Environmental Change, Human Security, and Regional Governance

Richard Matthew

Environmental Change, Human Security, and Regional Governance: The Case of the Hindu Kush/Himalaya Region

Richard Matthew*

Introduction
From an environmental perspective, the rst years of the twenty-rst century have been remarkably turbulent ones, and trends well documented by climate and earth scientists suggest the worst is yet to come. Natural disasters are perhaps the most obvious manifestation of this turbulence. According to the International Federation of the Red Cross 7,184 disasters took place in the rst decade of the new millennium, causing more than one million deaths, affecting over 2.5 billion people, and costing some US$987 billion. Of these, 4,014 were natural disasters, and in turn 91 percent of those were climate, hydrological, or meteorological disasters.1 A small number of these disasters received considerable media attention and have become a part of contemporary global discourse and imagery, and powerful symbols of our turbulent planet, including the 2004 tsunami that killed as many as 285,000 people in Indonesia and environs; the devastating earthquake that aficted Haiti in 2010; and, most recently, the stillunfolding, complex disaster in Japan.2 Population growth and inadequate or aging infrastructure help to explain these very large numbers, but the trend towards more oods, droughts, heat waves, and other severe weather events is also consistent with the predictions of climate science. Uneven world population growth, the age-based brittleness of much of the built environment, and climate change are thought to be powerful and interactive drivers of the patterns of disaster emerging today, patterns that are particularly evident in certain regions of the world, such as South Asia. Disasters, of course, are not the only events through which global environmental change affects human security and social systems around the world. Disasters are abrupt expressions of complex processes unfolding at different rates
* Small portions of this article are adapted from Matthew 2011b. 1. IFRC 2010, 169174. 2. Three of the high-prole examples mentioned to esh out the general claim fall just outside the ten-year data set covered in the Red Cross report.
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and on different scales, affecting the security and development of humankind in multiple ways. Higher food prices, population ows, the rapid growth of urban slums, economic disruptions, public health problems, development challenges, and even violent conict may all at times have signicant roots in global environmental change.3 Since ecological processes, the boundaries of ecosystems, and natural resource ows often do not align with political, economic, or cultural borders, it is reasonable to ask whether institutions and processes for regional environmental governance could be introduced. And where they already exist, could they be strengthened, and would that be an effective approach to managing environmental stressors, coordinating the adaptation and mitigation strategies required at various scales of social organization, and establishing better early warning, response, and recovery systems? Before considering these questions, however, it is important to reect on the term region. Regions such as the Great Lakes region of Africa or the Sahel are dened largely in terms of environmental attributes, such as bodies of water or stretches of ecologically similar land. Other regions are dened primarily by their social attributes, such as the European Union or cyberspace. Still others are dened by a combination of environmental and social attributes, such as Scandinavia. Regions of all three types may lie within political boundaries, or straddle them, or be dened by a bundle of them. This article focuses on those regions that straddle or are composed of a bundle of political boundaries, thus creating challenges for effective governance, and, potentially, a need for regional governance institutions. Such institutions can have at least two forms. They may be dened, supported, and operationalized by a regional hegemon, or they may be the expression of a more participatory construction crafted by a more-or-less inclusive range of actors from the region. In this article I argue that regional environmental governance holds great promisein terms of both human and national securitybut that effective governance institutions and processes (both hegemonic and participatory) are extremely difcult to create. In particular, difculties may be most acute in the places where they are most needed. I illustrate my argument with the case of the challenge of addressing climate change impacts in the Hindu Kush/ Himalaya (HKH) region, which lies mainly within South Asia. The HKH can be dened as a region based on both environmental and social attributes. Environmental changes taking place here have the potential to impact signicantly the large and growing population and economy of South Asia. It is also an interesting case in terms of differences in regionality and in the scale or level of regional authority. For example, considerable effort has gone into investing resources and authority into the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), but the HKH does not align well with this organization; it includes a subset of SAARC but also encompasses other areas. The countries of South Asia
3. Collier 2007; Homer-Dixon 1999; Kahl 2006; Matthew et al. 2009: and Stern 2007.

