This article by Foreign Policy in Focus co-director John Feffer powerfully explores three recent and geographically diverse killings in the context of marginalisation. Feffer links the fatal beating of an Iraqi-born American woman in California, the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and Mohamed Merah’s killing spree in Toulouse to the notion of trespass: “The message behind all three is this: you should not be here, you are not one of us, and your death shall serve as a warning.”

Merah himself was a member of a minority in France that is still yet to fully realise its place in French society, but that is only part of the context in which he operated: his own sense of trespass came from an intolerant ideology shared with a borderless fringe, dictating that Muslims who join the western ‘enemy’ armed forces (or who simply become too western) put themselves beyond the pale in doing so. As such, the concept of trespass is not merely a question of geography but also incorporates trespass of the mind, which is equally deserving of punishment. Feffer notes that the vast majority of Al-Qaeda’s victims are Muslims, a clear example of self-appointed leaders punishing disloyal or failed members of their own group. Other examples of this conception of trespass include honour killings and the 2011 terrorist attack by Anders Behring Breivik, who believed that Norway had betrayed its Christian European roots and so was motivated to punish the young liberal inheritors of that transgressive philosophy.

 

Three Killings

The note left next to the bloodied body of Shaima Alawadi read “go back to your country, you terrorist.” Alawadi, who died on March 24 after being taken off life support, was an Iraqi-born mother of five living outside of San Diego. Someone had delivered a similar note to the family earlier in the month. It was likely the same person who returned with a tire iron and struck her repeatedly on the head. Alawadi had lived in the United States for 17 years. Several family members reportedly provided cultural training to U.S. soldiers deployed to the Middle East. In a very sad coda, Alawadi is indeed going back to her country – to be buried.

There were no notes that accompanied Trayvon Martin’s death at the end of February. But he was also killed for a perceived trespassing. An African-American teenager, Martin was guilty of “walking while black” as he carried iced tea and Skittles through the Florida community of Sanford. The self-appointed head of the community’s neighborhood watch, George Zimmerman, identified Martin as a threat. Zimmerman didn’t wait for the police to arrive. He chased after the young man and, in circumstances still very murky, shot him dead. Because of the “stand your ground” law that permits shooting in self-defense, the police did not arrest Zimmerman.

In the middle of March, Mohamed Merah went on a killing spree in Toulouse, France that left seven people dead. The victims were a rabbi, three Jewish children, and three French soldiers. Two of the soldiers were Muslim. Merah, who identified with Islamic extremism, specifically targeted Muslim soldiers for being “traitors.” The French-born Merah better fit the profile of a serial killer than a political extremist. But his Muslim victims are an important reminder that ordinary, everyday Muslims, even more so than Jews or Americans, figure as the most potent threats to the worldview promoted by al-Qaeda and its ilk. The overwhelming majority of al-Qaeda and Taliban victims are Muslims.

These murders are, on the face of it, quite different: a hate crime, a serial killing, and an act of vigilantism. But underlying these three tragedies is a notion of violated borders, of trespass. The message behind all three is this: you should not be here, you are not one of us, and your death shall serve as a warning.

Trespass is originally an economic term intimately connected to evolving concepts of public and private space. In the late medieval period in England, wealthy landholders began to fence off common lands to increase the pasturage for their flocks of sheep. This enclosure movement, privatization avant la lettre, created a new class of dispossessed, of those who did not belong. The word “trespass” – to enter private property without permission – comes from this period of late Middle Ages. Fences marked off the newly enclosed property. You could not enter without the permission of the owner or his agents. And scaffolds appeared throughout England to punish those thrown off the land who were forced to steal because they had no other means of subsistence.

In his captivating book The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt describes how the violence and oppression of this system drove theologian Thomas More to create his famous “utopia” of commonly held property.

“Utopia begins with a searing indictment of England as a land where noblemen, living idly off the labor of others, bleed their tenants white by constantly raising their rents,” Greenblatt writes, “where land enclosures for sheep-raising throw untold thousands of poor people into an existence of starvation or crime, and where the cities are ringed by gibbets on which thieves are hanged by the score without the slightest indication that the draconian punishment deters anyone from committing the same crimes.” Greenblatt cites the statistic of 72,000 thieves hanged during the reign of Henry the VIII, when More was composing his tract.

We too are living at a time of gibbets and enclosures, of death penalties and gated communities, of state violence and privatization. The United States has become a country of wealthy enclaves, neighborhood watches, and charter schools. Widening inequality has directly contributed to the deterioration of any sense of the public good. The drive for minimal government has reduced the capacity of public servants to ensure basic services and security. The erosion of the middle class has not only reduced the tax base, it has weakened political support for programs that aspire to universality. “Ill fares the land,” wrote Oliver Goldsmith in his 1770 poem “The Deserted Village,” “to hast’ning ill a prey/Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”

Colorado Springs, a sort of anti-Utopia, is a case in point. There, the city council responded to state and federal budget cuts by radically reducing public services. In its place, the city set up an extortion racket. If you want the electricity restored to all the streetlamps in your neighborhood or the Parks Department to take care of your local park, you have to pony up the dollars yourself. Most disturbingly, as a recent This American Life episode on Colorado Springs detailed, residents are willing to pay more money to maintain services in their own little patch of earth than they would have paid in additional taxes to keep the services running for everybody in the city.

Trayvon Martin was killed in a modest gated community in Sanford, Florida, a suburb of Orlando hard hit by the recession. The name of the community, tellingly, is The Retreat. As in Colorado Springs, the residents of Sanford must band together to compensate for what a diminished public sector fails to provide. The Retreaters, who live in townhouses priced around $100,000, have recently been concerned about a rash of burglaries. According to one resident, there had been eight cases in 15 months, and the culprits were mostly African-American males (or so he said). There are no signs at The Retreat that read: No Poor People or No African-Americans or No People Wearing Hoodies. The rules regarding trespass are unstated, shaped by fear and subject to the worst kind of stereotyping. Trayvon Martin was a victim of profiling but also of the insecurity that accompanies the decline of the middle class, an insecurity that especially plagues those of modest means, for they cannot afford all the perquisites of the wealthy. Vigilantism is the byproduct of a failed state. And the austerity measures promoted during our current mean season result in such a failed state.

Shaima Alawadi and her family recently moved from Detroit to the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, home to the second-largest Iraqi community in the country. Alawadi, like so many Iraqis living in El Cajon, took refuge in America from the human rights violations and the subsequent sectarian violence of Iraq. But they also found themselves in a city close to the Mexican border and therefore on the frontlines of the immigration debate in the United States. The economic crisis has produced a spike in anti-immigrant sentiment: “they” are taking “our” jobs; “they” are a burden on “our” city services; “they” are not assimilating into “our” culture. Hate crimes against immigrants have been on the rise. Alawadi was not only an immigrant. She wore a headscarf and so was identifiably Muslim. As such, she was a target for all those who conflate Islam with terrorism. Religious freedom and respect for ethnic diversity are still core American values. But a certain tribalism has crept into American discourse. A tribe of xenophobic Christians is fearful that demographic shifts and economic malaise will undermine their precarious cultural status. A small but growing minority within this tribe will resort to violence to maintain this status.

The politics of immigration, multiculturalism, and Islamophobia take on a very different character in France. In this election year, President Nicolas Sarkozy has tried to steal the fire from an unabashedly xenophobic right wing. He has stated that there are “too many foreigners” in the country. He has strenuously backed the French ban on the hijab. He has gone after halal meat (which has also raised concerns in France’s Jewish community that Kosher food will likewise be stigmatized). What had once been on the margins of French debate is now in the very mainstream. Muslims are somehow under suspicion for challenging a mythical unitary French identity through what they eat, what they wear, and how they pray. Mohamed Merah, meanwhile, believed that some Muslims had become too French and should be punished for their transgression. French Muslims find themselves in an increasingly difficult position. They trespass on French culture if they attempt to retain their identity. Or they trespass in the imaginations of religious extremists if they identify too closely as French — by, for instance, joining the army. If France and the European Union were enjoying an economic uptick, these culture wars would retreat into the background. As it is, Muslims have become a convenient scapegoat.

