Water scarcity resulting from climate change is the number one issue the world will have to grapple with in the future, according to chief climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.

On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising. On the other hand, though, drought caused by climate change will leave possibly billions of people without clean water.

This will cause great health and global security issues. Most of these problems will be caused by water imbalances.

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sustainablog: Oftentimes, situations like these arise from limited economic opportunities. What other means of making a living are available (or could become available) to people in the Eastern Congo? Are there options for these people that couldn’t be as readily exploited by armed groups in the area?

David Sullivan: Impoverished Congolese miners and their families are often entirely dependent on their meager income from mining, and they currently have few viable economic alternatives to lift them out of this indentured servitude. What could be the most promising alternative to mining is agriculture, but the threat of violence often forces Congolese farmers to abandon their fields to flee for safety.

Efforts to end the trade in conflict minerals absolutely must be accompanied by international support for livelihoods and economic opportunities in eastern Congo. Rebuilding roads is a key opportunity, so that other sectors can benefit from trade. Infrastructure projects with guaranteed labor at decent wages can help lure miners out of conflict mines and create opportunities for demobilized combatants. Larger firms can raise miners’ living standards if independently verifiable mechanisms are put in place to ensure that the corporations are not contributing to armed groups, and health, safety, and labor standards are observed at mining sites. International investment should be stepped up in agricultural development initiatives in eastern Congo, which mining has displaced in recent years.  Good models for agricultural investments in mining areas exist in Sierra Leone. Other livelihood initiatives, such as small business development projects, should also be promoted. All projects should be designed in close partnership with miners themselves, and should also be followed up with education initiatives for miners.

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Do you recycle your cell phones? It’s a great practice for insuring that toxic materials in those old phones don’t make their way into the environment. But what about the other side of the cell phone lifecycle? Do you know where the materials come from?

It turns out that many of the minerals in that phone have an ugly story behind them, similar to that of blood diamonds. TakePart.com, a project of Participant Media, produced the PSA above as part of a larger campaign to educate the public about the role “conflict minerals” such as tin, tungsten, gold, and tantalum play in funding armed groups fighting in the Eastern Congo. According to Raise Hope for Congo, a campaign of the Enough Project,

The conflict in eastern Congo, the deadliest in the world since World War II, is being fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that go into our electronic products from cell phones to digital cameras. Over five million people have died as a result of the war, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in eastern Congo over the past decade. The armed groups that are perpetuating the violence generate an estimated $144 million each year by trading in [the above-mentioned] four main minerals…

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While many of our readers are well aware of global environmental laws that are specifically written to protect the environment, such as the Kyoto Protocol, the International Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Law of the Sea and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), this post would like to explore what some of the laws of war and humanitarianism (the Geneva Convention being the most famous) hold for protecting the environment.

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While a sobering read, even more sobering to readers will be understanding how the environmental costs of conflict are not limited only to the Middle East, but that war costs the environment no matter where it occurs.

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The East African newspaper reported this week that the spat was simmered by three previous unannounced visits to Cairo by a Ugandan water ministry official to negotiate a ’secret deal’ for Egypt to draw more of the Nile waters in contravention of existing multilateral agreements.

Dar es Salaam then demanded to see a copy of the political arrangement between Uganda, which shares Lake Victoria - which feeds the Nile - with Kenya and Tanzania, and Egypt whose economy is largely dependent on waters of the River Nile that drains into the Mediterranean.

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Spurred by shrinking freshwater supplies, U.S. states could begin “water wars” in the next years to claim rights to Great Lakes water, warned American and Canadian scientists at a water conference in Toronto last week.

Nations around the world, such as India and Australia, are already experiencing drought and its effects on access to clean water and increases in food prices–and states in the American South and West are bracing themselves for a time in the near future when water resources will be more scarce.

Scientist Milton Clark, a senior health and science adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was quoted as saying at the conference, “We will in fact get into major water wars. You will see water wars coming in every way, shape or form.”