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may prefer to address shared challenges in the context of SAARC, but what should they do if that organization does not have sufcient authority and capacity to address an issue of great importance to South Asia? Would another regional institutionin this case, an HKH organizationfacilitate governance, or complicate it?

South Asia, Security, and Environmental Stress

South Asia as a region is often dened largely by pronounced geographical boundaries. Its northern limits are marked by the HKH region itself. The rest of its borders are dened by water: the Arabian Sea, the Laccadive Sea, and the Bay of Bengal. South Asia can also be dened by its shared hydrological system. In spite of these environmental attributes, however, there is no agreement on the nations comprising South Asia. Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives are always included; for a variety of policy and analytical purposes, Afghanistan, Burma, and Tibet are sometimes added, and, even more rarely, Iran. In this article the region includes the seven countries included in all denitions, plus Afghanistanthat is, the countries that belong to SAARC. This does, however, speak to a broader issuethere is no generally accepted formula for dening a region; also, some terms, such as South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, are widely used but not always in the same way. Environmental attributes, social characteristics, patterns of social-ecological interaction, and even transnational institutions often do not converge in a single denition of a region. In any case, South Asia, however dened, has enormous world political signicance; therefore, the extent to which its vulnerability to climate change and many other potentially related security issues are managed is broadly important. It is home to two nuclear states, and it has been the site of relatively high levels of both civil and interstate conict. It is home to approximately onequarter of the worlds population, and has a majority of the worlds population that lives in extreme poverty. The region is marked by some dramatic and tense sectarian cleavages, especially between Muslims (who are dominant in the Maldives, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) and Hindus (who are dominant in India and Nepal). Buddhism is the dominant religion in the other countries of South Asia. There are enormous literacy decits; for example, approximately two-thirds of the citizens of India have no formal education at all. Today, many parts of South Asia are experiencing high levels of multiple forms of insecurity. For example, Incidents of terrorism and associated fatalities have been steadily rising in South Asia after 2001, especially in the economically lagging regions of South Asia.4 Also, according to the Failed State Index5, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal are all ranked as failed states; the rest of South Asian states are also ranked as failing. Another notable
4. Iyer 2009, 2. 5. Foreign Policy 2011.

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dimension of regional insecurity concerns sensitivity to natural disaster. Maplecrofts Natural Disaster Risk Index identies South Asia as the highest-risk region of the world, including Bangladesh (ranked #1), Pakistan (#4), and India (#11).6 From a more traditional security perspective, some of the most violent ongoing wars in the world include the Naxalite conict in India and the civil war in northern Pakistan. In the past twenty years, wars between India and Pakistan and civil wars in Nepal and Sri Lanka have combined to make South Asia one of the most war-prone regions of the planet. Among the many stressors one could relate to the violence and disasters in South Asia are environmental ones. Much of the region has been ravaged by deforestation and experiences with chronic scarcities of fresh water and arable land, and has faced oods that regularly displace tens of millions of people. The outlook for the future is often presented as quite bleak. Over the next several decades, for example, Christensen et al.7 predict that South Asia will experience warming of 3.3oC (well above the global average); that its dry areas will become signicantly drier and its wet areas signicantly wetter; that glacial outburst oods could cause havoc in mountainous areas; that the monsoon could change in ways that dramatically affect agriculture, which directly employs 70 percent of the population; and that severe weather events will increase. Rigorously mapping any of these environmental trends into the regions complex security dynamics is a very complicated task, but in light of the alarming climate trends associated with the HKH region (see next section), there may be a growing potential for institutional failures, civil war, resource capture leading to events such as riots triggered by water scarcity and higher food prices, ecological marginalization generating violence and public health threats, and disasters resulting in development setbacks and human insecurity. For example, Cruz et al., in IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report, have argued that the global burden (mortality and morbidity) of climate-change attributable diarrhea and malnutrition are already the largest in South-East Asian countries including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar and Nepal in 2000, and the relative risks for these conditions for 2030 is expected to be also the largest.8 The report also noted that:
Climate-related disruptions of human populations and consequent migrations can be expected over the coming decades. Such climate-induced movements can have effects in source areas, along migration routes and in the receiving areas, often well beyond national borders. Periods when precipitation shortfalls coincide with adverse economic conditions for farmers (such as low crop prices) would be those most likely to lead to sudden spikes in rural-to-urban migration levels in China and India. Climatic changes in Pakistan and Bangladesh would likely exacerbate present environmental conditions that give rise to land degradation, shortfalls in food production, rural poverty and urban unrest. Circular migration patterns, such as those
6. Maplecroft 2010. 7. Christensen et al. 2007. 8. Cruz et al. 2007, 487.