The European Union was supposed to be a borderless space. But the old dream of an ever more prosperous and economically equitable regional arrangement has come up hard against economic downturn and polarization. The United States was supposed to be a country without the class barriers of feudal Europe. But the old dream of a growing middle class and the relatively stable politics that accompany it cannot survive in the austerity liberalism and anti-government conservatism of the 21st century. When our notion of the common good, of commonwealth, begins to disintegrate, all that is left are tribes defending their turf, standing their ground, enclosing their land.

We are living now in a new world of enclosures. We are building our fences ever higher. We are patrolling our borders with ever more sophisticated weaponry. And we are punishing any and all who trespass. The victims of these recent killings are the collateral damage of these border wars.

 

To read the original article, click here

Image Source: Lightgraph

In a report published in December 2011, Minority Rights Group International highlights the problems facing minority groups, specifically in an area covering Kenya, Uganda and Jonglei State in South Sudan. Competition over resources has increased the potential for confrontation not only with local dominant ethnic groups, but also with the state and international corporations, thereby increasing the liklihood of different forms of conflict on different levels. Progressive legal protections are often not enforced because of a disconnect at state-level between legislation and law-enforcement, which only exacerbates existing problems caused by long-standing discrimination. Moreover, conflict involving already marginalised people adversely affects the women and children in these groups in particular, which in turn re-impacts on the community because of the traditional roles that women play in family cohesion and as food producers.

Many problems arise not simply because people belonging to minority groups are themselves marginalised, but also their community and governance structures which previously had been successful in mediating conflict such as (in an East African context) cattle raiding. Marginalisation not only discriminates against individuals because of their backgrounds or beliefs but also rides roughshod over communal organisation and mediation, leaving groups unable to adapt to change or protect their interests when threatened by more powerful entities.

 

Executive Summary, by Laura A. Young and Korir Sing’Oei

In resource-scarce East Africa, minority groups face major challenges over the control of and access to land and other natural resources. Despite national policy regimes that are developing in a positive direction, the reality for minority groups and their neighbouring ethnic groups is that land and natural resources continue to be a major trigger of violence. Minorities find themselves competing with other communities, with the state, and with corporate interests for control of resources upon which they depend for their livelihood, cultural integrity and future development.

As globalization, population explosion, and climate change converge to increase the demand for land, water, forest products and mineral resources within territories inhabited by minorities in East Africa, these groups are forced to find new ways to cope with different types of conflict at once.

This report describes the situation of selected minorities and their neighbouring groups in Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan’s Jonglei State. Each group has unique characteristics, including extreme livelihood challenges, vulnerability to conflict, and ongoing discrimination, which are common across communities and countries. Decades of discrimination against minority groups, often as a result of state policy starting in the colonial era, has rendered minorities in East Africa poorer and with more precarious access to land and natural resources than other communities.

Minorities face such serious challenges for numerous reasons: legal regimes remain unimplemented or result in further discrimination against minority groups; there are existing conflicts between formal and customary laws; population pressures and climate change; lack of coordination in conflict resolution programming and donor support, and non-recognition of indigenous livelihoods by states.

Resource conflicts and discrimination lead to negative consequences for women from these communities in particular, as they face double discrimination because of deeply entrenched patriarchy. Conflicts between formal and customary laws often leave women with limited options to protect their access to land and natural resources. Given the place of women in the social system of most minority groups, in which they are responsible for production of food, denial of access has negative effects on the community overall and specifically on women and children. Women also often bear the brunt of conflicts over natural resources. Security operations to quell violence or evict communities expose women to multiple violations of their rights. Moreover, violence between communities leads to attacks on women and children and directly impacts women’s particular property rights within traditional community structures.

The research for this report reveals that communities often struggle with multiple types of conflict at once: interethnic competition; conflict with the state; and conflict with corporate actors. Each of these types of conflict requires a different method of resolution. The report highlights that communities themselves are initiating the most effective conflict resolution methods when it comes to inter-ethnic violence, most often associated with cattle raiding in pastoralist communities. Effective conflictresolution strategies often draw on customary practices, integrated with modern technological advances. The report highlights that national law and policies often contradict and undermine customary practices. Moreover, current conditions of land scarcity, state intervention and resource extraction are straining or obliterating customary management in many communities.

State-led policy initiatives to resolve conflict between communities and state or corporate actors have not proven successful because of lack of implementation and failure to effectively consult minority communities’ traditional governance structures. Accordingly, many communities, such as the Endorois, have been forced to become legal adversaries of the state, addressing conflict through litigation at the national and regional level.

This report recommends that governments in the regions discussed take urgent action to adopt and implement their national policy directives on land and natural resources. These policies are generally progressive with respect to minority rights and provide a strong basis for supporting the other recommended actions in the report.

Among other key recommendations, this report urges national governments to develop guidelines on what constitutes participatory and effective community consultation around land and natural resource extraction, based on free, prior and informed consent; and recognize the value of indigenous peoples’ knowledge of resource management and of customary practise, especially related to women’s rights to hold and use land.

To read the full report and press release, click here

Image Source: Leonie_x

This Project Briefing from the Overseas Development Institute reports on the findings of a study examining the experience of Nepalese and Bangladeshi migrants in India. This vulnerable group of people face marginalisation on many different levels, having been compelled to emigrate in the first place because of economic hardship; and facing job-, wage-, and housing-insecurity on arrival because of their ambiguous legal status. Fear of disclosure or of being identified by their accents prevents migrants not only from taking a stand against exploitation, but also from forming networks within the host communities, thereby compounding the other forms of insecurity. In addition, migrants are often marginalised on their return home: “There is a common belief that women who Migrate to india engage voluntarily in commercial sex work once there,” while husbands left behind suffer from the stigma surrounding their wives’ supposed profession. The briefing concludes with recommendations for mitigating insecurity experienced by this group, who would otherwise be at permanent risk of violence and exploitation.

Introduction, Fiona Samuels et. al.

There has been a steady flow of people from Nepal and Bangladesh to India in recent decades in search of better work and livelihood opportunities. As they move to and fro, many face harassment, discrimination and violence. Many face these challenges during their journeys – particularly when they cross borders – at their destinations, and when they go home. Their experiences are affected by gender, country of origin and the process of recruitment to migration.

This Project Briefing explores the experiences of these people as they migrate, drawing on findings from a baseline study on their vulnerabilities, particularly to HIV and AIDS, as they move between their communities of origin in Nepal and Bangladesh to India. Although the baseline used quantitative and qualitative approaches, stories of harassment and violence emerge mostly from the qualitative elements. Respondents rarely speak about their own experiences of violence or discrimination, but talk about the experiences and behaviour of others. The term ‘violence’ is used in its broadest sense, ranging from harassment, bribery, threats and name-calling, to discrimination, stigma, exclusion and exploitation, to physical violence including beating, torture and murder, to sexual and gender based violence including sexual exploitation, coercion and rape. After exploring experiences of violence, this briefing concludes with recommendations, many of them already being operationalised in the three countries as a result of findings from this study.

 

To read the full briefing, click here

Image Source: FriskoDude

What is the real mission in Libya? Not the no-fly zone– that’s a method. So what is the mission? How do we end this thing?

The president said in Santiago yesterday that the military mission isn’t aimed at getting rid of Gaddafi. He said we have other means to do that-sanctions and money freezes and that stuff.

Well, excuse me for being skeptical, Mr. President, but we’ve done all that before and regimes have survived it for years-many years. I remember how many years we had white-ruled Rhodesia under sanctions. When I was over there in the Peace Corps, I went to that country, it meant watching old movies instead of ones currently available in other countries. No, it really didn’t really work all that fast.

Americans don’t like long wars. Are we going to be backing this military campaign in Libya for months or even years-with the French and the Brits and a token Arab force flying overhead while Gaddafi kills his people in alleys and basements below? Are we going to wait for –excuse me — sanctions to work their will?

It doesn’t ring true. We went in there to stop a killer from massacring his people. If he’s set on doing it, he’s got plenty of time now to find ways of doing it — if all we’re doing is running sanctions against him.

So, we need to know more. Perhaps there’s a secret plan out there to overthrow Gaddafi. Are we offering him safe-conduct to Venezuela? Are we giving him a means to end this standoff?

