South Asia Network For Security & Climate Change - SANSaC

SECURITY COUNCIL HOLDS FIRST-EVER DEBATE ON IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON PEACE, SECURITY, HEARING OVER 50 SPEAKERS

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Tue, 29 May 2012 01:29:00 +0000

With scientists predicting that land and water resources will gradually become more scarce in the coming years, and that global warming may irreversibly alter the face of the planet, the United Nations Security Council today held its first-ever debate on the impact of climate change on security, as some delegates raised doubts over whether the Council was the proper forum to discuss the issue.

The day-long meeting, called by the United Kingdom, aimed to examine the relationship between energy, security and climate, and featured interventions from more than 50 delegations, representing imperilled island nations and industrialized greenhouse gas emitters alike. While some speakers praised the initiative, there were reservations from developing countries, which saw climate change as a socio-economic development issue to be dealt with by the more widely representative General Assembly. Many delegations also called for the United Nations to urgently consider convening a global summit on the issue.

read the full document on http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/sc9000.doc.htm

AS NATURE OF NEW THREATS EVOLVES, SECURITY COUNCIL, CENTRAL TO KEEPING PEACE, MUST ALSO KEEP PACE, SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS DURING COUNCIL DEBATE ON NEW CHALLENGES

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Tue, 29 May 2012 01:27:00 +0000

Transnational crime, pandemics, and climate change were three defining challenges, and as the nature of such threats continued to evolve, the Security Council — so central to our ability to keep the peace — must also keep pace, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council today as it addressed new challenges to international peace and security and conflict prevention.

He said that although none of the three were new, they were increasingly transnational, increasingly acute, and had ever greater implications for human, State, regional and international security. There was an increasing convergence between organized crime and terrorist groups. Climate change had aggravated conflict over scarce land and could well trigger large-scale migration. Rising sea levels put at risk the very survival of small island States.

No country and no region, no matter how powerful, would be able to address those threats alone, he said. The complex and multilayered threats required multidisciplinary responses. The United Nations was well-placed to promote an integrated mix of political, developmental and capacity-building responses.

read the full document on http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10457.doc.htm

SANSaC Roundtable Maldives - TV Report by MNBC One

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:49:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRgAP4UDJpc

Report by Maldives National Broadcasting Cooperation, MNBC

on 1st December 2011

“Regional Collaboration is Crucial to Key Developments in Security Risks Caused by Climate Change Affects,” Vice President

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:38:00 +0000

Vice President Dr. Waheed, Maldives

Male' - Maldives - Vice President Dr. Mohamed Waheed has said that regional collaboration is crucial to key developments in security risks related to adverse and unusual affects caused by climate change within the South Asian region. The Vice President made this statement while speaking at “Security Implications of Climate Change” held by South Asia Network for Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) at Trader’s Hotel, this morning.

During his speech, the Vice President stated that the adverse affects of climate change is a threat not only to the individual country, but contributively to the whole South Asian region. The Vice President further said that climate change continues to threaten the vulnerability of the Maldives and that regional cooperation was required for the survival of small island states. In particular, the Vice President emphasized on problematic areas of coastal area destruction and the limitation of fresh water and water resources faced by island nations.

Source: www.presidencymaldives.gov.mv

Also, see official photo gallery

Roundtable in Male’ highlights implications of climate change for regional and national security, ahead of high level talks at CoP 17 in Durban

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:32:00 +0000

Session chaired by Mr Ahmed Shafeeq Moosa

Traders Hotel, Male', Maldives

Stories of the citizens from the disappearing islands of the Maldives, flood-affected communities in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh and the drought affected communities in the water scarce hills of Nepal, all in their own ways struggling to cope with the impacts of climate change, are increasingly permeating mainstream consciousness within those countries whose carbon intensive development over the past 100 years has been contributing to these situations. At the same time, international donors from these developed countries are creating new aid funds in an attempt to help the vulnerable cope with the impacts of climate change we are already feeling.

Members briefing the Maldivian Vice President

With the next round of high level global climate change talks starting in Durban this week, the high profile issues for agreement are about reducing carbon emissions and – more importantly for the affected communities – how much money the developed countries, who have the main responsibility for global warming, will put on the negotiating table to help people in poorer countries cope with the consequences. But these are not the only important issues.

The delegates from Pakistan, the Maldivian Vice President

One issue that is barely acknowledged is the heightened risk of political instability and conflict related to climate change. Factors linking climate change to an increased potential for instability and conflict include water scarcity, accelerated land degradation, increased food insecurity, and indeed the management of the climate funds themselves. The meeting of the South Asian Network on Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) in Male’ on the 1st December brought together experts from the climate change and security community to initiate a much needed regional dialogue on these issues.

The roundtable was organised in collaboration with the President’s Office of the Government of the Maldives and International Alert (an international peacebuilding organisation). The event was supported by the British High Commission in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The roundtable in session

The dialogue was inaugurated by the Vice President of the Maldives, Dr. Mohamed Waheed, who will lead the Maldivian delegation to CoP 17 in Durban. SANSaC members from the Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies, the National Centre for Competence in Research in Nepal, the University of Karachi in Pakistan, the Observer Research Foundation in India and International Alert also spoke at the event. Mr. Ahmed Shafeeq Moosa, the President’s Envoy for Science and Technology, outlined the Maldivian Climate Change policy and advocacy outreach. Significantly, the event also marked the establishment of the SANSaC Secretariat in Male’, with the full support of the Maldivian Government.

At the conclusion of the event SANSaC members issued a statement outlining key issues for advocacy during the high level talks at CoP 17 in Durban.

SANSaC Male’ Statement on Climate Change and Security

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:56:00 +0000

The South Asia Network of Climate Change and Security, having met in Male’ on the 1st of December 2011 to discuss opportunities and challenges related to climate change and security in South Asia, offer the following views to the Parties and Governments of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Acknowledging the heightened risk of political instability and conflict related to climate change;

Noting that the factors linking climate change to an increased potential for instability and conflict include water scarcity, accelerated land degradation, increased food insecurity and the management of climate funds;

Believing that enhancing trust, cooperation and coordination amongst key South Asian stakeholders on climate change related security issues can also be a step towards greater trust and cooperation on other conflict issues;

The South Asia Network for Climate Change and Security therefore:

1. Calls on governments to facilitate ‘decentralised water diplomacy’ that involves a broader group of stakeholders at local level, and particularly across the region.

2. Calls on governments and international institutions to better understand the dynamics and diverse causal factors of climate related migration, to promote timely, peace positive governance of rural-urban and trans-boundary migration.

3. Calls on governments to take leadership on improving rural and urban food security, in particular to ensure climate sensitive food production, equitable distribution and sustainable consumption.

Members:
1. Major General Muniruzzaman, President, Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies.
2. Mr. Ahmed Shafeeq Moosa, President’s Envoy for Science and Technology, Government of the Maldives.
3. Dr. Bishnu Upreti, South Asia Regional Coordinator, National Centre for Competence in Research, Nepal.
4. Dr. Moazzam Ali Khan, Director, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Karachi, Pakistan.
5. Ms. Lydia Powell, Head, Centre for Resources Management, Observer Research Foundation, India.
6. Mr. Johann Rebert, Country Representative, International Alert, Sri Lanka.
7. Dr. Markus Mayer, South Asia Regional Programme Manager, International Alert.

Climate, Governance and Resilience Roundtable - September 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Shangri-La Hotel, Kathmandu, Nepal, 3 September 2010

International Alert along with the Delegation of the European Union to Nepal hosted a dialogue on climate change, security and governance. The meeting brought together national and regional experts from Nepal and from the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) to discuss processes to tackle the dual challenge of climate change and security at regional and national levels. This meeting, part of an ongoing process to foster critical debate on addressing the climate and security risks, was the third to take place in Nepal since 2007, and the fifth in the South Asia region.

