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2012 Failed States Index: How Does Climate Factor In?
Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace have recently released their eighth annual Failed States Index for 2012. The index scores countries across the globe on their level of stability, assessing twelve key variables: demographic pressures, refugees/IDPs, group grievance, human flight, uneven development, economic decline, delegitimization of the state, public services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention.
Though measuring “natural resource security,” including water, food and energy, might be a useful addition to this index for the future, it would still be very interesting to look at how projected climatic changes in these states, whether stable, failing, or failed, might impact each of the twelve variables, and thus effect a nation’s overall stability.
Stay tuned for more.
This Week in an Expanding China: Energy, Climate and Security
The spotlight has been on China this week, with the U.S. visit from China’s soon-to-be President raising familiar, perennial questions between the two countries, ranging from currency manipulation to human rights (including China’s veto of a recent UN Security Council resolution supporting an Arab League plan to remove Syria’s President from power). There has also been significant scholarly and journalistic attention paid to China’s impact on environmental, energy and climate security, in Asia and beyond. Of particular interest is the geographic expansion of China’s foreign policy interests, and the implications of that expansion. Below is a brief summary of some of the more interesting articles that emerged over the past few days. (more…)