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IHDP

UPDATE

N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L H U M A N D I M E N S I O N S P R O G R A M M E O N G LO B A L E N V I R O N M E N TA L C H A N G E

03/2004

ISSN 1727-155X

CONFLICT, COOPERATION AND GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

W. Ming/UNEP/Still Pictures

Advancing the agenda

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FO CUS: CONFLICT AND COOPERATION

B Y S IMON DALBY

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Sandstorm in China ➤ Current concerns with conflict, cooperation and environment, summarized under the label „environmental security“, come from a policy and scholarly debate that grew out of heightened environmental concern in the late 1980s and the publication of „Our Common Future“ – the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. The initial policy discussion took for granted that environmental degradation was a large scale problem, and that it was one that postcold war security planners ought to take seriously. The social science literature has long suggested that matters are much more complex. Identifying a number of stages in the historical evolution of the debate allows us to see this complexity while also understanding how the debate has evolved to its present focus on the possibilities of cooperation in the face of global change.

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT

First, there was an initial concern to identify environment as a threat in terms that were broadly similar to the formulations of cold war security discourse. Whether this was in the United States, or in the Soviet Union, where environmental security became a matter of considerable importance in the final years of the Gorbachev administration, instabilities and disruptions to society as a consequence of environmental problems were the dominant theme. In particular there was a widespread assumption that there would be wars over water, a vital resource, that was supposedly becoming increasingly scarce. All this suggested that „security“ was an appropriate policy lens through which to discuss environmental change.

Second, there was a substantial literature in social science trying to formulate an appropriate empirical validation of the basic contentions that environmental matters would cause conflict. Thomas Homer-Dixon’s teams of researchers, which became known as the Toronto school, posited a series of complex links between environmen➤

O N T E N T S

1

Conflict, Cooperation and Global Environmental Change: Advancing the Agenda | Simon Dalby

2

Editorial

4

Managing Change in the Okavango Basin | Anthony R. Turton & Anton Earle

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Global Biodiversity and Conflict Resolution: The Possible Role of Public Private Partnerships | Susanne Stoll-Kleemann & Tim O’Riordan

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Human Security in the North: Is it Relevant? | Gunhild Hoogensen

10 The Lempa River Basin: Transborder Cooperation in an International River Basin with High Potential for Conflict | Alexander Lopez 11 Advancing Conflict, Cooperation and Environmental Change – Human Security Research | Mike Brklacich, Richard A. Matthew, Bryan McDonald, Bishnu Upreti 13 Environment as a Pathway to Cooperation, Peace and Confidence | Interview with Geoffrey Dabelko 15 Workshop Report: „Can Cities Reduce Global Warming?“ 16 Regional Networking on the Rise 17 Het is Zover | Anna J. Wieczorek 18 In Brief 19 Meeting Calendar, Publications

continued on page 2

W W W. I H D P. O R G I H D P U p d a t e i s p u b l i s h e d b y t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l H u m a n D i m e n s i o n s P r o g r a m m e o n G l o b a l E n v i r o m e n t a l C h a n g e ( I H D P ) , Wa l t e r - F l e x - S t r. 3 , 5 3 1 1 3 B o n n , G e r m a n y, V. i . S . d. P. : U l a L ö w

Conflict and Cooperation ADVANCING THE AGENDA

EDITORIAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE, CONFLICT AND COOPERATION The merging of several environmental themes in the mid-1980s spawned environmental change, conflict and cooperation research. „Our Common Future“ emphasized human-induced environmental degradation had become a global phenomenon. The transformation of global geopolitics in the late 1980s sparked a reconsideration of traditional security concepts and prompted interest in environmental change as a new national security threat. Environmental security also became part of the political agenda of several nations and moved environmental debates into new arenas that were not the sole domain of the environmental sciences. And finally, environmental degradation databases were being knit together and compelling images of „environmental hot-spots“ were reported in the scientific press and popular media. Environmental change as a global phenomenon was established and the foundation for environmental change, conflict and co-operation was set.

This set of six articles and an interview draw on the past two decades of environmental change, conflict and cooperation research. It provides examples of current research and draws attention to the barriers that will need to be overcome in order to further advance our collective understanding. A thorough and systematic review is of course not possible in a newsletter format. The aim here is to illustrate the breadth of contemporary environmental change, conflict and cooperation research.

The articles not only draw on research from several different locations around the world including southern Africa, Brazil, the Arctic and Central America but they collectively also highlight current debates that continue to shape this field of study. The role of environmental management regimes in promoting cooperation, opportunities for employing environmental restoration and conservation to reduce trans-border conflict and enhance prospects for international cooperation, and the applicability of environment and security concepts in the North as well as the South are a few of the key themes that will dominate environmental change, conflict and cooperation research over the next decade.

M IKE B RKLACICH , G UEST E DITOR Global Environmental Change & Human Security Project (GECHS) and Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

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tal scarcities and social responses, which they argued, when coupled to other political factors, such as weak states with inadequate capacities for resource management, appropriate infrastructure provision or conflict resolution would likely lead to overt conflict. Homer-Dixon’s attempts to establish a plausible series of causal links between environmental scarcity and conflict showed how complicated such causes were and suggested clearly that war between states was unlikely over environmental matters. The Toronto school’s approach met with objections from other scholars concerned that the methods were not proving anything given the selectivity of the case studies. Calls for comparison cases and null hypotheses appeared in the pages of scholarly journals and books, especially from those more interested in the general discussion of the causes of wars, rather than a specific focus on environment.

The supposed causal link between environmental scarcity and political conflict is exemplified in the debate over water. It is especially important when linked to concerns about global climate change and disruptions of rainfall patterns and evaporation rates. Supposedly in the face of scarcities and disruptions, states vying for control over specific rivers will fight to secure access to supplies of fresh water. But empirical research into the matter suggests that, ‘water wars’ have been very rare and are generally unlikely. Few states are so tied to the waters of a river that the extreme dynamics of interstate warfare unfold when water shortages happen. The pitfalls of conflict that might destroy shared infrastructure essential to both sides are much greater than any possible benefits of going to war. The water wars debate has made it clear that vulnerabilities are a complex matter, but also that environmental change presents numerous possibilities for cooperation.

Two examples make this clear. The Aral Sea is a classic case of both environmental degradation and consequent resource shortages. The large scale diversion of water for cotton irrigation and the consequent reduction of the volume of water in the sea lead to the death of most of the fish populations that provided many local livelihoods. The states that emerged from the former Soviet Union and which surround the lake have not gone to war over this matter. Not only have they cooperated with each other, but have actively invited assistance in international institution building that has incidentally helped build national institutions too. Another recent example of the attempts to resolve difficulties in the case of Lake Victoria suggests a dramatic alternative to the resource war scenarios. The need to curtail over-fishing in the lake and the importance of remediation has encouraged cooperation; scarcity leading to conflict arguments have not been common in the region and they have not influenced policy prescriptions. Many conflicts over the allocations of water use rights continue around the world but most of them are within states and international disputes simply do not have a history of leading to wars.

MALDEVELOPMENT, POLITICAL ECOLOGY AND RESOURCE WARS

The third approach to environmental security came from the Swiss Peace Federation which sponsored a large project that included many case studies looking at violence and envi-

Conflict and Cooperation ADVANCING THE AGENDA

ronment in a lot of places. The ENCOP project, directed by Gunther Baechler, linked environmental conflicts to problems of maldevelopment and a spreading, disruptive influence of commercial societies. Most explicitly, ENCOP (The Environment and Conflict Project) suggested that environmental conflict was most likely to occur where poverty ridden marginal lands in mountainous areas, and remote parts on the margins of major ecological areas in Africa, were being integrated into the global economy. But there were other dimensions to the relation of environment and conflict, too, not least the damage done to specific environments and local peoples by the dislocations of major development projects. The struggles by indigenous peoples to protect rainforests and other lands from oil wells and mining corporations are part of this larger pattern.

A fourth approach, that of „political ecology“, focused much more on the political economy of resources and in particular the complexity of local resources intersecting with the global commercial economy. Showing how local power structures, gendered access to farm land, traditional modes of subsistence agriculture and fishing were overlain with new modes of resource extraction, this literature challenged the arguments about scarcity in the neo-Malthusian formulations while not denying that some environments were indeed violent. This critical literature has made very clear that the complexities of the global economy have to be factored into local vulnerabilities, and that this has to be done with considerable care to ensure that the specifics of local circumstances are appropriately incorporated into the analysis. Both global environmental change and economic change matter in explaining local vulnerabilities.

This discussion links to a fifth literature, which in the late 1990s suggested that resource shortages were not correlated with conflict. The converse, it was suggested was the case.

The „new wars“ of the 1990s in the South were tied into the struggle to control the rents from resource streams that were being exported to the global economy. Controlling resources, whether timber, diamonds or oil, was the way to get rich quick, rather than follow the painful and slow routes of economic development. Elite rivalries and the promise of wealth are, so the argument goes, powerful incentives to initiate hostilities, especially where tribal or other sectoral loyalties can be mobilized. But these wars were not largely about either subsistence lands or the politics of agriculture. Extraction of diamonds, oil and other minerals frequently has environmental consequences, but apart from tropical timber, most of these are not technically „renewable resources“. Nonetheless, their inclusion within a discussion of „environmental security“ is a useful addition to the debate because it emphasizes the importance of globalization’s resource extractions as a factor in contemporary violence and insecurity.

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND HUMAN SECURITY

This links to a sixth approach, one summarized in the term Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) which in many ways offers a synthesis of the lessons learned in the other approaches. Vulnerabilities of populations to changing environments, and specifically concerns with the impact of

global change, is the driving force in many of these studies.

The welfare and survival of people and their environments is the key focus of research in contrast to the earlier focus on states and potential wars. This overlaps in part with the ENCOP concerns with human development and its focus on the juxtaposition of violence with the parts of the world that have the worst scores on the UN human development indices.

It emphasizes the importance of understanding the complexity of both environmental and social processes in specific contexts, and the obvious point that the poor in rural areas are frequently most vulnerable to both environmental change and the disruptions caused by political violence.