Issues Discussed:

Accepting that international processes on climate change may not be sufficient to drive progress in the South Asia region, participants explored how inter-linked issues of climate change, governance and resilience can be addressed within existing national and regional processes, the opportunities, and possible pitfalls specific to South Asia. Climate change is not a new, discrete issue. It is an overlay on existing governance and human security challenges. The challenge is to understand what this means for development. The discussion explored these issues and raised some of the main challenges to effective responses to climate change in fragile contexts:

One major challenge in this area is the lack of empirical evidence to shed light on the interactions between climate change and security at the local level. Presentations were shared by Major General Muniruzzaman from the Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Dr Anirban Ganguly from The Energy and Resources Institute, India, Kiran Mahajan from Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR), Nepal, and Neera Padhan Shestha from ICIMOD. These presentations[1] highlighted the nature of some of the knock-on consequences of climate impacts and climate responses at a sub-national level, and flagged some of the possible trans-boundary aspects of these risks. Given the lack of donor financial support and attention to this area of research, empirical evidence and thus understanding is thin and there is little that goes beyond assumptions, hypotheses and the posing of relevant questions. Increased research, information sharing, and dialogue on this issue is thus an urgent priority.

It’s not solely climate change but poor governance responses to climate change which can be destabilising: In the wake of the devastating floods in Pakistan and also closer to home in Nepal, community tensions have been rising. These individual events cannot definitively be attributed to man-made climate change. But to see how climate change will play out in people’s daily lives, we needn't only look to the science. Instead, we must also look to the efficacy of local dispute resolution mechanisms, the enabling environment for andolans (people’s movements) and existing dimensions of livelihood insecurity. These are amongst the background factors which must be understood to see what happens when natural phenomena interact with unjust economic systems and weak governance structures. For example, in the Nepali Terai, local dissatisfaction towards the government’s responses to floods has been mobilized by competing political parties and manipulated by criminal gangs. The destabilising factor is not the floods per se, but the marginalisation and political economy which develops around flood responses.

Climate change funding and policy can do harm: We know from over forty years of development, that ill-conceived interventions in vulnerable communities can do harm. Therefore with the uncertainties in current climate change predictions, poorly planned and un-joined up approaches could not only set back development progress, but also could in some cases increase political tensions and the risk of violent conflict. By inadvertently reducing the resilience of some communities in an attempt to address another critical challenge faced by others, climate response efforts could in and of themselves pose a threat to peace. For example, efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption through increased biofuel consumption has been linked to reduced food production, the hike in food prices in 2007 and 2008, and numerous violent clashes around the world. Similar challenges will arise when handling conflicting interests like the promotion of renewable energy through hydropower versus forest preservation and the rights of forest communities in India. Sufficient understanding of the knock-on consequences of any course of action is required to ensure these paths do not fuel violence or instability.

Whilst inappropriate responses to can increase the risk of conflict, positive responses to climate change can promote peace and cooperation. In Khabre, Nepal, in the absence of government assistance, endemic water scarcity was addressed through positive community management. Accepting that individual responses would not suffice, the local community coordinated a collective response by getting together to dig new wells for community use according to a community managed rota. Anecdotal evidence from the Terai also points to responses to climate change promoting tolerance and cooperation across a political manufactured ethnic divide. Growing tensions between Madhesi (people from the plains) and ‘Pahari’ (hill people) communities (which was being fuelled by political parties in the lead up to the 2008 elections) abated following the 2008 floods. The Madhesis felt that it was the financial assistance from the Pahari community from across Nepal rather than the Madhesi political party representatives - whom the Madhesi’s of the Terai had just elected into government – that helped them cope with the flood impacts. Positive responses to climate change have the potential to build social cohesion, peace and resilience. Where the government plays a positive role, this provides an opportunity to rebuild a potentially weak social contract between citizens and the state.

As well as knowledge gaps around these issues, there is also weak institutional capacity to address them in the relevant institutions. Science may not be able to tell us exactly what to do, but in the meantime, institutions need to be able to adapt and be flexible to variability and uncertainty. Social exclusion, weak governance and the ability of elite groups to capture resources intended for supporting adaptation to climate change are also significant obstacles to peaceful responses to climate risks. Many issues such as migration and river management cross state borders and cannot be dealt with at the state level alone. Yet South Asia lacks strong political leadership at a regional level to ensure effective use of resources and integrated approaches. These issues need to be met with appropriate institutional capacity – within donors, implementating agencies and local and national government, along with enhanced scope and capacity for regional analysis of trans-boundary issues and cross-border sharing of knowledge and experiences.

Conclusion:

Climate change will not affect communities in a political and economic vacuum. Policy responses need to look beyond the specific environmental impacts, to also address the broader context of failures of governance. The challenge then is to identify the gaps and weak points in key institutions, mechanisms and processes responsible within fragile states and explore how to reform, reinforce or create them such that they can deal with changes in a peaceful manner, in spite of climate variability.

The discussion raised some important questions for further thought:

- How does climate change, variability and uncertainty affect governance and security at all levels?

- How do we ensure climate adaptation policies and financing mechanisms do no harm in fragile contexts?

- How can we avoid climate financing becoming a new resource for elite capture?

- How can we maximise the potential for climate responses to build social cohesion and peace?

Responses to these questions are critical to promote understanding of the complex inter-linkages between climate change and security implications and to address these links through appropriate policy response in South Asia.

The starting point is the strong and urgent need for support to promote:

Localised research at the sub-national level in the region,

Dialogue and capacity building to strengthen the knowledge and capacities of national governments and responsible institutions in the region,

Improved knowledge sharing across borders around current best practice and lessons learned.

Security and Resilience Roundtable, Kathmandu, 3^rd September 2010: Participant’s list

Name	Organisation
Ajaya Dixit	Director, ISET-Nepal
Anil Pokrel	Consultant, ADB
Anirban Ganguly	SANSaC Representative: Heads of Forestry and Biodiversity Area under the Climate Change Division in TERI
Batu Krishna Upreti,	Joint Secretary, Climate Change Management Division, Ministry of Environment
Berend de Groot	Director Programme Operations, ICIMOD
Bhasker Kafle	International Alert
Chandini Thapa	International Alert
Deependra Joshi	Equal Access, Country Director
Giap Dang	Cooperation Head, EU Delegation to Nepal
Janani Vivekananda	International Alert
Jaypal Shrestha	Regional Environmental Affairs Specialist, Embassy of the United States of America
Kiran Maharjan	SANSaC Representative: Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR)
Laura Seraydarian	ISET
Major General Muniruzzaman	SANSaC Representative: Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies
Marcus Moench	Director, ISET
Neera Shrestha Pradhan	Hazard and Community Adaptation Specialist, ICIMOD
Purushottam Ghimire	Joint Secretary, Country Director – NAPA, Ministry of Environment
Ranjan Shrestha	EU Delegation to Nepal
Rebecca Crozier	Country Manager, International Alert
Sadhana Ghimire Bhetuwal	International Alert
Simon Lucas	Climate Change and Inclusive Growth Adviser, DFID Nepal
Sylvia Lee	The World Bank Nepal Country Office
Vijay Khadgi	Network Officer, ICIMOD

Climate and Security Roundtable: Summary of Discussion

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:10:00 +0000

Delhi 6th August 2010, 13.00 – 15.00

Chair: Fergus Auld, UK Cross-Government Climate Change and Energy Unit, India

International Alert convened a roundtable meeting, kindly hosted by the British High Commission in New Delhi, with the generous support of the EU, to generate a critical discussion on the inter-linkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia and to identify the institutional and governance level knowledge and capacity gaps to promote effective responses to these risks.

