Chinese walker

As in much of the world, the current security discourse in Asia and Australasia is dominated by what might be called the “control paradigm”, based on the premise that insecurity can be controlled through military force or balance of power politics and containment. The most obvious global example is the so-called “war on terror”, which aims to “keep the lid” on terrorism, without addressing the root causes.

Such approaches to national, regional and international security are flawed — particularly if not complemented by diplomatic efforts — and are distracting the world`s politicians from developing sustainable solutions to non-traditional threats.

There is an alternative approach, that of “sustainable security”. The central premise of sustainable security is that you cannot control all the consequences of insecurity, but must work to resolve the causes: “fighting the symptoms” will not work, so policies must instead “cure the disease” through an integrated analysis of security threats and a preventative approach to responses.

Sustainable security focuses on the interconnected, long-term drivers of insecurity, including:

* Climate change — loss of infrastructure, resource scarcity and the mass displacement of peoples;

* Competition over resources, including food, water and energy;

* Marginalisation of the majority world — the political, economic and cultural marginalisation of the vast majority of the world`s population.

* Global militarisation — the increased use of military force

Asia is a region in transition, and transition creates uncertainty. The political, economic and societal landscape is shifting and, at the same time, climate change and other long-term emerging threats to security will require regional responses. All of these trends are present in the Asian security dynamic.

The sustainable security analysis makes a distinction between these trends and other security threats (for example, terrorism or organised crime). It promotes a comprehensive, systemic approach, taking into account the interaction of different trends which are generally analysed in isolation by others. It also places particular attention on how the current behaviour of international actors and western governments is contributing to, rather than reducing, insecurity.

Sustainable security takes global justice and equity as the key requirements of any sustainable response, together with progress towards reform of the global systems of trade, aid and debt relief; a rapid move away from carbon-based economies; substantial steps towards nuclear disarmament and the control of biological and chemical weapons; and a shift in defence spending to the non-military elements of security. This links long-term global drivers to the immediate security pre-occupations of ordinary people.

Sustainable security is inherently preventative in that it addresses the likely causes of conflict and instability before the ill-effects are felt. It builds on elements of previous attempts to reframe thinking on security to include the concepts of common, comprehensive, human, just and non-traditional security. Many of these approaches have long been recognised in Asia, though national security policies continue to be dominated by the “control paradigm”.

While there are many immediate security concerns in the region, there are three principal drivers of insecurity over the medium- to long-term: maintaining state integrity, particularly against internal instability; a regional power shift; and environmental and humanitarian disasters. The economic downturn of recent months may aggravate some of these sources of insecurity, since economic growth in Asia has been a major factor in mitigating conflict.

While the United States may remain the ultimate guarantor of security for many for some time, it is undeniable that it is experiencing a relative decline in economic and military power and is heavily bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exact implications of waning US influence in the region are not yet clear, but the shifting power dynamic is itself a potential source of uncertainty and instability.

Among the most serious challenges facing Asia are the numerous environmental and humanitarian disasters to affect the region. In the last few years, there have been three major environmental disasters in Asia: the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunami which devastated costal regions in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand; the catastrophic Cyclone Nargis in Burma in May 2008; and, in the same month, the terrible earthquake and aftershocks that hit Sichuan province in China.

These three disasters alone caused nearly half a million deaths, with massive destruction to property and infrastructure. But, in addition, the region is hit by many smaller tropical storms, earthquakes, landslides and floods every year, each one killing hundreds and displacing many tens of thousands.

Events such as these place massive demands on governments, threatening internal stability and potentially displacing peoples across borders, adding to pressure on neighbouring countries. They are often made worse by inadequate or slow responses, which can turn an environmental disaster into a humanitarian catastrophe. There has already been much comparison of the differing responses of the Chinese and Burmese governments in May 2008. The Chinese authorities were quick to put rescue plans into action and commit 130,000 troops to a massive relief effort. Had the Chinese government response not been so prompt and efficient, many more would have died.

In contrast, the Burmese junta failed to recognise the scale of the emergency, and, at first, refused to accept foreign aid. It is likely that this government failure caused further unnecessary deaths and suffering.

Such disasters may occur more frequently with climate change over the coming decades. The latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that coastal areas will be hit by more frequent tropical storms and increased flooding, particularly the heavily populated megadelta regions in south, east and south-east Asia. They are also predicting a shift in rainfall patterns and a decrease in freshwater availability in most of Asia (particularly for those states dependent on Himalayan glacier melt water).

In addition, serious food and water security problems can be expected in Australia and New Zealand within the next twenty years. With Tuvalu and other Pacific islands set to disappear under rising sea levels and Bangladesh likely to lose a third of its land mass to flooding, perhaps the biggest problem for the region will be managing huge numbers of environmental refugees. New Zealand has agreed to accept the Tuvaluan population once the island becomes uninhabitable, but India has accelerated the building of a 2,500-mile [4,000-kilometre] security fence along its border with Bangladesh. The problem of environmental refugees will hit Asia hard and regional responses should be developed with some urgency.

Many of the drivers of insecurity outlined above can be addressed and mechanisms put in place to resolve the long-term causes, but there are impediments. These include the regional focus on sovereignty, the lack of inclusive and effective regional security architecture and the absence of a powerful, neutral country to take the lead.

Many of the post-colonial countries in the region are understandably reluctant to compromise their own sovereignty in any way, even if this creates difficulties in addressing pan-regional issues. Often national security takes precedence over regional stability and global security. Furthermore, there are still many unresolved historical grievances that make cooperation difficult and feed unhelpful political rhetoric.

Co-operation is made more difficult by the lack of an inclusive regional security architecture with the strength to implement a new security agenda. Asian integration and intra-regional cooperation would surely help to address the long-term drivers of insecurity in the region. The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) does encourage such regional communication and has been successful in many respects, but its makeup is perhaps too localised to have any wider impact (despite the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Security Community and ASEAN+3 processes). This lack of effective security architecture means that policy responses will continue to be formed at national level, even though regional cooperation is vital to address these sustainably.

If the blockages to change were addressed, mechanisms could be developed to prevent the growth of insecurity and conflict in the longer term. Specific initiatives could include:

*Climate change: Countries in the region that are not signatories to the Kyoto Protocol need to recognise that they too have a responsibility to stabilise then cut their greenhouse gas emissions and accept that economic development cannot come at the expense of social and environmental stability. The United States and other developed countries must negotiate a fair post-Kyoto agreement that includes radically reducing their own emissions.

* Regional architecture: International institutions such as the United Nations and European Union, and other influential players both within and outside the region, should support the development of a strong, inclusive regional security architecture.

*Power shift: President Barack Obama`s new administration should accept the rise of China and move from balance-of-power politics to policies of engagement and trust-building, particularly in the areas of trade, environmental protection and regional security.

*Taking the initiative: Given the lack of one powerful, respected and neutral country, Asian civil society organisations might draw together an independent, high-level panel of respected individuals, including security experts and elder statesmen, to promote a sustainable security framework for Asia and Australasia, with a particular focus on preventative diplomacy and educating publics and governments on the seriousness of the threats the region faces.

Over the next five to ten years, a radical shift towards sustainable approaches to security will be hugely important. If there is no change in thinking, security policies will continue to be based on the mistaken assumption that environmental problems can be marginalised. A change in thinking could lead to an era of substantial progress in developing a socially just and environmentally sustainable regional order for Asia and Australasia.

