“Water is a huge problem, as you all know, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Tajikistan has one of the greatest water potentials in the world. . . we have got a water resources task force now set up in the Department to examine how we can additionally help the countries of the area, and particularly Pakistan with the water issue.”
Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, Briefing on his Recent Trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, Georgia and Germany, March 2, 2010.
Our colleagues in the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently released a comprehensive report, Land Grab? The Race for the World’s Farmlands, that looks at the increasing frequency of food-importing developed nations and private companies investing in huge tracts of arable farmland in less developed countries.
This is an area that, while we haven’t explored deeply, we are beginning to study more and more here in the Natural Security program. We’re particularly interested in the ways that these emerging economic trends are engaging other socioeconomic and political trends in developing countries, which could lead to instability in countries of geostrategic importance to the United States (e.g. Pakistan).
According to the report’s authors:
Large-scale land acquisitions may have a negative effect on the wider sociopolitical and economic context of the host country. There are documented cases, such as the Daewoo Logistics Corporation’s (ultimately unsuccessful) plan to lease 1.3 million hectares of land in Madagascar, where negotiations over deals have contributed to political instability and internal social conflict. These deals touch on the already politically contentious issue of land allocation and land rights, so they carry a possibility of exacerbating existing tensions.
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Granted, to this point Madagascar is the only case where a land deal has contributed to widespread political instability. However, the factors at play in most host countries—land, food insecurity, and poverty—make up a combustible mix that could easily explode. In countries—such as Pakistan—where violent, extremist anti-government movements have mastered the ability to exploit land- based class divisions, the political risks are particularly high.
The report is intended for a much broader (global) audience and, rightly so, is not explicit about how these trends might engage U.S. national security interests. But for researchers like us who study natural resources and economic trends and analyze their engagement with national security, the report is robust and offers useful case studies in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe that are a great jumping off point for our further research. You should read this now!
Foreign policy watchers know that India is a hot topic in world politics, and will only become more so as its population and economic prospects increase (though its economy, like most others in the world, will take some time to recover after the global downturn). India is of interest to us natural security-minded people as well: it relies on imports for most of its increasing energy needs; it is a somewhat serious contributor to climate change with its growing use of coal to generate electricity and often a climate negotiations trend setter for developing nations; and its perennial water issues point to some worrying trends for the future. As we are just beginning to think more about these issues for India (and what it means for U.S. security), we won’t be drawing any hard conclusions until we’ve done a bit more research and exploration. But with this in mind, I searched for some historic lit that might provide some interesting insights.
I found such an article way back in the October 1943 issue of Foreign Affairs: “India's Mineral Wealth and Political Future,” by Charles H. Behre, Jr., a lifelong geologist and partner in the mineral consulting firm Behre, Dolbear, and Company. The entire premise of the article is admittedly dated—it’s about how to partition India into a majority Hindu nation and a majority Muslim nation, which wouldn’t happen for another four years—but it gives insight into important minerals considerations, and provides a good comparison case for the current resource wealth of India and Pakistan. Here are a few highlights:
Two weeks ago I wrote about the debate around what role the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could play in analyzing climate change. As I noted in that post, the CIA has already been playing a role since the mid-1990s. That got me thinking about the debate back when the CIA first stood up its Environment Center and started using its satellites to collect climate data. For this week’s Reading Old Magazines I took a look at an October 17, 1995 op-ed in The Washington Times, “Is the CIA being led astray?” While this is a newspaper article and not our usual old magazine, author Bruce Fein, a lawyer and free-lance writer with The Washington Times, offers some interesting points that help one understand the debate back when the CIA firsts began integrating climate change into its work.
During that time opponents seemed to bemoan looking beyond traditional security threats to include environmental concerns and climate change into intelligence assessments. “The national security of the United States is ill-served…by an agency without personnel made of sterner and less starry-eyed stuff,” Fein wrote. His suggestion that incorporating these concerns might pacify national security experts and intelligence analysts is indicative of the attitude at this time that including threats other than war was a luxury that could undermine hard security priorities.
Tomorrow we will also do a weekly roundup on the UN activities of the week, but for today, we'll just say that we're thrilled of how much emphasis the President placed on natural security issues in yesterday's address.
As countries battle a wave food shortages, trying to ensure supplies and qualm domestic fears, the consequences of food insecurity are growing increasingly vivid these days. Pakistan is described as being at extreme risk by a recent Food Security Risk Index by a British firm– indeed, 19 Pakistanis were killed this week in a scramble for food distributed for Ramadan in a poor Karachi neighborhood. How should we view data or interpret these kinds of rankings for natural security subjects?
While data plays an important role in understanding the world of natural security, it is, at times, not as readily available as it is for other security issues, nor is it consistently clear what underlying assumptions are actually true. I’m going to be occasionally looking at regressions, data sets and graphs from a variety of sources in order to look at some of the benefits—and drawbacks—of different types of quantitative analysis in natural security.
The Stimson Center held an event yesterday called “Water and Peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” at which Dr. Daanish Mustafa, a geographer at King's College, London, outlined the intricate linkages between water resources and regional stability. According to Mustafa, who has conducted extensive field research in Baluchistan and southern Afghanistan, traditions surrounding access to water form the glue that has held local communities together for centuries. Recent events, however, have begun to unravel social structures with second and third order effects on security.
At the heart of the matter is the traditional karez (also qanat) irrigation system. The ancient technique involves allowing natural water pressure to pump water horizontally underneath agricultural fields through hand-constructed underground channels. In communities throughout southern Afghanistan and Baluchistan, deeply engrained cultural norms dictate access to water and are enforced by mirabs, or water masters. Revered by their communities, mirabs have customarily ensured equity in water distribution and conscientious maintenance of the system’s entire length. For a karez system to remain viable, all stakeholders must use it responsibly.
The advent of tube-wells has disrupted the traditional order. Tube-wells drill directly down to the water table (sometimes 500 feet or more below the surface), sucking up the available water. Over time, though, they draw the water table down farther and farther, requiring deeper and deeper drilling. Tube-wells, then, have the potential to lower water tables enough so that karez systems are rendered inoperable, affecting
On Tuesday, July 21st, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called a hearing on the national security implications of climate change. Arguably, it should have been the Senate Armed Services Committee, but the SFRC was right for so many reasons. Start with the fact that the Chairman and the Ranking Member have been leading the way on energy security and climate change for the nation for some time.
First and foremost, this hearing legitimized the notion that climate change is a national security issue, and that the national security community needs to look at climate change as a concern with planning, policy, force structure, and budgeting implications. It was a bipartisan hearing, both in the senators in attendance and in the witnesses.
The star witness was former five-term senator, the Honorable John Warner, who is honorable, indeed. He could do anything he wanted to with his life right now, including just hang out with his grandchildren, but he has chosen to make raising awareness of climate change his mission. Two of the other panelists were retired flag-rank military officers – between them, about 70 years of experience in the U.S. navy. They passionately and persuasively talked about the national security challenges of climate change.
The fourth panelist was…me. I’ve attended many hearings, prepared others for hearings, but never been in the witness chair myself – it’s a slightly