The meeting was an opportunity to take forward discussion in India on the relationship between climate change, resilience and security. Bringing together institutional representatives and civil society experts, the discussion addressed the complexities of responding to climate change in conflict-affected contexts in South Asia and the institutional responses to dealing with such risks. In particular, the group explored:

Where human (and indeed state) security should fit into the climate change policy discussion?
What the link between climate change and violent conflict means for development policy?
The specific issues to be addressed in fragile communities.
4. The best ways to move the debate with not only the necessary sense of urgency but also awareness of the depth and breadth of the issues and the appropriate policy responses.

Background:

As more people become aware of and motivated by the links between climate change, conflict, peace and security, both the possibility of and the necessity for clarity about these links increases. Regardless of the scarcity of data, the climate change and security dialogue is moving ahead and shaping thinking and policy as it goes. Alongside this is concern from some quarters about the so-called ‘securitisation’ of climate change. A pragmatic response to this means ensuring the climate change and security dialogue is as informed as it can be by appropriate actors keying into the dialogue to embed sustainable development and peacebuilding priorities into the core of the debate.

Key issues discussed:

· What is the value of the climate change and security discourse? Is it a distraction from adaptation and mitigation priorities?

There are three particular risks in the climate change and security nexus:

i) Just as security fears can mobilise people and change, sensationalist scenarios demobilise, especially when they turn out not to justified by the evidence.

ii) Treating conflict and security issues as if they will produce direct threats from one country against another, or even one group against another, which is the language of military security will distort the debate and the policy response; at worst, the response will be inappropriate and wasteful.

iii) Basing the argument on an over-simplified linkage could generate policies that miss their targets in other ways and simply lead to confusion and uncertainty about what the problem is and why anyone should care.

Yet the discourse exists and will continue to move in some cases with more policy leverage than the adaptation or ‘common but differential responsibility’ for mitigation discourse. As such, the three risks above notwithstanding, engaging in the security discourse is a vehicle for getting critical development and governance concerns to the policy table.

· What is the nature of the causal link between climate change and security?

Policy cannot and should not be based on a straightforward cause-and-effect relationship between climate change and violent conflict or political instability. There is a lack of research findings on the topic and what there is does not offer robust conclusions. And there are good reasons for this: namely that causality is always complex. Armed conflicts not only have several different causes but several different types of causes. These are often conflated, blurring the differences between background or root causes, the immediate trigger, the role of the external actors etc. The fact is that simple cause-and-effect is rarely if ever enough to explain the origins of a conflict.

Given this lack of clear causal link, the sparse research literature on climate change and security contains some that declares that no link can be proven. But the fact that no link can be proven is not the same as saying none exists. A real limitation of studies so far is that they work by reflection on the past – whereas the key point to understand about climate change is that the future will be different from the past.

Perhaps the largest security risk of climate change is the most preventable one. That is the risk that climate change policy itself will be the most destabilising factor in fragile communities. The reasons are three-fold:

i) New financing mechanism on climate change strive towards ‘national ownership’, but where the state government is an actor in the conflict and is party to structural exclusion and marginalisation, this essentially provides an additional ‘point resource’ for elite capture and for the perpetuation of existing systems of exclusion and inequity.

ii) Lack of adequate consideration of the knock-on consequences on interventions to address climate change can have inadvertent negative consequences which could stoke instability. The rapid switch from food to fuel crops in the ill-informed bio-fuels experiment which lead to global riots in 2008 is a case in point. There are many more trip wires of unintended consequences in the path low carbon development which need to be understood from a conflict sensitivity perspective, particularly around REDD and hydro.

iii) Any action involves a trade-off and creates new winners and losers. A shift in priority to narrow and technical adaptation or mitigation responses will entail others issues – perhaps basic services such as health or education – being pushed down the agenda. In already fragile communities where governance is weak and basic service delivery is poor, such a shift could rupture an already weak social contract between citizens and the state.

· How to address the lack of empirical evidence?

The evidence base for climate and security interlinkages is necessarily weak; there has been too little time since the effects of climate change began to receive adequate attention for research data to have accumulated of the kind needed for large-scale quantitative studies that can reliably depict trends. Further, the state of knowledge in the natural sciences does not let us attribute specific events such as flood or drought to climate change, nor does it offer any policy relevant predictions of impacts at the regional level. As such, there is a case for turning instead to case studies. While limited in their generalisability, developing a broad geographic spread of case study evidence which drill deep down to understand community level perhaps offers the best solution to the knowledge gap in the interim.

Conclusions:

There was strong consensus that the solution to the risk of climate change policy itself becoming a security threat is linking dialogues. This entails much more local level research into climate change and security links and risk transmission pathways (such as rural-urban migration, food insecurity, service delivery failure), addressing governance capacity constraints to ‘joined-up’ programming, and advocacy to move the debate beyond concerns that the security dialogue will hijack the climate change dialogue, and instead to bring the dialogues together.

Next steps:

Interested parties are to remain part of an ongoing dialogue process in India, and also to link into the regional climate change and security dialogue. Specific aims of this dialogue process would be to bring development and human security concerns, lessons and good practice to the heart of the climate change and security debate. Alert is happy to facilitate the dialogue. ORF have offered to host the next meeting. In the meantime, all participants are welcome to share resources through the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change web-space (www.sansac.org).

List of participants:

1. Ranu Sinha, Operations Analyst, Water Resource Management, World Bank
2. Samir Saran, Senior Fellow and Vice President, Observer Research Foundation
3. Rob Donkers, Environment Minister Counsellor, EU delegation India

4. Mansie Kumar, EU Delegation India

5. Uttam Sinha, IDSA

6. Gitanjali Nandan, First Secretary, Australian High Commission

7. L Vijayanathan, Senior Adviser, Environment, Climate and Energy, Norwegian Embassy

8. Karolina Hedström, Regional Crisis Response Planner - South Asia, EU India

9. Deepti Mahajan, Research Associate, Resources and Global Security,Teri

10. Fergus Auld, First Secretary Climate Change and Energy, DfID India/British High Commission

11. Clare Shakya, Senior Regional Climate Change and Water Adviser - Asia, DfID India

12. Janani Vivekananda, Climate Change and Security Adviser, International Alert

Climate Funding: Creating a Climate for Conflict? Insights from Nepal

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:14:00 +0000

by Janani Vivekananda

During a recent field trip to mid-monsoon Nepal, stories of floods affecting vulnerable communities across the country dominated the daily headlines. At the same time, international donors are pouring in funds in an attempt to help the vulnerable cope with the impacts of climate change we are already feeling. Last week, the Adaptation Fund, a fund set up by the UN to help poor countries cope with the impact of climate change, has became operational. But are these funds helping – or are they contributing to the problem?

With less than two months to go until the next global summit on climate change in Mexico, the issues for agreement are about reducing carbon emissions and – more importantly for poor countries - how much money the developed countries, who have the main responsibility for global warming, will put on the negotiating table to help people in poorer countries cope with the consequences. But these are not the only important issues.

The risk will be greatest where governance is weak. Nobody will dispute that this is the case in Nepal.

‘A Climate of Conflict’, a report by International Alert, estimates that just under three billion people live in 56 conflict-affected countries, where climate change could increase the risk of political instability. Nepal is one of the 56 at risk.

Climate policy makers, however, are largely silent on the matter. International Alert’s latest research finds that new funds, already coming into the country’s coffers with more still in the pipeline, could make the situation worse if they don’t take account of the complex linkages between environmental change, security and governance.

