New Security Beat

Climate change is the world’s greatest environmental threat. It is also increasingly understood as a threat to domestic and international peace and security – recognized by the Department of Defense as a “threat multiplier,” by Secretary of State John Kerry as “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,” and by President Obama, in an address to graduates of the United States Military Academy, as “a creeping national security crisis.” The Supreme Court’s temporary blocking of the Clean Power Plan highlights the Federal-State divide over how to address climate change, but because of its national security dimension, climate change also raises unique separation-of-powers issues between the president and Congress with regard to how the military can respond.

The Global Conflict Risk Index evaluates the statistical risk of violent conflict over the next one to four years based on a quantitative analysis of indicators gathered from social, economic, political, security, geographic, and environmental dimensions.

“The good news is clean energy has gotten much cheaper,” says Ethan Zindler, head of the Americas for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, on this week’s podcast. “The amount of stuff getting built for the same number of dollars has been going up. You’re getting more ‘bang for your buck’ when it comes to actual deployment.”

From water to the Arctic, the topics discussed at the two-day conference hosted by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs were chosen by just over 300 participants during a year-long collaborative planning process. Participants were divided into 12 working groups that fell into regional, thematic, and strategic categories. Each came up with tailored analyses of challenges and actionable recommendations depending on their focus.

When the Global Goals kick in, there will need to be more development efforts that cross traditional sectoral boundaries. Global leaders should turn to population-health-environment programs - a niche within global development - to improve their cross-sectoral reach.

DURBAN, South Africa — Arguably the most elegant aspect of an inelegant subject is how this city of 3.2 million residents, South Africa’s second largest, is solving monumental water and waste challenges in its jammed informal settlements.

In the Canadian North, particularly in Arctic territory of Nunavut, this high standard of human development is conspicuously lacking. On most socio-economic indicators – health, education, housing, poverty, food security, crime, suicide, and so on – Nunavut lags national standards, in some cases to a shocking degree. Nunavut ranks alongside Palestine and Paraguay with respect to health and educational outcomes.

The ongoing violence in Syria exhibits the potential for water problems – a historic drought, in this case – to exacerbate existing social and political problems and contribute to humanitarian crises. In a recently released infographic, Circle of Blue combined data from the European Commission Joint Research Center’s Global Conflict Risk Index and the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to identify 10 hotspots around the world where water “could play a role in developing or exacerbating humanitarian crises” in 2016.

Despite evidence that natural resources play a major role in many conflicts – 40 percentof all civil wars since the end of the Cold War, according to an estimate by the UN Environment Program – a study conducted by Arthur G. Blundell and Emily E. Harwell for the NGO Forest Trends reveals that most ceasefire and peace agreements do not address natural resources.

Veeravalli was joined by four other experts from the military, development, and humanitarian fields to discuss how complex crises are prompting more multi-disciplinary cooperation across disparate government agencies and between national governments.

“In my view, we are 40 years into a 100-year transition to a clean energy economy,” says Mike Eckhart, global head of environmental finance and sustainability at Citigroup, in this week’s podcast. “We’re in the mainstream of building an industry.”

Somewhat ironically, as people in Beijing were trapped under a dome of smog, world leaders were gathering in Paris for the United Nations climate conference (COP-21) seeking solutions to achieve a “clean and resilient” future. At COP-21, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to combat air pollution and peak emissions around 2030 by curbing coal consumption and scaling up renewables.

Despite evidence that natural resources play a major role in many conflicts – 40 percentof all civil wars since the end of the Cold War, according to an estimate by the UN Environment Program – a study conducted by Arthur G. Blundell and Emily E. Harwell for the NGO Forest Trends reveals that most ceasefire and peace agreements do not address natural resources.

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It is “not sufficient to look at history for lessons on how we should prepare for and prevent future security risks in a climate change world,” said Swathi Veeravalli, research scientist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Geospatial Research Laboratory, at the Wilson Center on January 14. Climate change and the extreme weather events it brings pose an “unprecedented” threat to human security.

Around the world, urbanization and climate change are transforming societies and environments, and the stakes could not be higher for the poor and marginalized. The 2015 UN climate conference in Paris (COP-21) highlighted the need for coordinated action toaddress the profound injustice of the world’s most disadvantaged people bearing the greatest costs of climate impacts. Among those at the COP were mayors from around the world advocating for the important role of cities in these efforts.

From a demographic perspective, it’s a fascinating experiment – how much can the government really control fertility, and can they do so without resorting to coercion?