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NTS Bulletin

NTS Bulletin July 2010 (Issue 1)
Issues:
Note: Please click on the respective titles or headers for the full report.

Disclaimer: All links and news reports are correct at the time of publication.

MAIN HIGHLIGHT

Weather-related Disasters

In the second half of June 2010, we witnessed several weather-related disasters in various parts of the world. Heavy rains in several Asian countries inundated both rural regions such as China’s Yunnan province and cities such as Mumbai, India. Even countries from the developed world were not spared from the wrath of torrential rain, as seen in the French Riviera and in Singapore. While floods are an annual occurrence in Asian cities such as Mumbai and Jakarta, the flash flood in Singapore’s Orchard Road was a first for the city-state’s iconic shopping district.

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HEALTH SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This report focuses on drug resistance, a phenomenon that ‘occurs when microbes adapt to survive in the presence of drug therapy’. The increase in drug resistance is costing the lives of many and starting to have a negative effect on multiple global health efforts. Most significantly it has slowed down efforts to fight tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, child dysentery and pneumonia.

This study found that if an HIV positive mother uses anti-retroviral drugs or infant nevirapine during the first 28 weeks of breastfeeding, it reduces the chances of HIV/AIDS transmission from mother to child.

This report reviews the progress that 68 countries (a total of 26 key interventions) have made between 1990 and 2010 in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for child mortality and maternal health. Progress in reducing the number of neonatal deaths has been low and maternal mortality remains fairly high in the majority of the 68 countries. Besides measuring progress, this report also gives key recommendations on how MDG 4 can be achieved more rapidly.

Events & Announcements

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CLIMATE CHANGE, ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY AND NATURAL DISASTERS

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This article asks: under what circumstances can a natural disaster lead to interstate conflict initiation? Through an analysis of all major earthquakes, floods, storms, and tsunamis between 1950 and 2006, the report notes that a serious disaster increases the general likelihood of conflict initiation, and reaches two key conclusions about the specific causal mechanisms driving post-disaster conflict. First, there is not a single instance of a rival or opponent state taking the opportunity to initiate military conflict in the aftermath of serious disaster. This finding supports the developing literature on ‘disaster diplomacy’. Second, there are, however, cases in which states with a recent history of significant civil disruption initiate such conflicts themselves. In these situations, disasters can contribute to the conflict environment and can make conflict initiation significantly more likely. Counter-intuitively, it is the states which are most vulnerable and most weakened by disaster that are likely to initiate conflict in a post-disaster environment.

This report draws on case studies worldwide and Oxfam’s experience in working with rural communities to identify the range of interventions that are available to enable people living in poverty to adapt to climate change. Nonetheless, there are limits to adaptation, and without rapid and significant global mitigation, these options will be quickly lost. Oxfam’s approach brings together experience in the areas of livelihoods, natural resource management, and disaster risk reduction. Uncertainty and risk can be managed using robust decision-making in order to build adaptive capacity from household to national and global levels. This report identifies the need for a combination of bottom-up and top-down processes in order to create the enabling conditions needed for people living in poverty to adapt to climate change.

Climate finance is becoming a dark curve on the road from Copenhagen to Cancún. Poorer nations fear that richer ones will fulfill the US$30 billion ‘fast-start’ climate finance promises made in the non-binding Copenhagen Accord by relabeling or diverting basic development aid, or by simply delivering on past climate finance pledges. This paper argues that the problem is that contributor countries are operating with no clear baseline against which their promise of ‘new and additional’ funding can be counted – and they do not accept the baselines put forth by developing countries. A viable solution for the short term may be to use projections of business-as-usual development assistance as baselines. A longer-term benchmark could be the provision of truly ‘new’ funds from new funding sources. This paper further argues that substantial upfront negotiations may be required, but seizing this opportunity to define baselines will build confidence on both sides and create predictability for future finance.

The member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been frequently criticised for adhering to a longstanding norm of strict non-interference in one another's domestic affairs, thereby hampering collective efforts to address regional problems. This article presents an analytical model of international institutions that shows how underlying norms and principles – the meta-regime – govern the rules and procedures of specific international regimes. It then applies this model to ASEAN’s trade and anti-haze regimes, demonstrating how ASEAN’s underlying meta-regime has frustrated attempts to liberalise trade and reduce air pollution. While ASEAN’s purview has extended well beyond its original security mandate and it has developed new rules and procedures to handle the new issues, its underlying norms and principles consistently limit its ability to handle regional problems. The conclusion discusses how the ASEAN states might be able to foment cooperation in these issue areas without completely abandoning its foundational norms and principles.

This report has noted that awareness has grown in recent years of the relationship between international conservation practices to indigenous peoples and local communities, and especially the links between conservation and human rights. The impacts that protected areas can have on rural communities – such as evictions and lost access to natural resources – are now under particular scrutiny. This paper points out that concern is rising over the human rights implications of some climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. But awareness is also growing of the positive contributions of nature conservation to the rights of people to secure their livelihoods, enjoy healthy and productive environments, and live with dignity. This paper argues that international NGOs can play a central role in supporting and promoting conservation actions that respect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and help sustain their livelihoods.

