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NTS Bulletin

NTS Bulletin June 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

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

On 20 April 2010, an explosion and a fire took place at the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, 65 kilometres from the Louisiana coast in the United States. The incident took the lives of 11 crew members and caused an oil spill with an estimated 1,000 barrels (159,000 litres) of oil leaking daily into the Gulf of Mexico. At least 22.7 million litres of crude oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico so far, with the oil reaching the wetlands of Louisiana. The Deepwater Horizon – one of the most technologically advanced offshore drilling platforms in the world – was leased by the oil company BP. The US government and environmental non-governmental organisations have been pressuring BP to take better action to contain and investigate the cause of the oil spill. The incident has raised a number of questions related to issues such as the safety of oil rigs, dependence on fossil fuels as a source of energy, development of nuclear energy as an alternative source of energy, and levels of preparedness in oil rigs not only against natural disasters but also against man-made ones.

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HEALTH SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

Most of the research available on health systems focuses on the situation in stable, low-income countries. Little research has been done on the disrupted health systems in conflict-affected, fragile states. Such states have low millennium development goal indicators; contain one-third of the world’s poor, the world’s maternal deaths and those living with HIV/AIDS. This briefing note focuses on factors that could inform health systems-related policy and practice in conflicted-affected fragile state environments, which have poorer governance and severe human resource and financial constraints.

This report examines the roles of civilian institutions and the military in promoting health in conflict settings. There are actionable recommendations for how the Obama administration can better use its military health programmes to overcome knowledge gaps between the often segregated global health and national security objectives and improve interagency and civil-military communication. Recommendations focus on increasing global public health capacity, improving access to healthcare for host-nation civilians, and increasing security and stability abroad.

Public opinion polls conducted between April 2009 and January 2010 on the public opinion towards H1N1 in the United States have been reviewed and examined in this paper. Specifically, people’s behaviours during the following three periods were analysed: the early months of the pandemic, when no vaccine was available; at the time of the initial, delayed release of the vaccine to high-priority groups; and after the vaccine was widely available.

This article examines the situation of H1N1 in Vietnam from 26 May to July 2009. Systematic viral clearance data on 292 isolated cases and treated patients is presented.

Events & Announcements

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CLIMATE CHANGE, ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY AND NATURAL DISASTERS

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This report closely examines access rights to environmental decision-making in four countries: Cameroon, Paraguay, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. The case studies highlighted in this report cover a range of environmental concerns including water quality, land use, data availability, and the use or absence of environmental impact assessments (EIAs). The findings and literature review show that the poor in these countries face a daunting array of barriers to access, including low literacy, high costs (including the costs of corruption), exposure to risk from participation, and lack of documentation of legal identity or rights to resources, which is necessary to influence decisions. The case studies also provide examples where civil society organisations, community groups, and, most importantly, governments have taken steps to overcome these barriers. Based on the findings and literature review, the authors have identified six poverty-related barriers to access to decision-making and proposed eight categories of policy responses to overcome these barriers. In addition, they noted that a general lack of access to information for all citizens had a commensurately larger impact on access to information for the poor.

  • Adil Najam and Mark Halle, ‘Global Environmental Governance: The Challenge of Accountability’, Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Sustainable Development Insights No. 5, May 2010.

This issue of Sustainable Development Insights argues that accountability – or lack thereof – is a fundamental challenge in improving global environmental governance (GEG) and that success must be measured not simply by the vitality of the negotiation process but by the robustness of implementation. States as well as institutions must be judged not by their statements of good intentions but by measurable implementation of their commitments and achievement of goals. The authors provide five reasons for GEG’s culture of unaccountability and seven related ideas for GEG reform.

The commitment to provide new finance in support of climate change actions in developing countries was one of the few areas where tangible progress was made at the Copenhagen COP 15 meeting. This paper examines Europe’s approach to the provision of securing a system that supports financial flows to developing countries. As new funding initiatives have been established, a number of principles have been proposed to assess their relative worth. However, little emphasis has been given to how these principles might fit together in a coherent, overarching framework. This paper proposes such a framework and describes the criteria and indicators by which compliance with the principles could be assessed. The paper identifies three sequential phases that relate to the mobilisation, administration and disbursements of funds, examining the principles, criteria and indicators that are relevant for each of these three phases.

