UN conference set to bypass climate change refugees

Thalif Deen in IPS: An international conference on small island developing states (SIDS), scheduled to take place in Samoa next week, will bypass a politically sensitive issue: a proposal to create a new category of “environmental refugees” fleeing tiny island nations threatened by rising seas. “It’s not on the final declaration called the outcome document,” a SIDS diplomat told IPS.

The rich countries that neighbour small island states are not in favour of a flood of refugees inundating them, he added. Such a proposal also involves an amendment to the 1951 U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees, making it even more divisive.

The outcome document, already agreed upon at a U.N. Preparatory Committee meeting last month, will be adopted at the Sep. 1-4 meeting in the Samoan capital of Apia.

Sara Shaw, climate justice and energy coordinator at Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), told IPS, “We believe that climate refugees have a legitimate claim for asylum and should be recognised under the U.N. refugee convention and offered international protection.”

Unfortunately, she said, the very developed nations responsible for the vast majority of the climate-changing gases present in the atmosphere today are those refusing to extend the refugee convention to include climate refugees. “Worse still, they are trying to weaken existing international protection for refugees,” Shaw added....

A NASA image of Aneityum, Vanuatu

Russia's Arctic 'sea grab'

Fred Weir in the Christian Science Monitor: In a multinational race to seize the potential riches of the formerly icebound Arctic, being laid bare by global warming, Russia is the early favorite. Within the next year, the Kremlin is expected to make its claim to the United Nations in a bold move to annex about 380,000 square miles of the internationally owned Arctic to Russian control. At stake is an estimated one-quarter of all the world's untapped hydrocarbon reserves, abundant fisheries, and a freshly opened route that will cut nearly a third off the shipping time from Asia to Europe.

The global Arctic scramble kicked off in 2007 when Russian explorer Artur Chilingarov planted his country's flag beneath the North Pole. "The Arctic is Russian," he said. "Now we must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass."

In July, the Russian ship Akademik Fyodorov set off, accompanied by the giant nuclear-powered icebreaker, to complete undersea mapping to show that the Siberian continental shelf connects to underwater Arctic ridges, making Russia eligible to stake a claim. Around the same time, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced the creation of an Arctic military force tasked with backing up Moscow's bid.

"We are open for a dialogue with our foreign partners and with all our neighbors in the Arctic region, but of course we will defend our own geopolitical interests firmly and consistently," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in July. Among other things, Moscow plans to build at least six more icebreakers and spend $33 billion to construct a year-round port on the Arctic shores...

The KAPITAN DRANITSYN, a Russian icebreaker, chartered for Arctic research cruises. Here it is in the harbor awaiting the beginning of NABOS 2006 (Nansen-Admundsen Basin Observation System) cruise. Shot from NOAA

Water crisis offers chance for unity over strife

Kanya D'Almeida in IPS has a ray of optimism about water conflicts and the potential for cooperation among neighbors: As record-breaking temperature highs and rapidly melting ice caps fuel fears about impending "water wars", some experts in Washington say that the threat of full-blown conflict is exaggerated, adding that robust institutions and solid treaties could transform water crises into international cooperation.

The planet is currently home to 276 international river basins, which cover almost a half of the earth's land surface and are home to 40 percent of the global population. Many of these basins cross boundaries with no regard for the incendiary politics that divide nations, religions and peoples. In fact, a full 80 percent of the world's fresh water originates in basins shared by two or more countries.

However, while the risk of water wars has long made headlines, new research suggests that possible cooperation over shared resources would be a better, and more accurate, message. "Those of us who work on issues of international water management see only the boundaries of watersheds themselves, we see the things that unite us, that bring us together," Aaron Wolf, a professor of geography at the University of Oregon, told a panel at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington on Thursday.

...The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD), a project of Oregon State University's Department of Geosciences in partnership with the Northwest Alliance for Computation Science, carried out extensive research into the history of water-related conflict, referencing over 3,600 international treaties signed between the years 805-1997.

Rating water-related events between the years 1948-2008, the database found only 21 cases of "extensive military acts" compared to 682 instances of "mild verbal support" for treaties. The same period also witnessed the signing of 145 treaties on shared water resources....

The Cumbe Mayo Aqueduct (1500 B.C.E.) near Cajamarca, Peru. Photographer Gsd97jks has released it to the public domain

‘Water issues could sweep away Indo-Pak peace process’

Dawn.com (Pakistan) pores through a recent Wikileaks release: American diplomats were not very hopeful about the long-term prospects of Pakistan and India easily resolving their disagreements about the “emotional issue” of water, especially given “Pakistani anxiety over access to water”, according to a number of previously unpublished secret US diplomatic cables accessed by Dawn through WikiLeaks. They feared the water-related disputes would cast a long shadow over the ‘Composite Dialogue’ process, the latest round of which begins in Islamabad on Thursday.

