Category: 3

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.

Article source: The New Security Beat

Image source: Olmovich

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In a small village along the waters of Lake Turkana in northwestern Kenya, two fishermen were murdered last month as they were putting out their nets.

A cascade of retaliatory violence between the Kenyan Turkana and Ethiopian Daasanach (sometimes called Merille) has led to the deaths of at least four Ethiopians and 20 Kenyans ethnic groups, though some Kenyan government officials place the toll as high as 69, according to the Kenya-based Daily Nation. Though the fighting has been localized, it has put pressure on both nations to deal with strife between nomadic groups who are competing for diminishing resources.

Image source: Aocrone

Article source: Circle of Blue

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In 1985, Oran Young anticipated that the international community was ‘entering the age of the Arctic … in which those concerned with international peace and security will urgently need to know much more about the region and in which policy makers in the Arctic rim states will become increasingly concerned.’ Young’s insights were extremely acute and much international attention is being directed to the geographic ‘North,’ where much resource wealth lies under a rapidly thinning layer of ice.

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Writing for the New Security Beat, Schuyler Null discusses a recent event on creating a new national security narrative for the US held at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The event was based on a white paper by two active military officers writing under the pseudonym “Mr. Y” (echoing George Kennan’s famous “X” article). In “A National Strategic Narrative,” Captain Wayne Porter (USN) and Colonel Mark Mykleby (USMC) argue that the United States needs to move away from an outmoded 20th century model of containment, deterrence, and control towards a “strategy of sustainability.”

Image source: LizaP.

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As the global population soars toward nine billion by 2045, this corner of Africa shows what’s at stake in the decades ahead. The Rift is rich in rainfall, deep lakes, volcanic soil, and biodiversity. It is also one of the most densely populated places on Earth. A desperate competition for land and resources—and between people and wildlife—has erupted here with unspeakable violence. How can the conflict be stopped? Will there be any room left for the wild?

Image Source: DFID

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Over the next few decades, the increasing demand for resources and the pressures of climate change are going to force some rapid and potentially difficult decisions on the role of energy in the global economy. A useful exercise has been undertaken by the Institute for the Future in terms of exploring a number of scenarious that could come to characterise our political, social and economic systems depending on the energy choices we make today.

Image source: Ulleskelf. 

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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines food security as “all people at all times having both physical and economic access to the basic food they need”. However, due to a complex range of interconnected issues from climate change to misguided economic policies, political failure and social marginalisation, over 2 billion people across the world live in constant food Insecurity. It is important to take a sustainable security approach to look at the importance of “physical and economic access to basic food” by exploring the links between food insecurity and violence.

Image source: Bioversity International

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For some years, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) has been analysing the likely underlying drivers of global insecurity over the coming years, and ways to develop sustainable responses to these threats. This analysis has focused on four trends that are expected to foster substantial global and regional instability, and large-scale loss of life, of a magnitude unmatched by other potential threats. These are climate change, competition over resources, marginalisation of the ‘majority world’ and global militarisation.

Read the full article here.

Author: Hannah Brock

Image source: WorldIslandInfo.com

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This major report was the result of an 18-month long research project examining the various threats to global security, and sustainable responses to those threats. Read more »