Chris Abbott is the deputy director of Oxford Research Group (ORG).

Sophie Marsden is an ORG research assistant.

This article is an edited version of the report Tigers and Dragons: Sustainable Security in Asia and Australasia, published by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) and the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), following a consultation that ORG and SIIA held in Singapore in September 2008.

Homepage photo by uncultured

Half of the world’s population could face severe food shortages by the end of the century as rising temperatures take their toll on farmers’ crops, scientists have warned.

Harvests of staple food crops such as rice and maize could fall by between 20% and 40% as a result of higher temperatures during the growing season in the tropics and subtropics. Warmer temperatures in those zones also are expected to increase the risk of drought, further reducing crop losses, according to a new study.

The worst of the food shortages are expected to hit the poor, densely inhabited regions of the equatorial belt, where demand for food already is soaring because of a rapid growth in population.

A study published in the American journal Science found there was a 90% chance that by the end of this century, the coolest temperatures in the tropics during the crop-growing season would exceed the hottest temperatures recorded between 1900 and 2006.

More temperate regions such as Europe could expect to see previous record temperatures become the norm by 2100.

“The stress on global food production from temperatures alone is going to be huge, and that doesn’t take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures,” said David Battisti, at the University of Washington, who led the study.

Battisti and Rosamond Naylor, at Stanford University in California, combined climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and historical examples of the impact of heat waves on agriculture and found severe food shortages were likely to become more common.

Among the periods they examined was the record heat wave across western Europe in 2003, which killed an estimated 52,000 people and also cut yields of wheat and fodder by a third. In 1972, a prolonged hot summer in south-east Ukraine and south-west Russia saw temperatures rise by between two and four degrees Celsius above the norm, driving down wheat and coarse grain yields for the whole of the then Soviet Union by 13%. The disruption affected the global cereal market for two years.

Naylor, who is director of the food security and the environment programme at Stanford, said the study emphasised the need for countries to invest in adapting to a changing climate. To develop new crops to withstand higher temperatures could take decades, she added.

“When we looked at our historical examples, there were ways to address the problem within a given year,” Naylor said. “People could always turn somewhere else to find food. But in the future there’s not going to be any place to turn unless we rethink our food supplies.”

The tropics and subtropics — which stretch from the southern United States to northern Argentina and southern Brazil, from northern India and southern China to southern Australia, and cover all of Africa — are currently home to three billion people. Future temperature rises are expected to have a greater impact in the tropics because the crops grown there are less resilient to changes in climate.

According to the study, many local populations now live on less than US$2 a day and depend on agriculture. The need for food is due to become more urgent as populations are expected to nearly double by the end of the century.

“When all the signs point in the same direction — and in this case it’s a bad direction — you pretty much know what’s going to happen,” Battisti said. “You’re talking about hundreds of millions of additional people looking for food because they won’t be able to find it where they find it now.”

“You can let it happen and painfully adapt, or you can plan for it. You could also mitigate [climate change] and not let it happen in the first place, but we’re not doing a very good job of that.”

Naylor added: “We have to be rethinking agriculture systems as a whole — not only thinking about new varieties [of crops], but also recognising that many people will just move out of agriculture, and even move from the lands where they live now.”

In many countries, a combination of poor farming practices and deforestation, exacerbated by climate change, may steadily degrade soil fertility, leaving vast areas unsuitable for crops or grazing. In 2007, scientists warned that poor soil fertility meant a global food crisis was likely in the next half-century.

Homepage photo by gbaku

www.guardian.co.uk

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

(Republished with permission from the Worldwatch Institute`s 2009 “State of the World” report, Into a Warming World.)

The world`s small island developing states (SIDS) are often cited as the most vulnerable countries to climate impacts and the first nations on earth to face critical climate-change thresholds. Yet they have contributed least to the growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and so have the least responsibility for the crisis the world now faces. They are least likely to be heard at the negotiating table, as they lack the political weight of the major emitters. As a result, their vulnerability goes unnoticed and their voices go unheard.

They are also least likely to be the beneficiaries of climate funds, most of which get spent on mitigation (particularly energy projects) rather than adaptation. And when action is taken, they are least likely to be involved in the consultations.

The Caribbean states provide a good example of the vulnerability of small islands states. According to the New Economics Foundation (nef), the increased strength of storms and hurricanes and the surge in their destructive forces have affected hundreds of thousands of victims and led to multimillion-dollar damages. In 2004, Grenada, an island considered to be outside the hurricane belt, was devastated when Hurricane Ivan struck, destroying over 90% of the country`s infrastructure and housing stock and causing over US$800 million in damages, the equivalent of 200% of Grenada`s gross domestic product. The increase in frequency and intensity of these storms expected due to climate change could well place further strain on political, social, and economic systems and act as an additional constraint on development in the region.

These islands depend on fragile eco-systems such as coral reefs. Globally, coral reefs provide critical habitat for more than 25% of marine species and contribute more than US$30 billion in annual net economic benefit. Recent studies estimate that a third of the world`s reef-building coral species are facing extinction. Climate change, coastal development, overfishing and pollution are the major threats. A new analysis shows that before 1998, only 13 of the 704 coral species assessed would have been classified as threatened. Now the number in that category is 231.

The Caribbean has the largest proportion of corals in high extinction-risk categories, but reefs in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are also likely to be decimated. Sea level rises, flooding and storm surges are a particular concern for the atoll states in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. If the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prove correct, these island nations will effectively disappear by the end of this century.

SIDS also suffer from a lack of natural resources, often have limited freshwater supplies, and are constrained by poor transport and communication infrastructure. This means they are particularly susceptible to even small changes in the global climate. Furthermore, the chronic lack of adaptive capacity, including financial, technical and institutional resources, means they are ill prepared to deal with these multiple threats.

Today small island states are striving to achieve long-term sustainable development and implement the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Climate change impacts are already undermining their efforts, however.

The first MDG%26mdash;to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger%26mdash;is being affected by changing patterns of food production and the gradual undermining of livelihoods.

Many of these islands depend heavily on tourism and natural resources for their economic livelihood. They also depend on local staples and species for the bulk of their food. Threats to biodiversity and coral reef systems will reduce these livelihood assets, undermine economic performance and threaten regional food security.

The second goal%26mdash;to achieve universal primary education%26mdash;is being compromised by extreme weather events that create a cycle of destruction and reconstruction and that reduce the amount of investment flowing into long-term development. Tropical cyclones destroy schools and hospitals, damage public utilities and infrastructure (including energy, water and transport connections), and so reduce access to education, health care and other public services. Loss of national revenue from associated impacts may also undermine public spending on education.

The third MDG%26mdash;to promote gender equality and empower women%26mdash;is jeopardised, as women living in poverty are often the most threatened by the dangers that stem from climate change. Cultural norms can mean that women do not have the appropriate skill sets to deal with myriad impacts. The statistics indicating fatalities from extreme weather events are revealing in this regard. Moreover, as resources become scarcer, women and young girls spend more time collecting food and water and less time caring for their health and education.

Three of the MDGs deal with health and aim to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and leading health providers are anticipating an increase in waterborne and vector-borne diseases, in diarrhoeal diseases and in malnutrition as a result of associated climate impacts. This could lead to increases in child mortality, a reduction in maternal health and the undermining of nutritional health needed to combat HIV/ AIDS.