What should inform climate responses? Responses to climate change have to respond to the political and social realities of fragile contexts such as Nepal or they will not work.

Climate change is not only a climate issue. Climate change will affect political stability, development, government, equity, trade and the national economy. And these issues all affect the ability of people and the governments to respond constructively to the challenges climate change generates. The problems are interlinked, so the responses must be too.

At a meeting of the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) co-hosted by International Alert and the EU on 3^rd September, SANSaC recommended that in post-conflict situations like Nepal, adaptation strategies should address the broader dimensions of community resilience.

Resilience is multi-dimensional. Adaptation strategies should be defined not only by the nature of the natural hazard that is faced, but also on the basis of understanding the systems of governance and power. This must involve a deep understanding of the local context, and avoid pitting groups against each other. They must also address broader risks to resilience such as security. For example, a new Government of Nepal pilot project to address energy security and reduce deforestation through promotion of biogas plants is being rolled out in nine districts. The switch to biogas aims to curb deforestation for fuel wood thereby decreasing risks of soil erosion and landslides. But the pilot implementation was halted in three districts - Saptari, Udayapur and Siraha - due to the security situation in those places. Such decisions leave these communities doubly vulnerable: to the lack of sustainable energy sources, and to pre-exisitng insecurity.

Who are the ‘most vulnerable’? Donors often speak about targeting the ‘poorest and most marginalised’ but base their programming on a generalised conception of who these people are. Speak to people in the villages and they’ll tell you. ‘A poor person is a poor person, regardless of whether he is Brahmin or Janjati. Ethnicity is a political construct. The local context is socially and culturally complex. It is social and cultural factors that determine economic activity – not ethnicity’ a local from Sunsari explained. ‘It’s not so simple that because you are a Brahmin you have all the resources and rights, and because you are a janjati you don’t’. Local organisations must understand the local reality and they must make central governments and international actors aware of this complex reality.

A further problem already giving rise to local community level grievances is a culture of dependence on funds. ‘Everyone’s happy to get funds from donors but when they run out of donor funding, they come back to local government’ stated a local municipality employee in Dhankuta. This dependence on donor assistance usurps local authorities’ roles and responsibilities and undermines the social contract between communities and local government. This relationship between government and the governed is already fraught and may not be able to take the strain of well intended but ill-advised interventions.

Likewise, peace and reconstruction efforts need to be climate-proofed by paying attention to the availability of resources for livelihoods such as agriculture or returning ex-combatants or people displaced by conflict. These could be under pressure because of climate change. For example, possible future plans to reintegrate ex-combatants from cantonments into villages where they may hope to make a living from agriculture could cause and face future problems. Farmers struggling with changing rainfall patterns and only getting one harvest per year rather than two are seeing their rice yields falling. The prospect arises of returned fighters becoming resentful unemployed farmers, and thus potential recruits, with their combat experience, in instability.

More broadly, direct access to large-scale adaptation funding combined with low capacity and high corruption within government will limit the ability effective use. It is highly likely that funds will be diverted into the hands and pockets of one faction or another in the political elite. With public awareness of these funds coming in, people’s expectations for support - for example compensation for flood victims - are rising, and where they are not met, we are likely to see an increase in protests and political instability. In Nepal’s Koshi basin, recent experience shows that community protests are easily hijacked by political and criminal gangs who promote violence for their own ends. Misuse of funds may thus be the primary factor exacerbating instability.   If responses to climate change take account of the broad dimensions of what makes people resilient – not just drought-resistant crops and embankments to protect them from floods - but also the interlinked factors of livelihoods options, good infrastructure, social inclusion and effective governance, there’s a good chance that responses to climate change could yield a double dividend: increasing resilience to both climate change and conflict.

Failure to take account of the linkages however could result in the billions of dollars of funding for adaptation actually becoming part of the problem.

______________________

Janani Vivekananda is a senior advisor on climate change and security at international peacebuilding organisation International Alert.

South Asia Network For Security And Climate Change - SANSaC

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:15:00 +0000

SANSaC Meeting in Dhaka, March 2010

Security implications of climate change are a very real but relatively unexplored issue worldwide and in the region. An expert roundtable meeting on the 28^th/29^th March 2010 brought together experts of Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to have regional exchanges on climate security in South Asia. The roundtable was organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS), the Regional Center for Security Studies (RCSS) and Peace-building and Development Institute (PDI) based in Sri Lanka, and International Alert, a UK based NGO. This event created significant space for a critical discussion on the interlinkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia.

Water issues, large scale movements of climate refugees, including cross border migration, loss of people’s livelihood and food security, and an increase in urban-rural tensions over resource utilization were identified as the major conflict issues in South Asia. Two states, the Maldives and Bangladesh, are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of the phenomenon. There is therefore a measure of urgency that requires concerted action as fast as possible. This need to be addressed with unified approaches, which means

1) stronger regional understanding of potential social and conflict impacts of climate change, and

2) regional cooperation to build up the resilience of state institutions and civil society.

The network identified the following key issues to be addressed:

• Regional approach – emphasising regional approaches for addressing climate-related conflicts in South Asia through establishing platforms for exchange, sharing and concerted action. There is also a need for better multi-lateral cooperation in managing water resources (e.g. trans-boundary river systems) 

• Define/refine policy responses – All responses must reflect the expressed needs of the people, involve them in consultation, take account of power distribution and social order, and avoid pitting groups against each other. At the same time they must be integrated with overall development strategies. 

• Shift climate change investment priorities – more research to address knowledge gaps and better understand conflict related challenges of climate change impact in South Asia and peacebuilding related opportunities in adaptation strategies. Explore also private sector support. 

• Devise a responsive institutional framework – with appropriate human capacity and institutional collaboration, integrating and going beyond sectoral approaches. 

• State responses – more than adaptation, there is a need to strengthen capacities for resilience to cope with climate change induced crisis situation. Development needs have to be climate proof but similarly climate change needs have to be addressed in a conflict sensitive manner 

• Improve communication – ensure information flow to citizens and key sectoral stakeholders. An improvement in sharing and learning across sectors and between states will improve efficiency, but also conflict sensitivity, of climate change response policies and programs. Steps must be taken to strengthen social capacity to understand and manage climate and conflict risks. This means communicating the knowledge available on the issue in an open and honest manner to enable understanding and response.

Collaborators & Supporters

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The Security Implications of Climate Change in South Asia - Expert Roundtable - Summary of Key Points

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:16:00 +0000

Dhaka, Bangladesh: 29th – 30th March 2010

The aim of the workshop, which brought together experts from civil society, academia and government and the donor community across South Asia, was to generate a critical discussion on the inter-linkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia. In particular,

• To explore the implications of current and future climate impacts on security in South Asia.
• To build knowledge around who can do what and how to promote peaceful responses to climate change
• To build a regional coalition to identify and address the gaps in policy and institutional understanding of climate change and conflict risks in South Asia.

How is climate change affecting fragile communities in South Asia?

To ground the discussions in the reality of climate security risks in the region, experts from Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka each offered a case study of specific ways in which climate change is impacting community security in their countries.

The case study on Bangladesh gave an overview of how predicted climate impacts on in Bangladesh - including an increase in frequency and intensity of cyclones and flooding - would lead to knock-on social economic problems such as fall in crop yields of up to 30%, increased food insecurity and possible threats to governance stability as a result of food insecurity. It was noted that already, anger is growing at the community level where the poor are feeling the inequality of the issue – with increased resentment towards the national government for inadequate management of increasingly scarce resources, and towards the international community for their failure to support adaptation and reduce future emissions through the UNFCCC process.

