Resource conflict and ecosystem diplomacy in bullet point updates – since 2008
“The Pacific Ocean off Central America remains a blood-soaked environmental crime scene” writes Post Magazine in a sad report on illegal shark fishing by Chinese fleets. In one case, the Ecuadorean navy caught a Chinese freighter carrying 150 tonnes of dead shark. In China, the price of shark fins are sometimes higher than the price…
Firefighters in California are battling huge wildfires and every child can do the math. To little surprise, July turned out to be the hottest month on record in the state. But the wildfires a not linked to global warming. No, they are caused by legal actions of “environmental terrorist groups” says US Interior Secretary Ryan…
Don’t buy oil. The price of oil on the world marked dipped last week. This should worry investors and oil companies more than it does, argues The Economist: “oil firms are assuming that decarbonisation will be limited and are thus overstating their assets. […] Oil firms could face a sticky mess of forced writedowns. […]…
It’s Earth Overshoot Day, an unprecedented global heatwave has baked us for two months, and I’m rebooting Ecowar with the first of what I intend to be a weekly roundup of atrocities. Buckle up. First of all, this heat wave is due to climate change says the World Weather Attribution. No, any single weather event…
“You always have a higher potential for violent conflict when the survival conditions of groups of people are threatened. […] if all these scientists and climate researchers are right, or even close to right, what does it mean for greater potential for violent conflict? I think the answers are not encouraging.” “My belief is that…
I need YOU to write Ecowar. I will assist. You get final say. Together we will produce a little something cool. Read the full call for papers for further inspiration and instructions. (Languages accepted: preferably English, Danish, perhaps German.)
Dear reader, After five years of distribution by a publisher, my book Ecowar – Natural resources and conflict is now available for free under the Creative Commons Attribution license. That means you are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the…
The Washington Post recently published Oil wars: Why nations aren’t battling over resources by Emily Meierding. Does this article remove the entire foundation of this blog and the book I made of it? Pointing at “invasion costs, occupation costs, international costs and investment costs”, Emily Meierding says oil wars are just not worth fighting. With…
Food Security and Conflict debate by Food Tank. Keynote speaker: David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “The main concentration of world hunger now is in countries that are struggling with conflict.”
Check out New York Times’ six part series about the medevial conditions on the high seas. In this series on lawlessness on the high seas, Ian Urbina reveals that crime and violence in international waters often goes unpunished. In particular, ‘SEA SLAVES’: THE HUMAN MISERY THAT FEEDS PETS AND LIVESTOCK reports of slavery-like working conditions onboard….
While blogging, a cornerstone of sources were scientific journal articles. These are covered in chapter four of the book, Thinking about it: theories of peace and war. The recent publication by Bove et al has inspired me to summarize some of the quantitative research about conflict over natural resources in a table. Enjoy… Tweet
From the depths of my bookmarks (that were all automatically tweeted) on conflict and natural resources, here is a quick review of the way in which Earth was plundered for natural resources in the past year. Year 2014, the 100th anniversary of the first war to run on oil. In short, 2014 was just more…