In the Maldives, a small-islands nation in the southern Indian Ocean, the human drama of climate change is a daily reality for 300,000 residents. In 1987 the president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, became the first world leader to draw attention to the threat of climate change. In a landmark speech to the United Nations General Assembly, he warned that this would result in the death of his nation and others like it. Twenty years on and the effects of climate change are already evident: storm surges and coastal erosion destroy homes, pose dangers to infrastructure and utilities, and divert limited resources from strategic development.

In the medium term, rising ocean temperatures, coupled with growing acidification, threaten the survival of coral reefs in the Maldives%26mdash;the very lifeblood of the economy. The island`s two principal industries, tourism and fisheries, are entirely dependent upon the reefs. They account for 40% of the national economic output and more than 40% of the jobs. Together, these industries have fueled the sustained and enviable economic development that has enabled the Maldives to grow from being one of the poorest countries in South Asia in the 1970s to the richest country per capita in the region today.

In the long term, it is not economic development but the country`s very survival that is threatened. With most of the islands lying less than one metre above sea level, this generation%26mdash;the most fortunate one to have ever lived on these islands%26mdash;may be the last one to live in the Maldives.

Since some degree of climate change is already inevitable as the effects of current concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to be felt for the next few decades, the government of the Maldives has developed a comprehensive program of domestic adaptation. Work has concentrated on reinforcing vital infrastructure, particularly related to transport and communications. Public services ranging from water supply and electricity generation to the provision of health care and education are being strengthened against climate threats. Flood defenses have been constructed, and measures are being taken to minimise coastal erosion.

Perhaps the most innovative adaptation measure is the development of the “safe island” concept. This initiative is designed to minimise climate vulnerability by resettling communities from smaller islands that are more vulnerable onto larger, better-protected ones. This lets the government concentrate limited resources on protecting the more viable islands. It also allows for public services to be strengthened and economic opportunities to be developed.

Domestic adaptation in the Maldives and throughout other vulnerable societies will involve significant engineering projects and large financial investments. It will also require large-scale capacity-building to strengthen institutional capacity, to enhance knowledge, human and financial resources, and to encourage an awareness-raising programme to prepare people for the inevitable changes.

Adaptation without mitigation will result in little more than a temporary respite, postponing catastrophic climate change to a later date. Urgent and ambitious action must be taken to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Small island states have been active in attempts to find a global consensus on climate action from the very beginning. Indeed, the momentum to create the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol was in part a result of moral and ethical arguments advanced by members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), earning the organisation the title of “Conscience of the Convention.”

AOSIS members are participating actively in the Bali process, which seeks to find an appropriate global climate regime to succeed the Kyoto Protocol`s first commitment period, which expires in 2012. The AOSIS negotiating position for the Bali process is entitled “No Island Left Behind”. It outlines three long-term strategic objectives:

* An ambitious long-term goal for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions should be the organising point for all other processes within the Bali process. This implies deep and aggressive cuts in emissions to levels that keep long-term temperature increases as far below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as possible.

* More funding for adaptation is needed, with priority access given to SIDS on an expedited basis, based on their specific vulnerabilities and lack of capacity.

* SIDS need support and technical assistance to build capacity and gain access to technologies to respond and adapt to climate change across a wide range of socio-economic sectors.

AOSIS favors an expanded and broadened Kyoto Protocol, with clear opportunities for developing countries that may wish to enter into full Kyoto commitments. The overall outcome should use impacts on SIDS as a benchmark for effectiveness and success. Although AOSIS has had a legitimate and important voice in the climate change process, the organisation has often suffered from its own capacity constraints and from division among its members.

Many countries have become frustrated at the lack of urgency and ambition in international negotiations and believe that the time has come to change the dynamic by introducing new approaches to solving the climate crisis. In March 2008, the government of the Maldives, working closely with a number of other island nations and drawing on the support of more than 70 countries, introduced a resolution on climate change and human rights at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. It called on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct an analytical study exploring the interface between human rights and climate change. This groundbreaking and innovative initiative seeks to import the rhetorical, normative and operational force of international human rights law into the climate change discourse.

A rights-based approach to climate change holds a great deal of promise for small island states as they seek to inject urgency and ambition into mitigation policy while simultaneously lobbying for increased financial flows to support mitigation.

First, a rights-based approach could help improve analysis of the human impacts of climate change by linking it to realising more than 50 international human-rights laws, such as the right to life, health and an adequate standard of living.

Second, a rights-based approach replaces policy preferences with legal obligations and turns the communities most vulnerable to climate change from passive observers of climate negotiations into rights holders. This will give voice to the vulnerable and compel the major emitters to act on climate change before the clock runs out on small island states.

Edward Cameron is a Washington-based climate change specialist who has worked extensively with small island states.

Copyright 2009 Worldwatch Institute

(Republished with permission from the Worldwatch Institute`s 2009 “State of the World” report, Into a Warming World.)

SPECIAL OFFER: Chinadialogue readers may buy the book at a 20% discount from Earthscan, using the voucher code CHINA DIALOGUE

Homepage photo by romsrini

(Republished with permission from the Worldwatch Institute`s 2009 “State of the World” report, Into a Warming World)

Given its potential to cause a serious decline in the liveability of different regions around the world, policymakers and others are beginning to identify climate change as a security threat. Although there is no consensus that this drives violent conflict, security concerns arise from its indirect impacts on local institutions in areas challenged by environmental degradation.

Particularly in Europe, climate change is increasingly prominent in national security strategies and military policies, a reflection of the global reach of socioeconomic and political consequences. The fact that traditional security actors are involved in discussions on this issue confirms that state stability and security are no longer confined to the realms of territoriality and weapons-based threats. A broader understanding is needed of the threats to security posed by the direct and indirect impacts of climate change.

The direct impacts of climate change on human welfare are multiple and interlinked. The likely increase in the volatility of the water supply will threaten health and sanitation for the most vulnerable societies, for example. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 1.3 billion people today do not have adequate access to drinking water and 2 billion people lack access to sanitation.

In Africa, anywhere from 75 million to 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change by 2020. Yields from rain-fed agriculture could be cut in half, adversely affecting the food supply and exacerbating malnutrition. Increased temperatures also have a direct effect on the spread of disease, adding to the potential for the disruption of social stability. The IPCC predicts more frequent temperature extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events as well as more intense tropical cyclones, threatening the physical safety of people living in areas with limited capacity to adapt to these changes

The indirect impacts on states and communities are equally important. Migration, the collective impacts on human welfare, and the threat to livelihoods undermine political institutions in vulnerable states. They challenge the maintenance or establishment of political and socioeconomic stability%26mdash;a worrying consequence since cooperative and legitimate governance is considered the key determinant in the peaceful management of scarce resources. The negative effect on governance structures is particularly relevant when an economy depends heavily on its resource base, which is the case in most developing countries.

As centers of production shift to areas that remain viable during climate change, state and local institutions may be incapacitated. Loss of revenue, combined with the direct threats of climate change, bode ill for institutions struggling to ease conflict, regardless of whether the tensions emerge over the division of scarce goods or other social, political or economic divisions. The direct impacts and indirect institutional challenges linked to climate change can reinforce each other as security effects emerge at the state and transnational levels.