In some ways the discussion has come back to where it started in the 1980s, focusing on the vulnerable populations in the South and their need for a broadly understood human security. But what has changed is that simple assumptions of environmental degradation or resource scarcity leading to conflict are no longer accepted. Vulnerability is now understood as a complex problem; cooperation is understood as more likely than violent conflict in the face of environmental change. The connections between violence in the South and consumption in the North is also part of the analysis now, both due to the direct links through resource wars and the less direct impacts of climate change.

Understanding the specific circumstances of human vulnerability in different places is important and has become part of the discussion. Environment, development and human security are understood as parts of the same issue. But while it is clear that solutions have to be tailored to fit local circumstances it is also now understood that neither global change nor globalization can be ignored. Environmental changes are not strictly „local“ phenomena triggering „local“ social responses. Human insecurity is context dependent, but context is not simply a matter of local phenomena.

The good news from the contemporary literature on environmental security is that scholars now increasingly understand the importance of these links between human activity and natural processes at a variety of interconnected scales.

Protecting people and places now go together. The GECHS approach emphasizes the importance of policy cooperation across boundaries linked to the recognition that peoples and landscapes are interconnected, and hence vulnerable to global change in ways that make it important to plan protection of both environments and biodiversity on the one hand, and peoples and their livelihoods on the other, as part of a single cooperative process.

The challenge for contemporary research is how to turn these insights into practical innovations in specific places – innovations that reduce human vulnerability by enhancing ecological resilience, while simultaneously providing sustainable forms of livelihood in a rapidly changing global economy.

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website at www.ihdp.org/updateconcop04/references.htm S IMON D ALBY is Professor of Geography and Political Economy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada; simon_dalby@carleton.ca; www.carleton.ca/~sdalby IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 3

Conflict and Cooperation OK AVANGO BASIN MANAGEMENT

MANAGING CHANGE IN THE OKAVANGO BASIN BY

A NTHONY R. T URTON AND A NTON E ARLE

Photos: AWIRU

➤ The Okavango River basin is home to about 600,000 people, over half of whom live in the Angolan portion of the basin. Namibia is home to 160,000 people in the basin, with the remainder living in and around the Okavango Delta in Botswana (Mendelsohn & Obeid 2004). The two main tributaries, the Cubango and the Cuito, rise on the Bie Plateau in central Angola, where average annual rainfall is over 1000 mm a year, and flow south towards Namibia. The Cubango (Kavango in Namibia) forms the border between Angola and Namibia and joins the Cuito after about 300 kilometres.

Shortly after this the unified river traverses Namibia’s Caprivi Strip – becoming Namibia’s only perennial river wholly on its territory. The Okavango River does not flow into the sea, terminating instead in Botswana as the Okavango Delta (average annual rainfall of about 400 mm a year) where it is swallowed up by the sands of the Kalahari Desert and „lost“ to evapotranspiration.

A Russian battle tank lying in a mine field between Menongue and Caiundo About 10 cubic kilometres of water drain into the Okavango delta every year. At present very little of this flow is taken out of the river as there are no dams or major water pumping schemes on the river – yet. As such it is one of the last relatively pristine rivers in Africa, giving it an internationalized character as there are many stakeholders interested in the sustainable management of the river other than the three riparian states. The main economic value of the water is in the delta where it contributes to a unique biodiversity that sustains a large tourism industry. Revenues from tourism in the delta exceed US$ 250 million annually, or roughly 10 percent of the Botswana GDP. Current activities using water from the river in Namibia include small to medium-scale irrigation projects, fishing and fish farming.

As it is Namibia’s only perennial river, there has been talk of transferring the water to Windhoek for industrial and domestic use. The other potential increase in water use from the river is in Angola. The end of the Angolan civil war will accelerate development in the basin, probably requiring more water.

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These developmental needs run into a range of local and international interest groups aiming to conserve what they perceive to be the „fragile and unique“ ecosystem of the river, specifically in the delta. The result has been to thrust any mention of development of the river into the realm of politics with claims and allegations, some factual and others not, being made by the various stakeholders involved. It turns out that the system is not „fragile and unique“ as is claimed, but rather an enduring and dynamic system that is essentially driven by long-term variability. The Okavango River is a resilient system, which responds and adapts to the various changes and „threats“ it has encountered over time. However, it is important that the resilience of the system is protected and that any future development is planned in such a way that it does not rob the system of its ability to respond to change. For this to become a reality a high degree of social and institutional adaptive capacity is needed. Adaptive capacity of these human systems in the region is relatively low due to a lack of economic resources and political instability (specifically in Angola), while human vulnerability is high due to poverty and the reliance on rain-fed agriculture – exacerbated by the recurrent cycle of floods and drought (IPCC, 2001).

Effective sustainable management of the system calls for decisions to be based on legitimized data and knowledge.

The three basin states formed the Permanent Water Commission on the Okavango River (OKACOM) in 1994, with the mandate to act as a technical adviser to the riparian governments on issues related to conservation, development and use of the water resources of the basin. Although no agreements regulating the use of the water between the states have been signed, the Commission is generally seen to be operating effectively, but fears of unilateral action by any one riparian state and the absence of a unifying basin-wide database hamper the effectiveness of the institution (Turton & Earle, 2003). The Okavango River system needs to be well understood for water managers to respond to the pressures and challenges faced – a challenge given the highly dynamic nature of the ecological drivers and the limited adaptive capacity in the region.

Southern Africa is characterized by temporal as well as spatial climatic variability – droughts and floods follow on from each other with relatively few years of what can be called „average“ rainfall. The Okavango Basin is no exception. Since records of inflows to the delta began in the early 1930s flows have varied from –45% to +60% of the mean annual flow (Ashton & Neal, 2003). Since the 1980s there has been a downward trend in flow volumes into the delta, although the 2004 season is set to be one of the biggest flow events in the past 35 years. These variations appear to be natural, but anthropogenic factors cannot be ruled out as part of global climate change. Unfortunately flow and rainfall records in Angola were not maintained during the almost 30 years of civil war – a gap in the data which will never be recovered, making accurate predictions on climatic changes

Conflict and Cooperation OK AVANGO BASIN MANAGEMENT

Photos: AWIRU

over the past half century difficult. Given the highly dynamic politicize management. This is not necessarily a bad thing nature of the ecosystem however, this data sequence is far too however, as politicization usually leads to the creation of short to really develop a profound understanding of changinstitutions in which policy options can be debated and soluing weather patterns over time. tions generated. The alternative is securitization, which has By looking at layers of sediment and sand dune formation negative implications because such an approach would move in the region, as well as periods of intense plant growth, it is the management of the river basin into the realm of security possible to reconstruct an approximation of the rainfall patofficials, stifling open debate, preventing data-sharing and tern of the past limiting the range 200,000 years. of strategic options What emerges is a from which sustainseries of cycles takable and equitable ing about 23,000 solutions can be years for each to sourced. complete (MendelThe conflict sohn & Obeid potential needs to 2004).

Rainfall be institutionalized during the wettest through the adopcycles would have tion of a shared been higher than vision of how the today, while during resources of the the driest cycles river are going to be much of the system managed sustainas we know it ably. The three would have been states will have to covered in sand. build on the trust Aerial view of the Menongue showing a tributary of the Okavango Frequently the between them and river. The unpopulated areas in the photo are minefields. assertion is made arrive at an agreethat the climate is ment of what conchanging – usually that it is becoming drier as a result of stitutes a „fair and equitable share“ of water and benefits human activities. The only constant in the climate of the from the river, based on a sound understanding of the region over the past 200,000 years has been change – if by hydrology, ecology and development needs in the basin. To „climate change“ a change in this rate or direction of change do this, OKACOM will need to incorporate more than just is meant it will be difficult to predict the outcome. According the representatives of the departments of water affairs of to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the three states. Other departments dealing with issues such study conducted in 2001 the Okavango River headwaters as rural and agricultural development, trade and industry, region on the Bie Plateaux falls partly in a zone predicted to tourism, environment and energy need to be brought into experience a decrease in runoff of 50 to 150 mm per year and the process in addition to including community stakeholdpartly in a zone predicted to experience an increase in runoff ers such as the Okavango Basin-wide Forum (a collection of of 1 to 25 mm per year (IPCC, 2001). Most of the predictions basin-community representatives formed through the about the direction of climate change in the region have a Every River Has its People project). Each of the stakeholder low to medium level of confidence. However there is a high groups listed above will have an impact on the ability of the level of confidence in the prediction that the southern Okavango River and delta to respond to climate change, as African region generally will experience greater climatic well as being impacted by the nature and extent of such extremes leading to an increase in the severity of the floods change. and droughts in the Okavango basin.

The inherent climatic variability and any change in the REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website at natural cycles brought about by global climate change need www.ihdp.org/updateconcop04/references.htm to be incorporated into development and management plans on the basin. On a local level little can be done to prevent A NTHONY T URTON is GIBB-SERA Chair in Integrated Water such change – but the management regime can become Resource Management, African Water Issues Research Unit adapted to managing a changing system. This poses a chal(AWIRU), University of Pretoria, South Africa lenge to OKACOM, the River Basin Commission responsible aturton@csir.co.za; for developing a management strategy for the whole basin. www.up.ac.za/academic/libarts/polsci/awiru One of the implications is the fact that predictions are likely to be difficult to make, raising the spectre of vulnerability.