This policy brief assesses the two-week Copenhagen conference, evaluates the Copenhagen Accord, and discusses key issues the international community will face moving forward. It is argued that despite the chaos in Copenhagen, the accord is a significant step forward in addressing global climate change. Because of the chaos in Copenhagen, the international community has a unique opportunity to go back to first principles and craft a more suitable and sustainable long-term approach to this challenge.

Global environmental governance is undergoing significant change. There is a growing recognition that the traditional state-centric intergovernmental model of addressing global environmental problems is insufficient in the face of increasingly complex and overlapping environmental issues. This has provoked significant innovation. While there is growing discussion of institutional reform at the international level, including reform to the United Nations Environment Programme and the creation of a new global organisation to address these problems, there is also a fragmentation of governance processes at other jurisdictional levels and actors. Corporations, social and environmental organisations, private-public partnerships, sub-state governments, and even local communities have already begun to conceive and implement governance initiatives to address global environmental problems. This paper reflects upon these innovative institutional dynamics and assesses their prospects to produce effective, legitimate and equitable outcomes. It concludes with a series of questions to guide future analysis and to better understand the prospects for improving the practice of global environmental governance.

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 densities 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 manures, 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 increase the likelihood of success of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (REDD) and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries programmes and climate change mitigation but also promote food security in the region.

Urban household food insecurity continues to be a major problem in many urban households of Sub-Saharan Africa. The ineffectiveness of policies addressing the problem has hinged in particular on the paucity of information about consumption patterns under changing economic conditions. In this article, elasticities of food demand were estimated through the Linear Approximated Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) and inferences about access to food were drawn. As such, 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 that 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.

Events & Announcements

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ENERGY SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

The author points out that the consumption of hydrocarbon fuel (oil, gas and coal) resources has been rising but unsustainable at the present levels, given the continued inequity of costing and environmental degradation. At the same time, investments in energy research and development (R&D) appear to be too low to meet future needs. The author argues that sustainability science, which can form the blueprint for sustainable energy development in the future, needs greater effort in uncovering its utility. The following recommendations are suggested in this paper for the future sustainable energy pathway: 1) wiser use of energy resources through conservation and reduced energy intensity; 2) continued drive in the R&D and implementation of renewable energy sources; 3) reduction of energy losses through the R&D and deployment of commercial superconductor technologies; 4) exploration of space power generation for terrestrial use as a long-term solution; 5) halting the inequitable costing of energy resources; and 6) rapid development and application of sustainability science. However, the author also concedes that a frequent major obstacle to a sustainable energy pathway is the issue of inadequate political support.           

In this paper, the importance of standards for sustainable bioenergy production is discussed. The authors argue that the sustainability of bioenergy production is crucial if this form of alternative energy source is to contribute effectively to climate change mitigation. Two types of market failures that may threaten sustainable bioenergy production are identified: namely information asymmetry and externalities. Nonetheless, the authors propose that certain measures, such as mandatory certification and subsequent labelling can help to overcome these market failures. They conclude that the existence of production externalities calls for stronger market intervention, such as in the form of taxation regimes. Finally, they recommend government-imposed mandatory certification combined with binding minimum standards as an adequate policy option to regulate the bioenergy market and ensure its sustainable production. 

US President Barack Obama’s announcement in July 2009 that he would host a global nuclear security summit in April 2010 to ‘develop steps that can be taken together to secure vulnerable materials, combat nuclear smuggling and deter, detect, and disrupt attempts at nuclear terrorism’. As such, the Fissile Materials Working Group organised a non-governmental summit that gathered international experts to engage in a wide-ranging discussion on the nuclear security agenda. This summit aimed to provide analysis, education, and policy recommendations that highlight the urgency of the nuclear security agenda. With that, the summit endeavoured to advance policy proposals that go beyond those endorsed at the governmental nuclear security summit. Ideas presented and debated during this non-governmental summit could also help establish the foundation for a global network to press for the implementation of nuclear security improvements.            

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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