The case study on India, explored the political economy of climate change and security through a case study from Mihing, Assam. Three sources of conflict related to climate change in this context were identified as i) competition over resources ii) the climate sensitivity of key economic activities iii) policy and institutional failures. Many local conflicts are over local limits to access to resources, particularly water, created by elite capture and corruption within governance structures. Whenever there is a fall in groundwater, there is a strong trend of village elites seizing the dwindling water resources. This has potential to be scaled up to become a national threat. For example, recently, the farmers protest in Delhi against diversion of drinking water to Delhi stopped public transport and created large scale social disruption. The key to avoiding conflict is then to remove asymmetries in communication whereby the poor have access to information, transparency in local government, and increased participation.

In the Maldives, adaptation is a matter of survival. Security implications of climate change in Male are largely linked to internally displaced people who have been moved due to flooding on their own islands. There is an increasing trend of extremists taking advantage of the destitute during disasters, fuelling grievances and converting the vulnerable to extremist causes. Furthermore, the re-housing of communities from one island to another after tsunami flooding was met with hostility and low level violence between communities that required intervention by security forces. These tensions can be taken as a sign of future difficulties the Maldives is likely to face as climate change heightens the risk of inundation.

In Nepal, the Koshi river floods of 2008 caused tensions between Nepal and India – particularly with the state government of West Bengal who were concerned about movement of flood displaced communities to their state. The 2009 drought in Nepal caused huge food crisis in Mid -far-west Nepal which was highly politicised by various political actors and intensified tensions between Maoists and government – with the Maoists using the poor management of the flood response by government to fuel public protest which became violent and lead to some deaths. Increasingly, anti-elite causes are using climate change to build support against elites and different interest groups using climate change to build their support bases. Opponents of the government are using negative impacts to fuel sentiments that the government cannot protect its citizens, or even that the government deliberately gave them bad seeds so that their crops would fail. The Melamchi drinking water issue was highly politicised and had significant psychological impacts on the local community - creating uncertainty, not knowing who to believe and feeding into decisions to move.

The case study on Pakistan focussed on the significant problems around water in the Sindh province. There are historical tensions relating to damn construction diverting water between upstream industry and downstream agricultural users. Rivers flowing into Pakistan originate in India, so are dependent on India for flow, yet suffer from an asymmetric relationship between the two states on water management. The impacts of decreased water availability is most severely felt by the agricultural economy: there is a major loss of cultivable land, wheat and rice yields are down by 50%; sugar cane is being planted instead of mango or rice; and cotton instead of rice. The socio-economic impacts of climate change in Sindh include rural migration rates of approximately 10%, high interest rate credits of up to 10%, changing dietary habits, increased food and water insecurity faced by women and children, and an increase in children being taken out of school. The impacts of these consequences are a source of potential conflicts relating to lack of clarity and regulation around who owns the available water, who gets what water and whether it’s the duty of the government to provide free safe water to the poor.

In Sri Lanka, ecosystem decline is already affecting livelihoods. The impacts of climate change on the coastal zone of the island are most sharply felt in agricultural and fishery sectors. The need to address the impacts of environment change on the livelihoods of communities that depend directly on ecosystem related resources is very important, however in Sri Lanka, this relationship between rural poor and natural resource dependence is overstated or oversimplified by donors and projects based on this assumption are misplaced. In Sri Lanka, most rural communities with the exception of fishermen, are not as dependent on natural resources as they are in Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Communities are very dynamic so resource-user relationships will be evolving in the face of post-conflict development. For example, traditional fishing communities may not wish to carry on fishing in the lagoon, they may be more keen to move towards the tourism sector. To ensure adaptation responses adequately address livelihood impacts, they must involve the relevant target groups; communities need to be knowledgeable; local government authorities have to be motivated and pressurised (from the local level); central government sectoral policies and institutions should be flexible enough to respond to the types of changes projected to occur from climate change.

Across all case studies, the role of governance is addressing the problems posed by climate change, and indeed the role of governance in fuelling these problems emerged as common themes.

Policy Responses to Climate Change: Institutional responses

A major gap in knowledge and understanding of institutions currently dealing with above issue relates to the vague and varied understanding of the concept of ‘adaptation’. It was suggested that the language should shift towards resilience. Communities resilient to one risk, such as environment shocks, are going to be communities resilient to other risks such poverty, conflict. A resilient community is one that can absorb information, digest it, understand it, and act upon it. For this, good governance structures are needed.

It is also important that knowledge translate into understanding. Furthermore, it will cause problems if this understanding is not communicated to the affected communities and the institutions promulgating the information are not trusted by the communities.

In the South Asian context, weak local government capacity is a major obstacle to building community resilience. Better governance of natural resources requires the devolution of necessary powers to local government at the district level, but knowledge and understanding of the issues is generally very low. The need to build capacity within local institutions is a priority, as is exploring public-private and civil society partnerships in technical infrastructure projects or those which require community buy-in.

Institutions need to be open and transparent, and humble about what they don’t know. They also need to be flexible, to cope with variable and complex risks. Risks are interrelated, so policy responses need to be interconnected.

Key questions:

‐ How to get more acceptance of building ‘broad resilience’ rather than narrow, technical adaptation? Copenhagen showed how policy made by environmental and legal policy experts fails. Slow shift can now be traced, over the past three years, where there is acceptance of the complex human security linkages between climate change, mitigation and adaptation.

‐ How can the concept of resilience be operationalised? Education and two-way information flows between governance provides and local communities is a priority. They can be promoted in school curricula, university programmes, popular TV and radio programmes, civil society dialogue processes etc. As well as general knowledge and awareness raising, there is also a need for ‘champions’ who can take it up and spread the word within their circles.

Policy challenges and knowledge gaps

The state-citizen relationship in South Asia is weak. Citizens often see state as source of the problem rather than the solution. However, the paradox is that with increasing economic growth, there is greater dependence on the state to support the growth process.

Regionally, there is very little by way of multilateral approaches. Approaches to managing common resources are largely bilateral but often built on asymmetric power relations between the two states involved. Transboundary problems such as river basin management and glacier resource management however need a paradigm shift towards multilateralism.

A common problem across most states in the region is inertia in national policy frameworks, due to

‐ Antiquated laws (including land use planning)
‐ Colonial, paternalistic approach to governance
‐ Highly compartmentalised administration
‐ Conservative social and cultural institutions which are resistant to change.
‐ Lack of capacity and understanding in decision making and decision making
systems

Broad policy goals for conflict sensitive adaptation:
‐ Efficiency and equity
‐ Socially and culturally acceptable adaptation choices
‐ Stakeholder involvement
‐ Participatory institutional arrangements

These terms are often used and risk becoming jargon, but this does not distract from the fact that they are key to effective responses. The challenge is in translating them from ‘jargon’ to something which is operation able.

Conclusions:
Water issues, large scale movements of climate refugees, including cross border migration, loss of people’s livelihood and food security, and an increase in urban-rural tensions over resource utilization were identified as the major conflict issues in South Asia. These need to be addressed by unified approaches, which means

1) stronger regional understanding of potential social and conflict impacts of climate change, and

2) regional cooperation to build up the resilience of state institutions and civil society.

As such, the participants of the expert workshop initiated the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) - the first network to address this dual problem and its interlinked solutions in South Asia. The network identified the following key issues to be addressed:

Regional approach – emphasising regional approaches for addressing climate-related conflicts in South Asia through establishing platforms for exchange, sharing and concerted action. There is also a need for better multi-lateral cooperation in managing water resources (e.g. trans-boundary river systems)

Define/refine policy responses – All responses must reflect the expressed needs of the people, involve them in consultation, take account of power distribution and social order, and avoid pitting groups against each other. At the same time they must be integrated with overall development strategies.