A NTON E ARLE is Deputy Head of the African Water Issues The two downstream riparian states – Namibia and Research Unit (AWIRU), University of Pretoria, South Africa Botswana – have endemic water scarcity, and could face limand Southern African Coordinator of Universities Partneritations to their economic growth and prosperity in the near ship for Transboundary Waters future. This raises the stakes at the strategic level and tends to antonearle@mweb.co.za IHDP NEWSLETTER 2 3/2004 | 5

Conflict and Cooperation

BIODIVERSIT Y AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION The Possible Role of Public Private Partnerships BY

S USANNE S TOLL -K LEEMANN AND T IM O’R IORDAN

They are designed to be complementary to official inter-governmental and governmental commitment, and not to be a substitute for public sector responsibility in this area. ➤ Human activities continue to threaten biodiversity on a The World Parks Congress in 2003 also endorsed the global scale. Yet safeguarding mechanisms are insufficient notion of private sector financing for biodiversity goverboth in effectiveness and funding. Leakey and Lewin (1996) nance. While the resolutions from this Congress indicated liken the current onslaught to global biodiversity to a „Sixth caution over the guarantees for the well-being of local peoExtinction“, the possibility of a major collapse of species and ple, nevertheless the thrust of the declaration was for more habitats at a rate 1000 to 10 000 times higher than natural private sector investment coupled to improve procedures for background changes. Nearly seventy per cent of the current monitoring and surveillance. Given that there is little sign of land surface is either partially or wholly disturbed by human international financial commitment on the scale now regardbeings. Add to this the impacts of climate change, the chances ed as vital, there is growing recognition that the private secof re-colonization of lost species and habitats over the coming tor may provide a vital century by any other means financial service for the than through careful managemaintenance of biodiversiment is impossible. Global bioty on a global scale. But the diversity cannot be maintained current state of affairs without a wholesale change in remains ambiguous about the way in which humans govthe wisdom of this ern our planet. approach. Without clear Myers (2002) estimates the and explicit governance cost of protecting the global practices, that lock the biodiversity hotspots is of the public, private and civil order of $USD300 million per sectors into a common year. To safeguard all protected An overview of the Walker Bay Fynbos Conservancy purpose, it is unlikely that areas would amount to an private sector financing can guarantee global sustainable annual spent of some 500 billion dollars. These figures may biodiversity provision. For this to be the case a different set of appear large, but one should bear in mind that the expendimeasures for evaluating the effectiveness of such agreements ture behind agricultural subsidies alone amount to 365 bilis needed. lion dollars per year, and US spending on military security beyond its borders exceeds 450 billion dollars annually.

LIMITATIONS TO PRIVATE SECTOR AND SUSTAINABLE Much more to the point is that biodiversity investment, if BIODIVERSITY well managed, will aid local livelihoods, and stimulate the economic value of ecosystems.

There are a number of reasons of why private sector fundGiven the current biodiversity crisis, there have been ing can lead to a distortion in global sustainable biodiversity many calls for new forms of co-operation that will enhance management: environmental security over the longer term. The substantial – The promotion of the emblematic species costs associated with regaining and maintaining biodiversity Private sector providers aim to promote the protection as well as the difficulty of establishing international treaties and access to species which visitors wish to see. While this is in the public domain have encouraged a fresh assessment of a worthy objective for species protection, it cannot guarantee the role cooperation with the private sector might play in the maintenance of a robust and integral ecosystem. This is protecting total biodiversity. But the contexts under which particularly the case where additional areas of safeguard are the private sector can be a willing and effective partner are necessary to act as „ecological stepping stones“ for future not fully understood. This paper explores possible roles for species migration. Because of the need to maintain revenue, the private sector in safeguarding biodiversity needs. this mismatch of objectives can result in a weakened biodiversity and inherent conflict between conservationists and INTRODUCING PRIVATE SECTOR COLLABORATION economic enterprise.

– The failure of corporate social responsibility The international conservation community has begun to There is much talk nowadays of companies complying recognize the need for significant private sector involvement with the practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR). in biodiversity governance. The World Summit on SustainThere is an assumption that good corporate practice can lead able Development (WSSD) championed a number of initiato a public interest dimension in the profit-maintaining tives around the theme of the Type 2 partnerships. These world of corporate enterprise. The concept of Type2 partnerpartnerships are multi-stakeholder in construction and ships is designed to shadow official biodiversity protection, explicitly involve public, private and community interests.

Foto: S. Stoll-Kleemann

PERSPECTIVE

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Conflict and Cooperation

BIODIVERSIT Y AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

EXPERIENCE FROM CASE STUDIES

We introduce two case studies from Brazil and South Africa.

– Brazil: continuing conflict over bioprospecting Egler (2002) reviews the history of private sector involvement in promoting biodiversity enterprise in Amazonia. In 1995 the National Programme for Biodiversity (PRONABIO) created a non-profit-private fund (FUNBIO) to support projects in the sustainable use of biodiversity and biotechnology products. The cosmetic industry sought to establish a programme of research and development in order to capitalize on this market. In 1997 the programme for biotechnology in the Amazon (PROBEM) was established with joint governmentprivate sector funding. This programme was to be implemented by BIOAMAZONIA, a social organization specially established to ensure a favourable balance between private initiative and the public interest. But PROBEM is facing huge legal and political difficulties. There is no clear mechanism to provide access to genetic resources as required by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In the absence of appropriate legislation the government could not hire bioprospecting activities from any private entity. This meant that PROBEM had no basis for trading. BIOAMAZONIA was charged with a conflict of interest when seeking to promote private sector advantage in this sensitive arena of local livelihoods and contested property rights. The result was a major breakdown of trust between BIOAMAZONIA, the Brazilian Congress, and international environmental organizations. In the end the Presidency passed a provisional law regulating access to biodiversity in favour of

the private sector. The use of an autocratic instrument to regulate a sensitive and complex matter, that was not urgent, inflamed public aversion to BIOAMAZONIA. This reinforces our view that without clear guidelines for the effective monitoring and accountability of these partnerships there can be no sustaining biodiversity governance.

Foto: S. Stoll-Kleemann

as a means of integrating private enterprise to local interests and public sector regulation. Hamann and his colleagues (2003) show that CSR is by no means regarded by business as a genuine public interest activity. It should not be surprising that businesses mainly adopt CSR practices to promote their business case.

– Conflict over management objectives The private sector generally regards biodiversity as a suite of services over which it has proprietorial control. Such a view conflicts with the property relations of food and agricultural services sought by local people and local enterprise. It may also create an impasse over appropriate regulatory arrangements on long-term property rights. Any programme of designing indicators of effective biodiversity governance may well stumble over these contested property arrangements.

– Short vs long-term perspectives To maintain and create sustainable biodiversity requires commitment for the very long-term. It is well known that changes in the value of ecosystem services would force the private sector into a form of a survivalist mode. This cannot guarantee sustained biodiversity investment. Add to these changes in the character of agricultural markets, and local use of biodiversity products might also become unstable.

Nevertheless, there are many opportunities for the private sector; working with the support of sympathetic public agencies and local communities, can and indeed must create effective biodiversity resilience. We introduce a case study below that provides support for this observation. What is also critically needed are reliable and empathetic measures to guide us as to how such arrangements can be shown to be effective.

Parts of the nursery of the Walker Bay Fynbos Conservancy – South Africa: signs of hope – creating effective partnerships in the Cape Floral Kingdom Stoll-Kleemann & O`Riordan (2002) analyse the Grootbos initiative which is a private nature reserve situated by Walker Bay in the Western Cape. It is a self-financing arrangement run by a committed partnership of families. It forms a component of the Walker Bay Fynbos Conservancy (WBFC), which the partnership instigated. Grootbos contains a luxurious Lodge that provides residents with first hand access to the fynbos (the local name for the Cape Floral Kingdom plant species). The Lodge employs people from the local disadvantaged communities, and trains them into tourist management so that they benefit from ecotourism and related activities, such as contract gardening in the locality. The Conservancy itself already produces soaps, honey and perfumes from the biome. One project is to use established poverty alleviation funds to clear the acacia (aliens) from the nearby sand dunes so as to reintroduce an essential lost habitat and to create a fee-paying off-road recreational experience. Within the Conservancy is the Flower Valley enterprise, run by Flora and Fauna International (FFI 2000).

The area of Flower Valley is naturally managed to produce cut flowers for international and domestic markets and also employs local people as pickers. The scheme trains gardeners and alien clearance contractors which are assisted to find reliable work. In addition, the scheme provides training for natural farming, health education, and pre-school environmental education for the children of the employees. It is this creative mix of biodiversity enhancement, private-public partnerships, recreational choice, local community social and economic involvement, and the prospect of long term self-financing that are the hallmarks of this initiative.

CONCLUSIONS

We face a dilemma. The inter-governmental community is failing to provide adequate public sector financing in the midst of a possible Sixth Extinction. Measures to incorporate IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 7

Conflict and Cooperation HUMAN SECURIT Y IN THE NORTH

local community involvement in global biodiversity governance are now officially on all agendas. One positive example is the South African case study described above where the conduct of local sustainability livelihood schemes rests on training for enterprise and community sharing as the target of new funding arrangements. The key to such livelihoods is self-generated local income. Despite the existence of negative experiences it may be necessary to rely on private sector financing just to keep the ship afloat for the time being. This means we must address how best we can establish public-private-community partnerships for a sustaining biodiversity age.

– A global biodiversity stewardship scheme As with the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council, there is a need for a Global Biodiversity Stewardship Scheme that locks public to private to local informal arrangements based upon sustainability principles.

Ultimately such a scheme should provide the necessary conditions for the sale of any product or service from any established biodiversity setting.

– Formal corporate accountability CSR on a voluntary basis is simply not good enough.

There must be some form of corporate accountability that is mediated by community compliance, and agreed measures of managing biodiversity to meet the collective needs of local livelihoods and ecosystem integrity. This can only be achieved by establishing unambiguous indicators of effective biodiversity governance backed by the triple alliance of the biodiversity stewardship scheme partnerships.

– Political and corporate leadership Right now we live in a world where political and corporate leaders are not delivering sustainable biodiversity governance.

Only when the global community envelopes these leaders with positive messages relating to the long-term superior advantages of investing collectively in biodiversity will these leaders readjust their attention. There may be no substitute for other than a programme of systematic monitoring and support to show why sustainable biodiversity governance is the best bet for all parties, and our future generations. Here is where sustainability science must join with these global biodiversity stewardship partnerships to provide the scientific insights that should underpin these measures of effectiveness.

To underscore the significance of these measures, they should be robust enough to provide the legal and management basis for the global biodiversity stewardship scheme to be as strong as it must be if we are to avoid a possible Sixth Extinction.

R EFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website at www.ihdp.org/updateconcop04/references.htm S USANNE S TOLL -K LEEMANN is Associate Professor at the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; susanne.stoll-kleemann@agrar.hu-berlin.de T IM O’R IORDAN is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, UK; T.Oriordan@uea.ac.uk

HUMAN SECURITY IN THE NORTH Is it Relevant?