Recognising these complex linkages, the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on the national security implications of climate change [in May 2007]. In his opening statement, Senator Richard Lugar acknowledged that “the problem is real and is exacerbated by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. In the long run this could bring drought, famine, disease, and mass migration, all of which could lead to conflict.”

The military board of the CNA Corporation, a nonprofit research organisation for public-policy decision-makers, notes that the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy of the United States should directly address the threat of climate change and prepare the military to respond to the consequences. So far, this advice has not been implemented in security policy planning at the national level: the most recent National Security Policy of the United States did not mention anthropogenic climate change as an issue area of concern. In contrast, climate change is mentioned specifically as a security interest within the first few pages of the European Security Strategy

Researchers remain divided on the direct links between climate change and violent conflict. The models have been based on one of two scenarios: conflict over increasingly scarce resources such as water or arable land or migration as a trigger of conflict. Research in the early 1990s by Thomas Homer-Dixon on the resource scarcity-conflict relationship found limited evidence supporting a connection, but it did identify a causal link when resource competition was combined with other socioeconomic factors, such as poor institutional capacity to govern the resource.

One challenge in examining the relationship across a large number of cases was that both degradation and conflict data were only available at the national level, producing mixed results and masking the incidences of conflict within and between communities. A recent study by Clionadh Raleigh and Henrik Urdal used geo-referenced data to look at the relationship of conflict occurrence to geographical boundaries rather than political ones. Although their analysis provided only moderate support for the effect of demographic and environmental variables on conflict, the authors called for further investigation into the links between physical processes and the political processes of rebellion.

Migration is identified as the second primary climate-induced driver of conflict. In 2007 the [British government`s] Stern Review warned that “by the middle of the century, 200 million more people may become permanently displaced due to rising sea levels, heavier floods and more intense droughts.” Weak states are particularly vulnerable to climate-induced migration, since environmental impacts can be addressed by adaptation and mitigation or by leaving an affected area, but weak institutions are less capable of successfully implementing the former strategies.

Resource competition can emerge when local and resettled populations are forced to share subsistence resources, which can serve to worsen pre-existing ethnic or social tensions. Adrian Martin notes that in communities with resettled populations, “there is a growing concern that scarcity-induced insecurities can contribute to an amplification of the perceived significance of ethnic differences and inequalities, creating the conditions for unproductive conflict. %26hellip; In such cases, perceptions of resource use conflict and perceptions of inequity are mutually reinforcing.”

Nonetheless, some scholars emphasise that conflict in these cases is better explained by the migration of feuding parties or the weak institutional capacity of the receiving community.

What the academic debate is unable to account for, based on historical incidences of conflict, is the threat to security and state stability posed by unprecedented levels of climate change due to human activities. The evidence from several areas indicates that climate change can act as a “risk multiplier”, revealing a potential for unprecedented violent outcomes as climate conditions worsen.

In Sudan, for example, climate change is an additional stress in an area already unable to meet its resource demands. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that “desertification is clearly linked to conflict, as there are strong indications that the hardship caused to pastoralist societies by desertification is one of the causes of the current war in Darfur.”

The pastoralists were forced to move south to find arable land as the boundaries of the desert shifted southward due to declines in precipitation. In northern Darfur, the annual amount of rainfall has dropped by 30% over 80 years. As demand increases, in line with projected growth rates in the human and livestock populations, climate change is expected to aggravate conflicts in an area with an extensive history of local clashes over agricultural and grazing land.

In one case reported by UNEP, the camel-herding Shanabla tribe had migrated southward into the Nuba mountains as a result of northern rangeland degradation, and the Nuba population “expressed concern over the widespread mutilation of trees due to heavy logging by the Shanabla to feed their camels, and warned of %26lsquo;restarting the war` if this did not cease.” While the primary drivers of the Darfur crisis include a range of social, political and economic issues, episodes like this one demonstrate how declining resources can fuel an environment of competition and mistrust in regions plagued by conflict.”

Bangladesh is considered to be among the countries at highest risk from the effects of climate change, as floods, monsoons, tropical cyclones that increase in intensity, and sea level rise from melting glaciers threaten the population, particularly in coastal areas. Abnormally high destruction was already witnessed in the flood of 1998, when two-thirds of the country was inundated. The flood led to more than 1,000 deaths, the loss of 10% of the country`s rice crop, and 30,000 people being left homeless.

Continued climate change may prevent future recovery in Bangladesh, since small islands in the Bay of Bengal are home to approximately four million people, many of whom will need to be relocated as the islands are rendered uninhabitable by rising sea levels. Conflict over territorial borders already plagues the region, and the resettlement of vulnerable populations threatens to add to these conflicts.

The deteriorating socioeconomic and political situation in Bangladesh is already a security concern for other nations: following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Taliban and Islamic extremists relocated to Bangladesh. Increasing extremism threatens to further destabilise the country as environmental stress combines with socioeconomic factors to weaken the government`s ability to cope with multiple sources of instability.

As the Darfur and Bangladesh cases demonstrate, the threat posed to security and stability at the global, state and individual levels from environmental degradation is increasingly evident, despite academic criticism about the lack of precise evidence linking climate change to violent outcomes. Yet academic research suffers from improperly scaled national aggregate data, the challenge of capturing complex causal models, and the difficulty of accounting for the time-lagged effects of climate change. These constraints should not excuse policymakers who fail to address increasingly visible security challenges.

While preparing for the effects of climate change is receiving more attention through strategies of mitigation and adaptation, the developing world remains most a risk from the consequences of temperature rise – and it has the least access to financial, technical and human resources to implement preventative measures. As threats to stability and security are increasingly seen to transcend political borders, climate change presents clear security challenges for industrial nations as well as for the most volatile or vulnerable regions of the world.

Jennifer Wallace is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland.

Copyright 2009 Worldwatch Institute

(Republished with permission from the Worldwatch Institute`s 2009 “State of the World” report, Into a Warming World.)

SPECIAL OFFER: Chinadialogue readers may buy the book at a 20% discount from Earthscan, using the voucher code CHINA DIALOGUE

Homepage photo by uncultured

In a new report released by the Asia Society`s Center on US-China Relations and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a group of more than 50 experts on China, politics and business aim to provide Barack Obama`s new US administration with a policy roadmap for cooperation with China. Common Challenge, Collaborative Response: A Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change was produced by the Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Task Force, co-chaired by John L Thornton, professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and by Steven Chu, prior to his nomination as US secretary of energy. Here, Banning Garrett and Jonathan Adams introduce the report. The full document can be downloaded in both languages here.

Nearly four decades ago, the 1971-72 US-China rapprochement led to the most far-reaching strategic transformation of the international economic, political and security order since the extraordinary set of relationships and institutions that had been established in the aftermath of World War II. Today, the United States and China have a historic opportunity to once again catalyse a strategic transformation, this time to a global low-carbon, sustainable economy to effectively mitigate the chances of catastrophic climate change while increasing global prosperity. American and Chinese leadership is critical since the two countries are the biggest developed and developing countries, the biggest consumers of energy and the biggest producers of greenhouse-gas emissions. If the US and China do not lead this generations-long effort, it is unlikely that it will occur at all – or at least not on a timetable that will achieve the global greenhouse-gas emissions reductions necessary to prevent cataclysmic climate change.