Because if we’re not doing any of this, it promises to be a long war, a standoff, where Gaddafi sacrifices more and more of his people to prolong his own rule, which he needs to prolong if he’s going to prolong his own life.

I hope we have a plan here we’re not talking about, because what we’re seeing makes no sense. We say we want to overthrow Gaddafi again but give him no place to escape. If that’s the nature of this contest, he will fight to the death — as most people would — and that will mean the deaths of countless people who would survive if we had a quicker, smarter plan that promised a quicker, smarter ending to this thing.

I don’t like the looks of this campaign for the simple reason it looks like so many others. In an effort to reduce our footprint, we’re making it a far longer, more bloody journey to where we’re headed in the end.

 

Chris Mathews is a TV News anchor in the United States.

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post. 

 

In today’s era of globalization, the line between critic and hypocrite is increasingly becoming blurred. Single out a problem in a region or country other than one’s own, and risk triggering an immediate, yet understandable, response: Why criticize the problem here, when you face the same one back home?

Such a response is particularly justified in the context of water insecurity, a dilemma that afflicts scores of countries, including the author’s United States. In the parched American West, New Mexico has only ten years worth of drinking water remaining, while Arizona already imports every drop. Less arid areas of the country are increasingly water-stressed as well. Rivers in South Carolina and Massachusetts, lakes in Florida and Georgia, and even the mighty Lake Superior (the world’s largest fresh-water lake) are all running dry. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, if American water consumption habits continue unchecked, as many as 36 states will face water shortages within the next few years. Also notable is the fact that America’s waterways are choked with pollution, and that nearly twenty million Americans may fall ill each year from contaminated water. Not to mention that more than thirty U.S. states are fighting with their neighbours over water.

Such a narrative is a familiar one, because it also applies to South Asia. However, in South Asia, the narrative is considerably more urgent. The region houses a quarter of the world’s population, yet contains less than 5% of its annual renewable water resources. With the exception of Bhutan and Nepal, South Asia’s per capita water availability falls below the world average. Annual water availability has plummeted by nearly 70% since 1950, and from around 21,000 cubic metres in the 1960s to approximately 8,000 in 2005. If such patterns continue, the region could face ‘widespread water scarcity’ (that is, per capita water availability under 1,000 cubic metres) by 2025. Furthermore, the United Nations, based on a variety of measures – including ecological insecurity, water management problems and resource stress – characterizes two key water basins of South Asia (the Helmand and Indus) as ‘highly vulnerable’.

These findings are not surprising, given that the region suffers from many drivers of water insecurity: high population growth, vulnerability to climate change, arid weather, agriculture dependent economies and political tensions. This is not to say that South Asia is devoid of water security stabilizers; indeed, its various trans-national arrangements, to differing degrees, help the region manage its water constraints and tensions. This paper argues that such arrangements are vital, yet also incapable of safeguarding regional water security on their own. It asserts that more attention to demand-side water management within individual countries is as crucial for South Asian water security as are trans-national water mechanisms.

To understand the importance of trans-boundary water arrangements in South Asia, one must first bear in mind a paradox: the region is poorly integrated, yet linked together by water co-dependencies.

Consider, first, that the World Bank has declared South Asia the world’s least integrated region. According to the Bank, South Asia has the world’s worst railways and road density, while only sub-Saharan Africa has worse electricity and sanitation systems. Predictably, intra-regional trade accounts for just 5% of the region’s total international trade, and less than 2% of gross domestic product. Not surprisingly, South Asia’s regional organization, SAARC, is not nearly as dynamic as regional groupings like the European Union or the Association of South East Asian Nations.

Second, that many of the region’s countries depend on the same rivers – and, by extension, neighbouring upper riparians – for their water supply. India, Bangladesh and Nepal look to the Brahmaputra, while both Pakistan and India are beholden to the rivers of the Indus basin. Bangladesh and Pakistan, both lower riparians, must obtain great majorities of their water resources (91% and 75%, respectively) from beyond their borders.

Conversely, China, while not a geographic entity of South Asia, is an upper riparian for many of the key rivers flowing into South Asia. India is both a lower (in the case of the Brahmaputra) and upper (in the case of the Indus) riparian. This means, hypothetically, that any flow-diverting Chinese activities on the Brahmaputra could alarm India, Nepal and Bangladesh, and in turn trigger Indian flow manipulations on the Indus, with implications downstream for Pakistan. Such a dynamic creates a hydro domino effect: one nation’s water policies can spark a chain reaction throughout the region.

Another notable factor about South Asia’s interconnected water geography is that many major rivers originate in or pass through politically contested or tense areas. The Tibetan plateau – where the mighty flows of the Salween, Brahmaputra, Indus, Sutlej, and other rivers all spring to life, providing water to 1.5 billion people downstream – is controlled by China, and abuts India’s water-rich Arunachal Pradesh state, which China covets and has sparked Sino-Indian tensions. The rivers of the Indus basin, of course, flow through the Kashmir region – an unending source of Pakistan-India tensions. No wonder that many of South Asia’s riparian pairings (India-Pakistan for the Indus, and India-Bangladesh for the Brahmaputra and the Ganges) reflect the region’s most troubled bilateral relationships.

In effect, South Asia’s water relations play out amid a volatile backdrop of shortage, dependency and geopolitical tension.

A nation’s upper riparian status by no means guarantees water security. China, an uber-upper riparian, suffers from a full-blown water crisis. The North China plain – one of the country’s ‘economic and social cores’ generating more than 20% of its grain supply, according to China scholar David Pietz – is frighteningly water-scarce, with a per capita availability of 225 cubic metres per year. India, meanwhile, contains about 20% of the world’s population, but only about 4% of its water. A 2010 Asian Development Bank report projects that the country could suffer from water shortages of as much as 50% by 2030.

Faced with current shortages, policymakers in upper riparian states frequently opt for supply-side solutions. Water generation measures may ease water stress internally, yet they often exacerbate regional tensions. India and China, to generate desperately needed water resources for both agriculture and energy, often resort to dam construction and other large engineering projects. Many of these are run-of-the-river and hence do not prevent flows from continuing downstream. Still, dams are a delicate matter. China’s insistence that its South to North Water Diversion Project will not divert flows from the Brahmaputra is met with skepticism in India. Additionally, even run-of-the-river dams and other hydro projects threaten lower riparians’ water and food security. For example, if India builds all its envisioned hydro projects on the western rivers of the Indus basin, Pakistan’s agriculture could be deprived of up to a month’s worth of river flows – enough to ruin an entire planting season.

Lower riparians also opt for large, supply generating projects. Pakistan’s water resources policy has been dominated by dam building for decades, and the country’s Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) plans to construct five dams, three large canals, and five hydropower facilities by 2025. As a lower riparian, these national engineering projects will not impede river flows into downstream countries. However, they upset riparian communities, who risk being displaced. Supply-side efforts also aggravate regional and provincial tensions, which are high in many South Asian countries. The furious debate surrounding Pakistan’s Kalabagh dam, for example, has pitted supporters in Punjab against opponents everywhere else in the country. This internal discontent feeds into the domestic instability that so concerns Pakistan’s neighbours.

In Pakistan, water insecurity also spawns different manifestations of militancy. In recent years, the Pakistani Taliban, aware of Pakistan’s precarious water situation, has attacked the country’s largest earth-filled dam, the fabled Tarbela. More recently, extremists in Punjab have issued violent threats, angrily blaming India for ‘stealing’ Pakistan’s water and vowing aggression against India unless it ceases such ‘theft’. It is perhaps not coincidental that while Pakistan based extremists have been largely absent from the latest uprising in Jammu and Kashmir, they have been increasingly vocal in their accusations of India’s alleged water theft. These extremists regard their India blame game as an expression of nationalism – an attempt to draw attention away from divisive debates within Pakistan about dam construction and toward a unified front on confronting India. Water may well be supplanting Kashmir as the militants’ chief rallying cry.