BY GUNHILD

H OOGENSEN

THE SECURITY DEBATE

➤ The meaning and efficacy of security concepts has long been debated. The domination by international systems and nation-state perspectives on security has effectively marginalized most other notions of security. A widened security agenda that goes beyond the stereotypical military (usually synonymous with security) needs of the state has often been proposed, but frequently against the critique that the coherence of the concept becomes lost, such that security becomes meaningless and all „motherhood and apple pie“. Nevertheless, widened notions of security have been a particularly hot topic since the end of the Cold War. State-defined security, particularly revolving around the political and military sectors, has been perceived as too narrow, elitist and insufficient, and other sectors of security have been introduced.

Economic, personal, community, environmental, health, food and societal securities, often encapsulated within „human“ security, have been recognized as important sectors of the security dynamic, as have new security referents, such as the individual through human security, as well as the region (linking and transcending states, providing individu8 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004

als and groups alternative venues in which to voice securities, alongside regional expressions of security).

HUMAN SECURITY: NORTH VERSUS SOUTH?

Ever since the notion of human security was broadly popularized through the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report, it has been often employed by the United Nations and by states around the world, in particular by northern states interested in promoting human security in the Global South. This has lead to criticism that the concept entrenches linear and elitist thinking with regard to security, insofar as it is implied that countries of the Global North have no experiences to share with the Global South, and that the North remains secure, while the South is not.

The end result is an imbalance between understandings of what is actually happening within and across regions, and the assumptions of „North-secure, South-insecure“ serve to disguise and prevent shared human security concerns and experiences. This is well exemplified through indigenous and gender experiences and perspectives which transcend the North-South construct and reveal human insecurities occurring on different levels, to different degrees, throughout the

Conflict and Cooperation HUMAN SECURIT Y IN THE NORTH

world. These perspectives have not, however, been actively engaged within the dominant security discourses. The same can be said for examining security from the level of regions; although there is an increasing awareness that regional security is as relevant as the security of the international system, the north, and particular the Arctic, is not commonly included in discussions of regional security.

NEW RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

These alternative perspectives emanate from security referents other than the state, and are often described as expressions of security from the „bottom up“, and new research programs have emerged reflecting these widened approaches to security.

The Human Security Program (HSP) at the University of Tromsø, Norway, contributes to these debates by exploring gender and indigenous perspectives of security within the Arctic regional context. Both the context and theoretical perspectives examine security from the „bottom up“.

The theoretical dimension of the HSP primarily draws on western and non-western feminisms, as well as indigenous perspectives (including indigenous or aboriginal feminisms) to understanding security. This approach does not negate current, more traditional theoretical approaches to security. Nor does it negate the state as an important component of security; expressions of security can and do transcend boundaries, but responses to it are often very much state or institution based. As such the HSP builds upon these foundations in the interest of demonstrating the complexity of the security concept.

ABORIGINAL FEMINISM AND HUMAN SECURITY

A central advantage of various feminisms, especially those rooted in indigenous cultures and traditions, lies in their expressing the inherent linkages between the environment and other securities. Indigenous feminisms give space not only to needs of indigenous women to freely express themselves in their communities and challenge patriarchal privilege, but seek to give voice to women’s personal and cultural oppression within colonized and subordinated communities.

As such, to give voice to these oppressions additionally expresses indigenous women’s needs for securities. Culturally, economically and socially, environmental security is not a distinct or separate issue, but an integrated core of these securities. Environmental issues therefore become inevitably and inherently linked to the security dynamic and have an impact on, as well as are impacted by, all other securities.

This is particularly true in the Arctic, where the voices expressing these security concerns are often not heard.

THE ARCTIC AND HUMAN SECURITY: AN EXAMPLE

The Arctic has long been a peripheral region of the Global North (for the purposes of this article the Arctic is defined as the circumpolar region, although there are many contested notions of what constitutes the Arctic and/or the north). As a region free of large scale violent conflict, it has not been the focus of human security researchers. However, it is becoming more apparent that to take human security seriously, issues of the Arctic need to be taken into account. The Arctic is still considered „pristine“ and provides a clear and region-wide demonstration of the linkages of diverse securities, particular-

ly rooted in environmental security. The impacts of environment and environmental security upon the women and men of the Arctic are clear and significant: for example, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), mercury and lead that emanate from the polluting activities of the industrialized south primarily through air and water, are ingested by humans through traditional country foods, causing numerous health problems such as increased rates of breast cancer and problems with pregnancy, the possible reduction of testosterone/increase of estrogen in men with impacts on their fertility and gender, and neurological damage in children.

As a result, warnings against traditional country foods has led to decreased consumption but also to a clear reduction in the health benefits of these foods, as well as their social, cultural, and economic significance to the communities.

Increased dependence upon store-bought foods and market as opposed to traditional economies has had impacts on food availability and access, the development of diseases such as diabetes, the weakening of traditional economies and access to hunting equipment necessary to these economies, as well as poverty. A 2004 report by Marcelle Chabot chronicles the problems of poverty, hunger and starvation in Kuujjuamiut households in Nunavik, Canada where she noted that women and children were most at risk for material and food security; amongst the general population already 68% were at risk, but this number increased to 71% for women and 74% for children (Chalbot, 2004). Access to income is limited, compounded by debt and substance abuse, all of which contribute to these high rates of insecurity amongst the Kuujjuamiut.

In general, limited access to income is a chronic problem amongst women in the north as many women have had to rely on public sector employment which has been steadily reduced over the years, and have had less access to natural resources employment such as mining, forestry and oil which employs mostly men. It is nevertheless almost impossible to isolate one security from the other. In this region we find an intricate blend of security issues from the environmental, health, and food to economics, cultural and identity (high rates of suicide associated with loss of culture/identities among indigenous peoples, traditional economies struggling against market economies, reduced access to market economies, and so forth).

It is clear that recognition of human security issues in northern contexts is imperative to the development of the concept as a whole, as well as to eliminating the ‘us-them’ othering approach inherent within such notions. Listening to and understanding the experiences of women and men in the north and particularly the Arctic, through the lenses of various gender and indigenous perspectives, highlights the limitations northern peoples face in meeting their security needs.

Recognition of shared human insecurities between North and South leads to better definitional clarity, and better policy making on behalf of all parties concerned.

R EFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website at www.ihdp.org/updateconcop04/references.htm G UNHILD H OOGENSEN is Associate Professor/Senior Researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Tromso, Norway; gunhildh@sv.uit.no IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 9

Conflict and Cooperation T R A N S B O R D E R CO O P E R AT I O N

THE LEMPA RIVER BASIN: TRANSBORDER COOPERATION IN AN INTERNATIONAL RIVER BASIN WITH HIGH POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT A LEXANDER L OPEZ

➤ The Lempa river basin encompasses an area of about 18 246 square kilometers and is divided by the international boundaries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Lempa river shows that in a scenario of high potential for conflict, such a situation has not occurred, instead a process of transborder cooperation is taking place. Thus, the key question is how an acute process of environmental change (such as the one in the Lempa river basin) can promote transborder cooperation instead of conflict? Before all, it is important to recognize that an international river basin does not provide a good foundation for regional cooperation simply by virtue of its crossing national borders. The Lempa river basin shows that the relative dependence of each riparian on the river is an important determinant of the potential for conflict or cooperation. Greater interdependence among riparians and the generation of externalities increases the necessity and possibility of international cooperation.

Finally, dependency is the third factor influencing the potential for conflict. Because of its downstream location, El Salvador feels the greatest impact of the Lempa river’s deterioration. The effects of environmental damage are further magnified when one considers that El Salvador is heavily dependent on the Lempa relative to Guatemala and Honduras. In fact, there is no other country in Central America that relies on a single river as heavily as El Salvador does on the Lempa.

Photo: Proyecto Trifinio/GTZ

BY

THE POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT

When considering the potential for conflict in the Lempa river basin, three elements can be considered: Geography, environmental change, and resource dependence. In terms of geography the physical location of countries within a river basin influences the potential for environmental conflict. El Salvador occupies the lower reaches of the Lempa basin and is located downstream of Guatemala and Honduras. A full ninety percent of El Salvador’s river basin surface area lies downstream of its two neighbors and is highly subject to damage from upstream activities.

In addition, natural resources degradation is seen by the high levels of erosion affecting dams and reducing their life.

The production of sediments is high. 48% of the sediments in the Lempa river originate in Honduras, while El Salvador and Guatemala generate 39% and 13% respectively.

(Hernández and Rodríguez: 2002: 25) Because of its downstream position, El Salvador must bear the brunt of the environmental and economic impacts of soil erosion. Indeed, four hydroelectric dams in El Salvador have lost portions of their generating capacity due to accumulated sediment deposits.

Second, in terms of environmental change the Lempa river basin is the most environmentally damaged and polluted international river basin. One of the most significant sources of deterioration is the discrepancy between land use capacity and its effective use – more than half of the land in the watershed (almost 9500 km2) is over-used. Of all land area in the three countries classified as over-used, 58.4% lie in El Salvador, while the remainders of the overused areas are located in Honduras (23.3%) and Guatemala (18.3%) (Granados, 2002). The consequences are severe erosion upstream and sedimentation downstream.

10 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004

The Lempa River Basin For example: • 48 % of the Salvadorian population lives in cities, towns, and villages that are located in the Lempa basin. These include the capital city of San Salvador.

• The Lempa basin covers 49 % of the territory of El Salvador. In contrast, only 4.9 % of Honduras and only 2.3 % of Guatemala lie in the Lempa basin.

In conclusion, a conflict scenario such as the following could be considered: if environmental degradation persists, it will become a major threat against hydroelectric power generation and water sources for El Salvador. In such a situation, very possibly, El Salvador will demand action on the part of its neighbors and may generate regional unrest.

COOPERATION INSTEAD OF CONFLICT

Nevertheless, the above elements conflicts have not occurred. Instead, a scenario of transborder cooperation is taking place – why is that?

In the case of the Lempa river basin three factors explain the reduction of conflicts. First, the socio-economic and environmental interdependence; second the role of no point sources; and finally the existence of institutional arrangements – all of them are creating partnerships between neighboring countries and help to reduce the potential for conflict.

Socio-economic interdependencies: The economies of the countries in the Lempa basin are highly interdependent.

