete with shopping-malls, entertainment venues and gated communities – violent extremists appear, as if from nowhere, to wreck the party and threaten the future (see Manmohan Singh, “’A Systemic Failure’”, OutlookIndia, 4 November 2009). The fact that much of what is happening can be understood as a desperate response from intensely marginalised people is discounted.

A warming conflict

The import of the Naxalites and other Maoist groups in India may go far beyond the major internal-security problem they pose. From another perspective, they represent an early example of the kinds of radical response that could – if present dominant policies continue – become far more widespread in the coming decades (see “A world on the edge”, 29 January 2009).

In the 2010-40 period, climate change will affect the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world in ever more pervasive ways. As the continents warm up much faster than the oceans and the croplands dry out, the consequence will be a sharp decline in the land’s ecological “carrying-capacity” (see Shanta Barley, “A World 4 degrees C warmer”, New Scientist, 3 October 2009)

This is also a world where there are enormous gaps in living-standards, life-chances and access to resources; where 10% of the world’s people have over 85% of the household wealth; and where hundreds of millions of people in the global south (and north) are marginalised and resentful. The results, if such trends are allowed to continue, will be a combination of more fragile and failing states with intense migratory pressures; in turn this will reinforces the tendency of the world’s elites to seek to “close the castle gates” (see “A tale of two towns”, 21 June 2007).

In this perspective, the rational approach would be led by an awareness of how the dangers of socio-economic divisions and environmental limits make a new definition of security essential (see “A world in need: the case for sustainable security”, 10 September 2009). A continuation of the current path may mean that al-Qaida will be seen as a short-term problem that withered away – and the Naxalite rebellion as the prototype conflict for the 21st century.

In a study from the Center for Sustainable Development at Uppsala University in Sweden titled “Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflicts in Southern Africa,” authors Ashok Swain, Ranjula Bali Swain, Anders Themnér, and Florian Krampe examine the potential for climate change and variability to act as a “threat multiplier” in the Zambezi River Basin. The report argues that “socio-economic and political problems are disproportionately multiplied by climate change/variability.” A reliance on agriculture, poor governance, weak institutions, polarized social identities, and economic challenges in the region are issues that may combine with climate change to increase the potential for conflict. Specifically, the report concludes that the Matableleland-North Province in Zimbabwe and Zambezia Province in Mozambique are the areas in the region most likely to experience climate-induced conflicts in the near future.

Article source: The New Security Beat

Image source: The City Project

Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Berlin wall, one of the shameful symbols of the cold war and the dangerous division of the world into opposing blocks and spheres of influence. Today we can revisit the events of those times and take stock of them in a less emotional and more rational way.

The first optimistic observation to be made is that the announced “end of history” has not come about, though many claimed it had. But neither has the world that many politicians of my generation trusted and sincerely believed in: one in which, with the end of the cold war, humankind could finally forget the absurdity of the arms race, dangerous regional conflicts, and sterile ideological disputes, and enter a golden century of collective security, the rational use of material resources, the end of poverty and inequality, and restored harmony with nature.

Another important consequence of the end of the cold war is the realisation of one of the central postulates of New Thinking: the interdependence of extremely important elements that go to the very heart of the existence and development of humankind. This involves not only processes and events occurring on different continents but also the organic linkage between changes in the economic, technological, social, demographic and cultural conditions that determine the daily existence of billions of people on our planet. In effect, humankind has started to transform itself into a single civilisation.

At the same time, the disappearance of the iron curtain and barriers and borders, unexpected by many, made possible connections between countries that until recently had different political systems, as well as different civilisations, cultures and traditions.

Naturally, we politicians from the last century can be proud of the fact that we avoided the danger of a thermonuclear war. However, for many millions of people around the globe, the world has not become a safer place. Quite to the contrary, innumerable local conflicts and ethnic and religious wars have appeared like a curse on the new map of world politics, creating large numbers of victims.

Clear proof of the irrational behaviour and irresponsibility of the new generation of politicians is the fact that defence spending by numerous countries, large and small alike, is now greater than during the cold war, and strong-arm tactics are once again the standard way of dealing with conflicts and are a common feature of international relations.

