Water is a basic condition of life. We depend upon it for daily use, for agriculture, for industry and infrastructure. A shortage, an excess and deficient quality can all undermine welfare, impair human security, hold back economic development and in some circumstances generate conflict. The London-based Foreign Policy Centre has published Tackling the World Water Crisis, an edited collection of articles in which mine looks at the peace and security issues around water. (more…)
Entries categorized as ‘Climate change’
Water, conflict and peace
June 3, 2010 · 5 Comments
Categories: Climate change · Conflict & peace · International development
Tagged: food security, Climate change, poverty, fragile states, human security, peacebuilding, China, adaptation, Yemen, India
Chaff, noise and fog in the climate debate.
March 12, 2010 · 9 Comments
This is a critical time on climate. Scientific conclusions that had seemed largely settled and backed by professional consensus are today challenged with increasing confidence. Three months after Copenhagen, the policy pathway is still hard to discern. Opinion polls show growing numbers of people think the globe is not warming, or not because of human action, or, variously, that not much can, need or should be done about it. Last week a House of Commons committee queried the state of climate science in the wake of the publication of emails to and from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit; this week a new UN review has been launched to assess the work of the Inter-govermental Panel on Climate Change.
Categories: Climate change
Tagged: Climate change, Obama, carbon trading, Copenhagen, green economy, adaptation, carbon emissions, UEA, UEA emails, Phil Jones
Copenhagen: Recovering from the hangover
January 1, 2010 · 7 Comments
Copenhagen is a city where people like to party. Coming into December, the city was all dressed up for a climate party with posters of green exhortation everywhere and different official and unofficial events laid on. But in the end as everybody knows, the climate conference was no party. Yet there is this terrible sense of hangover around. Political leaders, delegates, activists and journalists have reeled away from the site and the recriminations have started about who just behaved badly and who actually threw up.
Around the city there were also some particularly crude advertisements using sex to sell booze with the slogan, “Party now, Apologize later.” But that’s another way the conference was not like a party. No-one has apologised. Even though the city encouraged them. One set of posters that went up well before the conference showed world leaders in 2020 apologizing for having failed in Copenhagen in 2009: ageing Obamas, Merkels, Browns et al look down and acknowledge their fault. But there have been no apologies. Instead they have passed the blame.
Let’s try something different. Instead of blame and apology let’s take some time to discuss results, reasons and response. It’s a lengthy discussion that must start now because it’s already time to shake off that hangover. (more…)
Categories: Climate change
Tagged: adaptation, banking reform, Brown, carbon emissions, carbon trading, China, Copenhagen, EU, EU External Action service, EU foreign policy, fragile states, green economy, international politics, Merkel, Obama, Tobin tax
Copenhagen: time to re-think? Or just keep thinking!
December 6, 2009 · Comments Off
As thousands of negotiators, activists, diplomats, scientists, politicians and journalists start pouring into Copenhagen for the climate summit – formally said, the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – the question has been raised whether we should want them to succeed or fail. Which, of course, begs the next question: what is success at Copenhagen?
So is Copenhagen not the time to seal a new climate deal after all? Is it time for a re-think? My own view is that it’s best never to stop thinking, then you don’t have to make the effort to start up again. (more…)
Categories: Climate change · Conflict & peace · International development
Tagged: adaptation, Bush, carbon emissions, carbon trading, Copenhagen, development aid, green economy, International development, international politics, peacebuilding, UN
Peacebuilding and adaptation to climate change: the 3 minute version
November 24, 2009 · 1 Comment
No more need for long posts. Between us, al-Jazeera and I have boiled down the whole climate-conflict-peace-adaptation issue, on which I have been writing at length, to a three minute news report. Well, not quite the whole but some of the core elements. Watch on.
Categories: Climate change · Conflict & peace
Tagged: adaptation, Copenhagen, EU, fragile states, green economy, human security, poverty
Climate change and conflict: respecting complexity
November 21, 2009 · 2 Comments
The climate deal won’t happen at Copenhagen in December. The work will continue. And as more people become aware of and motivated by the links between climate change on the one hand and conflict, peace and security on the other, both the possibility and the necessity of clarity about those links increase. It is an area of discussion where making an extra effort of care and precision is justified. (more…)
Categories: Climate change · Conflict & peace
Tagged: adaptation, conflict causes, Copenhagen, Darfur, food security, fragile states, human security, Nepal
Tobin tax: is this the way to meet the climate change bill?
November 16, 2009 · Comments Off
Tobin or not to bin? Gordon Brown’s apparently sudden conversion to supporting a tax on financial transactions – initially proposed by James Tobin – has, if nothing else, put new energy into the related debates about the banking sector, paying off the costs of the economic crunch, and financing basic social needs. But will it fly? And should it? There are several strong reasons why but there is a negative side that we also need to attend to. (more…)
Categories: Climate change · International development · The economic crunch
Tagged: adaptation, banking reform, Brown, budget deficit, carbon trading, finance sector, G-20, green economy, Tobin tax
Adapting to failure in Copenhagen
November 6, 2009 · 3 Comments
It’s official. A new treaty on mitigating and adapting to climate change will not be agreed at the Copenhagen conference in December. So now we have to mitigate the impact of that failure and at the same time adapt to it. (more…)
Categories: Climate change
Tagged: adaptation, Bush, carbon emissions, China, Copenhagen, international politics
Climate change, security and development
October 29, 2009 · Comments Off
The problem about the climate change issue – one problem among many – is that political leaders and ordinary citizens alike, as well as institutions large and small in all walks of life, have to act on it before we know everything there is to be known about it. So a lot of the argument comes down to risk. One of the key risks is increased insecurity and violent conflict. As we trace this risk, how should it shape the response we want on climate change from governments and ourselves? (more…)
Categories: Climate change · Conflict & peace · International development
Tagged: adaptation, Copenhagen, fragile states, green economy, human security, peacebuilding
Yemen, water and war
October 21, 2009 · Comments Off
Today’s Times carries a vivid and timely article about water shortage and conflict in Yemen, depicting it as potentially the first nation to run out of water in 10 to 15 years’ time. I contributed some thoughts in a background analysis The Times also carries on larger conflict patterns, links to climate change and water shortages, and the imperative of international cooperation to address the problems, especially for a country such a Yemen.
Categories: Climate change · Conflict & peace
Tagged: desalination, Middle East, water, water and conflict, water wars, Yemen