After the United States, Guatemala and El Salvador are the second and third most important export destinations for Honduras. Similarly, El Salvador’s second and third most

Conflict and Cooperation

T R A N S B O R D E R CO O P E R AT I O N / H U M A N S E C U R I T Y R E S E A R C H

important export destinations are Guatemala and Honduras respectively. External trade aside, there is also a great deal of interaction among local populations. The boundary area between Honduras and El Salvador is the largest population center in Central America. The inhabitants are linked economically and socially and have demonstrated a willingness to work together to protect their own interests.

The role of no point sources: Although most environmental changes in the area rather trigger conflict, there is one aspect that reduces conflict potential. This is the diffuse characteristic of the damage, meaning that the sources of environmental change are not mainly concentrated in one country. For instance, the main factors causing damage in the upper reaches of the basin have their origin in farming and the direct discharge of domestic wastes into the river. Both activities are widely spread.

Institutional arrangements: A third element (perhaps the most important) for diminishing the potential for conflict is the development of institutional arrangements such as the Trifinio Plan and its latest component, the management plan

for the upper basin area of the Lempa River. In 1997 the Trinational Commission was established by the vice-presidents of the three countries. This was followed by the signing of the Treaty, implying legal international status to the commission.

This was a crucial moment because it provided the commission with a real institutional framework from which to develop the Trifinio Plan. The commission as a regional institution started in 2000, with its headquarters located in San Salvador and its technical unit in Esquipulas, Guatemala.

It can be argued that, as a result of the Plan Trifinio, there has been a strengthening of the border links which has led to a strengthening of all levels. Through these activities the level of coordination between the three governments has increased. In the same way, the process of integration among border communities has been spurred.

A LEXANDER L OPEZ is Director of the Mesoamerican Center for Sustainable Development of the Dry Tropic, Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica; alope@una.ac.cr; www.una.ac.cr/CEMEDE

ADVANCING CONFLICT, COOPERATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE – HUMAN SECURITY RESEARCH BY

M IKE B RKLACICH , R ICHARD A. M ATTHEW, B RYAN M C D ONALD, B ISHNU U PRETI

➤ Considerable work since the publication of Our Common Future in 1987 has enhanced our collective knowledge about linkages between environmental change and human security (ES), improved our understanding of the human causes and effects of global environmental change (GEC), and catalyzed considerable policy activity. Despite these advances, there is still much to learn and this short review maps a three-pronged approach to advance research in conflict, cooperation and ES over the short to medium term.

1. ADVANCE RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA QUALITY

Broad-scale, macro assessments have characterized much of the ES research and while this has been useful in identifying trend changes in human security at the national scale, understanding of root causes of human security have been obscured. Detailed field-level data which pinpoint variables which drive ES relationships are sparse and inconsistencies across case studies limit comparative assessments. Finegrained research which builds upon human livelihood assessments has been identified elsewhere (Dabelko and Matthew, 2000) as the much needed next wave of ES research. Understanding these complex relationships amongst co-operation, conflict and ES will undoubtedly require developing methods which embrace quantitative and qualitative approaches to social science research as complementary rather than polar opposite forms of assessment.

Newer technologies such as Geographic Information Systems provide opportunities to further understanding as well as visualize environment and human security relationships.

In addition to greater detail, it is also crucial that ES research methods be designed to uncover both direct and indirect drivers of human (in)security. Population levels are anticipated to level off around mid-century and this in turn has contributed to a re-orientation of ES research away from population growth towards other demographic issues.

UNDPs (1998) recent assessment reveals that the wealthiest 20 percent of the of population consume resources at 66 times the rate of the poorest fifth and the differential effects of economic globalization underscore the need for methods that explicitly consider economic inequalities as an integral part of ES assessments. Similarly, gender inequalities relating to the undervaluing of women’s contributions to livelihoods, constraints on access to education and violence against women, especially during armed conflict, are important issues to both demography and ES. Clearly there is a need to further develop the capacity of ES research methods to consider interactions amongst multiple demographic factors.

2. CHALLENGE LONG-HELD ASSUMPTIONS

Much of the early ES work was based upon the assumption that scarce resources and environmental degradation either caused or enhanced the likelihood of violent conflict.

The current rift between the neo-Malthusians who support this assumption (for example, see Baechler, 1998; HomerDixon, 1999; Klare; 2001) and their critics who suggest scarce resources can prompt new forms of cooperation (for example, see Deudeny, 1990: Wolfe, 1999) underscores the need to challenge this long-held assumption.

IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 11

Conflict and Cooperation HUMAN SECURIT Y RESEARCH

There is a similar need to examine under which contexts that resource and environmental conservation can prompt improvements in human security. Recent work by Conca and Dabelko (2002) and Matthew et al (2002) portrays resource conservation and environmentally sustainable practices as relatively low-cost peace-building strategies which can transcend ethnic, social, and political tensions.

While this is conceptually attractive, these relationships between environmental conservation and human security have yet to be confirmed through rigorous empirical research. To date, the results have been uneven and preliminary, and it is premature to draw firm conclusions linking conservation and peace.

A third set of assumptions needing further investigation relate to war’s environmental effects. The strong claims that war and preparation for war results in rapid and extensive environment damage is not based on satisfactory evidence.

UNEP’s recent Post-Conflict Assessment Unit has produced environmental assessments of Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Liberia, Occupied Palestinian Territories and Iraq, which have experienced environmental degradation due to conflict (Post-Conflict Assessment Unit, 2004). This approach provides a basis for an evaluative framework to enable comparisons of environmental degradation and war relationships as well as significantly improve understanding of post-war environmental liabilities and rehabilitation.

A fourth set of assumptions requiring consideration are the relationships between governance, environmental security, and conflict. Much of the research in ES has demonstrated the relationship between governance and many cases of resource related conflict. In the case of the 1995 Turbot war between Canada and Spain, the roots of the conflict can be found in the efforts of the North West Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) to establish guidelines on sustainable turbot yields and to allocate allowable catches for each member country.

The NAFO issued guidelines to limit the catch of Turbot in Canada’s depleted fisheries, however, these guidelines significantly curtailed Spain’s allowable catch and the EU said it would not abide by the commission’s guidelines (McDonald and Gaulin, 2002). To move the field forward, more robust understandings are needed of the way governance can also contribute to efforts to reduce conflict and instability.

3. EXPAND THE RESEARCH CONTEXT

Political scientists have dominated ES research, focusing on national settings and time frames of less than ten years.

While such foci are attractive to policymakers, the failure to examine regional and historical dynamics diminishes the research’s explanatory power and in the long run limits its policy value. Broader analysis reveals relationships among environmental change, conflict and cooperation are dynamic and allows the field to move beyond the much-criticized linear theories and models typical of the 1990s. In addition to rethinking the spatial and temporal parameters of analysis, researchers should increase efforts to integrate perspectives from disciplines such as geography, sociology, urban planning, and history.

ES research has regularly employed conflict and cooperation studies as departure points and as a result have not fully 12 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004

examined causal factors and processes which result in conflict (e.g. injustice, group identity, greed) or in cooperation (e.g. methods for engaging multiple actors, role of political entrepreneurs, management of free riders). Too often ES research has reduced this complex set of causal factors to a meta-variable such as undifferentiated „social factors“ and thereby relegating environment and conflict or cooperation relationships to an unspecified „black box“. Clearly there is a need for ES and conflict and cooperation researchers to collaborate more closely and thereby collectively unpack this meta-variable.

ES research has focused primarily on rural areas. A recent UNDP (2002) report projects half of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2007. This suggests ES research must expand from its traditional rural roots and should focus not only on the overall impacts of urban growth on the environment but also on the dynamics and challenges associated with rapid urbanization. Recent development studies which have tracked remittances between urban and rural residents and analyzed the implications of these exchanges for human security (Leybourne, 2003) have emphasized the need to move away from assessments which fracture the world into urban and rural space and consider the dynamics along an urban-rural continuum.

R EFERENCES to this article are included on our website at www.ihdp.org/updateconcop04/references.htm M IKE B RKLACICH is Chair of the Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project (GECHS) and Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada; mbrklac@ccs.carleton.ca; www.gehs.org R ICHARD A. M ATTHEW is Director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA), Director of the GECHS Research Office and Associate Professor of International Environmental Politics at the University of California, Irvine, USA; rmatthew@uci.edu; www.gechs.uci.edu; www.cusa.uci.edu B RYAN M C D ONALD is Assistant Director of CUSA and Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, USA; bmcdonald@uci.edu B ISHNU U PRETI is Expert on Conflict Management and Resources at IUCN (World Conservation Union) in Kathmandu, Nepal; bishnu@iucn.org.np

Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change

Greening of Policies – Interlinkages and Policy Integration Berlin 3–4 December 2004

Interview

GEOFFREY DABELKO

ENVIRONMENT AS A PATHWAY TO COOPERATION, PEACE AND CONFIDENCE ➤ Geoffrey Dabelko is Director of the Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP), one of the programs of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., USA. Serving as the formal memorial to former U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, the institute brings together the worlds of scholarship and policy to engage in two-way dialogue.

1. What can you tell us about the Environmental Change and Security Project?

The Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP) was created ten years ago to get the worlds of environment, health, and demography together with the worlds of foreign and security policy. Through its work with both research and policy communities, ECSP tries to initiate dialogue between these rather disparate communities about shared interests and connections across portfolios. We also try to be an information clearing house on issues of environment, population, and security, building networks people working in these issue areas.

ECSP has four policy and research topics. Under environmental security, we look at questions of environment, conflict and cooperation specifically. But we also examine broader notions of security such as human security parting the context of efforts to redefine security. We have been a long-time collaborator with IHDP’s Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project (GEHCS). Second, we explore the linkages between population, health, and environment. We have found the topics to be intimately linked and posing a host of challenging research and policy questions. Third, we have a specific focus on water. We often examine water in the context of environment and security with a special working group on the future of water conflict and cooperation for example. Finally, for the past eight years we have had a specific focus on environment issues in China through our China Environment Forum. The forum was initiated to help U.S. policy makers deepen their understanding of Chinese environmental issues and explore opportunities for cooperation.