Alas, over the last few decades, the world has not become a fairer place: disparities between the rich and the poor either remained or increased, not only between the north and the developing south but also within developed countries themselves. The social problems in Russia, as in other post-communist countries, are proof that simply abandoning the flawed model of a centralised economy and bureaucratic planning is not enough, and guarantees neither a country’s global competitiveness nor respect for the principles of social justice or a dignified standard of living for the population.

New challenges can be added to those of the past. One of these is terrorism. In a context in which world war is no longer an instrument of deterrence between the most powerful nations, terrorism has become the “poor man’s atomic bomb”, not only figuratively but perhaps literally as well. The uncontrolled proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the competition between the erstwhile adversaries of the cold war to reach new technological levels in arms production, and the presence of the new pretenders to an influential role in a multipolar world all increase the sensation of chaos in global politics.

The crisis of ideologies that is threatening to turn into a crisis of ideals, values and morals marks yet another loss of social reference points, and strengthens the atmosphere of political pessimism and nihilism. The real achievement we can celebrate is the fact that the 20th century marked the end of totalitarian ideologies, in particular those that were based on utopian beliefs.

Yet new ideologies are quickly replacing the old ones, both in the east and the west. Many now forget that the fall of the Berlin wall was not the cause of global changes but to a great extent the consequence of deep, popular reform movements that started in the east, and the Soviet Union in particular. After decades of the Bolshevik experiment and the realisation that this had led Soviet society down a historical blind alley, a strong impulse for democratic reform evolved in the form of Soviet perestroika, which was also available to the countries of eastern Europe.

But it was soon very clear that western capitalism, too, deprived of its old adversary and imagining itself the undisputed victor and incarnation of global progress, is at risk of leading western society and the rest of the world down another historical blind alley.

Today’s global economic crisis was needed to reveal the organic defects of the present model of western development that was imposed on the rest of the world as the only one possible; it also revealed that not only bureaucratic socialism but also ultra-liberal capitalism are in need of profound democratic reform – their own kind of perestroika.

Today, as we sit among the ruins of the old order, we can think of ourselves as active participants in the process of creating a new world. Many truths and postulates once considered indisputable, in both the east and the west, have ceased to be so, including the blind faith in the all-powerful market and, above all, its democratic nature. There was an ingrained belief that the western model of democracy could be spread mechanically to other societies with different historical experience and cultural traditions. In the present situation, even a concept like social progress, which seems to be shared by everyone, needs to be defined, and examined, more precisely.

In a three-month investigation, a team of Northwestern University student reporters has found that the US security establishment is not adequately prepared for many of the environmental changes that are coming faster than predicted and that threaten to reshape demands made on the military and intelligence community. This is despite the fact that the Defense Department has called climate change a potential “accelerant of instability.”

The 10 Medill School of Journalism graduate students interviewed more than 200 current and former national security officials and experts and reviewed scores of official documents and reports. While reporting, they used social media to create a community of people interested in the intersection of national security and climate change, informing them of their work through Tweets, blog posts and an e-newsletter.

Among the project’s findings:

• The government lacks critical information about where and when climate changes will happen and what effect they will have on the U.S. military, intelligence and national security communities.

• In a major strategy review last year, the Pentagon acknowledged the challenge that climate change poses to its operations, including a dramatically increased need for intervention in future humanitarian crises. While military branches have begun global assessments of their vulnerabilities, many security experts say the work lacks senior level support in Congress and the administration and that military service preparations are not keeping up with environmental changes.

•  Work by the CIA and environmental scientists during the Clinton administration was largely ignored in the years of George Bush’s presidency. Although the CIA is now spearheading intelligence assessments to determine where climate change could affect global stability, that work may be in jeopardy as Republicans skeptical of climate control take control of key congressional committees.

• The nation’s satellite system, which provides the lifeblood of climate information, is in disrepair after years of inadequate funding and, in the past two decades, the intelligence community has struggled both internally and politically to respond to the challenges posed by climate change.

•  At home, critical infrastructure along the Gulf of Mexico is vulnerable to the stronger storms and more frequent flooding that are predicted due to climate change.

Stories in the series also explore how the U.S. defense and intelligence community is preparing for a melting Arctic, shifting disease vectors, altered glacial melt in the Andes and rising seas in South Asia.