Another response – more potential than actual, at least at this point – is for desperate citizens to flee to more water-secure nations. According to a Strategic Foresight Group estimate, water scarcity will contribute to the displacement and migration of 50 to 70 million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China by 2050. To be sure, water strain takes a devastating toll on human security inside upper and lower riparian nations alike – as evidenced by the livelihood-shattered Pakistani fishermen along the disappearing Indus plain and the water starved, suicidal Indian farmers in parts of India.

However, migration is a particularly worrisome threat for lower riparians, with the potential not just to uproot millions of people, but also to imperil regional stability. Bangladesh offers a vivid example. As an impoverished, highly populous, lower riparian that depends on other countries for nearly all its water needs, it is deeply vulnerable to Indian or Chinese activity on rivers upstream and to glacial melting in the Himalayas. And as a low-lying nation, it is susceptible to rising sea levels and monsoon flooding. This array of water problems, according to some observers, could hasten mass Bangladeshi migrations into India’s volatile East, with politically explosive implications.

The combustible mix of water vulnerability, geopolitical tensions, and supply-side responses with ripple effects across borders constitutes a recipe for disaster – and figures to become even more explosive in the coming decades as the region’s population growth soars and Himalayan glacial melt accelerates. Several nightmare water-driven scenarios come to mind:

* Indus Basin War. Militants in eastern Pakistan, vowing to avenge India’s ‘theft’ of Pakistan’s water from the Indus basin’s western rivers, launch terror attacks in India. New Delhi dispatches troops to its western flank, and threatens to shut-off western river flows into Pakistan.

* Sino-Indian Water Showdown. China, in response to Indian defen-sive upgrades in and near Arunachal Pradesh, the water-rich northeastern Indian state that Beijing has long claimed, seeks to reclaim a strategic advantage by slowing the flow of the Brahmaputra into India’s Assam state – an impoverished bastion of separatist militancy that is also an important area of agricultural production.

* Environmental Refugee Crisis. As glacial melt in the Himalayas runs its course, river flows slow to a trickle, and lower riparian Bangladesh experiences rampant water scarcity, Bangladeshis migrate en masse to more water secure but politically volatile eastern India – deepening instability in the latter as violent factions target these new arrivals, and long entrenched separatist militants exploit the unrest by launching their own attacks.

These hypothetical scenarios, and the bubbling cauldron of water insecurity and political tensions that makes them impossible to dismiss, crystallize the importance of trans-boundary water arrangements with the ability to manage, if not reduce, the region’s water based tensions.

Numerous trans-boundary rivers in South Asia are governed by treaties. These include the Mahakali (to which India and Nepal are party), the Ganges (involving India and Bangladesh), and the Indus (comprising India and Pakistan). The Mahakali accord is meant to promote the river’s integrated development, though various disagreements have prevented the treaty from being properly implemented. The Ganges agreement is also constrained by several disagreements, particularly over the Farakka Barrage, which Bangladesh believes has reduced downstream flows of the Ganges.

Nonetheless, none of these countries has ever gone to war over water, and the treaties are surely a major reason why.

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) allocates the Indus basin’s western rivers to Pakistan, and the eastern rivers to India (India is authorized to draw on the western rivers for agricultural purposes, so long as this use does not involve storage). It deserves particular attention, given that it is repeatedly lauded as a magnificent example of international cooperation and conflict management. Such rhetoric is warranted. The two parties, despite their rocky relations, truly make a commitment to uphold the treaty’s provisions. The IWT emphasizes transparency, particularly in terms of data exchange and notification of plans to undertake hydro projects. Sure enough, in 2010, India allowed Pakistan to inspect several under- construction Indian hydropower projects on the western rivers. The two nations have also agreed to set up a telemetry system to measure river flows.

Additionally, only once in the treaty’s 50 year history have the accord’s mechanisms for dispute resolution been put to the test. This was a period between 2005 and 2007, when a neutral expert (appointed by the World Bank, as per the IWT’s stipulations) weighed in on the concerns of Pakistan about the Baglihar dam, a project being constructed by India on one of the Indus basin’s western rivers. The expert ruled against Pakistan on several technical points – particularly when he stated that a gated spillway was necessary – yet agreed with it on others (such as on the issue of power intake levels). While many on both sides undoubtedly found ways to oppose the outcome, it is undeniable that the dispute was settled peacefully. In June 2010, both governments concurred that the Baglihar dispute had been definitively resolved.

In 2010, Pakistan decided to bring some technical concerns about the Kishanganga dam (a hydro project being constructed by India in Jammu and Kashmir) to an international court of arbitration. While the outcome of this latest case is far from clear, the Baglihar precedent suggests the arbitration process for Kishanganga should be similarly smooth.

Despite its successes, many observers fear the IWT’s increasing vulnerability. This derives in part from the long-standing grievances harboured by both countries about the treaty. Indians believe it curtails the storage rights of Jammu and Kashmir, and hampers the development of hydro projects on the western rivers. Indeed, India’s participation in the treaty is both economically and politically risky – given that the energy-starved nation must forego opportunities to harvest hydroelectric resources, and given the resentment these cautious hydro development policies breed among Kashmiris.

Pakistan, meanwhile, resents its inherent vulnerability as the lower riparian (even though the IWT allots it 80% of the total Indus basin river flow). For many in Pakistan, the country with the lowest per capita water availability in Asia, entrusting its water security to its deeply mistrusted neighbour is profoundly unsettling.

Furthermore, worries about population growth and climate change effects (particularly the melting of Himalayan glaciers) are fuelling calls for a revised treaty that takes such trends into account. There are also recommendations that the treaty be expanded, so that it includes the other two Indus basin riparians, China and Afghanistan. Those advocating this latter view argue that a four-party treaty would reduce the possibilities of region-wide conflict, and promote basin-wide ecological sustainability.

Some experts contend that the ‘dividing the resources’ mentality of the IWT is no longer tenable, and that Pakistan and India should move toward a more cooperative ‘share the resources’ paradigm. Ahmad Rafay Alam, one of the most eloquent articulator of this view from the Pakistan side, argues that the two nations should determine ‘whether it is in the economic, social or political interest of both riparians to cooperate on water, rather than be antagonistic over it.’ For example, instead of railing against Indian run-of-the-river dam projects on the western rivers, power-starved Pakistan should consider buying the electricity they generate – a more affordable investment than buying power from pricier indigenous gas-powered rental power projects.

This paradigm can be applied to a broader geographic area as well. Bhutan and Nepal are blessed with ample hydroelectric potential; India could therefore invest in energy resources in these countries just as Pakistan could in India.

Some experts make more modest suggestions about improving trans-national water arrangements. They believe that regional water security is best attained not by changing the architecture or philosophy of regional water agreements, but instead by strengthening mechanisms for cooperation and transparency within existing arrangements. In other words, instead of crafting a new IWT, the parties should make even greater commitments to respect the treaty’s current provisions on transparency.

A core component of this viewpoint is the need for more data sharing on river flows, hydro project plans, and glacial melting. This emphasis on transparency is a chief feature of U.S. government policy on trans-national water arrangements. Policymakers in Washington, when describing South Asian water arrangements, repeatedly underscore the same terms: good communication, data sharing and joint management.

Some modest steps have already been taken along these lines. As mentioned above, India and Pakistan recently agreed to several information sharing measures. Additionally, China and India have agreed to share data on glacial melt. Still, much more can be done, and it is here that the international community can play a key role. International academic conferences and other forums facilitating the exchange of information about water constitute one way to boost water transparency. Technology sharing is another avenue.

The United States, for example, can share its new METRIC system – a new water measurement tool developed by academic researchers that has already helped resolve a fight over water in the Arkansas river, and could similarly be deployed in the Indus basin. Similarly, America could provide satellite data that document water availability. It is sometimes observed that there are no international water treaties or other global mechanisms to promote water cooperation. The international community’s participation in water data sharing exercises, in South Asia and elsewhere, can serve as a modest corrective.

Champions of trans-boundary water transparency argue that by fostering greater data sharing, riparians’ mutual suspicions can be reduced, paving the way for greater water cooperation. It is important to note, however, that greater water transparency can easily backfire, and even undermine riparian relations. As one study concludes, revelations of ‘inequitable Indian water stewardship on Indus tributaries’ could exacerbate the volatility of India-Pakistan relations. One might then argue that nations with delicate relations may in certain cases be better served by not revealing inflammatory water data, and should instead maintain opacity.