We work on these four topics through three primary formats. We convene meetings in Washington and abroad to bring people together to debate and discuss new research and policy alternatives. Through a range of print and on-line publications, we try to help bridge the research-to-policy gap while providing updates on environmental security through book reviews and commentaries. And finally, ECSP staff and fellows conduct original research, synthesize current research for policymakers, and participate in a range of scholarly and policy meetings.

2. What factors have encouraged the factoring of environmental change, conflict & cooperation into national and international policy? What needs to be done to further advance the uptake of this theme into policy?

In the wake of the Cold War, there was considerably more political space to examine broader notions of security and the complexity behind conflict – to try to understand some of conflict’s root causes rather than just proximate causes.

Research and policy interest in environment, conflict and cooperation questions „took off“ during this period. Along with the expanGeoffrey Dabelko sion of our understanding of what might cause conflict came the „facts on the ground“: Environmental change, poverty, and conflict forced themselves onto the agenda as policymakers were looking for a means to re-anchor their foreign policy perspectives.

I think it is critical for the environment and security field to offer an action agenda instead of reactive bickering over narrow causes of conflict questions. A more recent focus on environment as a pathway to cooperation, peace and confidence building suggests that we can do more than simply add an additional variable to our models of conflict. My hope is that a proactive research agenda and proactive policy possibilities will be appealing as the international policy community grapples with conflict prevention, a particularly timely and urgent problem.

3. Can you give an example for the complexity of conflicts?

In the Middle East, water scarcity is not the cause of conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis. They have in fact continued to talk and de facto collaborate on management of water. So, in that sense, water may serve as something of a lifeline that allows for continued dialogue and hopefully can be part of building confidence. This is not to say water is not critically important and a high politics issue. Water is not what causes India and Pakistan to be at odds. Yet, as they set up six negotiating committees to try to resolve their differences this year, one of the committees concerns water. Water did not get India and Pakistan into the conflict but it is necessary to address water to resolve the conflict.

I think one of the shortcomings of the environment and conflict literature has been the singular focus on trying to understand how environment causes conflict. That misses some of the most interesting questions about why water is particularly important. We have seen little or no evidence of water wars between states. Yet we have focused far too little attention on the real story of cooperation on water and how this cooperation can be used to build trust, confidence, and peace.

IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 13

Photo: David Hawxhurst

Interview with Geoffrey Dabelko

Interview

GEOFFREY DABELKO

4. What are ECSP’s major achievements?

We have had some success in building bridges between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers on the complex linkages between environment and security – overcoming in that sense the barrier between research and policy making.

We emphasize the importance of speaking each other’s language. Also, we have been able to bring research and perspectives from outside Washington, from outside the United States, and from outside Europe into the „Beltway“ policy discussions. This kind of cross-fertilization of ideas through building networks has been critical to addressing the field’s notable lack of North-South dialogue on these issues.

In doing all this, we view the non-partisan, non-advocacy character of the Wilson Center as a real comparative advantage. The Wilson Center by definition does not have an official position. We try to get different perspectives in the room to put forward issues, thereby making it easier to get together the broad set of actors involved.

5. What do you view as some of the key obstacles to advancing environmental change, conflict & cooperation research?

Institutional barriers make it difficult to address complex interlinked issues and to establish a holistic integrated policy programme. In the policy realm, these barriers pose a hindrance to pursuing cross-sectoral programs. In academia, more cross-disciplinary work between social, natural, and physical sciences is required and even just within the social sciences themselves. The academic incentives – i.e. refereed journals that are only published within disciplines – are structured so as to make it very difficult for this type of research to be rewarded.

Collaboration within the research community is an uphill battle. But even if we manage to achieve this integrated work, we in the research community still face the challenge of communicating our ideas and insights to the policy community in a form that can be understood and readily accessed in a timely fashion. If nobody reads and uses it, even the best research report will have no impact on policy making. The importance of communication goes back to our mission – trying to present arguments in formats such as meetings, such as short publications, that can reach policy makers and help them solve problems in their inboxes.

And, as I mentioned before, there are also some barriers on what the research agenda has focused on. That notion of focusing just on environment as a cause of conflict rather than understanding the cooperative properties around the environment have meant that in both the research and the policy worlds we have missed opportunities to understand and operationalize environment’s confidence-building and peace-making possibilities.

6. The utility of linking the environmental change to the conflict and cooperation agenda continues to debated. Where do you see this debate going over the next few years?

There has been merit in many of the arguments against linking environment and security. The utility of the frame 14 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004

can be very place-dependent. Even in places where resource scarcity or abundance link to conflict, it can still be counterproductive in a policy arena or even in an academic arena to structure them in the environmental security frame. In a place such as Latin America where there is a history of military institutions being the cause of insecurity rather than the provider of security, a term like environmental security may turn off more people than it turns on.

A traditional shortcoming of the environmental change, conflict and security literature has been that it says very little about questions of consumption and behaviour in the North and so it has been difficult to bring issues of climate change into it. Ideas such as the ecological footprint or externalizing environmental degradation from the North to the South to support consumption in the North, are issues that need to be integrated. How, for example, are consumption and the global economy tied to local deforestation in Indonesia, contributing to local conflict over resources? In many ways, the field of ECS has reacted to these types of criticisms and addressed some of the shortcomings of work from the early and mid-nineties. So, I think it is fair to say that there are and have been valid criticisms. However, when critics continue to only consider the field to be where we were in the mid-90s, they miss a great deal because the research has moved forward and gone into new areas.

The webpage of the ECSP is: www.wilsoncenter.org/ecsp INTERVIEW BY ULA LÖW

Call for Sessions 6th Open Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research Community Global Environmental Change, Globalization and International Security: New Challenges for the 21st Century University of Bonn, 9-13 October 2005 Timeline and deadlines for applications: Session submissions: September 15th – November 15th, 2004 Abstract submissions: February 1st, 2005 – March 15th, 2005 Poster submissions: February 1st, 2005 – March 15th, 2005 Open Meeting capacity-building seminars: November 15th, 2005 – February 15th, 2005 openmeeting.ihdp@uni-bonn.de www.ihdp.org

National Committees MEXICO/JAPAN

Initial International Workshop for the IAI Project: „CAN CITIES REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING? URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND THE CARBON CYCLE IN LATIN AMERICA“ Mai 27-29, 2004 Metropolitan Autonomous University – Xochimilco ➤ Cities are contradictory front-runners of development and key drivers of climate change. Their activities release carbon directly, through the consumption of fossil fuels, and indirectly, such as through electricity consumption in the production of cement. Cities’ development priorities are paradoxical. Their governments are required to address local issues and at the same time they are key players for promoting the behavioral changes necessary to abate carbon emissions and to adapt to global climate change.

Considering this context, the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM-Xochimilco) in Mexico, the University of Chile, and the University of Mendoza in Argentina are conducting a research project on strategies to reduce global warming through urban development in Latin America. The workshop is a first step in this process and has been sponsored by the Inter American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), the Global Carbon Project (GCP), and START. The main goals of the research are (1) to explore the linkages among three dimensions of urban development (social, economic, institutional) and changes in the carbon cycle resulting from energy and land use; and (2) to identify innovative management alternatives that can simultaneously reduce local air pollution and improve local welfare. To support fulfillment of these goals the workshop intended to establish a well-coordinated strategic network of case stud-

ies, and develop common and comparable methodologies.

Cases include Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, MendozaBuenos Aires in Argentina, and eventually Bogotá, Colombia.

Three main areas of interest were covered in the workshop and will be part of the research, namely • Current trends and state of the art in emission inventories for the participant cities • Main drivers of land use and energy consumption in urban centers (economic, technological, demographic, institutional) • Available modeling tools for the CO2 cycle in urban centers Research findings will be discussed in a follow-up workshop to take place in Santiago de Chile, during the second week of January 2005.

PATRICIA R OMERO L ANKAO is a member of the Mexican National Committee; she is also SC member of the Global Carbon Project (GCP) and Professor of Sociology at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico; prlankao@correo.xoc.uam.mx

„DEVELOPING HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT SYMBIOTIC CITIES“, NAGOYA (JAPAN), JUNE 2004 On 25th of June 2004, the Nagoya Sangyo University (NSU) and the Japan Association on Human and Environment Symbiosis (JAHES) organized a joint International Symposium on „Developing Human-Environment Symbiotic Cities“ in Nagoya (Japan). The symposium was cosponsored by the Human Dimensions Programme Special Committee of the Japan Science Council. Its overall goal was to discuss the participation of universities and civil society in developing environmental business and forge by this means partnerships towards sustainable development. After an

opening address by Professor Tatsuo Ito, President of NSU and President of JAHES, several lectures addressed key aspects of the symposium’s main topic. Barbara Göbel (IHDP Executive Director) gave a lecture on „Linking Civil Society with International Cooperation for Protecting the Earth“, in which she emphasized IHDP’s relevance for regional and national research agendas. Professor Yoshinobu Kumata, Chair of the HDP Special Committee of Japan Social Science Council, presented in his lecture opportunities for a dialogue on civil society collaboration.

„CITIZENS PARTICIPATION AND PARTNERSHIPS FOR RISK COMMUNICATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITIES“, CHIBA (JAPAN), JUNE 2004 At Chiba University of Commerce, Chiba (Japan) an Experts’ Workshop and Open Forum on „Citizens Participation and Partnerships for Risk Communication in Environmental Activities“ was organized on 26th of June 2004 by Professor Yoshinobu Kumata, Chair of the HDP Special

Committee of Japan Social Science Council. Two other members of the National Committee, Sachihiko Harashina and Youshiro Higano, participated. Main goal of the Experts’ Workshop was to analyse perspectives from risk communication to policy design. The overall theme of the Open IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 15

National Committees REGIONAL NET WORKING

Forum on community-based informatics for environment and public services was the importance of risk communication as a tool for public choice to facilitate informed consent. Yoshinobu Kumata gave a presentation on „Risk communication to facilitate public choices“. It was followed by a

lecture from Barbara Göbel (IHDP Executive Director) on „International Cooperation for Human Dimensions Research“, in which she addressed the connectivity between the global and the local dimensions of environmental change.