In addition to traditional print and online pieces, the project allows audiences to explore the impact of climate change through creative interactive graphics that:

• demonstrate the impact of rising seas on domestic military installations;

•  visualize the cascade of consequences that could turn climate changes into national security threats and crises;

•  cast users as decision makers in a war game that plays out the consequences of climate change in four regional scenarios;

•  convey the interrelated history of scientific findings, extreme weather events and  political and defense policy as they relate to a changing climate through an interactive timeline;

• let users hear from the experts themselves and engage in the conversation; and

•  provide an online library of dozens of government, academic and think tank documents related to climate change and national security.

 

For more information on this timely initiative please visit the project’s Global Warning website. Further information about the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative can be found here.  

A new conceptualization of insecurity and instability is needed in a world with greater and freer movement of goods, services and people – both legal and illicit – greater demands on weakening governments and the internationalization of local conflicts. The new insecurity is fundamentally derived from the responses of people and groups to greater uncertainty in an increasingly volatile world. Governments, and increasingly other actors need to recognize this in order to promote sustained stability in the long-term, locally and internationally.

Security of persons and property is absolutely necessary for economic, social, or political development on any large scale; people must have a reasonable belief in their own physical safety and that tomorrow they will be able to capture the fruits of their labor today. This extends not just to people in underdeveloped countries. Insecurity is a global and natural phenomenon – although admittedly undesirable – experienced by all people to varying degrees. The financial crisis has brought a large amount of uncertainty to people in the United States and the European Union about their futures and has seen a surge in political mobilization and social upheaval across the Atlantic. In an age of globalization where borders are more open, people and goods more mobile, which simultaneously facilitates the spread of prosperity as well as risk; i.e., there is greater opportunity for everyone, not just those engaged in legitimate activities. Furthermore, global openness also requires that events in one part of the world are necessarily felt in other parts. We learned this lesson all too well during the financial crises of 1998, and are still learning it after the 2008 crisis.

Fundamentally, the question is still: how can we make lives and livelihoods better? The question is not restricted to the poor anymore, although the poor generally face much higher levels of risk and insecurity than the wealthy. The question is now focused on the creation and sustainment of secure, stable environments where people can exercise personal authority to improve their own outcomes. The answer is that lives are made qualitatively better when people’s environments are relatively stable, and they have the power to exercise autonomy over them.

The absolute rise in risk and insecurity resulting from an open, global economic system has reshaped the nature of insecurity in two ways. First, people internalize more risk. The 9/11 attacks and the 2005 London bombings, in addition to news stories of “home-grown” terrorists or uncovered attack plots that came close to being enacted, remind people in the developed world that they are not entirely protected against international threats to their security. Second, the rise in risk creates demand for greater state interventions to curb the proliferation of insecurity. It does this first by placing demands on states by its constituents, and second by other states’ demands that they take action against persons or groups that promote violence or insecurity elsewhere. As demands on the state to provide greater security and stability increase, the ability of the state to establish and maintain sole authority over the use of force is constrained. In many places the state is incapable or unwilling to establish, maintain and consistently deliver a fair and impartial rule of law – i.e., provide a stable environment in which people can go about their daily lives with the reasonable expectation that the integrity of their persons, family, and property will be secure.

As a side note, the inclusion of the term “unwilling” is deliberate here. Some states are unwilling to undertake necessary measures to establish secure environments, perhaps because they lack the resources, the opportunity cost of those resources is too high, or there is insufficient political will to allocate the necessary resources. In general, establishing authority over a space is a difficult task requiring huge amounts of money, manpower, experience, and a credible commitment to maintain those efforts into the long-term. To illustrate, in 2011 the United States Department of Defense spent an estimate $159 billion USD on operations in Afghanistan, most of these to train police and maintain security. If this number were the GDP for a nation, it would be the 58th largest economy in the world, far ahead of countries like Iraq, Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uruguay, Bolivia, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Mali, and many other nations that are being increasingly asked to take on greater roles of governance and responsibility within their own borders. Aside from a lack of resources, states have other agendas and demands on political energy. This has been the case in Rio de Janeiro since the 1960s. The favelas around Rio are mazes of ad hoc buildings and streets built up on hilly terrain – very easy to defend and very difficult to infiltrate for outsiders. That is essentially what the state has become for many in the favelas of Rio – outsiders. In Rio and other cities, poor areas are run by local “informal” authorities” who provide a form of governance in the absence of the state. Donos provide public security, dispute resolution mechanisms, and a clientelistic form of service delivery that acts in part as a substitute for government functions. While there have been actions taken to combat the control of the favelas by narcotrafficking donos, the government of Rio has been, in general, tolerant of their control of these areas even if vocal about their disapproval of the donos.

