ECSP Report 6
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Features Environmental Change & Security Project REPORT ISSUE NO. 6 • THE WOODROW WILSON CENTER • SUMMER 2000 TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURES X5 Human Population and Environmental Stresses in the Twenty-first Century Richard E. Benedick 19 Oiling the Friction: Environmental Conflict Management in the Niger Delta, Nigeria Okechukwu Ibeanu SPECIAL REPORTS 33 The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States National Intelligence Council 66 Exploring Capacity for Integration: University of Michigan Population-Environment Fellows Programs Impact Assessment Project Denise Caudill COMMENTARY 77 Environment, Population, and Conflict Geoffrey D. Dabelko Ted Gaulin Richard A. Matthew Tom Deligiannis Thomas F. Homer-Dixon Daniel M. Schwartz 107 Trade and the Environment Martin Albrow Andrea Durbin Kent Hughes Stephen Clarkson Mikhail Gorbachev Anju Sharma William M. Daley Tamar Gutner Stacy D. VanDeveer OFFICIAL STATEMENTS AND DOCUMENTS 119 William J. Clinton; Albert Gore, Jr.; Madeleine K. Albright; David B. Sandalow; Benjamin A. Gilman; George W. Bush; Kofi Annan; Mark Malloch Brown; Klaus Töpfer; Nafis Sadik; Gro Harlem Brundtland ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE & SECURITY PROJECT REPORT, ISSUE 6 (SUMMER 2000) 1 Features 132 NEW PUBLICATIONS Environmental Change, Adaptation, and Security 132 Ecology, Politics, and Violent Conflict 135 Hydropolitics in the Third World: Conflict and Cooperation in International River Basins 136 Violence Through Environmental Discrimination: Causes, Rwanda Arena, and Conflict Model 139 The Sustainability Challenge for Southern Africa 140 Nature’s Place: Human Population and the Future of Biological Diversity 142 Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle 143 Promoting Reproductive Health: Investing in Health and Development 144 Population and the World Bank: Adapting to Change 145 Coastal Waters of the World: Trends, Threats, and Strategies 146 Life Out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World 147 149 THE WILSON CENTER’S ECSP MEETINGS Preserving the Atmosphere as a Global Commons 149 Water: Conflict or Cooperation & Food Security in a Changing World 156 West Africa: A Briefing on Food Security, Environment, and Population Issues 158 Building Partnerships to Achieve Food Security: An NGO Consultation 160 United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) Environmental Security Workshop 162 World Population Beyond Six Billion 163 The GLASS Model: Assessing Environmental Threats to Food and Water Security in Russia 164 Population Dynamics, Migration, and the Future of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve 166 USAID-WHO Collaboration for Health in the Millennium 168 The Future of Environmental Security in European Institutions 169 Forest Futures: Population, Consumption, and Wood Resources 171 Trade and the Environment: Finding Common Ground 173 Population Growth, Environmental Degradation, and State-Sponsored Violence: The Case of Kenya, 1991-93 175 Water and Population Dynamics: Case Studies and Policy Implications 177 Oiling the Friction: Environmental Conflict Management in the Niger Delta, Nigeria 179 The Promises and Pitfalls of Environmental Peacemaking in the Aral Sea 182 Environmental Cooperation for Regional Peace and Security in Southern Africa 183 ISA Workshop on Environment, Population, and Conflict Research 184 Land, Water, People, and Conflict 185 Integrating Population and Environment: Current Practices, Future Potential 187 U.S. Central Command Workshop on Environmental Security 189 “Environmental Degradation and Migration” and “Sustainable Development: A Southern Perspective,” a two-part meeting in the AVISO Policy Briefing Series 192 The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States 194 One Planet, Two Hemispheres: Green Politics from an Indian Perspective 196 Migration, Environmental Change and Security: A Great Lakes Simulation 198 Nature’s Place: Human Population and the Future of Biological Diversity 200 202 UPDATE Academic Programs; Foundations; Nongovernmental Organizations; Governmental Activities; and Intergovernmental Activities 232 BIBLIOGRAPHIC GUIDE TO THE LITERATURE 2 ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE & SECURITY PROJECT REPORT, ISSUE 6 (SUMMER 2000) Features FEATURES Human Population and Environmental Stresses in the Twenty-first Century by Richard E. Benedick Abstract: Human populations have put pressure on their natural surroundings throughout history. Yet the world is now facing truly global environmental challenges and rapid population growth in the final half of the twentieth century is a critical component to understanding these phenomena. In his article, Ambassador Richard Benedick examines a host of population dynamics and their complex interlinkages with