Today Togo should have played Ghana at Africa Cup of Nations 2010 in Angola. Separatists rebels, Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), attacked Togo’s team bus Three people were killed and nine injured. Togo has left the tournament. “Unfortunately, the situation [in Cabinda] is not stable because there is a separatist…
Author: Benno Hansen
Thinking back: Climate change and conflict through the ages
The past three months I’ve been so busy writing for (and winning) the European Journalism Centre’s TH!NK ABOUT IT #2: Climate Change blogging competition that stories I’d usually post here at Ecowar asap have lingered in my various link collections. But here’s an excerpt of two of these. A history of water wars A very…
Fighting for fossils: the al-Fakkah oil field and West Virginian mountain tops
The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15) has just ended at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Even while world leaders were discussing how to curb demand for fossil energy the fight for control of supply of them continued unabated. On the Iran-Iraq border the two countries are moving troops around to impress each…
“The Risk of Caution” by Joachim Spangenberg
The second of three videos: Dr. Joachim Spangenberg, Vice Chairman of the sustainable Europe Research Institute Germany e.V. (SERI), speaks at “Climate change and conflict – The Danger of future wars”, Klimaforum09 Sunday the 13th of December 2009. The video is of the first half of his presentation only (the rest I got on audio…
Jürgen Scheffran at Klimaforum09
I attended “Climate change and conflict – The Danger of future wars”, Klimaforum09 Sunday the 13th of December 2009. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Scheffran, Institute for geography in the KlimaCampus at University Hamburg, Germany and The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) made the first presentation. The event had an initial resource…
Nnimmo Bassey: “Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole”
The alternative to the official UN COP15 summit is called Klimaforum09 – free, open for all and packed with interesting speaks, workshops and exhibitions. It opened this Monday, the 7th of December, simultaneously with COP15. The main attraction was, hands down, Naomi Klein. She is also getting the attention on the website so far: Last…
New Greenpeace chief: “civil disobedience appears to be the only way”
Watch Kumi Naidoo, the new executive director for Greenpeace International, address climate change in his “inauguration YouTube video”: “After several years in the anti-poverty movement I came to see how the struggles against poverty and the struggle to reverse catastrophic climate change are two sides of the same coin. All our different struggles are linked…
Holy Water War continues
I have largely given up covering the Israel-Palestine strife over water. But I keep bookmarking stories at my Water of The Holy Land Diigo list. However, Al Jazeera just released this video: “This policy is not a new policy, there are lots of examples of Israel trying to force Palestinians to leave their land so…
I’m TH!NKing about climate change
As duly advertised I’m spending my time blogging about climate change and COP15 in a European Journalism Centre project called “TH!NK ABOUT IT”. Thus, not a lot of updates here lately. But ironically, this has caused some bookmarked stories to go nowhere as I haven’t addressed conflict at TH!NK yet. Here is a couple. Later…
Video: NATO chief on security challenge from climate change
Climate change will have a significant impact on our overall security environment both in the south and in the north. All of his examples have been detailed here at Ecowar. But he says two things: One, the solutions should be political, not military; and two, the military can contribute by lowering CO2 emissions.
Bloody Blog Action Day 2009
I did an Ecowar post for Blog Action Day 2008 on poverty but for the 2009 topic on climate change I ended up with a rant on the Danish (COP15 host) government: Something is rotten in the state of COP15 at TH!NK ABOUT IT. Perhaps I “should” have summed up the previous Ecowar and climate…
The military – green or black?
Destroying the Environment Is Also a War Crime [Throughout human history there have been] many deliberate acts to destroy or exploit the natural environment to achieve military goals. In the 5th century BC the retreating Scythians poisoned the water wells in an effort to slow the advancing Persian army. Roman troops razed the city of…