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punctuated by shocks of migrants following extreme weather events, could be expected. Such changes would likely affect not only internal migration patterns, but also migration movements to other western countries.9

To tease out the full dimensions of the potential security implications of climate change is well beyond the scope of this paper, but it seems reasonable to suggest that climate change in the HKH region has enormous potential to affect water supplies (and hence agriculture and energy), and to contribute to more disasters, tension, and strife throughout South Asia.

Climate Change in the HKH Region10

The extent and character of the HKH region have been well dened by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal, drawing upon numerous, mainly local, sources. The HKH region includes all of Nepal and Bhutan and the mountainous parts of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar, and Pakistan.11 This region is important for many reasons, including its unique biodiversity, which makes it a mountain laboratory for investigating phenomena such as climate change and biodiversity loss; as the home of some 210 million culturally diverse people; and as the source of ten major river systems upon which the health and welfare of about three billion downstream residents depend. China and South Asia generally have growing populations, urban areas, and economies, which means that dramatic increases in the demand for energy, water, food, and other natural resources are anticipated for at least several decades. Climate change, to which these anthropogenic variables contribute, appears to be having signicant impacts on the HKH region, and could therefore pose a variety of challenges to meeting increased demand for water and hence for food and energy. Measuring the impacts of climate change is not easy, however, because of the tremendous arduousness of gathering data in a region marked by severe weather and the worlds highest mountains, the incomplete nature of historical data, and political obstacles which have made transnational collaborative research difcult. Moreover, the region includes a mountainous area with very high altitudes as well as an extensive grassy plateau, which suggests that climate effects are likely to vary considerably over different altitudes and ecosystems. The most recent meta-analysis of existing research concludes that the entire HKH region is warming at a rate considerably higher than the global average, with some areas warming much more quickly than others.12 There are not
9. Cruz et al. 2007, 488. 10. The information for this section is based on notes I took as a participant in an NRC Workshop on Himalayan Glaciers, Hydrology, Climate Change, and Implications for Water Security that took place on October 1920, 2011, in Washington, DC. Material was gathered at the workshop on a non-attribution basis. Empirical material has been corroborated using Singh et al. 2011. 11. Singh et al. 2011, 3. 12. Singh et al. 2011, 1132.

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enough data to determine whether changes in precipitation patterns are taking place. The region has about 30 percent of the planets mountain glaciers. So few of them have been studied that overall trends are unclear, and data are inconsistent and incomplete. But early data analyses suggest glaciers are retreating and fragmenting, processes that may be altitude-sensitive. A reduction in glacial extent could have long-term ramications, especially for seasonal water ow, as glacial and snow melt may contribute 15 percent or more of the regions stream ow. Understanding of climate effects on the regions biodiversity is also incomplete. In simple terms, global warming is expected to drive species to higher altitudes, where they may be forced to compete with other species or otherwise be unable to nd adequate energy and shelter, resulting in a net loss of biodiversity. Summit species have heightened vulnerability for the simple reason that they have no place to migrate up to. Changes in the regions forest cover, the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau, and the regions permafrost are not well understood; meta-analysis suggests disturbances to the carbon economy that may be signicant. Related to this, the region appears highly sensitive to black carbon, which reduces the albedo effect of snow and ice. Thus, while the 2007 IPCC reports have been criticized for predicting a very rapid rate of glacial melt on the basis of awed anecdotal evidence, overall the concerns raised in these reports remain intact and plausible. While it may be inappropriate to simply ascribe human impacts to phenomena and trends that remain uncertain and understudied, the planning and policy value of what if scenarios continues to be robust.