Shift climate change investment priorities – more research to address knowledge gaps and better understand conflict related challenges of climate change impact in South Asia and peacebuilding related opportunities in adaptation strategies. Explore also private sector support.

Devise a responsive institutional framework – with appropriate human capacity and institutional collaboration, integrating and going beyond sectoral approaches.

State responses – more than adaptation, there is a need to strengthen capacities for resilience to cope with climate change induced crisis situation. Development needs have to be climate proof but similarly climate change needs have to be addressed in a conflict sensitive manner

Improve communication – ensure information flow to citizens and key sectoral stakeholders. An improvement in sharing and learning across sectors and between states will improve efficiency, but also conflict sensitivity, of climate change response policies and programs. Steps must be taken to strengthen social capacity to understand and manage climate and conflict risks. This means communicating the knowledge available on the issue in an open and honest manner to enable understanding and response.

The following were agreed to be roles which SANSaC could take forward:

‐ To identify knowledge gaps
‐ To advise on policy responses
‐ To establish new institutional norms and modus operendi to replace current
norms which are not relevant to the problems faced.
‐ To identify champions and create a constituency for the core messages
emerging from this dialogue.

SANSaC Participants, Dhaka Meeting, 29-30 March 2010

Annex 1:
Participants List
1. Dr. S. Mahmud Ali
Director Research, Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS)
2. Mr. Ivan Cambell
Senior Adviser, Conflict and Security, Saferworld
3. Dr. Moazzm Ali Khan
Director, Institute of Environmental Studies, University for Karachi
4. Dr. Ashild Kola
Program Leader Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Program, International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
5. Dr. Arabinda Mishra
Director, Climate Change Division & Dean, Faculty of Policy & Planning, TERI
6. Mr. Ahmed Shafeeq Moosa
Special Envoy for Science and Technology, The President’s Office, Maldives
7. Dr. Nirmalie Pallewatta
Head, Department of Zoology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
8. Jorge Nieto-Rey
European Union Delegation to Bangladesh
9. Dr. Atiq Rahman
Executive Director, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies
10. Dr. Bishnu Raj Upreti, Regional Coordinator, South Asia Coordination Office of Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) - North- South
11. Maj. Gen. Muniruzzaman
President, Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS)
12. Dr. Markus Mayer
South Asia Programme Manager, International Alert
13. Mr. Dan Smith
Secretary General, International Alert
14. Mr. Paul Moon
Senior Programme Design & Fundraising Officer, International Alert
15. Ms. Janani Vivekananda
Climate Change and Conflict Adviser, International Alert
16. Ms. Rebecca Crozier
Acting Nepal Country Programme Manager, International Alert
17. Mr. Mohammed Mahuruf
Director, Peacebuilding and Development Institute in Sri Lanka
18. Ms. Asha Frances Cecilia Bulathsinghala
Peacebuilding and Development Institute in Sri Lanka
19. Ambassador Geetha de Silva
Associate Director, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS)
20. Ms. Dilkie Perera Koelmeyer
Finance and Admin. Officer, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies

Annex 2:
SANSaC (South Asia Network for Security and Climate Change) - Objectives:

Short-term:
1. Providing recommendations to SAARC
2. Write up presentations from Session 1 country experiences into case studies for publication (Alert
to copy edit, TERI Press to print)
3. Explore the six identified thematic areas
4. Create an informal network (regular e-communication in short run)
5. Remain as a small core group of committed individuals from SAARC states
6. North and South partners to seek funding opportunities

Long-term:
1. Long-term engagement and advocacy with SAARC
2. Gradual expansion of network with additional members from existing countries, plus new states
3. Strengthening understanding around six thematic areas through further research
4. Reach out to private sector for advocacy and funding
5. Producing high quality regional research around six key themes – providing knowledge base for
advocacy and training
6. Joint publications

Expert Group - The Security Implications of Climate Change in South Asia

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:23:00 +0000

Dhaka Roundtable Meeting, 29-30 March 2010

Dr. S. Mahmud Ali is Former Senior Editorial Coordinator BBC World Service. He has devoted the past three decades to studying aspects of national, regional and international security, broadly defined. His formal academic labours have been at the Royal United Services Institute of Defence Studies, London (1981), and King's College, London (1985-90) where his focus ranged from strategic nuclear doctrine, strategy and tactics, through insecurity drivers shaping policy among great- and not-so-great powers, to inter-state and intra-state conflictual dynamics defining the South Asian subsystemic milieu. He has published six volumes, three of them in a trilogy charting the evolution of Sino-US security dynamics over 1942-2008. His monograph, Understanding Bangladesh (New York, Columbia University Press, forthcoming), examines the likely impact of environmental and demographic stresses on the future health of the Bangladeshi state and society. Dr. S. Mahmud Ali has spent the past quarter century working as a journalist, broadcaster, regional analyst, and editor, in both print and electronic media, in Bangladesh and the UK. Prior to that, he spent a number of years in military service in Pakistan and then, in Bangladesh. He is currently engaged in a project titled 'A New World Emerging: Asia-Pacific Dynamics in the Obama Era.'

Mr. Ivan Campbell who has over 15 years experience of conflict prevention and peace-building is currently Senior Advisor on Conflict & Security for Saferworld. Saferworld is an international non-governmental organisation that works to prevent and reduce violent conflict and promote cooperative approaches to security. It works with governments, international organisations and civil society to encourage and support effective policies and practices through advocacy, research and policy development and through supporting the actions of others. The majority of Ivan’s experience has been in Africa, where he managed International Alert’s Programme in the Great Lakes region (2000-5), and subsequently as Head of Saferworld’s Programme in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Uganda (2005-9). In his current advisory role Ivan is supporting Saferworld’s work in Georgia, Sri Lanka and Nepal, with a focus upon promoting dialogue processes and conflict-sensitive development. Ivan is also leading the development of Saferworld’s work on the linkages between climate change, security and conflict. Ivan holds an MA in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia, and a BA from Oxford University.

Ms. Rebecca Crozier is Country Manager for International Alert Nepal, based in Kathmandu. International Alert’s work in Nepal focuses on ensuring that national level policy debates around issues critical to the peace process are informed by, and respond to, local level needs and experiences. Over four years in Nepal Rebecca has designed and led a number of projects and research initiatives in Nepal with a focus in particular on building the capacity of civil society, youth and women from across Nepal to engage in and influence policy debates relating to security sector reform (SSR) and public security. An important next step for International Alert Nepal in 2010 will be to explore further the links between climate change and insecurity in the Terai region in particular. Ms. Rebecca Crozier Rebecca has a degree in Political Science and International Studies from Birmingham University.

Ambassador Geetha de Silva is Associate Director at the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS) in Colombo since December 1, 2007. Before assuming this office she held the position of Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka. Ambassador de Silva was a member of the Sri Lanka Foreign Service (SLFS). During her career of over 25 years as an SLFS officer, she served as Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Canada and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Sri Lanka Embassy in Washington D.C. in addition to other diplomatic postings. While at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs she has functioned as Additional Foreign Secretary, Political Affairs, Director General, South Asia and SAARC, as well as in other capacities and has been the Leader of Sri Lanka’s Delegation to a number of international and regional conferences. Since joining RCSS she has participated in conferences and presented papers focusing on Climate Change, Regional Integration, Maritime Security, Small Arms ,and, Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament. Ambassador de Silva has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Ceylon and a Diploma in International Relations from the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.