REGIONAL NETWORKING ON THE RISE Brazil: The Brazilian National Committee (Daniel Hogan, HOGAN @ REITORIA . UNICAMP. BR ), which was reorganized in 2004, will host a national workshop entitled „Global Environmental Change: A New Scientific Agenda in the Brazilian Context“ to take place 21-22 October 2004 in the Campinas region. This workshop will have the objective to define a workplan for the National Committee for the next four years, identifying key GEC issues which most affect Brazil and in which social science competence exists and fruitful collaboration with natural sciences is possible.

Chile: IHDP will co-sponsor the 3rd RUPSUR (Southern Pacific University Network) Meeting „Biophysical and Socioeconomic Impacts of ENSO on Marine and Terrestrial Ecosystems“ to take place in Santiago de Chile from 11-12 November 2004. Alejandro Leon ( ALEON - A @ UCHILE . CL ), IHDP National Contact Point for Chile, is a member of the organizing committee and IHDP will be particularly active in discussions on climate and society (vulnerability, mitigation, socio-cultural and economic aspects).

Germany: The German National Committee on Global Change Research (Chair, Wolfram Mauser, NKGCF @ IGGF. GEO - UNI MUENCHEN . DE ) is organizing a national conference from 2224 November 2004 in Berlin to discuss new developments in the field of Global Change Research and Germany’s future research strategy.

Norway: The Research Council of Norway, also the Global Change Committee for the ESS-P (Nina Gornitzka NG @ FORSKN INGSRADET. NO ), is hosting a national workshop on Global Change Research to be held on 4 November 2004 in Oslo.

The purpose of the workshop will be to present and inform about the global change programmes to the Norwegian Global Change Research community.

Russia: The Russian National Contact Point for IHDP, Maria Ananicheva ( CEST @ ONLINE . RU ) will host a national workshop on Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change to take place in mid-November 2004 in Moscow.

This workshop will have the goal to increase IHDP visibility in the region and start to bring together communities working on human dimensions of global change.

South Africa: The IHDP and the National Research Foundation in Southern Africa (NRF), together with the IHDP National Contact Point for South Africa (Hector Chikoore, HEC TORCHIKO ORE @ YAHO O . COM ) are co-organizing a regional Workshop on Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research for Southern Africa to identify leading research issues and promote collaboration, partnerships and communication of IHDP-related research in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The workshop takes place from 13-15 September 2004 in Richards Bay, South Africa.

Human Security and Climate Change An International Workshop Oslo, Norway, 21 – 23 June 2005 Call for Papers – Deadline extended to 1 October!

– How does climate change affect vulnerability, and hence human security?

– What role does climate change play in the array of factors affecting human security?

– How might climate change directly or indirectly influence conflict and cooperation?

The workshop is organized by the Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), in collaboration with the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) and the Study of Civil War (CSCW) at the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo.

For more information contact humsec-secretariat@cicero.uio.no or go to www.ihdp.org

16 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004

Core Research Projects

I N D U S T R I A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

HET IS ZOVER Pier Vellinga Steps down as a Chair of the IT SSC, Frans Berkhout takes over! ➤ Yes, as the Dutch say: het is zover. On 1 July 2004, after almost 10 years of successfully chairing the Industrial Transformation project, Pier Vellinga stepped down from this position.

This event makes one look back at the history of the IT initiative. The first talks about initiaPier Vellinga tion of the Industrial Transformation project started back in 1995. „… In 1996 the IHDP Scientific Committee requested Pier Vellinga, then a Director of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to initiate and co-ordinate preparations for the development of a Science Plan on Industrial Transformation. A Scoping Report and a Tentative Framework of the Research Agenda on Industrial Transformation were prepared and provided the basis for the establishment of a Scientific Planning Committee (SPC) in February 1998.

Throughout 1998, the Industrial Transformation SPC organized eight regional workshops for researchers interested in Industrial Transformation. The results of the eight workshops, the background documents and additional discussions by the SPC contributed to the development of a Draft Science Plan that was discussed in depth at the Open Science Meeting, held in Amsterdam at the end of February 1999.

Subsequently, on the basis of input and comments received, the draft has been significantly adjusted and finally published at the end of 1999 …“ (excerpt from the preface to the IT Science Plan by E. Ehlers and J. Jaeger).

Together with the publication of this document, the Scientific Planning Committee (SPC) completed the planning phase of the project. In the course of 2000 a new committee, the IT Scientific Steering Committee (SSC), was appointed in order to guide the implementation of the IT Science Plan. In the same year the Science Plan was distributed to over 1500 researchers world-wide and the IT research framework was promoted at a number of meetings, workshops, conferences, seminars and Ph.D. courses. The following years have been marked by the efforts on the part of the chair, the SSC members, the IPO and members of the IT network to build an intellectual community concerned with issues of sustainability and transformation. IT has tried to provide a platform for exchange of knowledge and experience in the area of IT, and for constructive dialogue between researchers across different fields, through peer reviews, workshops, conferences, common publications.

For a long time, Industrial Transformation seemed a complex and quite abstract concept especially for policy makers and funding agencies. The preferred nationally-oriented sectoral approach was a tough competitor for international interdisciplinary and integrated projects. Although science as a whole recognized the importance of studying structural changes in society from a broad and integrating perspective,

researchers did not have many opportunities to fund projects. It took much persuasion and debate for space to be opened-up in the national and international programmes to global environmental change (GEC) research. We believe IHDP, with its core projects (IDGEC, IT, LUCC, GECHS) and the three other global change programmes (IGBP, WCRP and Diversitas) have made important contributions.

The IPO and the IHDP Secretariat would like to thank and acknowledge the commitment of Pier Vellinga to the long and challenging process of creating the IT project. His vision and determination have been essential in its inception and establishment. We wish him success in fulfilling his position as dean of the Faculty of Life and Earth Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam!

With great enthusiasm we welcome Frans Berkhout, who is now a director of the Science and Technology Policy Research Department at University of Sussex in UK, but from 1 September 2004 will become director of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) in Amsterdam. IVM hosts the IT International Project Office (IPO). We wish him success in a new phase of the IT project, when a revision of the IT research agenda is planned. Anna Wieczorek will continue in her position as Executive Officer in the IPO. With great pleasure we also welcome a new member of the IT Scientific Steering Committee – Edward Parson, professor of law and an associate professor of natural resources and environment at the University of Michigan, USA, and we look forward to a fruitful Frans Berkhout cooperation.

A NNA J. W IECZOREK is Executive Officer of the Industrial Transformation Project (IT) at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Anna.J.Wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl; http://www.vu.nl/IVM/research/ihdp-it/ ➤ The IHDP UPDATE newsletter features the activities of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change and its research community.

ISSN 1727-155X UPDATE is published by the IHDP Secretariat Walter-Flex-Strasse 3 53113 Bonn, Germany.

EDITOR: Ula Löw, IHDP; loew.ihdp@uni-bonn.de LAYOUT AND PRINT: Köllen Druck+Verlag GmbH, Bonn+Berlin, Germany UPDATE is published four times per year. Sections of UPDATE may be reproduced with acknowledgement to IHDP. Please send a copy of any reproduced material to the IHDP Secretariat.

The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the position of IHDP or its sponsoring organizations

IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 17

In Brief NEWS

IN BRIEF New IHDP Core Project ➤➤➤ Land-ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) is co-sponsored by IGBP and IHDP’s newest research project. It studies the world’s coastal zones as heterogeneous, relatively small but highly productive, dynamic and sensitive systems that provide a significant proportion of the life support systems of most societies. The Earth’s coastal zones are one of the study areas where changes in various components of the Earth system affecting and altering their role in global cycles have been observed. It has become clear that irrespective of the improved knowledge on coastal system metabolism, the understanding of the complex interactions between society and environment in coastal zones under global environmental pressures is still limited. Consequently, the „new“ LOICZ aims to provide an integrated framework to address the primary issues of sustainable human use of coastal systems with vulnerability of coasts and risks for human uses playing a key role.

For more information, see the project’s website at www.loicz.org.

New Members to the Scientific Committee ➤➤➤ Following a suggestion made by the IHDP Scientific Committee, the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) nominated three new SC members to the IHDP. Geoffrey Dabelko (whose interview is featured in this UPDATE on page 13), Sander van der Leeuw and Hebe Vessuri, three internationally renowned social scientists, started their terms as members of the IHDP Scientific Committee as of 1st June 2004.

William Clark, P.S. Ramakrishnan and Mohammed Salih rotated off the SC end of 2003. We would like to thank them for their commitment to the IHDP and wish them all the best!

Geoffrey D. Dabelko’s expertise lies in the field of international security and environmental conflicts, as well as in the science-policy dialogue. He is director of the Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP), a nonpartisan policy forum on environment, population, and security issues located in Washington, D.C., USA, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Furthermore, Geoffrey Dabelko has been a visiting Researcher at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway. He has held prior positions at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Foreign Policy Magazine. He is co-editor with Ken Conca of Green Planet Blues: Environmental Politics from Stockholm to Johannesburg (3rd ed., January 2004) and Environmental Peacemaking (2002).

Sander van der Leeuw, who is Professor of Archaeology and Chair of the Department of Archaeology at the Arizona State University in Tempe, USA, has a strong working experience with different social and natural science traditions. He has published widely on archaeological theory, historical ecology 18 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004

and European prehistory. He has been coordinating the ARCHAEOMEDES Project of the European Union since 1992 and published a book on its research: The ARCHAEOMEDES Project – Understanding the natural and anthropogenic causes of land degra- Sander van der Leeuw dation and desertification in the Mediterranean (Office for Official Publications of the European Union, Luxemburg, 1998).

He is also Professor of Archaeology at the Institut Universitaire de France and has been Deputy Director of the Social Sciences Division of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he still heads the ‘Environmental Archaeology’ Research team. Both institutions are situated in Paris, France.

Hebe Vessuri is a Senior Researcher and Head of the Department of Science Studies at the Instituto Venzolano de Investigaciones Científicas (Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research) in Caracas, Venezuela. She is a pioneer sociologist of science in Latin America, Hebe Vessuri and her special fields of interest are environmental anthropology and knowledge systems. Currently, Hebe Vessuri is Vice President of the Global Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge, as well as Chair of its Latin American Committee. She is also a member of the Experts Committee of the ALFA II Program at the European Union, Brussels, Belgium.