That “informal” groups provide some semblance of order is not to say that the lives of everyday people is secure in these areas. They are not. Yet, there are very few places in the world where there is absolutely no form of social control or order – someone is calling the shots practically everywhere. What is ultimately at the heart of growing local and regional insecurity are the dynamics at play between individuals who are seeking to reduce their personal insecurity, groups that promote or engage in illicit and/or violent activity, and states or other sovereign authorities. The social contract is being renegotiated as states compete with other groups for public authority, either because other groups are expanding into spaces formerly occupied or controlled by the state, or because the state is trying to expand into spaces formerly occupied or controlled by other groups.

This dynamic inevitably creates insecurity for individuals at the micro-level. People come under competing jurisdictions, and have to learn to negotiate blurry lines of authority and safety.  As security increases, the incentive to take sides rises. This happens globally. The aggregation of personal responses to insecurity generates the instability that policy-makers seek to mitigate. When the state cannot provide protection or opportunity, unemployed, disenfranchised young people join street gangs across the globe – Chicago, Mumbai, Johannesburg, Kinshasa. They join organized criminal networks that will offer employment and protection throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa. They join rebel movements, taking up arms against a state that cannot make credible promises of opportunity, equality, or personal security. They join terrorist groups that can offer them immediate protection, access to resources, and a sense of belonging and identity – a buffer against an uncertain world and a framework for organizing and making sense of one’s environment.

Moreover, these decisions also have implications for conceptions of personal identity. Personal identity is a fundamental human need. People seek a sense of self, a way of organizing their world and the environments in which they find themselves. Instability necessitates changes in how people view themselves and their place in the world. As group, ethnic, regional, and national identities are redefined in the face of conflict or altered sovereignty, people are forced to renegotiate personal identities to incorporate these changes. In the face of dissonance between how they see themselves and the opportunities they have, people often adapt different identities to reduce this disconnect. This renegotiation comes through practice; as people practice new behaviors, they adopt their new identities. Hence, as people in areas of contested authority or beyond the reach of the state practice informality or criminality, this becomes a part of their identity over time.

Even for those that are not willing to commit to sides, the insecurity caused by ill-defined or blurry lines of authority within a political, economic or special space leads civilians to hedge their bets against a clear victor and pay tribute to both sides, to the extent that they can. Civilians must learn to talk out of both sides of their mouths, so to speak, to appease one authority without offending the other. This must necessarily weaken the ability of the state to exert authority in contested spaces and confound efforts to establish authority in these spheres.

The presence of criminal groups absolutely promotes this dynamic. Illicit, violent or other criminal groups have benefitted from the freer movement of goods and services at least as much as those in legitimate business. They have large stores of cash that they can use to buy favors and loyalty, as well as power and weapons to enforce order within their spheres of influence. In some parts of the world, illicit groups are the only groups with public authority – Jamaica, some of Rio’s favelas, most of Sinaloa, Mexico, the shantytowns of Mumbai, Nairobi, and even today, after a huge effort on the part of the Colombian government, parts of Calí and Medellín. These groups benefit from this kind of uncertainty on the part of civilians. They offer employment and an identity to young men, and favors, medication, and even some public services to the community. In return, they receive support – sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit – which builds legitimacy, which translates into authority. The more a non-state group can make state forces appear inept, corrupt, or unwilling to provide basic security to the people, the more people will turn to the group to provide it.

The result is that, in the course of trying to promote their own personal stability – access to resources, a sense of identity, employment, safety –people either actively engage in activities that promote instability for others, or they acquiesce to a system that sustains insecurity.