Dr. Moazzam Ali Khan is currently Director, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Karachi. He is also Associate Professor and is teaching courses of Environmental Science to post graduate students. He has done his Ph.D on waste stabilization ponds technology and has considerable experience in low cost wastewater treatment technology in hot climates. Presently he is working on Higher Education Commission Pakistan project entitled Climate change vulnerability and hazards to coastal areas of Sindh, Pakistan. He has organized many national and international seminars, workshops and lectures, many of these have been sponsored by the World Health Organization. He was also local tutor of CLIMA; A project of the European Commission on global climate change. He has authored several research papers which have been published in national and international journals. Currently he is also engaged as Principal Investigator in many research projects funded by national and international agencies. He has traveled extensively and has presented his research findings in many international forums.

Dr. Åshild Kolås is a Social Anthropologist and Senior Researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), where she leads the Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Programme. Her main research focus is the construction and politics of identity. She is the author of two books and numerous articles, mainly on Tibetan culture and identity, and has conducted long-term fieldwork in Tibetan communities in India and the People’s Republic of China. Since 2005, Dr. Kolås has coordinated an institutional cooperation between PRIO and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), Delhi. Key research topics in this cooperation are energy and water security.

Mr. Mohammed Mahuruf is the Regional Network Consultant of Cordaid (Dutch based Catholic Organization for Relief and Development). He initially joined Cordaid as a freelance consultant in 2000 and later performed as its coordinator. He is the initiator of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute in Sri Lanka and represents Sri Lanka on the People’s SAARC regional steering committee since 2007. People’s SAARC is the largest people’s movement covering SAARC countries working towards a People’s Union of South Asia. Mr. Mahuruf entered the NGO sector in 1980 through Terre des Hommes (Swiss organisation for Children in distress). He served as social worker in a child based family rehabilitation project of socially and economically excluded Indian origin Tamil stateless people in Nuwara Eliya and left in 1989. He then joined the training team of the Save the Children Fund (UK) and worked with the One-Year Training Course in Care of Children and Young Persons, launched in collaboration with Sri Lanka School of Social Work. He was the co-founder of PEACE (Protecting Environment And Children Everywhere) a local arm of ECPAT International (International campaign to end child prostitution child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes). In 1992 he joined Helvetas and initiated rehabilitation and development projects in the war torn areas of the east, the Integrated Rehabilitation and Development Project in Vaharai is one of them. He worked as the Principle Consultant for Novib, 1998 – 2003 and functioned as its focal person in Sri Lanka. He also worked as a freelance consultant for GTZ to provide strategic assistance to the FRG- supported technical assistance projects in the North-East of Sri Lanka between 2003 and 2004.

Dr. Markus Mayer is Programme Manager for South Asia at International Alert and the former Country Director of International Alert in Sri Lanka. He has worked in Sri Lanka for over 10 years on poverty interventions, youth unemployment, conflict sensitive development programming, and the role of local business in Peacebuilding and has published in these areas. He was attached as a lecturer and researcher to the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (Germany) as well as to the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka), where he coordinated a capacity development program to improve employability of social science graduates and to create stronger linkages between academics, practitioners and policy makers working on development relevant issues in Sri Lanka. He has a Ph.D in Development Geography from the University of Heidelberg and is co-editor of Sri Lanka at Crossroads: Dilemmas and Prospects After 50 Years of Independence (Macmillan 2000), Building Local Capacities for Peace: Rethinking Conflict and Development in Sri Lanka (Macmillan 2003) and The Challenge of Youth Unemployment in Sri Lanka (Worldbank-ILO 2010, forthcoming).

Dr Arabinda Mishra is the Director of the Climate Change Division in TERI, New Delhi. Concurrently, he holds the position of the Dean, Faculty of Policy & Planning at the TERI University. He joined the Department of Policy Studies, TERI University as an Associate Professor in May 2005. Earlier he was a Fellow for four years in the Centre for Multi-disciplinary Development Research (CMDR) in Karnataka, an institution affiliated to the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Trained in environmental economics, Dr Mishra’s research skills include integrated impact assessment, economic analytics, and econometrics. He is particularly well conversant with project and programme evaluation techniques and has led a number of impact assessment studies at the country-wide level, of which a major one is a socio-economic and environmental assessment of power sector reforms in India. His research experience covers varied themes such as climate change risks and community-level vulnerability assessment, management of ecosystems and their services for poverty alleviation, amongst others. On the teaching front, Dr Mishra’s interest in the area of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has led to the design of an international Masters programme in Sustainable Development Practice as part of a global initiative. His doctoral work is based on an econometric approach to factor productivity and technological progress in Indian manufacturing sector. Doctoral students under his supervision are examining the application of concepts of panarchy and inter-institutional interplay to understand cross-scale interactions in complex adaptive systems and the implications for integrated vulnerability assessment. He has to his credit a number of publications and has participated in as well as organized a number of international seminars/ conferences/ workshops.

Mr. Paul Moon works as a Senior Programme Design and Fundraising Officer in International Alert supporting programmes in West Africa. He is also part of the Climate Change advisory group in International Alert and supports the development of new ideas linked to climate change adaptation. Prior to working with International Alert, he worked for CARE International as West Africa Programme Coordinator with a particular focus on Climate Change Adaptation, Disaster Risk Reduction, Governance and Health. Mr. Moon has also held posts supporting work in Sri Lanka, Thailand, China and Latin America and spent one year living and working in Ecuador.

Mr. Ahmed Shafeeq Ibrahim Moosa is Maldives' Envoy for Science & Technology and is currently looking into implementing the new initiative announced by the Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed to make the Maldives carbon neutral within the next 10 years. Maldives has gone through remarkable transformation over the last few years becoming a full fledge democracy. Mr. Moosa played a key role in the democracy movement which brought an end to the 30 year old dictatorship in the Maldives. He is a founding member of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) which won the first ever multiparty presidential election and took office in November 2008. The new government of the Maldives is campaigning hard to bring the plight of their nation to the world agenda and reach a common consensus to tackle climate change impacts. Maldives, an archipelago of 1200 islands in the middle of Indian Ocean and having a population of over 350,000 is an island nation, extremely vulnerable to climate change. Mr. Ahmed Shafeeq Ibrahim Moosa graduated from Glasgow University in Mechanical Engineering in 1995 and from Birmingham University with M Phil in Metallurgy and Materials in 1997.

Major General ANM Muniruzzaman, ndc, psc, (Retd.) is the President of Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS), a leading independent think tank which focuses on peace studies and a broad spectrum of security studies covering traditional, non traditional security, trans-national security and human security. He is an active speaker of the lecture circuit and a prolific writer. His subjects of expertise include Counter-terrorism, Environmental Security, Information Warfare, Civil Military Relations, Peace Support Operations, Humanitarian Interventions in Conflict and Interventions in fragile states. He is regularly consulted by government agencies, the diplomatic community and international organisations in Dhaka on issues of security, stability and counter terrorism. Major General Muniruzzaman (retd.) is a member of the International Military Advisory Council (MAC) on “Climate Change and The Military: Copenhagen and Beyond”, an initiative of Institute of Environmental Security (IES) based in The Hague. This expert body consolidated and analysed the research findings on the impact of climate change on global security and made a statement/ recommendation to the climate negotiators in the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009. Major General Muniruzzaman also served as the Director General and CEO of Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), the premier government think tank under the umbrella of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. General Munir also served as Military Secretary to the President of Bangladesh (MSP) for a long tenure. He is the Editor of the quarterly academic journal ‘Peace and Security Review’.