This challenge for the US, China and the rest of the world comes at a time not only of increasing threats from global warming, but also the most severe global economic crisis since the Great Depression. The economic meltdown has an immediate and daily-worsening impact while the climate-change crisis is more invisible and slow-developing – although with potentially more disastrous and long-lasting consequences. Political leaders are under great pressure to focus their attention on halting and reversing the economic death spiral that began with the global financial crisis last autumn. Failure to address global warming as part of the economic recovery effort, however, could greatly increase the long-term costs of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and the impacts of climate change. The planned stimulus packages by the United States and China promise vast increases in government resources and directed investment, which offer great potential – if properly directed – to accelerate transition to a global low-carbon economy while pulling the world out of recession.

To establish their new strategic relationship in the early 1970s, China and the United States overcame more than 20 years of mutual isolation, ideological rivalry, and intense hostility, including fighting a hot war in Korea from 1950 to 1953, a near-conflict over Taiwan in the late 1950s, and a proxy war in Vietnam in the 1960s. While the shared objective of the US-China rapprochement was the containment and strategic isolation of the Soviet Union, the ultimate, long-term effect was to spur the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union and its eastern European empire, thereby ending the Cold War and creating one integrated world economy. The US-China rapprochement also created the international conditions for China`s successful opening to the outside and its economic reform, leading to the extraordinary reemergence of China – and the acceleration of the process of globalisation.

The US-China rapprochement of the early 1970s was based on strategic calculations and decisions by the top leaders in both countries to deal with the common strategic challenge posed by the Soviet Union. These decisions set in motion a process that led to far more massive international change than a reconfiguration of big-power relations to counterbalance rising Soviet power. The decisions at the top in the two countries unleashed a largely bottom-up process that involved daily decisions and actions of hundreds of millions of people in China and around the world, which transformed the global strategic fabric and created the increasingly interconnected, globalised world we have today.

Now, a shared strategic threat is posed by not by an external enemy but by our own efforts to achieve economic development and prosperity. The climate-change threat is more slow-moving and diffuse than the nuclear threat hanging over the Cold War, but the long-term danger to civilization may be no less existential. The response to this new strategic threat must begin like the US-China rapprochement in the 1970s, with initial decisions by the top leadership of the two nations that set in motion a long-term process that would prove to be even more transformative perhaps than initially envisioned. Similarly, key strategic decisions and concerted efforts to establish the necessary conditions for a transformation of the US and Chinese economies could unleash the creativity, resourcefulness, competitiveness and determination of millions of people and businesses to speed the world`s transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy.

A new opportunity has emerged in both countries. US president Barack Obama has stated that mitigating climate change will be a high priority for his administration, which is committed to 80% reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050. His stimulus plan includes commitment of massive resources for building a new clean energy infrastructure, greater efforts to enhance energy efficiency, and new steps to move away from dependence on fossil fuels. Although China is not yet willing to commit to emissions reduction targets, Chinese leaders have a similar perspective on the climate-change threat and the need for transition to a low-carbon economy. They are also planning to devote stimulus resources to energy efficiency, green technologies and other efforts to build a low-carbon energy infrastructure.

It is essential that both the Obama administration and the Chinese leadership engage at the highest levels to begin a new programme of significantly scaled-up cooperation on energy and climate change as soon as possible. Successful US-China cooperation on energy and climate security will substantially enhance prospects for a new international climate agreement as well as bolstering political support in each country for climate change mitigation policies. It will also build mutual trust between the United States and China, strengthen the US-China partnership for tackling a wide range of common strategic challenges in the twenty-first century, and be a constructive force in US-China relations at a point in time when the American public is increasingly sceptical of the benefits of bilateral economic integration.

Banning Garrett is director of the Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate

Jonathan Adams is assistant director of the Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate

Homepage photo from White House Photo Office/ Richard Nixon Library.

President Richard Nixon at the Great Wall, February 24, 1972.

Food prices have fallen significantly from their peak last year, but that doesn`t mean that policymakers can start to heave a sigh of relief. For one thing, prices remain acutely problematic for poor people and poor countries at current levels. Moreover, prices are poised to resume their upwards climb when the world emerges from the downturn. Accordingly, policymakers need to treat the current easing in prices as a window of opportunity in which to agree the comprehensive, long-term collective action needed to ensure food security for all in the twenty-first century.

This is the central argument of The Feeding of the Nine Billion [pdf], a new report on food prices and scarcity issues published by Chatham House. The report argues that long term demand drivers – a population set to reach over 9 billion by mid-century, and the rising affluence and expectations of a growing “global middle class” – are half the story: the World Bank forecasts 50% higher demand for food by 2030.

At the same time, scarcity issues will present increasing challenges on the supply side. Oil prices are set to rise again after the downturn, given that investment in new production has collapsed as oil prices have fallen, setting the stage for a future supply crunch. Food prices are likely to follow them, as biofuels, fertiliser prices and transport costs play their part. Climate change, water scarcity and competition for land will all also push prices upwards over the longer term.

So what needs to be done? Four main areas stand out.

First, we need to get a twenty-first century Green Revolution underway, and fast. Spending on agriculture by aid donors and developing country governments has collapsed over the last 25 years. A similar story applies on research and development. The core task here is to move from today`s unsustainable, input-intensive model of agriculture to one that`s instead knowledge-intensive. Genetically-modified crops could have a part to play, but more ecologically integrated approaches (like integrated soil fertility management) often score higher on equitability and social resilience, given that they diffuse power among farmers rather than concentrating it with seed companies.

Second, we need to scale up social protection systems in developing countries. Today, nearly a billion people don`t have enough to eat. But as can be seen from the fact that another billion are overweight or obese, the problem is not that there is insufficient food to go around. Instead, it is simply that poor people find food prices beyond their reach. Social protection systems, such as food safety nets, unemployment benefits or school feeding programmes, are a better bet for developing countries than price controls or economy-wide subsidies. They target help where it is needed, and they don`t break the bank. As yet, however, only 20% of the world`s people have access to social protection systems.

Third, there is much to do in the trade context. One option for policymakers to consider is a globally coordinated system of food stocks, similar to the International Energy Agency`s system for managing oil reserves in an emergency, which would be a way of building resilience to the kind of volatility seen last summer when panic over food prices set in. They also need to think about ways that trade rules can help manage the risk of export suspensions, given that WTO trade rules were built to resolve disputes over market access, not to ensure security of supply. And it remains imperative for developed economies – above all the EU and US – to reform their farm support policies, which have the effect of structurally undermining developing country agriculture.

Finally, there remains the observation that – as Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi once put it – there is “enough for everyone`s need, but not for everyone`s greed”. The global consumer class has barely begun to recognise that its “western diet”, rich in meat and dairy products, is far more resource-intensive than everyone else`s, whether in terms of grain intensity, water use, energy consumption or greenhouse-gas emissions. That doesn`t mean everyone has to be vegetarian, but consumers do need to face up to the issues of fair shares involved. A similar point applies on biofuels: not all of them are problematic, but grossly inefficient options like corn-based ethanol have no place in a sustainable or equitable agriculture system.

Inevitably, the question arises of whether the credit crunch and global downturn have concentrated policymakers` minds on short term economic concerns. There are worrying signals that aid spending is already starting to fall. On the other hand, it is encouraging that the multilateral system remains strongly focused on the triple crisis of food, energy and climate change (as an official from the International Monetary Fund told me, “the last thing we can afford now is another crisis creeping up on us”).