This raises a critical point: Advocating for more trans-boundary water openness, pushing for ‘resource sharing’ paradigms, and proposing more inclusive treaties all presuppose a level of political cooperation that may not exist in South Asia. After all, it is easy to propose the formation of a new Himalayan Rivers Commission to govern water management in this sub-region, as was done in 2010. However, it would be much more difficult to implement such an arrangement, which would necessitate the close cooperation of nations harbouring major trust deficits toward each other.

So the question invariably arises: How can South Asia’s trans-national water arrangements be enhanced in such a troubled political environment? One answer is to look within, and to muster better efforts to improve internal water governance. This is because sounder water management inside countries can create a more favourable political climate for the pursuit and achievement of lasting external water cooperation. Better internal water management can serve as a catalyst for effective regional water governance.

It is common to attribute water problems exclusively to politics. It is often said that India-Pakistan water tensions are just one facet of a long troubled bilateral relationship. Similarly, one frequently hears that India-China disagreements over water are rooted in the larger competition between the two rising powers for influence over South Asian territory and resources. And India’s water disagreements with Bangladesh and Nepal too are said to be part of a long history of poor political relations.

Such views are accurate, yet incomplete. After all, across the United States and Australia, regions and states bicker over river water allocations – yet these tensions have little to do with politics. Neither Colorado and Kansas in the United States, nor Victoria and Queensland in Australia, are at risk of going to war; they simply disagree about how to properly divide up river flows. As such, their squabbles demonstrate an inability to efficiently manage existing water resources. In South Asia, where the availability of water resources is more precarious, this poor water governance is a chief cause of water insecurity.

In South Asia, water insecurity is not solely a function of resource shortages. To be sure, much of it is running low on water. However, excluding some arid portions of the region, very little of South Asia is actually water-scarce. The resource is precious, yet present. South Asia’s water problems are very much rooted in the wasteful and inefficient management of the region’s available water supplies.

Pakistan is arguably the worst culprit. Water infrastructure and transmission systems – the canals and pipes that have helped make the Indus river system the world’s largest contiguous irrigated area – are literally falling apart because they have not been properly maintained. As a result, millions of gallons of water are lost to leakage every day. In urban areas, wastewater treatment facilities are nearly non-existent – hence the country’s great cities are notorious for fetid surface water resources that sicken and kill hundreds of thousands every year.

Meanwhile, Islamabad offers few incentives to the population to use water saving technology. The lack of subsidies for drip irrigation, for example, compels farmers to use traditional, water wasting flood irrigation. Furthermore, the government has made little effort to diversify crop production. This is unfortunate, given that Pakistan’s most intensively produced crops – and those that fetch the greatest profits for small farmers – are also the most water guzzling.

Then there are the structural factors that exacerbate Pakistan’s water mismanagement. Thanks to the nation’s feudal land setup, a small landed elite owns most rural land, while the majority of the rural population is landless. In a country with few water laws or rights, land ownership determines water access. As a result, most of Pakistan’s rural population struggles to obtain water. In theory, mechanisms such as warabandi – the colonial-era water distribution system meant to ensure farmers equal access to irrigation water – and provincial level water arbiters such as the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) are meant to compensate for such inequalities. In reality, they fail miserably. Warabandi is exploited by politically connected large farmers, while IRSA is rarely taken seriously, and its edicts about provincial river flow allocations are routinely ignored.

Given this gloomy domestic water situation in Pakistan, it is clear why not only militants, but also the country’s government, have chosen to externalize blame over the border. After all, bringing attention to its dysfunctional domestic water management would essentially be an acknowledgment that Islamabad is to blame for its water crisis. While Islamabad is much less prone to blame India than it was several years ago (in fact, in 2010, Pakistan’s minister for water and power acknowledged that India rarely prevents river water from flowing into Pakistan), it rarely admits that the country’s water problems are largely internally rooted.

Pakistan is not the only poor water manager in South Asia; India’s water governance is similarly troubled. India is home to ‘dilapidated’ pipes and pumping stations that cause more than one-third of New Delhi’s fresh water (and at least 40% of most Indian cities’ total water resources) to be lost to leakage. The Yamuna river is choked with ‘faecal bacteria’, and this sewage has increased ‘thousands of times’ over the last decade. Water intensive rice and wheat crops are championed by the government through price guarantees to farmers. And per capita storage availability – the sine qua non for dam efficiency – has plummeted in recent years to levels found in Africa’s poorest nations.

Poor internal water management has grave implications for public health, food security and the environment. Sometimes the effects can be catastrophic. Consider this summer’s flooding in Pakistan. If the country’s water infrastructure had been sturdier and better maintained, raging rivers would have been better contained and the damage wrought by the deluge may not have been as extensive.

Perhaps the most disturbing implication is the strain on groundwater resources. With poor internal water management regimes causing surface water to be wasted, lost or contaminated across the region, South Asians are increasingly digging deeper – literally – to alleviate their water insecurity.

In the context of agriculture – by far, the sector that consumes the most water across South Asia – the increasing inefficiency of highly subsidized, state-run irrigation systems have driven farmers to mine groundwater, which they have more control over and is more readily available. Even back in 2000, nearly 70% of Bangladesh’s irrigation, and more than 50% of India’s, was served by groundwater resources.

Yet groundwater depletion goes beyond the agricultural sector. According to the World Bank, India is the world’s most voracious consumer of groundwater. This heavy consumption is reflected in a 2009 study by several U.S. scientists, which found that groundwater levels fell by about four centimetres per year between 2002 and 2008 across three states in northwestern India – including the breadbasket of Punjab. These areas could conceivably exhaust their entire groundwater supply within the next few decades.

Pakistan, too, is increasingly groundwater-reliant. Lahore – the country’s second-largest city – is completely dependent on it for drinking water needs, and groundwater tables have fallen by as much as sixty-five feet in some areas of the metropolis. Worse, wastewater is now infiltrating the city’s groundwater, choking it with arsenic.

Groundwater – once a pristine, untapped resource – is now being extracted intensively throughout South Asia. In effect, with this onslaught on South Asia’s groundwater, the last bastion of regional water security has been breached. And as groundwater becomes increasingly short and scarce, South Asia may be compelled to return to rapidly dwindling surface water resources and to compete ferociously for the ultra-precious supply that remains – a terrifying prospect, and particularly for lower riparians.

Faced with domestic water problems, and mistaking mismanagement for shortages (or intentionally cloaking mismanagement in the guise of shortages), governments succumb to their supply-side fancies, and construct more dams and reservoirs. Such actions, as noted earlier, fan provincial tensions, and, in the case of upper riparians, anger downstream neighbours. Herein lies the troubling link between poor water management at home and trans-national water cooperation: the former prompts governments to take actions that threaten the latter.

Whether such actions outweigh the risks of imperilling trans-national water cooperation is debatable. This is because many supply-side coping strategies are neither efficient nor sustainable. One of Pakistan’s top water experts, Simi Kamal, has calculated that the quantity of water projected to be generated by the nation’s under-construction Diamer-Basha dam pales in comparison to the amount that would be freed up simply by repairing and maintaining Pakistan’s leaky canal system. Additionally, Pakistan’s dams, like India’s, are rapidly losing storage capacity.

Such considerations give way to another unsettling reality: So long as internal water management remains poor, the benefits accruing from deeper regional water cooperation will be strictly political; from a water resources standpoint, little will improve. Take the case of Pakistan. Assume, for a moment, that increased cooperation enables Pakistan to succeed in getting India to release more water downstream. What would be the result? Many Pakistanis would argue that their water problems would be solved: parched farmland saved, children’s thirst quenched, and lost water livelihoods restored.

In reality, however, none of this would happen. Instead, more water would mean more inefficiency: More water lost to leaky canals and pipes, wasted in irrigation, showered on water-guzzling crops, and contaminated by urban waste. Indeed, if nothing is done to improve internal water governance, allowing more water to gush into Pakistan would simply intensify the country’s water crisis.