Events & Announcements

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FOOD SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This report explores the potential interactions between food production and climate mitigation for two situations in sub-Saharan Africa, where deforestation and land degradation overlap with hunger and poverty. Three agriculture intensification scenarios for supplying nitrogen to increase crop production are compared to baseline food production, land requirements to meet basic caloric requirements, and greenhouse gas emissions. At low population densities and high land availability, food security and climate mitigation goals are met with all intensification scenarios, resulting in surplus crop area for reforestation. In contrast, for high population density and small farm sizes, attaining food security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions require mineral fertilisers to make land available for reforestation; green manure or improved tree fallows do not provide sufficient increases in yields to permit reforestation. Although these results are encouraging, agricultural intensification in sub-Saharan Africa with mineral fertilisers, green manure, or improved tree fallows will remain low without policies that address access, costs, and lack of incentives. At the same time, carbon financing for smallholder agriculture could not only increase the likelihood of the success of the programmes for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in developing countries and climate change mitigation but also promote food security in the region.

This article argues that the ineffectiveness of policies which address the problem of urban household food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa has hinged in particular on the paucity of information about consumption patterns under changing economic conditions. Thus, elasticities of food demand were estimated through the Linear Approximated Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) and inferences about access to food were drawn. Shifts in consumption were evident when changes occurred in income, prices and household demography. As the urban poor are sensitive to variation in food prices and income, they should be cushioned against their negative effects in order for their access to food to be enhanced and hence their food security improved. Dairy and dairy products and wheat and wheat products were identified as subsidy carriers which would improve the nutrition of the urban poor. These results provide guidance for the design of food security and nutrition strategies and programmes at the micro- and macro-economic levels.

This volume examines the various drivers of global change, including climate change and the use of agricultural knowledge, science and technology; as well as the outcomes of global change processes, including impacts on water quality and human well-being. Several authors examine potential policy and institutional solutions afforded by globalisation to meet the challenges ahead, particularly the role of trade policy. Financing water development in a more globalised world and adapting to global warming are also examined.

Events & Announcements

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ENERGY SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

The authors first argue that, in order to accomplish the objectives set out by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), innovation, widespread transfer and implementation of sustainable energy technologies will be essential. A number of countries were used as case studies in the review of the contemporary literature on energy technology transfers. The authors found that energy systems in both developing and developed countries tend to possess large-scale infrastructure and institutional inertia which hamper changes in energy infrastructural investments favouring low-carbon alternatives and more decentralised energy generation. To circumvent this, the paper recommends more rapid transfer and innovation of low-carbon, hence more sustainable, energy technologies to reduce global vulnerability to climate change. In particular, the authors advocate a paradigm change in implementing the clean development mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, which they deemed as unable to foster the supporting systems required to enhance adoption of new technology. As such, they argue for a more pragmatic adaptation of CDM to deliver more technology transfer through improvement of national energy systems.

This paper examines the causal relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, electricity consumption and economic growth for five countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) over the period 1980–2006. From the statistical results, the authors found that there has been a statistically significant positive association between electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. The results also reinforce the conclusion that these five ASEAN countries are energy-dependent economies which require intensive electricity use in order to fuel industrial, and hence economic, growth. The increase in electricity consumption leads to higher gross domestic product through two main causes: the direct translation of energy consumed into commercial use, and increase in energy consumption leads to increase in energy production that has the indirect effect of generating employment and infrastructure in energy services. The authors argue that continued rapid economic growth for ASEAN will require higher and/or more efficient electricity consumption. This can be achieved through adopting a multi-pronged strategy of: increasing investment in energy infrastructure to expand energy inputs, regulatory reform of energy infrastructure, and implementation of energy conservation policies to improve energy efficiency.

Using key indicators of price, efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, availability, limitations, land use, water use and social impacts, the authors assess the sustainability of electricity generation from biomass. They found that biomass-generated electricity generally favours pricing and efficiency, and lowers greenhouse gas emissions compared with other energy sources. Moreover, biomass is readily available. Nonetheless, the authors concluded that the use of biomass for electricity generation consumes huge amounts of land space and water, and creates social impacts. It is argued in this paper that the type and growing location of the biomass source are paramount factors to be considered for its sustainable utilisation. The authors recommend that hardy crops cultivated on unused or marginal land, as well as waste products, are more sustainable biomass sources for electricity generation compared to dedicated energy crops grown on food-producing land using huge amounts of fertilisers.

The goal of this discussion paper is to contribute to the current policy debate about how to effectively limit or reduce oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from the US transportation sector. The paper explains what is wrong with the status quo and therefore why new policies are needed. It examines special policy challenges in this domain, and analyses the pros and cons of individual policy measures. Finally, the paper explores the probable overall effects of several illustrative policy packages.

Events & Announcements

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Use of this article:

You are free to publish this article in its entirety or only in part in your newspapers, wire services, internet-based information networks and newsletters and you are also free to use the information in your radio-TV discussions or as a basis for discussion in different fora. We would, however, appreciate it if you could let us know when and where the article was used.

About the Centre:

The Centre for NTS Studies of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, was inaugurated by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-General Dr Surin Pitsuwan in May 2008. The Centre maintains research in the fields of Climate Change, Energy Security, Health Security, as well as Internal and Cross Border Conflict. It produces policy-relevant analyses aimed at furthering awareness and building capacity to address NTS issues and challenges in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. The Centre also provides a platform for scholars and policymakers within and outside Asia to discuss and analyse NTS issues in the region.

In 2009, the Centre was chosen by the MacArthur Foundation as a lead institution for the MacArthur Asia Security Initiative, to develop policy research capacity and recommend policies on the critical security challenges facing the Asia-Pacific.

The Centre is also a founding member and the Secretariat for the Consortium of Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies in Asia (NTS-Asia). More information on the Centre can be found at www.rsis.edu.sg/nts


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