“Even if India and Pakistan could resolve the Baglihar and Kishanganga projects,” wrote US Ambassador to New Delhi David Mulford in a confidential cable dated February 25, 2005, “there are several more hydroelectric dams planned for Indian Kashmir that might be questioned under the IWT (Indus Water Treaty).” Both Baglihar and Kishanganga projects are on the Chenab River, one of the three ‘western rivers’ to whose waters Pakistan has exclusive ‘consumptive’ rights under the IWT and which have been the source of long festering disagreement between the two neighbours.

The American ambassador also expressed guarded optimism that matters in “this politically charged impasse” would not spiral into “Islamabad’s worst case scenario, that India’s dams in J&K (Jammu and Kashmir) have the potential to destroy the peace process or even to lead to war”.

Mr Mulford wrote his cable at the height of the Baglihar Dam construction controversy and was quoting the opinion of an unnamed World Bank “contact” with regard to the upcoming dams. The bank official in particular referenced the (then under-construction, now completed, 450 MW) Dul Hasti Dam and the proposed Burser, Pakul Dul and Sawalkote projects on the Indian side which were “all on the order of 1000 MW” and which were “significant undertakings in varying stages of planning that might be questioned as to their IWT compliance”…

The Swat River in Pakistan, shot by Alakazou1978, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Water pacts 'could bring Mideast peace'

UPI: Water scarcity in the Middle East can be the catalyst for reducing, rather than causing, conflict in the volatile region, a Beirut think tank says in a report that urges a major "paradigm shift" in how regional states view the problem of dwindling water resources.

The report entitled "The Blue Peace: Rethinking Middle East Water," issued by the Carnegie Middle East Center, suggests that a radical "paradigm shift" is needed to change how these states view the political and environmental issues at the core of the water crisis, a region-wide approach rather than the piecemeal, largely bilateral, efforts made so far that have achieve almost nothing.

"It is possible … to anticipate conflict between countries due to disagreements over shared water resources," the report observed. "Indeed conventional thinking about water in the Middle East tends to be pessimistic and alarmist.

"The challenge is to rethink water in the Middle East, to treat it as an opportunity for peace and development," the Carnegie Middle East Center declared. The report focuses primarily on Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, a choice "governed by the potential of opportunities to rethink water."

The purpose is to develop "a common political framework for the future, for sustainable management of water resources across several basins and not a negotiating platform for dividing water resources in any individual basin or aquifer." The report, released Thursday in Beirut, envisions these states establishing a monitoring system through which they can collaborate and determine a more equitable sharing of water resources in the region….

Solomon's Pools and ancient aqueducts, near Jerusalem. Inflow of Wadi el-Biyar aqueduct into the upper pool, between 1934 and 1939

US clutches at Pakistan flood relief opportunities

M K Bhadrakumar in Asia Times Online: The humanitarian situation resulting from the unprecedented floods in Pakistan has been turned into a playground of regional geopolitics. The responsibility for this primarily lies with the United States, which fashioned its response to the crisis in a needlessly competitive spirit.… Pakistan's crisis presents itself as a theater of public diplomacy for the United States to burnish its image among Pakistani people, of whom 59% regarded America as an enemy country, according to a July 29 Pew Global Attitudes Project poll.

The window of opportunity opens in other directions, too. The areas of Pakistan where the extremists and terrorists have been most active also happen to be the most affected. The expectation in Washington seems to be that US marines will be working in the field closely with the Pakistani military, and that a sort of rank-and-file camaraderie is expected to develop that could have useful fallouts for the war in Afghanistan.

…Then, there are the profound implications of the Pakistani floods from the strategic and political angles, which are uniquely important to the US's war effort in Afghanistan at the present time. First, there is the lurking possibility that the Taliban might take advantage of the crisis in Pakistan.

… However, the bigger danger lies elsewhere: to what extent would the crisis be seized by the Pakistani military to fob off any continuing US pressure to crack down on the so-called Haqqani network affiliated with al-Qaeda which is ensconced in the North Waziristan?

….All this is linked to a much bigger question as well: to what extent will the 2010 floods turn out to be a game changer for Pakistan's political economy? Will the civilian leadership grab the opportunity to seize the political high ground in its shadow-boxing with the military?...