She is a former Vice President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) and has also been a member of the Board of the United Nations University Institute of New Technologies in Maastricht, The Netherlands. She has published widely, is part of the editorial board of a number of scientific journals, namely ‘Social Studies of Science’, and has co-edited the 2001 special issue ‘Science and its Cultures’ of the International Social Science Journal.

Research in response to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ➤➤➤ During the 16th session of the SBSTA (Subsidiary

Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) in Bonn (Germany), 18-22 June 2004, a side-event on „Research in response to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“ was organized by the UNFCCC Secretariat. It was chaired by Pier Vellinga, who has been Chair of the IT project for the past four years. Key research recommendations of the Third Assessment Report

Calendar/Publications NEW BOOKS

IN BRIEF of the IPCC were presented by representatives from the European Community, Japan, China and the United States.

Following these national responses to the IPCC process, international programmes and bodies such as IHDP, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNUEHS) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) presented their activities. IHDP Executive Director Barbara Göbel gave an update on the current and forthcoming research and capacity building activities of IHDP, drawing attention to IHDP’s key relevance to the general discussion on mitigation and adaptation to climate change. In the final discussion the role of human dimensions research for the whole IPCC process was emphasized.

NEW BOOK The Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Humans, Climate and the Natural World

By Field, C.B. and Raupach, M.R. (Eds.) The centerpiece of this book is the concept that the carbon cycle, climate, and humans work together as a single system. This systems-level approach focuses the science on a number of issues that are almost certain to be important in the future.

Some of these concern the driving forces of climate change and the ways that carbon-climate-human interactions modulate the sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gas emissions. Others concern opportunities for and constraints on managing greenhouse gas emissions and the carbon cycle.

The key messages from this assessment focus on four main themes: (1) inertia and the consequence of entrained processes in the carbon, climate, and human systems, (2) unaccounted vulnerabilities, especially the prospects for large releases of carbon in a warming climate, (3) the need for a common framework for assessing natural and managed aspects of the carbon cycle, and (4) a serious gap between reasonable expectations for future technologies and the requirements for carbon-free energy. Three of these cut across all aspects of the carbon-climatehuman system, while the fourth concerns the challenge of developing the energy system of the future.

Island Press, 2004, 526 pp.; ISBN: 1559635274; price: US$ 31.50 hardcover

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics (INEA) Journal seeks members for Scientific Advisory Board Submit C.V. to Editor-in-Chief, Joyeeta Gupta: joyeeta.gupta@ivm.vu.nl

MEETING CALENDAR ➤➤➤ 27 September – 8 October – Mexico City, Mexico IAI/IHDP/INES Institute on Urbanization and Global Environmental Change www.institutes.iai.int/2004UGEC.htm ➤➤➤ 29 September – 1 October – Venice, Italy IFAC Workshop: Modelling and Control for Participatory Planning and Managing Water Systems www.elet.polimi.it/IFAC_TC_Environment/Venice2004/ ➤➤➤ 4–8 October – Yucatán, Mexico Coastfish Conference: Coastal Fisheries in Latin America and the Caribbean www.mda.cinvestav.mx/eventos/Coastfish/inicio.htm ➤➤➤ 6–9 October – Wengen, Switzerland 10th Wengen Workshop on Global Change Research www.unifr.ch/geoscience/geographie/EVENTS/ Wengen/04/Wengen2004.html ➤➤➤ 13–16 October – Stanford, CA, USA The Fourth Annual International Sustainability Days Conference http://environment.stanford.edu/conference/index.html ➤➤➤ 24 October – 6 November – Nicoya, Costa Rica IHDP-IAI 2004 Global Environmental Change Institute on Globalization and Food Systems. Scientific Workshop and Sience-Policy Forum. www.ihdp.org ➤➤➤ 24–27 October – Ottawa, Canada 11th Canadian Conference on International Health The Politics of Health: Whose Reality Counts? www.csih.org/what/conferences2004.html ➤➤➤ 28–30 October – Amsterdam, The Netherlands Integrated Assessment of the Land System: The Future of Land Use; International Workshop www.ihdp.org ➤➤➤ 4–5 November – Fano, Italy Governing Sustainable Cities www.iclei-europe.org ➤➤➤ 10–12 November – Tokyo, Japan International Conference on Science and Technology for Sustainability – Asian Megacities and Global Sustainability www.scj.go.jp/ja/info/syusai/ess2003/index.html ➤➤➤ 11–12 November – Santiago de Chile, Chile RUPSUR Meeting on Biophysical and Socio-Economic Impacts of ENSO (El Niño – Southern Oscillation) on Marine and Terrestrial Ecosystems www.udep.edu.pe/rupsur ➤➤➤ 18–19 November – Bonn, Germany Beyond Multiple Regression – Interactive Drivers in Coupled Human-Natural Systems Joint IDGEC-LUCC Workshop; www.ihdp.org ➤➤➤ 3–4 December – Berlin, Germany Greening of Policies – Interlinkages and Policy Integration: Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change www.fu-berlin.de/ffu/akumwelt/bc2004/index.htm IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004 | 19

Addresses

CONTACT ADDRESSES IHDP SECRETARIAT • IHDP Secretariat: Barbara Göbel, Executive Director Walter-Flex-Strasse 3 53113 Bonn, Germany Phone: +49-228-739050 Fax: +49-228-739054 ihdp@uni-bonn.de www.ihdp.org

IHDP CORE PROJECTS GECHS • Global Environmental Change and Human Security ➤

c/o Maureen Woodrow Executive Officer GECHS International Project Office Dept. of Geography & Environmental Studies, Carleton University 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada gechs@carleton.ca www.gechs.org

IDGEC • Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change ➤

c/o Heike Schröder, Executive Officer IDGEC International Project Office 4526 Bren Hall, Bren School of Env. Science and Management University of California at Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5131, USA schroeder@bren.ucsb.edu IDGEC@bren.ucsb.edu http://fiesta.bren.edu/~idgec/ ➤ IT • Industrial Transformation

c/o Anna J. Wieczorek, Executive Officer IT International Project Office Institute of Environmental Studies De Boelelaan 1087 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands Anna.J.Wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl http://130.37.129.100/ivm/research/ ihdp-it/index.html

LOICZ • Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone ➤

c/o Hartwig Kremer and Martin Le Tissier LOICZ International Project Office P. O. Box 59, 1790 AB, Den Burg, Texel, Netherlands loicz@nioz.nl www.loicz.org

LUCC • Land-Use and Land-Cover Change ➤

c/o Helmut Geist, Executive Officer LUCC International Project Office

University of Louvain Place L. Pasteur 3 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium lucc.ipo@geog.ucl.ac.be www.geo.ucl.ac.be/LUCC

JOINT PROJECTS ➤

GECAFS

• Global Environmental Change and Food Systems c/o John Ingram, Executive Officer GECAFS International Project Office, NERC-Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford OX 10 8BB, UK jsii@ceh.ac.uk www.gecafs.org

GCP • Global Carbon Project ➤

c/o Pep Canadell Executive Officer GCP International Project Office, CSIRO Canberra, Australia Pep.Canadell@csiro.au www.globalcarbonproject.org ➤ GWSP • Global Water Systems Project

c/o Eric Craswell, Executive Officer International Project Office GWSP Center for Development Research Walter-Flex-Str. 3 53113 Bonn, Germany Eric.Craswell@uni-bonn.de

IHDP SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE (SC) ➤ Chair • Coleen Heather Vogel

Dept. of Geography & Env. Studies University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa vogelc@geoarc.wits.ac.za ➤ Vice Chair • Roberto Sánchez-Rodríguez

UC-Mexus, University of California Riverside, CA, USA roberto.sanchez-rodriguez@ucr.edu

• Gilberto C. Gallopin Economic Commission for Latin America & the Caribbean (ECLAC) Santiago, Chile ggallopin@eclac.cl

• Carlo J. Jaeger Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) Potsdam, Germany carlo.jaeger@pik-potsdam.de

• Tatiana Kluvankova-Oravska Institute for Forecasting Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, Slovak Republic tatiana@progeko.savba.sk

• Sander van der Leeuw Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA Arizona State University, USA vanderle@asu.edu

• Elinor Ostrom Center for the Study of Institutions, Population & Environmental Change Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA ostrom@indiana.edu

• Xizhe Peng Institute of Population Research Fudan University Shanghai, P.R. China xzpeng@fudan.edu.cn

• Hebe Vessuri Department of Science Studies, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas, Caracas, Venezuela hvessuri@ivic.ve

• Paul L.G. Vlek Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany p.vlek@uni-bonn.de

EX OFFICIO MEMBERS IHDP SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP) Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., USA dabelkog@wwic.si.edu

Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada gmcbean@fes.engga.uwo.ca

• Carl Folke

• Lourdes Arizpe

Centre for Research on Natural Resources and the Environment (CNM) CNM, Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden calle@system.ecology.su.se

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) Cuernavaca, Mexico larzipe@correo.crim.unam.mx

20 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 3/2004

École Normale Superieure Laboratoire d'Écologie Paris, France loreau@ens.fr

IGBP • Guy Brasseur ➤

Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology Hamburg, Germany brasseur@dkrz.de

START (alternating) • Sulochana Gadgil ➤

Indian Institute of Science & Oceanic Sciences Bangalore, India sulo@caos.iisc.ernet.in

• Graeme I. Pearman CSIRO Atmospheric Research Aspendale, Australia graeme.pearman@dar.csiro.au ➤ WCRP • Peter Lemke

Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research Bremerhaven, Germany plemke@awi-bremerhaven.de

GECHS • Michael Brklacich ➤

Department of Geography and Environmental Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Canada mbrklac@ccs.carleton.ca ➤ IDGEC • Oran R. Young

Bren School of Environmental Science and Management University of California at Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA, USA young@bren.ucsb.edu

IT • Frans Berkhout ➤

ICSU • Gordon McBean

➤

• Geoffrey Dabelko

➤ DIVERSITAS • Michel Loreau

➤

ISSC

Director, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands Frans.Berkhout@ivm.vu.nl

LUCC • Eric Lambin ➤

Dept. of Geography University of Louvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium lambin@geog.ucl.ac.be