Environmental Security Perspective

Several early attempts to sketch plausible scenarios based on analyses of the 2007 IPCC reports have borrowed from or been guided by the concepts and intuitions that have informed or emerged from research undertaken during the past two decades on how various forms of resource scarcity, resource abundance, and climate change may be implicated in a range of human and national security issues and impacts. This controversial strand of the environmental security literature has associated environmental change with institutional breakdown and civil war. It is worth briey noting some of its more widely disseminated arguments.13 The following synopsis is not intended as an overview of the environmental security literature, but rather as an overview of a subset of arguments that have informed or inuenced the dire scenarios for South Asia that emerged in response to the 2007 IPCC reports. For example, the eld includes signicant work on the security of the environment itself; on the relationships among environmental change, cooperation and peacebuilding; on the risks of securitizing
13. For an overview of the eld, see Floyd and Matthew, forthcoming 2013.

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the environment; and on military impacts on the environment, none of which is discussed here. For example, through a series of case studies, Homer-Dixon and colleagues investigated the connections between resource scarcity (specically of water, cropland, and pasture) and violent conict. They argued that in developing countries these forms of scarcity could lead to two negative outcomes: resource capture (where one social group takes control of the resource) and ecological marginalization (where some people are compelled to migrate into resource-poor lands). They further concluded that either process could contribute to violent conict, especially in societies that lacked the ingenuity to address them.14 Kahl added another dimension to this line of inquiry by linking resource scarcity to state failure (breakdown of functional capacity and social cohesion) and to state exploitation (in which a state in danger of breaking down acts to preserve itself by giving greater access to natural resources to groups that can prop it up).15 Offering a different but largely complementary perspective, Collier and many others have explored the relationships between various forms of resource abundance, especially involving high-value resources, and security problems such as civil war and state failure. Collier identied a group of countries at the bottom that are falling behind, and often falling apart.16 He argued that these countries, in which development generally has been slow, unequal and erratic, are constrained by an interlocking set of almost intractable factors. Colliers simple statistical analysis identied four variableschronic violent conict, an abundance of natural resources such as oil or diamonds, unstable and violent neighboring countries, and corrupt and incompetent government that he argued are mutually reinforcing. Much of the impetus to this strand of environment and security scholarship has been a stream of increasingly bleak assessments of the scope and effects of human-generated environmental change. In fact, the inuential 1987 Brundtland Commission report artfully but rather speculatively linked environmental stress and other variables to outcomes such as violent conict, establishing an attractive platform on which Homer-Dixon and others could build their research programs.17 A similar platform emerged in 2007 with the publication of the IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report.18 Since that time, many analysts have suggested that, insofar as climate change amplies resource scarcity or otherwise adds environmental stress to the planet, it will deepen and expand the pathways to violent conict and state failure identied by Homer-Dixon, Kahl, Collier, and others.19
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Homer-Dixon 1999. Kahl 2006. Collier 2007, 3. World Commission on Environment and Development 1987. For an overview see Matthew 2011a. For a more balanced, albeit very focused view, see Rotberg and Swain 2007.

