 DEVELOPMENTS China no longer needs to worry about the U.S. as a serious green technology competitor because the U.S. just left the race. After a year-long impasse, Senate majority leader Harry Reid confirmed on July 22, 2010 that the Democrats would not be able to secure enough votes to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act and, thus, would abandon any further efforts to do so. But, in today’s globalized economy, rising powers like China are willing and readily able to capitalize on America’s missed opportunities. The climate change bill would have provided a coherent U.S. energy policy, directed investment to green technology and created much-needed American jobs. Instead, those investment and job opportunities will likely go to China. With China’s rapid expansion into the clean technology sector, the U.S. is being left behind and leaving many to wonder--will it ever be able to catch up?
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 DEVELOPMENTS The U.S. government’s recent donation of $13.5 million to support the United Nations’ World Food Program operations in Yemen epitomizes U.S. and other western nations’ concerns with Yemen’s deteriorating natural resources. As its resources deteriorate, the Yemeni government is facing growing threats to its national security. The growing presence of Al-Qaeda and other extremists, the Houthi rebellion in the north of the country, and an increasingly hostile protest movement, all spurred by lack of access to basic goods, threaten to make large swaths of the country, if not the entire nation, ungovernable. Although some of these issues are attributable to mismanagement by the Yemeni government or the government’s lack of military equipment, other factors, including climate change, play a significant role. Yemen’s rapidly diminishing water resources are one example of how climate change, exacerbated by poor resource management, is contributing to national and regional instability in Yemen and the Middle East.
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Bangladesh has become a poster child for the unfolding tragedy of climate change. The region’s unique geography and topography leave the nation prone to severe flooding, and global warming will likely worsen this condition in the years to come. If the phenomenon is in fact man-made, Bangladesh would bear a disproportionate brunt of the problem created by rapid modernization in other parts of the world, without fully enjoying its fruits. Bangladesh has not been lifted out of its abject poverty by the industrial revolution in the West; it could in fact drown because of it in the decades to come. By no coincidence, Bangladesh tops the Global Climate Risk Index compiled by Germanwatch every year. Buffeted by melting glaciers in the Indian Himalayas, a rising Bay of Bengal, frequent coastal storms, and a network of hundreds of rivers and their tributaries, Bangladesh is a water world unto itself. 60% of the nation’s inhabitants are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood, and farmlands are particularly vulnerable to destruction by rising water and sea salt. To cope, Bangladesh’s disaster management capacity must improve dramatically.
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.jpg "Moscow Fire Alert") DEVELOPMENTS
From historic blizzards to flooding, headlines in 2010 have been dominated by extreme weather—even environmental chaos. One of the latest victims of Mother Nature’s wrath is Russia, which has experienced its hottest summer in 130 years. There have been several thousand heat-related deaths in Moscow alone, where the summer’s daily temperatures have hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Between June and July 2010, the relentless heat spawned a total of 27,724 fires, destroying approximately 2,000 homes and leaving 1,000 Russian villagers displaced. The resulting smoky haze–coupled with Moscow’s notorious smog—enveloped the city’s 10 million residents. By August, reports estimated that the heat wave would kill at least 15,000 and cost the Russian economy $15 billion. The unfolding events debunk the myth that Russia is a climate change “winner.” The “winner” theory posits that Russia stands to gain from increased global temperatures because it could reduce heating costs, lengthen its agricultural season, and access the mineral and energy resources currently buried beneath the Arctic tundra. A 2007 report issued by the UNDP foreshadowed the crisis, concluding that climate change would not improve conditions in Russia, but rather would exacerbate its existing environmental, economic, and social issues.
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According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, average global temperature increased 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century, 90% of which occurred in the last fifty years. The 2009 State of the Climate report released by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that the first six months of 2010 have been the warmest on record, increasing the rate of glacial melt and the frequency of heat waves. The same report also points to extreme weather conditions around the world in 2009, including Brazil, where forty people were killed and 376,000 were left homeless. Climate change, as these events suggest, is a global security issue and the solutions must transcend international and domestic politics so that livelihoods and the planet are protected. Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change can have a significant impact on small, rural producers and agricultural production, such as heavy flooding in Brazil and elsewhere. The Brazilian government, in turn, recently announced an investment of 200 million reais ($113 million) to mitigate the effects of climate change by promoting REDD activities (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), agricultural research, and environmental conservation. However, a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report suggests that China, India, and Brazil, among other nations, cannot accurately measure their share of greenhouse gas emissions, while countries like Russia reported data with a significant margin of error. These data and reporting methodologies further complicate efforts for global climate policies.
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DEVELOPMENTS Without a concerted effort by the international community to curb the harmful effects of climate change in Africa, droughts and famines will increase the likelihood of ethnic and regional conflict. As the German Advisory Council on Global Change warns,“Without resolute counteraction, climate change will overstretch many societies’ adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree.” The Darfur region in the Sudan starkly illustrates this point. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes that in the 1980s, crucial rains in southern Sudan became less frequent. Regional farmers became protective of what little water they had and began to fence in their properties to protect their lands from animal herds. Up until that time, regional farmers had gotten along reasonably well with Arab herdsmen, who were primarily nomadic. In 2007, the United Nations Environmental Program reported, “a very strong link between land degradation, desertification and conflict in Darfur. Exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conflicts to be triggered and sustained by political, tribal, or ethnic differences.” The report continues “[Darfur] can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from ecological collapse.” Although an underground source of freshwater the size of Lake Erie was discovered in Darfur, past efforts at water management in Sudan have been poor.
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