Furthermore, as boundaries become more fluid, formerly local or regional conflict takes on an increasingly international flavor with some unintended consequences.  Global supply chains for illicit goods and services imply an opportunity for many new types of illicit groups to participate. Hence,  the lines between types of violent destabilizing actors, activities, and events are blurry and becoming more so. Local street gangs in Latin American countries are being used by transnational drug-trafficking supply chains to enforce order in their zones of control and move drugs, people and weapons throughout the region. Similar gangs in megacities in India, Africa and Asia are being used like Tammany Hall-style political coercion delivering votes for local bosses. Formerly local gangs in the United States and elsewhere are adopting increasingly organized, hierarchical structures as their focus grows and their range of activities extends from local protection to drugs, prostitution, extortion and weapons trading. Some of them now resemble the top-down tiered structure of organized crime syndicates. Rebel groups use youth gangs in countries from Colombia to Nigeria as mercenary fighters, who then take their skills learned back to their neighborhoods with them. Rebel groups also are becoming less distinguishable from terrorist groups, and vice versa. As well, all of them are becoming indistinct from organized criminal networks and organizations as they turn to the movement and sale of illegitimate goods and services to finance their operations. Paramilitary groups and other violent non-state groups from across the globe convene in the Tri-Border Area of South America to laundery money and trade expertise and illicit goods. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) had well-known ties to the Cartagena and Medellin Cartels in Colombia, as well as the FARC, during the 1990’s. Previous demarcations between types of violence and insecurity as well as their perpetrators no longer apply as neatly as they used to.

The second consequence is that local, regional, or national crises have spillover effects across borders. There is little true “global” insecurity. Rather, local, national, or regional instabilities have spillover effects that affect people beyond the area where the instability originates. Porous borders, low state capacity, and poorly guarded information can cause leakages of weapons, people, and goods that can decrease security everywhere. Regional conflicts create power vacuums where local, violent terrorist groups can set up operations and perpetrate instability not only in their own areas of operation, but also far-off targeted countries. Intrastate conflicts in Africa directly affect the probability of war in neighboring countries. Drug trafficking and violence in Central America filter through even the heavily guarded US-Mexico border. However, these sources of instability are not, in themselves, global in origin. Rather they are the organizational, and in some cases societal-level, responses to insecurity and instability locally that contribute to global insecurity.
Third, insecurity breeds insecurity. Insecurity motivates people to take steps to reduce the insecurity to themselves – to exercise, or regain, control over their environment. Sadly, this often manifests itself in competition rather than cooperation, resulting in zero-sum approaches to reducing instability. If groups cannot cooperate effectively to reduce risk, which is often the case where insecurity exists, then one’s actions to reduce one’s own insecurity generates insecurity for others. As a simplified example, a man who burgles a home has generated insecurity for the homeowner even as the sale of the stolen items generates income for him.

Fourth, unless credible commitments can be made on the part of all groups involved, the third issue cannot be overcome.  In the absence of credible commitments, the actors fall into a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. None of them can credibly commit to provide security for one another. This can be the case between any combinations of states and non-state groups or actors.  In some parts of the world, there is no actor who can enforce societal contracts in which all sides agree to cooperate. States may not have either the capacity or the willingness to police their borders, ensure fair and enforceable dispute resolution, provide a fair and uncorrupt police force, or ensure tight control of the movement of goods and services – legal and illegal – within and beyond its borders. Partly, in an age of globalization, the sheer magnitude of movement and the increase in demands on the state makes this near impossible. Partly, despite rhetoric to the contrary, some states have not taken effective steps to try and a globalized world has made these places even more dangerous. However, the fact remains that without either a mechanism between competing parties, be they individuals, groups or states, or a third party who can credibly commit to enforcing contracts of cooperation over competition, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to overcome the problem of the third observation noted above.

Fifth, many things promote insecurity, and they cannot all be thought of as separable. Environmental degradation and pollution, climate change and constrained natural resources, porous borders and weak state capacity, social or economic exclusion, and structural or institutional exclusion all exacerbate problems of insecurity and incentivize individuals to seek alternative situations that increase their short-term security and stability. Groups in resource-depleted areas can often also face ethnic or sectarian violence over access to resources. People in areas where unemployment is high turn to illegal or informal modes of income generation. Additionally, these problems all exacerbate one another. Lack of state control over resources or their distribution permits poor custodianship of those resources. Porous borders make illegal economies more lucrative. Conflict weakens state capacity. Globalization itself worsens insecurity by amplifying its effects across borders.

