Displacing Rural Communities for Delhi’s Drinking Water: Is the Renuka Dam Worth the Cost?
I have a love/hate relationship with the many contrasts in India: the bright green paddy fields next to red tile roofs, the smell of jasmine and fresh food mixed in with the scent of putrid sewage, and the polluted cities juxtaposed with the expansive sky from mountain tops. The narrative of dams (and dams in India especially) is one stark contrast in development. It goes something like this: let’s drown fertile land and forests with a reservoir... Read More
Rising Global Food Prices and Political Instability
World food prices hit a record high in January – the highest since the FAO began monitoring in 1990. Some experts are saying that the popular protests across the middle east are in part due to these rising food prices. A drought in China that has damaged the winter wheat crop, and flooding in Australia has caused food prices to spike are partly to blame. Rising food prices were to blame for riots across the globe in 2008. With a rising global... Read More
Some perspective on climate-security linkages
More great material from The New Security Beat. Photo Credit: "KE139S11 World Bank" courtesy of flickr user World Bank Photo Collection. This time it is a critique from Marc Levy, a former professor of mine, about the linkages between climate change and security. Marc responds to a reporter’s misrepresentation of a recent research paper’s findings about the connections between climate and security. He also makes some excellent... Read More
The New Security Climate: Environmental Vulnerability
The recent earthquake in Haiti has highlighted a whole host of issues related to development, poverty, the environment, and security. Countries in which natural resources are mismanaged, degraded, or heavily exploited are more susceptible to the devastation brought on by environmental change, and when extreme events and conflicts do occur, these countries are far less likely to effectively respond to the crisis. Even before the earthquake in Haiti,... Read More
Weekly gRound-Up: 11/28/09
This week the gRound-up is a bit shorter due to the holiday break. We hope everyone had a fun and relaxing Thanksgiving! East Antarctic Ice Sheet Losing Mass Quickly Of all of the major ice sheets, the East Antarctic has been thought to be the most stable – until now. New satellite data from NASA is showing that this sheet has been shedding mass the past three years. The scientists are quick to point out that the cause of this sudden mass loss... Read More
Will REDD be a Cause of Conflict?
Indonesia is welcoming a newly emerging forest carbon mechanism, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), as a means to mitigate climate change. Nearly 20% of global CO2 emissions are released into the atmosphere as a result of deforestation, and many see the prevention of these emissions as relatively inexpensive way to combat climate change. Under REDD, industrialized nations will be able to offset their carbon emissions by... Read More
Weekly gRound-Up: 11/7/09
Here are some items in the news that we found this past week that are worth a read: At the Intersection of Conflict and Environment What is the role of natural resources and the environment in conflict and post conflict settings? Watch an interview with David Jensen by Geoff Dabelko at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program. David is a Policy Manager at UNEP’s Post Conflict and Disaster Management Branch,... Read More