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Nicholas Stern is one of many high-prole commentators who have imagined a near future with perhaps hundreds of millions of desperate climate refugees placing enormous stress on social systems.20 Following Stern, the German Advisory Council on Global Change predicted that climate change will overstretch many societies adaptive capacities within the coming decades, and described how water scarcity, food scarcity, and an increase in natural disasters are likely to further undermine the economic performance of weak and unstable states, thereby encouraging or exacerbating destabilization, the collapse of social systems, and violent conicts.21 Similarly, the Center for Naval Analyses, a team of former US military leaders, has forecasted a future in which climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world and adds tensions even in stable regions of the world.22 The NGO International Alert sought to quantify this threat, identifying 46 countrieshome to 2.7 billion peoplein which the effects of climate change interacting with economic, social and political problems will create a high risk of violent conict.23 The reports mentioned above emphasized the idea that climate change could increase the likelihood of violent conict, but this claim is quite speculative and not based on sufcient familiarity with the region itself. This is not to disagree, however, with the fear that substantial disruptions of human systems might result from climate change impacts. Turning back to the ICIMOD overview by Singh and colleagues provides a more empirically grounded window into what these disruptions might be. However, based on the available models and theories of how environmental change might contribute to security problems and the high levels of uncertainty about what is happening in the HKH region, there is no simple way to determine whether climate stress is more likely to generate remarkable local innovations that enable rapid and adequate adaptation and mitigation and encourage new forms of cooperation, or lead to more institutional breakdowns, increased population ows, complex crises, and incidents of violent conict, or a combination of the two. Policies therefore need to be sensitive to the range of possible outcomes that might manifest in the next two or three decades. In any case, the Singh et al. overview of impacts provides a good platform for thinking about policy needs and other types of intervention. Singh and colleagues begin by arguing that climate change is embedded in a wealth of other drivers of change that may inuence the impacts in a variety of ways by amplifying, masking, or even compensating for them. A critical general observation is that both environmental systems and social systems are complex adaptive systems in which the analytical attitude associated with quantum physics is appropriatean acknowledgment that understanding can never be perfect vis--vis such systems as they adapt to stresses in novel ways, generate
20. 21. 22. 23. Stern 2007. German Advisory Council on Global Change 2008, 1 and 3. Center for Naval Analyses 2007, 67. Smith and Vivekananda 2007, 3.

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new properties through the interactions of their parts, and function along lines of probability rather than predictability. One implication of this is that very localized empirical research is critical to determining probabilities and identifying possible leverage points. More abstract understandings, especially those based on very large-n data analysis, may produce strong recommendations that are unlikely to succeed; they will tend to be most informative as historical accounts. An obvious conclusion from this might be that far more eld research is needed before we can have enough condence in our understanding to design interventions, but the vast scale on which climate change is playing out here argues for acting sooner rather than later. This, in turn, means identifying real and potential climate impacts based on what can be gleaned from available local data and climate models. On this basis, the rst area of concern is clearly fresh water. The food security of billions of people is linked to abundant, affordable, and reliable supplies of fresh water, which come from the seasonal monsoon rains and the river systems that originate in the HKH region. There are, however, many other social factors, such as the ways in which global economic forces affect the choices available to small farmers worldwide, which may be more important than climate change effects in determining the level of food security at a given time and in a given place. In any case, the range of ways in which climate change could affect water in the region begins with a familiar mantra of climate sciencewet areas are likely to get wetter and dry areas are likely to get drier. This is especially ominous in a region of young, steep mountains that is highly vulnerable to natural disasters including oods, drought, and rockslides. Climate change is already a threat to Nepal and Bhutan in the form of glacial lake outburst oods. Changes in the rate of glacial melt, together with changes in the timing and intensity of monsoon rains, could have profound impacts on seasonal water ow and natural water storage, introducing various problems for agriculture and hydroelectric power generation, including both more intense oods and droughts. In some parts of the HKH region there may be more water and longer growing seasons, so the effects are not expected to be uniformly adverse. Climate change also is expected to affect wetlands, which puts at risk a variety of ecosystem services, and permafrost, which could lead to greater soil instability. These hydrological impacts in turn upset other ecological cycles and relationships in ways that could alter and threaten biodiversity. The cumulative effects of changes in seasonal water ows, more oods, more landslides, more drought, and shifts in the range of pests and insects could intersect with various social trends to threaten food security and expand public health challenges related to both nutrition and exposure to zoonotic disease. They could also encourage population movement towards urban areas, already a pronounced trend in the region, expanding slums and creating conditions for disease outbreaks, social unrest, greater health effects linked to heat waves, and so on. A much larger area of concern, of course, is how climate impacts will play out across South Asia, which largely depends on water from the HKH region, and

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has many worrisome traits including rapid economic development and urbanization, continuing population growth, considerable political tensions, and high vulnerability to natural disasters. Insofar as such an outcome is a possibility, but not in any sense a guaranteed outcome, an obvious question is, what types of activities make sense today?