Sixth, responses to insecurity can be seen as rational attempts to reduce insecurity. If a neighborhood has a high rate of crime and no police protection, it makes sense in the short-term to join a gang for protection. Unemployed, young men who face challenges in securing legitimate livelihoods join gangs to traffic drugs, or join rebel armies for a steady supply of food and pay. Socially excluded groups with no political means of securing access to resources will organize rebellions and wars to gain access. Related to this, steps to crack down on groups that cause insecurity may generate new problems, as the insecurity for the groups itself is increased. A notable example is that, as a result of the Mexican government’s crackdown on narco-trafficking groups, some groups have splintered off and begun extorting schools and other local officials. These are rational, if awful, responses to increased instability in the lives of the former traffickers. Attempts to crack down on insecurity should be ready for its expression in alternate forms.

While it is undoubtedly the case that policy-makers and academics have begun to prioritize efforts to mitigate the spread of the kind of insecurity discussed here, too much emphasis is still placed on actions and reactions at the group and national level. Daily insecurity happens at the micro-level, beginning with individuals’ perceptions of and reactions to the environment in which they find themselves. While insecurity and conflict are all connected at the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels, there needs to me more analysis of risk and insecurity that recognizes the effect of these societal dynamics in individuals as well as groups, and understand how the effects at one level aggregate or disaggregate to levels above and below.

 

Image source: bass_nroll

 

One of the ways that non-state armed groups get their funding is by exploiting displaced populations.

 

Practically all armed groups are heavily dependent on external support. Armed groups primarily seek support from both other states and from the diasporas, displaced populations and other armed groups, in order to prevent the burden of  the war effort from falling entirely on the civil population they claim to protect, a situation that has its own political costs. States too need external support to deal with outbreaks of instability and violence; during the Cold War this was normal and it still continues today in most current armed conflicts.

The violence, discrimination and poverty that follow armed conflicts lead to forced displacements of population that often help to maintain the original conflict. Armed groups frequently use IDP and refugee camps as a source of supply and recruitment, as well as for refuge for themselves. Although the armed groups have no legitimate power, they can depend on the refugee population on two essential fronts: fighters and income.

Armed groups have been formed or have recruited members (voluntarily or forcibly) and resources from the IDP and refugee camps in regions and states neighbouring conflict zones. In some cases these camps have become important refuges and logistical bases for the armed conflict. Most of the Afghan armed groups originated in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. The Taliban, for example, emerged from the madrassas (Koranic schools) of the Afghan refugee population in Pakistan. The Karen refugee population – mainly on the Thai-Burma border – supports the Karen National Union armed group against the Burmese government. The Hutu and Tutsi communities that left Rwanda and Burundi during the successive waves of violence following independence in the 1960s settled in large refugee camps in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania which later spawned the insurgency that destabilised both countries. Other cases of similar effects can be seen in Ethiopia, Iraq, Turkish Kurdistan, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan and elsewhere.

The refugee populations provide support for insurgent groups as a way of establishing protection mechanisms in host countries. Without any such protection, refugee populations are frequently extremely vulnerable given the potentially hostile local population and/or state authorities, and are thus at the mercy of other armed groups and criminal gangs.

Coercion is another important factor in eliciting contributions from the refugee population, particularly when armed groups are in control of refugee camps. The groups are easily able to take over as they are both armed and organised, whereas the displaced populations tend to be disorganised, weak and unarmed. In these circumstances it is easy for the groups to demand money, provisions and recruits from these populations, even where they are unpopular and are not supported by the populations they claim to represent.

The most extreme example of this situation occurred following the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when the remnants of the former Rwandan Armed Forces, officials from the previous Rwandan government and the Interahamwe militias organised resistance in the refugee camps in the former Zaire. They created a de facto government within these camps, exploiting international aid to continue their armed struggle against the new government in Rwanda, forcibly abducting and training new recruits, controlling and distributing humanitarian aid, and appointing themselves as camp managers, giving the refugee population no alternative but to let them do so.

A similar situation is happening with the displaced populations in the Sudan region of Darfur. These people have suffered repeated attacks and abductions in recent years, becoming immersed in a spiral of militarisation by insurgent groups, pro-government militias and the Sudanese Armed Forces.