South Asian nations need to focus more on demand-side solutions to domestic water problems. These include water conserving technologies, crop diversification, better investments in infrastructure maintenance and wastewater treatment, and a stronger embrace of rainwater harvesting (a conservation method that has already caught on quite strongly in parts of the region). Such policies are less expensive, and potentially more efficient, than traditional supply-side water engineering projects like large dams. Some encouraging signs are emerging from India, where there has been some debate about the merits of emphasizing sugar-bean cultivation over that of sugarcane, which is notoriously water wasting. There has also been discussion about embracing water saving mechanisms such as the direct seeding of rice.

If such demand-side management policies are implemented successfully, South Asian nations would become more judicious in their use of existing water resources, and therefore less threatened in the short-term by the spectre of scarcity. Upper riparians would, presumably, be less likely to initiate new hydro-generation projects that upset their downstream neighbours. Lower riparians, meanwhile, would have less incentive (and fewer grounds) to stoke tensions with their upstream neighbours by accusing them of water theft. As a result, trans-national water arrangements would be threatened less, and the calmer political climate would enable riparians to make more substantive progress on the data sharing and transparency essential for better South Asian water security. None of this, it should be noted, would necessitate drawing up new treaties or other water agreements.

To be sure, new demographic and environmental realities may well call into question the continued relevance of decades-old trans-national water arrangements. Still, these mechanisms need not stop functioning simply because of the presence of factors not at play fifty years ago. One study of the Baglihar dam case observes that the issue was ‘addressed bearing in mind the technical standards for hydropower plants as they have developed in the first decade of the 21st century, and not as perceived and thought of in the 1950s when the [IWT] was negotiated.’ A precedent has effectively been set for new conditions to be taken into account when interpreting the existing treaty, without needing to incorporate such conditions into an altogether new or revised treaty.

This is just one more reason for South Asian nations to redouble their efforts to ameliorate internal water management. Trans-national water arrangements can also stand to improve, yet they are not in desperate need of reform and revision. Rather, it is the water governance of the region’s individual countries that so urgently needs to be fixed. In effect, South Asian water policies must adopt a new approach – one that, in the words of noted water expert Ramaswamy R. Iyer, embraces the ‘responsible, harmonious, just, and wise use of water.’ With population growth and climate change continuing apace, the stakes have never been higher, and the costs of inaction never starker.

Article Source: Seminar

Image Source: hceebee

The eighth Review Conference of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will get under way at the United Nations in New York next week.  Scheduled to run for a month, the Conference brings together top diplomats from 189 countries and over 2000 representatives of civil society to debate a range of issues relating to nuclear disarmament, security and preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons and the fissile materials that make them.

When the Conference ends on 28th May, the outcome could be an agreed document containing substantive commitments to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and move decisively towards their elimination, as was adopted in 2000.  Alternatively, the Conference might fail, as happened in 2005, or achieve something in between. The stakes are high, and despite some shared objectives the gulf between the objectives, intentions and expectations of the nuclear-weapon states and the majority of non-nuclear countries – especially the developing states – is still quite wide.  On past experience, how the Conference addresses the nuclear programmes in the Middle East – Israel’s as well as Iran’s – may play a critical role in whether or not the outcome is successful.  Israel, like India and Pakistan, stayed outside the NPT and developed its own nuclear arsenal, to the enduring anger of its neighbours.  In 1995, it was necessary for the NPT Conference to adopt a resolution calling for negotiations on a zone free of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Without such a resolution, the Arab States had made clear that they would not vote for the treaty – which at that time had a 25 year time limit – to be extended indefinitely.  In 2010, the League of Arab States, backed by over 110 Non-Aligned governments under Egypt’s leadership, have made clear that they want the Review Conference to take more action to implement the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East. Others, particularly the United States, are wary of putting too much pressure on Israel, which maintains the utmost secrecy about its nuclear weapons and policies.

President Obama’s initiatives have given renewed impetus to calls for deeper cuts in the existing nuclear arsenals and more comprehensive progress on nuclear disarmament. This year, for the first time, a majority of NPT parties will be calling for the objective of a nuclear weapons convention to be put on the negotiating agenda.  While recognising that such a comprehensive treaty to ban nuclear weapons will take time to achieve, there is renewed determination to make this possible, bringing nuclear weapons into line with biological  and chemical  weapons, both of which have been banned under comprehensive multilateral conventions.

Just before the Conference starts there is intense speculation about the role the United States intends to play, following President Obama’s initiatives of hosting a special session of the UN Security Council to discuss nuclear weapons issues last September, inviting the leaders of 46 countries to a Nuclear Summit in Washington this April, and his signing a new strategic arms reduction treaty with President Medvedev of Russia in April –  New-START. The US Nuclear Posture Review, which was finally published in April – six months after it was first expected – gave mixed messages about US intentions. On the one hand, the Obama administration made clear their desire to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, promising not to use US nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are NPT members and deemed to be fully complying with their obligations. However, the policy continued to assert the relevance of nuclear deterrence and left open a “narrow range of contingencies” – including attacks with conventional, biological or chemical weapons – in which the United States would be prepared to use nuclear weapons “in extreme circumstances”. Though the signing of the New-START agreement with Russia is very widely welcomed and there is considerable goodwill towards President Obama among NPT states, there are concerns that the US has still not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), despite the indispensable link between this treaty and the support of many states for indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995.

The NPT was negotiated in the 1960s soon after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis nearly turned the cold war into a nuclear war.  The shock of this propelled the key governments to the negotiating table. Though many countries wanted nuclear weapons to be abolished at that time, the political conditions made that impossible.  Instead, they agreed on a non-proliferation approach to halt the further spread of nuclear weapons.  This history is critical to understanding many of the treaty-related conflicts that are likely to unfold during the Review Conference.

Unlike previous kinds of treaties, which imposed restraints or prohibitions on all states equally, the NPT had to acknowledge that five countries had already become “nuclear-weapon states”. The core obligations therefore were that these five – Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and the United States – were prohibited from transferring nuclear materials, control over nuclear weapons or know-how for nuclear weapons purposes and that they should “pursue negotiations in good faith” on nuclear disarmament. All other countries could only join the NPT as “non-nuclear weapon states”. They accepted obligations not to receive nuclear materials or know-how for nuclear weapons purposes and not to seek to develop any nuclear armaments. Along with this, the non-nuclear weapons countries agreed that the International Atomic Energy Agency would be able to inspect “safeguard” any of their civilian nuclear facilities to ensure that no materials were being diverted for weapons programmes. As an incentive to non-nuclear-weapon states to join the treaty, it was explicitly promised that they would not be prevented from developing civilian nuclear programmes; more than that, they were offered assistance to develop non-military nuclear reactors and programmes.  After the entry into force of the NPT there were further developments to strengthen the regime, including export controls imposed by suppliers of uranium and other nuclear products, nuclear-weapon-free zones – now covering the whole of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, South-East Asia and five countries in Central Asia.

I have covered every NPT meeting since 1994, and this one appears too close to call.  It would be a major problem for the credibility of the non-proliferation regime – and especially for the nuclear-weapon states – if the 2010 Conference were to collapse without agreement.  The fact that the 2005 Review Conference ended acrimoniously, having failed to agree on any substantive issue had less direct impact on the non-proliferation regime than some had anticipated, because it was predictable in view of the intransigent position of the Bush administration and refusal by a number of countries to adopt something much weaker than had already been agreed in 2000.  Iran and Egypt were also seen to have contributed to the 2005 deadlock, but they were clearly not the cause.

Expectations for the 2010 Review Conference are very different, not least because of the positive measures undertaken by President Obama. Yet these could still be swamped by the regional rivalries of the Middle East or if some of the other nuclear-weapon states refuse to reaffirm commitments made in 2000 that are still a long way from being fulfilled.  At the preparatory meeting held in 2009, France and Russia were digging their heels in over some of the disarmament proposals being put forward, while China was quietly anxious about what more transparency and accountability on disarmament matters might entail. If solid agreements on nuclear disarmament and the Middle East are on the table by the fourth week then that would be sufficient incentive for significant governments to exert pressure on potential spoilers. But that might not be the case if not enough is being offered in negotiations.