Mitigation and Adaptation in the HKH Region

Conventional thinking about adaptation and mitigation is a logical place to begin this discussion. From the broader perspective of South Asia, while it is important to consider how those dwelling in the HKH region might adapt to climate change effects, clearly the mitigation of these effects is of great importance to a much larger population, insofar as it could reduce the extent to which rapid adaptation on a large scale is required. The ICIMOD report identied several mitigation strategies appropriate to the characteristics of the HKH region. One possible strategy could develop from the increasingly popular notion of payment for ecosystem (or environmental) services (PES).24 UNEP denes PES as (1) a voluntary transaction in which (2) a well-dened environmental service (ES), or a form of land use likely to secure that service (3) is bought by at least one ES buyer (4) from a minimum of one ES provider (5) if and only if the provider continues to supply that service (conditionality).25 The UNEP guidance on PES focuses on the conditions required for successful PES programs benetting the poor, an approach of clear relevance to this region. UNEP identies four categories of ecosystem services: environmental goods (e.g. food); regulating services (e.g. climate regulation); supporting services (e.g. nutrient cycling); and cultural services (e.g. aesthetic value).26 The idea of working out schemes through which the billions who depend on water from the HKH region could provide nancial incentives for protecting the sources seems a promising one, but Singh et al. raise several concerns, including difculties in assigning value to ecosystem services, the challenge of reconciling this approach with existing conservation strategies, and obstacles to crafting revenue ows in a region in which these services ow across many political borders.27 In spite of these difculties, the possibility of crafting a reliable stream of revenue from downstream to upstream holds much promise from an environmental security perspective, which tends to underscore the risk that efforts to control a scarce resource such as water could lead to corruption, exclusion, instability, and conict. A transparent, multilateral system with conict resolution mechanisms and processes built in for evaluation and reform would make all of these outcomes, in principle, less likely.
24. 25. 26. 27. For a brief, insightful discussion of PES, see Redford and Adams 2009. UNEP 2008, 3. UNEP 2008. Singh et al. 2011, 5353.

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Another potentially fruitful course of action would be to identify opportunities for projects within the framework of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), which has expanded to include conservation practices, sustainable forestry and expanding carbon stocks at Bali in 2007, the so-called REDD. REDD and REDD are forms of PES, with the funds coming mainly from developed states. In other words, countries such as Norway have established funds to protect ecosystem services (like the climate regulation and carbon storage services provided by forests) that happen to be provided in developing countries. While to date many of these experiments have focused on national forests, there are several reasons for thinking about REDD and REDD in regional contexts. The rst is to address the fear that with national projects the problem will be displaced across the national border forest protected in one country, but people then degrading forest cover across the border in their efforts to obtain fuel wood and other forest goods. A second reason would be to avoid the possibility of different governments negotiating different reference levels and payment structures for the protection of parts of contiguous transboundary forest. One can easily imagine how a patchwork approach could prove suboptimal and even a source of tension. Finally, given that an ancillary goal of REDD and REDD is to generate other benets such as protection from biodiversity loss, it seems again that a regional perspective could be most effective given shared forest cover. The potential for REDD and REDD in the region appears to be strong. Singh et al. concluded that the forest ecosystems of the HKH region have a good biophysical potential for improved forest management activities, with expected mitigation outcomes of 0.26 to 4 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per year.28 While many agree that REDD and REDD are attractive in theory, there is disagreement over how much forest cover could be protected in this way, and also over whether the scheme is fair to developing countries. The big question in this specic case, however, is whether the potential revenue from carbon management programs eligible for REDD or REDD funding would fully offset losses to poor communities from decreased access to forest goods and services. A third mitigation strategy is far more straightforwardmitigating black carbon, a byproduct of imperfect combustion, through efcient cooking and heating technologies. Black carbon is generally thought to be so extensive in the region that it may actually be upsetting the monsoon, and may be causing rains to shift north and west, a potentially catastrophic change for some farmers and shers.29 As black carbon covers snow and ice, it might also have enough impact on the regions albedo to affect its climate. Throughout the world, experiments with efcient cookstoves, for example, have garnered considerable support as an inexpensive way reduce black carbon and hence to improve public health as well as mitigate climate change.30 The opportunities for progress along this tra28. Singh et al. 2011, 54 and 55. 29. Khadka 2011. 30. For example, Kammen 1995.