The economy of armed groups

There can be varying forms of economic relationship between armed groups and displaced populations. Some armed groups persuade the populations under their control to provide resources, while others force them to. The relationship between the parties may be symbiotic, parasitic or predatory, and may move from one type to another depending on how the war develops.

In a symbioticeconomic relationship the armed group promotes certain types of activity in exchange for a share in the derived benefits. In such cases the economic development of the area and the economic well-being of the population may become dependent on the armed group for security and infrastructure; the group establishes a degree of social and economic order in the areas it controls in exchange for support and income, emulating a government and providing security, infrastructure and a rule of law that allow economic activities to continue in exchange for some form of taxation on the civilian population.

In a parasitic arrangement the armed groups provide protection and guarantees of security in exchange for collaboration and economic retribution through extortion or the establishment of taxes and charges, charges for permission to access resources, looting of international aid, or payments known as ‘revolutionary taxes’. The degree of extortion may be more controlled and regulated if it stems from the leadership of the armed group, or it may be totally arbitrary where individual combatants establish the level of abuse and extortion.

In a predatory economic relationship the armed groups are unconcerned by relationships with the civilian population, intimidating and terrorising them through the use of force in order to increase their power or to gain access to resources.

Conclusions

It is important to be aware that the relationships that emerge between armed groups and civilian populations in the economy of war do not always correspond to the standard victim-victimiser model. These relationships may be far more complex and may generate new forms of protection, authority and rights over the distribution of resources that may then play a decisive role in the outcome of the armed conflict. Understanding the economy and funding mechanisms of non-state armed groups is essential if we are to fully understand their nature. Greater understanding is needed of how these groups operate and where their funding comes from if we are to be in a position to facilitate humanitarian action in contexts of violence and to promote the respect for and fulfilment of human rights.

 is a political scientist and since 2000 has been a researcher on the Programa de Conflictos y Construcción de la Paz (Programme on Conflict and Peace-building,http://escolapau.uab.cat/) at the Escola de Cultura de Pau (Faculty of Peace Culture) in the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Image source: Gustavo Montes de Oca

Article source: Forced Migration Review

Understandably, the world has become increasingly preoccupied with risk and insecurity. The uncertainties produced by global challenges such as financial crises, economic slowdowns, health pandemics, the international narcotics trade, terrorism and conflict and indeed the impact of climate change are just a few pressing examples causing concern. However, the earth’s environmental resources are increasingly under enormous strain and nowhere is this stress more apparent than in the case of the earth’s finite supplies of freshwater.

WHY WATER? WHY NOW?

Less than three per cent of the earth’s water is potable and 2.5 per cent of this freshwater is inaccessible, locked up in Antarctic and Arctic ice sheets and glaciers. In addition, fewer than 10 countries hold 60 per cent of the world’s available freshwater supplies: Brazil, Russia, China, Canada, Indonesia, U.S, India, Columbia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The uncertainties, insecurities and scarcity produced by insufficient access to water and its poor management extends beyond national borders, generations and population groups, albeit in different ways. Without decisive collective action, access to freshwater will become increasingly limited and the growing risk of water scarcity more widespread.

Water, which is such an integral part of the planet’s social, economic, political and environmental wellbeing, has for too long been overlooked as a major cause of global uncertainty and insecurity. This is despite the fact that its increasing scarcity has led to a silent crisis, which although many argue is preventable, continues to be ignored.

THE CHALLENGES

How can access to freshwater be secured when and where it is needed, and how can the competing demands for freshwater from the environment, agriculture, industry and households be more effectively managed? More importantly, in an increasingly interconnected world where co-operation is not just an option but an absolute imperative, how can future foreign policy tackle the challenges thrown up by the world water crisis?

In a collection of essays recently published by the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) in partnership with WWF-UK, a diverse range of authors endeavoured to explore the most significant foreign policy impacts created by water scarcity under the aegis of three overarching themes.