three representative environmental issue areas: forests, freshwater resources, and climate change. These connections raise the impor- tance of meeting the commitments made at the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development. Benedick maintains that investments in measures to slow the rate of population growth-and thereby to reach a stable population earlier, and at lower levels, than under current trends-would significantly reinforce efforts to address the environmental challenges of the century ahead, and considerably lower the cost of such efforts. INTRODUCTION: PEOPLE AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT hen historians in the far distant future look back upon the tumultuous twentieth century, they will likely judge the most outstanding feature to be the extraordinary increase in human numbers that has occurred W during this relatively short time period. It took the entire history of humanity—tens of thousands of years—for the world’s population to reach one billion, which is now estimated to have occurred around 1804. It was more than a century later that the second billion was reached. But, it took only twelve years—from 1987 to 1999—for the most recent billion, the sixth, to be added. The world has never seen anything like the steep popula- tion growth of the twentieth century, with most of it concentrated during the last fifty years. That human populations can exert strains upon their natural surrounding is nothing new. However, from the dawn of history until about thirty years ago, the impacts of human activities were primarily localized. Early regional civilizations—Mesopotamia in the Near East, Mohenjo Daro in Southwest Asia, the Mayans of Central America, and possibly the Anasazi in the southwest of what is now the United States—collapsed due to a likely combination Ambassador Benedick, formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, was responsible for population and environmental policies. He was chief U.S. negotiator for the historic 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, and author of Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet (Harvard University Press, revised edition 1998). Currently, he is Deputy Director at Battelle Washington Operations, Visiting Fellow at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, and President of the National Council for Science and the Environment. This article reprinted with permission from Rolf Kreibich and Udo E. Simonis, eds. Globaler Wandel-Global Change: Ursachenkomplexe und Lösungsansätze. [Global Transformation-Global Change: Causal Structures, Indicative Solutions] Berlin: Verlag, 2000. ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE & SECURITY PROJECT REPORT, ISSUE 6 (SUMMER 2000) 5 Features of overpopulation and scarcity or depletion of arable extent already upon us, measured and tracked by scien- land and water supply. In some places, archaeologists tists. And, these environmental issues come in an era have found evidence of adverse environmental effects when human numbers are moving rapidly upward into caused by deforestation and by gradual salinization of uncharted territory. irrigated land. The final blow may have been a regional All of these global environmental trends are, in some climate change: a succession of unusual dry years, prob- ways, touched by demographic dynamics: population ably ascribed by local spiritual leaders to angry or size, population growth rates, population densities, and capricious gods. Many centuries before the Aswan High migration of peoples. Some environmental problems are Dam, Herodotus wrote of salinization in the Nile Delta. influenced more directly by population, some less—even Much later, rapid industrialization in Europe and North acknowledging that there are such mediating factors as America was accompanied by severe local pollution of income levels, consumption patterns, technological air and water. structure, and economic and political institutions. Be- Environmental stress has thus been a continuing cause of these intervening parameters, it is often difficult factor throughout human history. It is fair to say, how- to establish with scientific precision clear correlations ever, that at the close of the twentieth century, the six between population pressures and environmental deg- billion inhabitants of planet Earth find themselves threat- radation. Nevertheless, it is hard to disagree with the ened by environmental dangers that would have been conclusion of a recent study that “the least likely theory unimaginable to our 1.65 billion forefathers at the be- is that there are no relationships at all.”1 ginning of the century. The industrial, agricultural, and Many scientists are beginning to express concern energy policies that produced enormous improvements about the extent of the planet’s capacity, as reflected in in standards of living during the