In this regard, a particularly wild card is whether the Security Council, currently chaired by Japan, will push ahead with a new sanctions resolution against Iran, as some politicians in the United States and elsewhere are demanding.  If so, then all bets for a positive NPT outcome will be off. Not only would such a sanctions resolution make Iran more likely to disrupt and block agreements in the NPT Conference, but it would also make it more difficult for other members of the Non-Aligned group of states to exert friendly persuasion on Iran to engage more constructively and not hold up agreements supported by the rest of the Non-Aligned countries.  The next four weeks will be critical for nuclear non-proliferation and security.

 

Source: OpenDemocracy

About the Author: Rebecca Johnson is Director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy and a former senior advisor to the International WMD Blix Commission (2004-06)

Image source: ricardo.martins

 

The summer of 2010 saw the third-lowest amount and extent of Arctic sea ice ever recorded. For the third year in a row both the Northwest Passage between Greenland and Alaska and the Northern Sea Route between Norway and Kamchatka were ice-free – something that had not happened before 2008 in recorded history. As the physical state of the High North is changing, so too is the diplomatic environment.

 

The changing North

On 19 September 2010, sea ice covered 4.6 million km² of the 14.1m km² Arctic Ocean. This was 2.1m km², or 31%, below the average summer minimum during the last two decades of the twentieth century. It was the third-lowest extent, after 2007 and 2008, since consistent records began. Eight of the ten lowest minimums have been experienced in the last ten years. Change is also visible in winter ice cover: the maximum extent in March 2010 was 4% below the 1979–2000 average of 15.8m km², an area greater than the Arctic Ocean itself, since many areas outside the Arctic also freeze. The extent of ice cover is not the only story. The total volume of ice is also showing a downward trend, in both summer and winter. This is because the proportion of multi-year to newly formed ice is also declining. Since older ice tends to be thicker, this changing proportion means the total amount of summer ice in the Arctic is declining faster than the area it covers.

 

Some observers have taken comfort in the fact that ice extent increased year-on-year in both 2008 and 2009, with 2010 levels still above those of 2007 and 2008. But this was in part because the record low of 4.1m km² in 2007 was an anomaly, falling well below the long-term trend. Other observers worried that the 2007 melt was a harbinger of disaster – that a tipping point had been passed and that accelerating warming might lead to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in as little as ten years. But the figures for 2010 closely reflect the long-term trend. Both the optimists and the pessimists appear to have been wrong.

 

However, this long-term trend is worse – in the context of global climate change – than projected even five years ago. Only the most extreme of the projections included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 Assessment Report showed an ice-free Arctic by the end of the twenty-first century. Yet the trend with regard to actual observations falls outside the range projected by the IPCC models (see chart). A simple linear extrapolation of the current trend would imply some seasonally ice-free years in the Arctic by the 2040s, while an accelerating trend that better fits the data suggests a date of 2030. Recent model-based projections that take into account the latest data give dates ranging from around 2040 to 2080, with most expert opinion inclining towards the earlier end of the range.

 

The full article can be found at IISS

 

Image source: IISS

 

 

“We, alongside this growing consensus of research institutes, analysts, and security agencies on both sides of the Atlantic, think of climate change as a risk multiplier; as something that will amplify existing social, political, and resource stressors,” said Janani Vivekananda of International Alert, speaking at the Wilson Center on May 10.

Vivekananda, a senior climate policy officer with International Alert’s Peacebuilding Program, was joined by co-presenter Jeffrey Stark, the director of research and studies at the Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability (FESS), and discussant Cynthia Brady, senior conflict advisor with USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, to discuss the complex connections between climate change, conflict, stability, and governance. 

A Multi-Layered Problem

Climate change and stability represent a “double-headed problem,” said Vivekananda. Climate change, while never the only cause of conflict, can increase its risk in certain contexts. At the same time, “states which are affected by conflict will already have weakened social, economic, and political resilience, which will mean that these states and their governments will find it difficult to address the impacts of climate change on the lives of these communities,” she said.

“In fragile states, the particular challenge is adapting the way we respond to climate change, bearing in mind the specific challenges of operating in a fragile context,” said Vivekananda. Ill-informed intervention programs run the risk of doing more harm than good, she said. 

For example, Vivekananda said an agrarian village she visited in Nepal was suffering from an acute water shortage and tried adapting by switching from rice to corn, which is a less water-intensive crop. However, this initiative failed because the villagers lacked the necessary technical knowledge and coordination to make their efforts successful in the long term, and in the short term this effort actually further reduced water supplies and exacerbated deforestation.

“Local responses will only be able to go so far without national-level coordination,” Vivekananda said. What is needed is a “harmony” between so-called “top-down” and “bottom-up” initiatives. “Adapting to these challenges means adapting development assistance,” she said. 

“What we’re finding is that the qualities that help a community, or a society, or in fact a government be resilient to climate change are in fact very similar qualities to that which makes a community able to deal with conflict issues without resorting to violence,” said Vivekananda.

No Simple, Surgical Solutions

“The impacts of environmental change and management of natural resources are always embedded in a powerful web of social, economic, political, cultural, and historical factors,” said Stark. “We shouldn’t expect simple, surgical solutions to climate change challenges,” he said.

Uganda and Ethiopia, for example, both have rich pastoralist traditions that are threatened by climate change. Increasing temperatures, drought, infrequent but intense rains, hail, and changes in seasonal patterns are threatening pasture lands and livelihoods.

At the same time, pastoralists are confronting the effects of a rapidly growing population, expanding cultivation, forced migration, shrinking traditional grazing lands, anti-pastoralist attitudes, and ethnic tensions. As a result, “any intervention in relation to climate adaptation – whether for water, or food, or alternative livelihoods – has to be fully understood and explicitly acknowledged as mutually beneficial by all sides,” Stark said. “If it is seen in any way to be favoring one group or another it will just cause conflict, so it is a very difficult and delicate situation.”

Yet, the challenges of climate change, said Stark, can be used “as a way to involve people who feel marginalized, empower their participation…and at the same time address some of the drivers of conflict that exist in the country.”

Case Studies: Addressing the “Missing Middle”

When doing climate change work in fragile states, “you have to think about your do-no-harm parameters,” said Brady. “Where are the opportunities to get additional sustainable development benefit and additional stabilization benefit out of reducing climate change vulnerability?”

More in-depth case studies, such as the work funded by USAID and conducted by FESS in Uganda and Ethiopia, are needed to help fill the “missing middle” between broad, international climate change efforts – like those at the United Nations – and the community level, Brady said. 

The information generated from these case studies is being eagerly awaited by USAID’s partners in the Departments of State, Defense, and Treasury, said Brady. “We are all hopeful that there will be some really significant common lessons learned, and that at a minimum, we may draw some common understanding about what climate-sensitive parameters in fragile states might mean.”

Image source: aheavens

Article source: The New Security Beat

While the public debate about resource conflicts focuses on the risk of supply disruptions for developed countries, the potentially more risky types of resource conflict are usually ignored. As part of a two-year research project on behalf of the German Federal Environment Agency, adelphi and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy, and Environment have analyzed the risks of international conflict linked to natural resources in a series of reports titled Beyond Supply Risks – The Conflict Potential of Natural Resources.

Resource extraction, transportation, and processing can create considerable crises and increase the risk of conflicts in producing and transit countries. This phenomenon – widely referred to as the “resource curse” – impacts consuming countries only if it leads to shortages and higher prices. However, in the producing and transit countries it can have much wider destabilizing effects – from increasing corruption to large-scale violent conflict. In addition, the extraction, processing, and transportation of resources often create serious environmental risks. Overexploitation, pollution, and the degradation of ecosystems often directly affect the livelihoods of local communities, which can increase the potential for conflict.

The eight reports that comprise Beyond Supply Risks explore plausible scenarios over the next two decades, focusing on four case studies: copper and cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo; theNabucco natural gas pipeline project across Southern Europe and Turkey; lithium in Bolivia; and rare earth minerals in China.

Lithium in Bolivia

Bolivia possesses the world’s largest known lithium deposits, a potentially important resource for the development of electric vehicles. While the development of Bolivia’s lithium reserves could provide major economic benefits for one of the poorest countries in Latin America, our analysis identifies two main potential risks of conflict.