Another reason for optimism is the astonishing tale of innovation that is the history of agriculture – and the prospects for more of it in the future. At the same time, innovation on its own is clearly not enough. The twentieth-century Green Revolution achieved huge improvements in yield, for instance, but also put huge numbers of agricultural labourers out of work, benefitted larger farmers first and small farmers later (if at all), and largely bypassed Africa. Technical innovation must be matched by political sophistication – and real commitment to social justice.

Above all, there is the hopeful fact that while agriculture has taken 10,000 years to get to where it is today, we could – with hard commitment, but not much sacrifice – reach the more productive, more sustainable, more resilient and more equitable food system that we need within a decade. Storm clouds – economic and otherwise – are gathering. But the prospect of concluding a quest that has lasted the whole duration of human history now lies within reach: ensuring that each of us can live each day of our lives secure in the knowledge that we`ll have enough to eat at the end of it.

Alex Evans is a non-resident fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and editor of the foreign policy blog, www.GlobalDashboard.org.

Homepage photo by antkriz

Since his election victory, US president Barack Obama has made decisive steps to deliver campaign promises on environment and energy. The nomination of the environment team, with Nobel Prize laureate Steven Chu as energy secretary and Harvard professor John Holdren as science advisor, signals his determination to tackle climate change and develop alternative energy sources. In the first week of his presidency, Obama wasted no time in issuing two memoranda: one ordering the Transportation Department to work out rules for automakers to improve fuel efficiency by 2010; and the other allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to let California set tougher tailpipe standards than are applied nationally. Moreover, the US$787 billion stimulus package includes a tax break for renewable energy development, billions of dollars to modernise the power transmission grid to support renewable power and money to retrofit public housing.

The US financial system has been battered by the fallout from the sub-prime crisis, Iraq continues to stretch the military and national budget beyond capacity and the US image in the world is in tatters. One might think the environment would represent the least of the new president`s worries. But now is a critical time to put energy and environment at the centre of the US national agenda. By prioritizing green, the Obama administration can add a new engine to the economy and redeem the country`s image as a responsible global leader. This also presents a great opportunity for China and the United States to jointly explore solutions to environmental problems, bringing the two countries` economies and governments into a closer partnership.

The Obama campaign`s platform on energy and environment is the cornerstone of his strategy to free America from its dependence on fossil fuels. His plan calls for the United States to invest US$150 billion over 10 years in renewable energy technology, implement an economy wide cap-and-trade program to regulate greenhouse gases and re-engage in United Nations-led climate talks. Although the new energy plan`s US$150 billion price tag has caused critics to question whether Obama can maintain his commitment to such a costly program in the midst of a worsening financial crisis, it incorporates income-generating mechanisms that would offset most, if not all, of the costs associated with making America green.

As a starting point, the Obama plan calls for an economy wide cap-and-trade scheme that will encourage enterprises to find innovative and efficient ways to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The new administration will push Congress to pass the bill at the earliest date possible. The revenue generated through auctioning greenhouse-gas emission permits will fund US$150 billion investment in green technology over 10 years and thus would be self-sustaining.

A greater challenge for Obama will be ensuring that climate protection and energy-efficiency initiatives at home will proceed in tandem with substantial commitments from developing countries, most importantly China. Obama said as much when he declared that climate change was a “common challenge” that had seen little progress. “For too long [the United States and China] have pointed a finger at the other`s attitudes as an excuse for not itself doing more,” he wrote in September 2008 in an essay for the American Chamber for Commerce in China. Indeed, the US rejection of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the failure of the UN-sponsored 2007 Bali climate-change conference can be partially blamed on the inability of the United States and China to come to an agreement on each country`s responsibilities towards addressing climate change. As the new US administration renews its leadership in tackling climate change, the world will also expect China, though a developing country, to adopt stronger policies as well.

Energy and climate change will likely be the defining issues of Sino-US relations for years to come. As the United States and China account for almost half of the world`s energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions, both countries must push forward an energy revolution to address energy security and climate change. In the area of greenhouse-gas emissions, both countries must reduce their reliance on coal, which accounts for 78% of electricity production in China and 50% in the United States. Similarly, both countries face enormous challenges in the transportation sector as the US accounts for 25% of world oil consumption, more than 60% of which is used for transportation. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency predicts that car ownership in China will rise from the current 50 million to 270 million by 2030. A February 2008 Science policy brief cautioned that by 2030, China`s carbon emissions will reach eight gigatonnes a year, given current rates of growth.

Although China has clearly been reticent in addressing climate change, it has also made strides to improve. Chinese officials have, in recent years, been acting like climate-change converts. Facing constant energy shortages and environmental degradation, the government has set an ambitious efficiency target to cut energy use per unit of GDP by 20% from 2006 to 2010. China will raise the share of renewable energy from 7.5% to 15% by 2020, and local government officials will be held accountable if the energy-efficiency targets are not met. As a result of these policies, hundreds of small, inefficient coal-fired power plants in China were shut down last year. The shift towards clean energy has encouraged the growth of China`s renewable energy technologies: the country`s solar photovoltaic cells topped world production last year and a slew of new wind farm projects led Zhang Guobao, director of the National Energy Commission at the National Development and Reform Commission, to predict that China could soon be the world`s largest wind power producer.

The progress of energy and environmental policies on China`s end is an effective antidote to the accusation – often made by US politicians – that the country is holding up global action on climate change. In fact, a study compiled by environmental NGO Germanwatch found last year that China performed better on climate protection than the United States. The study, which ranked 56 of the world`s top carbon dioxide emitters based on a combined index that evaluated emissions trends, levels and the efficacy of its climate policies, placed the United States at fifty-fifth, second only to Saudi Arabia. Both the US and China have made recent strides in tackling climate change, yet it remains a daunting task for both countries. The key, as Obama argued during the campaign, is to recognise that the challenges posed by climate change are global in scope and use this as an opportunity to establish a stronger bilateral partnership.

Niu Jitao is a Master of Public Administration student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He previously worked for China`s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace.

This article appeared in an earlier form in China Security (Autumn 2008).

Homepage photo by Pete Souza/White House photo

This is arguably the most important year in human history. The grandiose invites suspicion, so the previous sentence was written reluctantly. But ideas do not seek permission before they enter your mind, nor are they always the most welcome of guests.

The idea that this might be the most important year in human history was prompted by the headlines that greeted the New Year. War and recession, tragically familiar sources of human misery, dominated. Yet it was what was missing from them that provoked my unwelcome thought.

In December, a meeting on an issue far more important than war or recession to the future prosperity and security of literally everyone on earth will take place in Copenhagen. Yet, nowhere did its prospects make the front pages. Terrible though they are, we know that consequences of war and recession pass. Climate change is forever.

The punctuation of history is marked by the names of the places where order was restored after chaos had prevailed – Westphalia, Versailles, San Francisco. It is not an exaggeration to say that what happens – or does not – in Copenhagen in December will shape human destiny more deeply, and for longer, than any of them.

The reason for this is the unique nature of the climate problem. We know that dangerous climate change is a threat to the fragile film of order we humans have built around the chaos of events and call “civilisation”. We know, because Europe`s political leaders told us, that a rise in global average temperature of more than two degrees Celsius is dangerous. We know from our scientists that greenhouse gas emissions must be moving downwards globally by 2015 if we are to have any chance at all of staying within that limit.