To prevent states from fighting over–or selling–water, the Great Lakes Compact was created in 2001 among the eight Great Lakes states, Ontario and Quebec.

Ontario and Quebec have signed the agreement, which bans long-distance water diversions to states not bordering the Great Lakes. Minnesota, New York, Indiana and Illinois have also signed the agreement, and Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania have not.

As one of the world’s largest reservoirs of drinking water, the five Great Lakes contain 18 percent of all fresh surface water on the planet. Conservationists continue to lobby to protect the lakes’ waters from mismanagement and environmental degradation.

Photo: NASA

Over the city, military jets scream through the sky.

The jets that thunder all day long over Gangneung are a reminder that for the past 60 years Korea has been a country divided and at war with itself. Gangneung, with its windfarm, solar panels, and cherry blossoms, lies less than 100 miles (160 km) from the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, the world’s last remaining Cold War border.

This week, as springtime blooms, a series of events unfolded which threaten to destabilize the delicate balance between the North and the South.

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There is no recent conflict in Africa that has elicited so much debate around the world and in the United States, in particular, as Darfur. Not even the post election political skirmishes in Kenya drew so much attention. Kenya, once the darling of the continent, the erstwhile adversaries are today sharing a cup of tea as well as power, something unthinkable only two months ago.

In a 2007 newspaper article, UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.”

What does this mean? The Darfur conflict inflicts even more damage on Sudan’s environmental degradation with nearly two million internally displaced people putting pressure on the fragile environment as they clear land and source ground water to survive.

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After maintaining a stable and affluent country for decades, Côte d'Ivoire fell to a rebellion in 2002 which split the country in two. This led to many human rights violations, with harassment, child soldiers and executions reported on both the rebels and government. The fighting has claimed "thousands of civilian lives and led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people" with over 40% of the population now in poverty. There already exists an arms embargo ban on rough diamonds because of their contribution to the conflict. However, cocoa is still available to on the international market, with an estimated $118 million already used to fund the conflict on both sides.

One quarter of the people of Côte d'Ivoire work in the cocoa sector, which produced 40% of the world's cocoa in 2006. While the south portion of the country, which is under control by the government, grows approximately 90%, the rebel-controlled north produces the remaining 10%. The Global Witness is an independent non-governmental organization which investigates and campaigns on the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict and corruption. They recently published Hot Chocolate: how cocoa fuelled the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire, a report dedicated solely to the cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire and found "cocoa trade have contributed to funding armed conflict and how opportunities for enrichment from cocoa through corruption and misuse of revenues, both by the government and the rebel group Forces Nouvelles (FN), continue to undermine the resolution of the crisis." Both rebels and the government find opportunity to use profits from the sale of cocoa to directly fund their internal conflict, with the government siphoning $38.5 million directly into the war effort. The study found that when people such as journalists, auditors and independent investigators attempted to expose this embezzlement they have been intimated with threats and attacks. In the north the average revenue from cocoa is approximately $30 million through both sales and taxes. Cocoa from the northern zone is exported to Togo and then sold on the international market.

The report calls for the purchasers of cocoa to use their power and demand more transparency and improved management of cocoa revenue from their suppliers. One such way to ensure the chocolate consumers purchase is not supporting arms supplies or political conflicts is to search for Fair Trade chocolate, which, among others, requires transparency.

This is another example of a country's natural resources fuelling conflict, a scenario that has become all too common. Trade is not a simple exchange of commodities, but has extending ramifications across the people, the country and region and ultimately the world. We must adjust our trade practices to include the human element as an important factor, rather than view supply and demands existence within a vacuum. The report calls for the purchasers of cocoa to use their power. They need to demand more transparency and improved management of cocoa revenue from their suppliers. One such way for consumers to ensure the chocolate purchased is not supporting arms supplies or political conflicts is to buy Fair Trade chocolate, which, among others, requires transparency which prevents groups from funnelling revenue into their wars.