Dr. Nirmali Pallewatte is a zoologist by training with a Ph.D, 1986 from the University of London, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. She is a tenured senior lecturer at the Department of Zoology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Currently she is the head of the Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo. She had her first degree from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, majoring in Zoology with Chemistry as a subsidiary subject. She has been a university teacher all throughout her career with the exception of two years from 1998-2000. She has however, branched off into various fields of environmental science since obtaining her first degree. Among the activities of her illustrious career are, the examination of coastal resource management issues through involvement in the evaluation of pilot scale Special Area Management projects in Sri Lanka, financed by the USAID in 1990s, functioning as the team leader for the environmental impact assessment (supported by UNEP) following the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, co-ordinator of the M.Sc. programme in Environment Science at the University of Colombo from 2005 to 2008, and functioning as a programme officer of the IUCN Asia Regional Biodiversity Programme from 1998-2000. She has participated in and contributed to the activities of several think tanks, including the Henry L. Stimson Centre in Washington D.C. on subjects related to climate change.

Dr Atiq Rahman is the Executive Director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS). He was trained as a chemist and earned his B.Sc Hons. and M.Sc from Dhaka University. He was awarded the Commonwealth Scholarship 1974 and completed his Ph.D on solid state chemistry and low energy processes from Brunel University, London, UK.. During his scientific career in Europe he was awarded the “Thermal Methods Group Award” in 1984 by the Royal Society of Chemistry and “Sir Eric Rideal Award” in 1985 by the Society of Chemical Industries, London. Royal Society, London gave him an award for lecturing on Advanced Ceramics in Universities in Japan during 1986. Dr Rahman was awarded the highest UN award on Environment the “Champion of the Earth 2008” by the UNEP for the Asia Pacific Region for his “extraordinary leadership and contribution to environmental issues, sustainable development and climate change.” He is a well recognized global leader in sustainable development and was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as a lead author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. He is also the recipient of the ‘Paribesh Padak 2008’ the highest Environment Award of Bangladesh for “his contribution to research work and scientific innovation.” Dr Rahman is a visiting Professor of International Diplomacy and Sustainable Development at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Boston. He also coordinates the Global Forum on Environment and Poverty (GFEP) and is the Chairman of Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) and the Coalition of Environmental NGOs in Bangladesh. He is the Bangladesh Focal Point for South Asian Poverty Commission follow up action. He has designed, developed and taught a multi-disciplinary postgraduate course on “Sustainable Development Challenges and North South Dialogue” at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Cambridge, USA. He is a Reviewer of the World Energy Assessment (1999), UNDP and UNEP and a lead author of the South Asian intergovernmental policy paper for World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr Rahman was a member of International Advisory Committee of the Secretary General of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) on Sustainable Development and was elected Vice Chairman of working group on Environment, Trade and Investment (GETI) of the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic & Social Policy (CEESP).

Mr. Dan Smith is the Secretary General of International Alert and he has been holding this position since 2003. Having graduated in 1973 from Cambridge University where he read English Literature, Mr. Smith’s work on peace issues started when he began research on UK defence policies in 1976. Prior to joining Alert he held a number of senior positions, most notably as Director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo from 1993 to 2001. He also held fellowships at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Hellenic Foundation for Foreign and European Policy and was for over a decade the Chair of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Dan is a prolific author and since arriving at Alert he has continued to publish widely. He has authored, co-authored and edited sixteen books including successive editions of The Atlas of War and Peace. Responsible for over 100 journal articles and chapters in anthologies he is also regularly invited to advise governments and international organisations on policies and structures for peacebuilding, including through his membership of the Advisory Group for the UN Peacebuilding Fund. At Alert he produced the path breaking A Climate of Conflict (2007) report on the links between climate change, peace and war and continues to lead the organisation’s advocacy on a range of issues critical to the reduction of conflict and building of peace.

Dr. Bishnu Raj Upreti is currently the South Asia Regional Coordinator of NCCR North-South. He also teaches at Kathmandu University. He is engaged in conflict transformation in the capacity of an academic, researcher and practitioner. His interest in conflict management led him to peruse a Masters (in resource use negotiation) and PhD (conflict management) from the Netherlands. Since 1996, Dr Upreti has been actively engaged in conflict and peace studies and has been extensively published on the issues of security sector transformation, conflict management and peace building, conflict and development, non-conventional security issues, small arms and light weapons, based on his research and practice. In the process of research, Dr Upreti has conducted field observation/case studies in Nepal, Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Africa, Ivory Cost, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India. He spent a decade studying and as a research assistant teaching in the Netherlands, UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. He has been frequently quoted in national and international media about Nepal’s armed conflict and peace process. His latest publications include 1, B. R. and Mueller-Boeker, U. (2010), Livelihood Insecurity and Social Conflict in Nepal. Kathamndu: RCO, 2, Upreti, B. R. (2009), Nepal from war to peace: legacies of the past and hopes for the futures. New Delhi: Adroit Publishers and 3, Upreti, B. R., Topperwin, N. and Heiniger, M. (2009), Peace Process and Federalism in Nepal: Experiences, reflection and learning. Kathamandu: RCO.

Ms. Janani Vivekananda is Senior Climate Change and Security Programme Officer in International Alert’s Security and Peacebuilding Programme. With Secretary General Dan Smith, she co-authored A Climate of Conflict: The links between climate change, peace and war, published by International Alert in 2007. Prior to this role at Alert, she worked as disaster risk reduction policy adviser at Plan International and before this her policy research focus was on security and peacebuilding. She holds an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies and is a graduate in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from New College, University of Oxford.

Expert Roundtable - The Security Implications of Climate Change in South Asia

noreply@blogger.com (Dhivehi Observer) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0000

Dhaka, Bangladesh - 28th-29th March 2010

Concept Paper

Co-hosted by International Alert, the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS) and the Peacebuilding and Development Institute in Sri Lanka (PDI-SL)

Climate Change, Conflict and Fragility by IA

‘Climate change is already adding to the burdens that developing countries have to face. Its impact is hardest on the poorest and most vulnerable members of society…Their vulnerability is shaped not only by the persistence of poverty, the lack of good infrastructure, the difficulty of getting a foothold in the world market, and thus the intractability of underdevelopment, but also by the fragility of state institutions, the instability of political arrangements, and the effects of recent armed conflict or threat of looming violence. In many, as climate change interacts with other features of their social, economic and political landscape, there is a high risk of political instability and violent conflict’. [Extract from ‘Climate Change, Conflict and Fragility’, International Alert, 2009]

The impacts of climate change are part of the daily reality for South Asia. Higher temperatures, more extreme weather patterns, melting glaciers, water scarcity and rising sea levels are now a common feature both in people’s daily lives and in media and political attention around the world. The environmental concerns are clear and the socio-economic impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent. However, little attention has yet been paid to the risks of instability and violent conflict that arise from the interplay between poverty, economic and social vulnerability and the consequences of climate change.

The roundtable aims to initiate discussion in South Asia on the relationship between climate change, resilience and security. This discussion is equally urgent at the subnational, national and regional level. It will bring together selected experts from the region to discuss the complexities of responding to climate change in conflict-affected contexts in South Asia, explore institutional responses to dealing with such risks and to identify issues of critical importance to managing the conflict risks associated with climate change.

The roundtable is envisaged as the first step of a process to assess where the gaps in knowledge, understanding and institutional responses lie. Taking this process further could include research and dialogue through a series of workshops, seminars and networking. If adequate resources can be raised, this continuing process could have the participation of different segments of society such as members of governments, the private sector, civil society organisations and the future generation.

Aim: To generate a critical discussion on the inter-linkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia.

Objectives:

To explore the implications of current and future climate impacts on security in South Asia.
Preliminary recommendations for climate-sensitive development for governments and donors.
To build knowledge around who can do what and how to promote peaceful responses to climate change.
To build a regional coalition to identify and address the gaps in policy and institutional understanding of climate change and conflict risks in South Asia.

Methodology: This two-day workshop will be structured around case study presentations, in-depth panel and working group discussions. The roundtable will also launch International Alert’s latest report ‘Climate Change, Conflict and Fragility’.