Once a given concentration of carbon is in the atmosphere the climate it drives is inexorable, even if it takes decades or more to fully express itself. In the most literal sense, the sins of the fathers will indeed be visited on their sons and daughters and well beyond the third and fourth generation.

Climate change does not suit us. We have little experience with the irrevocable and dislike exacting time limits. The nature of the climate is such that the future cannot redeem today`s mistakes. We have one chance, and only one chance, to reach a political agreement to reduce global carbon emissions in time to stay safe. This is the year in which we take that chance.

Compared to the diplomatic effort needed to achieve success in Copenhagen, that required for a final settlement in the Middle East is small. But there is no sign that an effort on the required scale is yet being made. Compare the amount of media coverage, and intensity of political effort, given to the Middle East to that accorded to climate change.

This is not to diminish in any way the magnitude of that tragedy, nor to argue that less should be done to address it. It is rather to point out the classic human error of allowing the more immediate to obscure the more urgent. History does not have an agenda on which items can be prioritised. Either you deal with the events it throws at you or they deal with you.

We humans do not learn easily. We try and fail and try again. Our progress is incremental. We are prone to repeating our mistakes. Too often, we are content to let the future redeem the mistakes of the present.

No leader will want to come away from Copenhagen saying they failed to solve a problem they have recognised as the most serious facing humanity. But the appearance of success will be easier to achieve than the substance. It will consist of words and the less the success the more interpretable the words.

To get emissions on a downward path by 2015, 200 nations must agree to so coordinate their energy policies as to build a carbon neutral global energy system by 2050. This will require the greatest cooperative endeavour in history. Agreement in Copenhagen is the key to the lock on the door to that 40-year endeavour. The political conditions needed to turn that key are not yet there. We have this year to build them.

Deeds rather than words will play the biggest part in building those political conditions. US president Barack Obama has pointed the way with a stimulus package aimed to deliver economic, energy and climate security together. If the European Union and Chinese stimulus packages are also well designed then US$1.5 trillion dollars will be spent in ways which really will begin the transition to a low-carbon energy system.

Most of the world has played a far smaller part than the OECD countries in creating the problem. Their reluctance to act is understandable, if unwise. Without significant financial help from rich countries to meet the cost of adapting to the climate change to which they have been committed by others, and to help with building their own low-carbon economies, they will be unable to support the necessary agreement. We are talking tens of billions, not millions.

Words will matter too. But the words that will count most are those of political leaders, not official negotiators. Count the number of times a month presidents and foreign ministers are in the media talking about climate change. Note the number of times they hold press conferences on the issue. If they are not going up month by month, we are failing.

Climate change is a bad problem that is getting worse. For the moment it remains manageable. Pretty soon it will become unmanageable. We already have both the technology and the capital to solve this problem. What is uncertain, and will be determined this year, is whether we have the political will to do so.

I grew up in a world engaged in another long-term, large-scale cooperative endeavour. It spent billions of dollars on building weapons it hoped never to use. When they became obsolete it threw them away and built even more sophisticated and expensive weapons which it hoped never to use.

We did that for 50 years. Eventually the world really did become a safer place. The threat of climate change to the prosperity, security and well-being of everyone on the planet, especially anyone under 40, is far more certain than was the threat of the Cold War going hot. Maintaining climate security in the twenty-first century will require at least as big an effort as maintaining peace did in the last century.

Tom Burke is a founding director of E3G, an environmental policy adviser to Rio Tinto plc and a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London.

Homepage photo by Oxfam International

Sam Geall, chinadialogue`s deputy editor, interviewed Steven Chu before his government appointment. They discussed China`s energy future and the responsibilities of policymakers faced with a warming world. Edited excerpts are published below.

Sam Geall: Can countries decouple energy use and emissions without exporting manufacturing?

Steven Chu: In the United States, we offshore some energy intensive industries – plastics, for example. Steel and concrete is slightly offshored, but not as much as you would think, because China is consuming most of its own steel and concrete. We have offshored to some extent, but not completely.

Commercial and residential buildings account for 40% of our energy. Transportation – trains, trucks, air, personal and all the others – is 28%; industry is the last. I believe we can drop down by a factor of four or five in buildings. China`s energy use is 65% buildings, so if they drop down by a similar factor and become really efficient, we can decouple.

There are some industries: steel, cement, aluminum that are very energy intensive. But already in the United States the cement industry has dropped down by about 30% in energy. It`s the same with the chemical industry, again about 25% to 30%. But can they make it all the way to zero? Absolutely not.

SG: What should policymakers` priorities be, when it comes to climate change?

SC: The Stern report says there`s a 50% chance that in this century we will go up by five degrees Celsius. The potential downsides of that – and the economic costs – are so enormous that it is prudent insurance to try not to go near it. Try to go one or two degrees Celsius: I think one degree is already written.

People don`t realise six degrees Celsius is the difference between today and the Ice Ages. During the Ice Ages, in what is now the United States, Ohio and Pennsylvania were covered in permanent ice all year round. This is a big change. So five degrees the other way is also a big change.

Borders of countries that took thousands of years to develop – what do you do with these? Some places will be uninhabitable. There`s a big fear that the agriculture around the equator will collapse. Rich people will always survive, but there will be millions of poor people that could die.

SG: An energy and climate-change crisis could also cause great conflict.

SC: Sea level goes up. If the northern tundra melts you get this great release of carbon. Greenland will melt, part of Antarctica will melt. In Bangladesh, with 140 million people, half of them could be permanently displaced. Where are they going to go? To India? What`s India going to do? The economic, social and political consequences are huge.

SG: What do we do about coal, which China and the United States are still dependent on?

SC: We have got to figure out how to use coal in a clean way, which means we have got to figure out how to capture the carbon dioxide. The methods are too expensive. I think we can store it quite safely, but it has to be proven, because the public is going to be very wary. The public doesn`t like windmills, some people don`t like hydro-electric dams, and they certainly don`t like nuclear. The danger of carbon dioxide release, in my mind, is actually greater for life than nuclear. And you would need to have thousands of repositories. So unless you can really demonstrate that they are safe, there is going to be lawsuit after lawsuit and things would be stalled for years. You have got to do research and prove to the public that it is going to be safe. You have got to do research on how to capture it better.

I think investment in carbon sequestration is absolutely needed. I think high temperature metallurgy is needed for more efficient power plants. Right now the most efficient coal burning plants are 40% to 42% efficient. They can go over 50%. And the coal plant efficiency in China is about 30%, and in India it`s even less than 30%. So you can almost double it: that`s a lot.

SG: What would you tell China`s policymakers?

SC: The major issue in China is energy efficiency. They have reasonable mileage standards, but not as good as Europe. They are beginning to close down their very inefficient industries and coal plants. They are trying to do these things more aggressively, so that`s good news.

I think the United States can do the carbon sequestration research. A lot of the research is not intellectual property. It`s just a question of: “we now know how to do it, and they can do it too”. What happens geochemically is something we need to find out, but China can just read the journals. And then perhaps we can co-develop other technologies.

SG: What do you think about biofuels?

SC: Let me just say there`s 101 ways to do it wrong, and a couple of ways to do it right. I am certainly not in favour of foreign ethanol. You want to get off corn as quickly as possible. I`m not in favor of chopping down Indonesian rainforest to grow palm oil. That`s a bigger loser for the climate than leaving the rainforest there.