First, the environmental consequences of developing industrial-scale lithium production might have negative effects on the livelihoods of the local population. The local population in the lithium-rich department of Potosí has shown that it is capable of organizing itself effectively in defense of its interests, and past resource conflicts have turned violent, making a conflict-sensitive approach all the more important. 

Second, the Bolivian economy is largely dependent on natural resources, and consequently is susceptible to price shocks. At present, this risk is primarily associated with natural gas. But lithium production, if developed, might be subject to the same dynamics, which could potentially destabilize the political system. 

For consuming countries, these conflicts threaten supplies of lithium only if local protests or broader destabilization were produce bottlenecks in the supply chain.

Rare Earths and China

Like lithium, rare earths are likewise essential for some new technologies. China’s well publicized monopoly on 97 percent of the global production spurred a heated debate on the security of supply of strategic minerals. While our case study identifies supply risks for consuming countries, it also outlines some of the conflict risks China might face internally.

First, local populations could protest against the severe ecological impact of rare earth mining and production. In addition, conflicts might arise if those who profit from economic development (entrepreneurs or regional power-holders) undermine the traditional centralized party structures and expand their own influence.

International conflicts over access to Chinese rare earth resources, while they dominate the headlines, do not appear to be the dominant risk. Instead, internal political tensions could result in a weakened China that is not able to exploit its monopoly position for foreign policy gains. Or the government could enter into multilateral agreements and thus avoid a confrontational approach towards consumer nations.

Ultimately, the actual rate of diffusion of environmental technologies and the development of new technologies remain the key factors in determining whether relative shortages in global supply of rare earths will in fact occur. If industrialized nations and emerging economies commit to the same technologies to attain climate policy goals, international resource governance and coordinated promotion of (environmental) technology will also play a role in preventing conflict and crisis over rare earths.

The Way Forward

The series concludes with five recommendations to mitigate the risks of future resource conflicts:

• Introduce systematic policy impact assessments to understand how policy goals and strategies, especially in regard to climate and environmental policy, interact with resource conflict risks.
• Increase the transparency of raw material markets and value creation chains to prevent extreme fluctuations in prices and improve information on markets, origins, and individual players.
• Improve the coherence of raw material policy by linking raw material policies with security, environmental, and development policies.
• Demand and promote corporate social responsibility along the whole value chain.
• Increase environmental and social sustainability as a means of strengthening crisis and conflict prevention by systematically taking into account social and conflict-related aspects in the resource sector.

However, none of these strategies alone would be capable of mitigating all the risks of future resource conflicts. But together they represent a methodology that, with intense coordination among the key players, could make a far-reaching contribution to reducing risk and preventing international conflict over the long term.

The individual reports from the project can be downloaded here:

• Conflict Risks (GERMAN only)
• Supply and demand (GERMAN only)
• Case Study: Nabucco Pipeline (GERMAN only)
• Case Study: Congo
• Case Study: Bolivia
• Case Study: China
• Conflict Resolution Strategies (GERMAN only)
• Summary and Recommendations

Lukas Ruettinger is a project manager for adelphi, mainly focusing on the fields of conflict analysis and peacebuilding as well as resources and governance. Moira Feil is a senior project manager for adelphi and has participated in more than 30 projects with various partners and clients on natural resource links to crises, conflicts and peacebuilding, and corporate responsibility.

Sources: Government Accounting Office.

Article source: The New Security Beat

Image source: Olmovich

Thousands of negotiators, activists and lobbyists have descended on Copenhagen for two weeks to attempt to seal a global deal on climate change. Issues on the negotiating table include how much wealthy polluters like the US put towards financing measures to help people in poorer countries cope with the impacts they are already experiencing, and how the rich states will share their low carbon technology with poor states so that the unindustrialised world can still develop without relying on fossil fuels.

But as the negotiations unfold, one very real issue unlikely to be given much discussion space is the heightened risk of violent conflict. Factors linking climate change and the potential for conflict include a number of powerful threats to human security, such as water scarcity, land degradation, decreased food production. The risk will be greatest in poor, badly governed countries, many of which have a history of armed conflict. International Alert’s report ‘A Climate of Conflict’ estimates that just under three billion people live in 46 conflict-affected countries, where climate change could create a high risk of violent conflict, and a further in two billion people living in an additional 56 countries face a high risk of instability as a result of climate change.

Attention to the security implications of climate change is slowly increasing among politicians and strategists in the developed world, yet climate change negotiators are largely silent on the matter. Specialists in climate change are not generally well informed about it and, although development specialists universally agree that the poorest will be worst hit by climate change, they have not resolved how to deal with the issue of fragile states in climate negotiations.

It is essential to address this issue, but necessary to do so carefully. The potential conflict implications are among the most compelling arguments for rich states to take action against climate change. But there are three notes of warning.

First, there is the risk of over-stating the conflict dimension in an attempt to persuade a sceptical, even disaffected or merely ill-informed public to support cuts in carbon emissions. Fuelling fears that climate change will generate threats like terrorism and mass immigration* will lead to oversimplified and inaccurate perceptions of the security angle. In the political debate, exaggerated positions will inevitably be vulnerable.

Secondly, securitising the issue runs the risk of a damaging response that overlooks cost-effective and sustainable options in favour of high cost and probably ineffective military ones. The point here is that policy responses must be based on a thorough understanding of not only the reality of the conflict risk but also of how it is shaped. Effects of climate change such as more frequent natural disasters, long-term water shortages and food insecurity could combine with other factors and lead to violent conflict. The reason why this can happen lies in the context of poverty, weak governance, political marginalisation and corruption. These factors limit the capacity to adapt to climate change and simultaneously drive conflict. Policy responses need to look not only at the immediate risk of violence, for example by reforming the security sector, and not only at the specific environmental impacts, for example by taking steps to reduce the risk of disaster, but also at the broader context of failures of governance.

Thirdly, climate negotiators have not paid attention to fragile states and conflict risks. Most negotiators are climate and legal experts whose remits do not extend beyond the talks. They have neither incentive nor expertise for taking account of the complex web of that links climate, conflict, governance and development.

Nonetheless, to be effective, the global agreement must make it possible to address these linkages. This means taking the discussion beyond the question of how to raise climate funds for adaptation and mitigation, into thinking about how to spend and what governance and institutional changes are needed so spending can be effective.

Policies for adaptation have to respond to the political and social realities in which they are intended, or they will not work. Climate change impacts are linked to conflict, development, government, human rights, trade and the world economy. The problems are interlinked and so the responses must be interlinked.

International Alert’s latest report ‘Climate Change, Conflict and Fragility’ recommends that adaptation strategies should be more conflict-sensitive. Water management in water stressed countries for example should be decided by understanding the systems of power and equity. This must involve the poorest and most marginalised, and avoid pitting groups against each other.

Likewise, peace-building needed to be climate-proofed by paying attention to the availability of resources for livelihoods such as agriculture – which could be under pressure because of climate change – for returning ex-combatants or people displaced by conflict.  For example, in Liberia, which is in the process of recovery from war, many ex-combatants are returning to villages hoping to make a living from agriculture. But climate scientists predict that crop yields in parts of West Africa could halve by 2020. The prospect arises of returned fighters becoming resentful unemployed farmers, and thus potential recruits, with their combat experience, in a new conflict.

The efforts of rich countries to shift to a low-carbon economy must be peace-friendly and supportive of development. We don’t want a repeat of the hasty actions in 2007/8 that saw the diversion of food crops and land use to biofuel production playing a role in pushing food prices up, causing conflict in over 30 countries.

Getting the negotiators in Copenhagen to understand these interlinkages will mean there’s a good chance that responses to climate change could yield a double dividend: increasing resilience to climate change and to violent conflict. Failure to take account of the linkages though could result in the millions or billions of dollars of new funding actually becoming part of the problem.

 

*For example, see the US public education campaign on climate change, September 2009 http://www.secureamericanfuture.org/

Janani Vivekananda is Senior Climate Policy Adviser on climate change and security at International Alert, the London-based peacebuilding organisation. She co-authored Alert’s latest report Climate Change, Conflict and Fragility, and A Climate of Conflict: The links between climate change, peace and war, published by International Alert in 2007.