1. TACKLING 21st CENTURY CHALLENGES

WATER, PEACE AND SECURITY

The potential disputes over shared water resources may not have produced outright conflict, but tension is often masked by cooperation between unequal powers which can fuel social and political instability and violence within and between states. All of this will be compounded by increasingly acute climate constraints. There are particular high risk regions such as Darfur, Yemen, Nepal and Bangladesh where the effects of too much (floods) or too little (droughts) water are testing peoples’ resilience and ability to adapt. In such cases good water management is an important part of peacebuilding and can only be delivered through insightful political leadership.

WATER SCARCITY AND ENERGY SECURITY

There is an inextricable link between energy and water. Water cannot be secured without employing energy and energy cannot be produced, transported or distributed without water. The interdependence of energy and water exists in a world confronted by an age where natural resources have become increasingly scarce due to pressures from the explosive growth in the earth’s population, as the world becomes rapidly industrialised and urbanised. The implications for securing affordable, reliable and sustainable access to water is momumental but not beyond reach with the help of new investment strategies to improve water use.

FARMERS AND LIVELIHOODS

About 70-80 per cent of freshwater taken from rivers or aquifers in the developed world is used for irrigation. In other words, the amount of water required for one hectare of irrigation in hot climates is about one litre per second every second of the day. Farmers are the main managers of water world-wide, employing 80 per cent of the water used by society. How can irrigation knowledge and affordable investment strategies be developed to produce more food with much less water? In addition, in regions such as West Africa where nine countries depend on the Niger River, the availability of water is not necessarily scarce, but effective governance is. Therefore an urgent priority is to identify how the most optimal water management investment choices can be made.

2. GOVERNANCE AND INVESTMENT IN WATER MANAGEMENT

WATER SECURITY AND TRADE

In examining the economic imperative for managing water wisely there are a number of critical issues. Can international trade in food commodities deliver food and water security for the rural and urban poor in the developing world and does this process improve access to international markets and ultimately providing an exit out of poverty for poor people? Current evidence suggests this is not the case but the question is could it?

WATER SCARCITY AND BIG BUSINESS

Water scarcity has particular relevance for big business. The uniqueness of water as a natural and irreplaceable resource that is impossible to substitute, underlines a shared risk to business and other water users and a collective business case for better water managementpPrivate sector investment in a new approach to water stewardship needs to look beyond volumes of water used to consider the impact of water use on natural and economic systems. Such an approach supports the development of an locally-appropriate, equitable and transparent regulatory framework to help allocate water to different users. Above all however, such a stewardship ethic demands strong and autonomous political water management institutions that not only have the technical capacity to secure greater outputs for every litre of water used, but can also rigorously enforce fair and sustainable water allocation for all.

3. WATER AND HABITATS FOR PEOPLE AND NATURE

SHIT MATTERS!

Every US$1 spent on water and sanitation yields a return of US$8- US$10 in economic development in poor countries. The impact of improving the provision of safe drinking water and appropriate sanitation facilities in poor countries is a cornerstone for economic development transformation. Yet, while the controversy surrounding the public and private sector provision of water and sanitation is complex, such issues need not be allowed to hijack the debate when improving provision for those most in need is an urgent challenge.

WOMEN AND WATER

The central role women play in tackling the crisis in global water management cannot be underestimated. Yet, women’s rights are often conspicuously absent from water management decision-making, be it on a local, national, regional or global level. The challenge is, how can women be supported to have a greater voice, commensurate with their knowledge and expertise as primary users of water resources in many communities around the world?

GLOBAL MEGACITIES

By 2030 water supplies will only satify 60 per cent of global demand. This will be compunded by the fact that by this year over 60 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. The realities of water scarcity in the sprawling megacities that have sprung up across the developing world accelerate the need for better sustainable water management in emerging urban areas.

THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

Nature is being squeezed by humankind’s increasing demand for freshwater. In essence, the impact of water scarcity on species and on natural river, lake and aquifer systems is a phenomenally neglected priority requiring urgent action. After all, these rivers, lakes and aquifers are the very sources of our water. If they dry up, we do too.

As Hilary Clinton has said, the challenge of tackling management of freshwater supplies in an age of growing scarcity will increasingly be a front-burner issue. The question is, can future foreign policy be reshaped and recasted to tackle this challenge?

Dr David Tickner, is Head of Freshwater Programmes, WWF-UK.

Josephine Osikena is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre.

Article Source: The Foreign Policy Centre

Image Source: darkpatator