SG: You have said we need a second Green Revolution.

SC: I think there needs to be a second Green Revolution, because we are not doing agriculture in a sustainable way. We are over-fertilising. There`s a huge greenhouse-gas problem. There`s a water pollution problem. It`s time to have a really hard look at our agricultural practices.

SG: How do we achieve this?

SC: Partly education, partly incentives, partly regulation. A lot of over-fertilising, at least in the United States, comes from ignorance and pushy salesmen. “If this much fertiliser is good, then twice as much is better.” Well, it is better, but maybe only 10% better. And the farmer doesn`t pay for the water pollution problems, and the nitrate runoffs, and all the nitrous oxide that is being generated.

SG: What do you think is at stake at Copenhagen?

SC: The future of the world. Not to sound too melodramatic. I`m very much hoping the United States and the new administration will begin to play a leadership role. If the United States plays a leadership role, I think China and India will follow, because they will suffer more from climate change than we will – and they know that. But I agree that they can`t do it unless the United States does it first. So if the United States takes a leadership role and is willing to develop and share technology, it would go a long way.

China already is very afraid. They`re beginning to see the consequences of climate change in their water supplies. In northern China, the Yellow River is beginning to run dry; the Tibetan plateau is melting very quickly. They have forest degradation as well. All over the world we`re beginning to see this. And once you lose your forest you lose your watershed area. Trees do something magical to the land, they help hold the water.

SG: What are the key issues that need to be a part of the decision at Copenhagen?

SC: The international price of carbon: we need a way of regulating it so that you make sure there`s a floor. You don`t want the price to crash. There must be ways of limiting it, just as in the US economy there`s a Federal Reserve board that tries to balance things by adjusting interest rates. You could adjust things through how many carbon credits you auction, or a minimum floor for the auction. It`s important for long-term investment.

We need regulation where the price won`t do it. The price will never make a house with insulation more attractive. There should be inducements – carrot and stick. I think countries have the wisdom to put more research into energy. Denmark understands: they look at industries like their wind power industry and their enzyme industry [for biofuel production] and they are making lots of money. They see this as a business opportunity.

SG: And a company may hit on something that`s truly transformative.

SC: Yes, and they are going to make a lot of money.

I really hope we can get photovoltaics to work better. There is nothing in the laws of physics that say they cannot be really cheap and 25% efficient. Because of that I think there is more technological headroom in photovoltaics. But it may not work for 10 or 20 years.

Building efficiency could be comparable. One problem is that the people who are supposed to be operating buildings don`t know how to. I have seen this in my own laboratory: it was a new building, the people didn`t know how to adjust the heating ventilation system and it would oscillate. It was fighting itself – too hot and too cold – and it went on for two months. Finally someone gave us control of it. They just didn`t know how to operate the building. So you have to make the buildings smart. That I think has a lot of potential. Is it transformative? The results might be.

Sam Geall is deputy editor of chinadialogue

Steven Chu is currently the 12th United States secretary of energy. Chu won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light.

Homepage photo by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Water scarcity affects 184,000 square kilometres (276 million mu)of farmland in northern China, as the worst drought for half a century grips the region. It has put food security back on the agenda, and revealed a lack of investment in agricultural land. The drought has also triggered discussion about new crops that can cope with these conditions. Monsanto, the multinational agricultural biotechnology firm, recently announced plans to market a drought-tolerant strain of maize earlier than expected, after four years of development. Irrigation will provide inadequate water for China`s fields, say some experts. The cultivation of drought-tolerant crops seems important.

But are genetically-modified crops the best way to improve harvests? Aside from food safety issues, they may not be a good idea. The factors that affect Chinese food security are the area farmed, and the yield per unit of area. Yield is more affected by the quality of the land than the nature of the crop. Without a major increase in yield, decreases in the amount of land that is farmed or a shortening in the growing season result in decreased harvests. GM technology only has a role to play where fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides are used heavily. All of these technologies replace labour: people do less work, the soil becomes less fertile and pollution worsens. In the long term, the key factor in food production – soil fertility – is not improved but diminished. As the GM industry overwhelms agriculture, farmers will have less freedom over their work and will become less inclined to plant staple food crops.

According to Li Zhensheng, an award-winning expert on the genetics of wheat, yields in the 1950s were very low: around 100 kilograms per mu. At that time, harvests were limited by the area of land planted. Investment in agriculture, including irrigation, the use of chemical fertilisers and mechanisation, increased from 1962 to 1995. This and the household-responsibility system – which motivated farmers to increase harvests – saw yields rocket to 283 kilograms per mu (667 square metres). Yield became the limiting factor. Since then, yield has remained around 300 kilograms per mu: 314.4 kilograms in 2006, 286 kilograms in 2008. As in the 1950s, the area of land farmed now determines the size of the harvest.

In the latter half of the last century, there was progress in increasing soil fertility, which we can still learn from today. Mao Zedong said that increasing harvests required irrigation, soil improvement, extra fertiliser, improvement of crop strains, closer planting, the prevention of pests, the use of machinery and field management. All of these measures can provide crops with the conditions for growth, and all need investment in agricultural infrastructure. But today we concentrate on a few technological factors: different GM strains, fertilisers, and so on. Irrigation, pest control and field management infrastructure receive no investment and fall into decay. Labour is replaced by machinery; people become lazy. Vendors of machinery, fertilisers, pesticides and agricultural membrane take their cut; nobody worries about pollution or biodiversity loss. Is it any surprise the soil suffers?

There have been huge advances in agricultural technology in recent decades – in fertilisers, pesticides, membranes, breeding and genetic engineering. The use of fertiliser increases by two million tonnes every year. But despite this, China`s harvests from 1999 to 2007 failed to reach the peak of 1998. The limiting factor is not technology; further investment in that direction only serves to increase costs. The problem is a human one.

An elderly farmer from eastern China told me that he often heard people say: “There is no money to be made growing crops. Fertilisers and the rest are so expensive: the more you plant, the more you lose. Just plant enough to eat.” In economically developed regions, farmland goes to waste or is covered with buildings. Fertile soil is being lost.

“Just plant enough to eat,” encapsulates the threat to China`s food security. After the household-responsibility system was implemented, farmers took care of their own food security first. And when it became possible to earn an income from growing crops, productivity rose. Today, costs are high and grain prices are low, so farmers leave the land and head for the cities. From the rich eastern coast to the poor provinces of the west, it is mainly the old, sick or disabled that remain in the villages. Even the women have left to find work. With little available labour, only the minimum is ever planted.

This is the root of China`s food security problem, and it is not an issue that GM crops can solve. GM crops will only benefit the powerful and force more people off the land. GM crops, combined with the use of chemicals, will continue to harm soil fertility, decreasing food security.

Chinese food security is limited by the fact that millions of rural residents simply will not plant food crops, due to falling fertility and yields. For the sake of our agriculture and that of future generations, we must use and maintain the land as we did in the past. We need to increase investment in agriculture; restore the irrigation infrastructure that dates back to the 1960s; encourage intensive cultivation; and ensure that working the land is profitable. We should not allow fields to lie empty and fertility to drop.

Jiang Gaoming is a professor and Ph.D. tutor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany. He is also vice secretary-general of China Society of Biological Conservation and board member of China Environmental Culture Promotion Association.

Homepage photo by .SantiMB.