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jectory are considerable, but real mitigation would likely require a regional commitment, even if this were achieved through a series of loosely coordinated national strategies. Here again, there would seem to be signicant efciency gains in collaboratingto understand the issue, share best practices, assess outcomes, and perhaps even negotiate with donor countries. On the adaptation side of the equation, a promising approach is to improve natural and articial water storage, which varies enormously across the HKH region. ICIMOD notes projections of increased water scarcity in many parts of this region and also identies some of the possible gains available through improved water storage. For example, water catchment systems in Kathmandu Valley, which ironically experiences massive water stress as the hub of a country with vast stocks of water, could supply about 12 times the present demand.31 The landscape or whole-of-landscape approach to managing biodiversity that has become popular worldwide in recent years seems well suited to mountain regions. By identifying conservation corridors to facilitate the movement of species experiencing climate stress, the pace and extent of loss might be managed.32 This, of course, may require quite extensive transborder cooperation. A common thread through much of the above discussion is that the success of mitigation and adaptation strategies often will depend on a regional governance framework. This is not to say that everything depends on regional cooperationclearly this is not the casebut the transboundary character of the causes and impacts does create a bias in this direction on many fronts.

Prospects for Regional Environmental Governance in the HKH

Although the countries of South Asia often identify themselves as part of a distinctive region, cooperation on this scale is notably limited. Regional governance typically occurs around a shared sense that integration of economic, security, and other policy will confer substantial benets to all parties.33 In South Asia, the benets of integration may be widely acknowledged, but progress towards realizing such benets has been constrained by sectarian divisions and frequent outbreaks of violent conict within and across states. For example, SAARC has done little in the sphere of environmental governance. It has produced a report on the regions environmental challenges, established a few technical and management committees, and adopted the Thimphu Statement on Climate Change34modest actions with little tangible effect.
31. Singh et al. 2011, 59; and personal communication with Bishnu Upreti, Delhi, India, 8 November 2011. 32. Singh et al. 2011, 60. 33. This attitude was expressed clearly, for example, at a workshop on Non-Traditional Security Challenges and Opportunities for Cooperation: South Asia 2025, held in Sri Lanka on 1314 December 2010, which I attended. 34. SAARC 2010.

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There may be several reasons for this tentative approach. First, SAARC is a consensus-based organization, and so new initiatives emerge slowly. Second, it steers away from contentious areas of bilateral conict, of which there are many, and thus some important environmental issues such as the reform of the Indus River Treaty cannot be addressed. Third, SAARC cannot build on a strong vision of economic or security integration, which are often the leading issues mobilizing regional attention and focusing regional integration and governance, as these are not well advanced. Fourth, in the domain of environmental governance, SAARC faces a complex and even bewildering governance landscape, consisting of a diversity of agreements and initiatives at all scales of behavior. Fifth, all of the members of SAARC have signicant internal challenges such as extreme poverty, and many (e.g. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) have experienced long periods of civil war or violent internal conict. Higher levels of state stability and capacity may be important to successful regional governance. And, sixth, SAARC may simply be the wrong structure to tackle some of the problems. As noted earlier, the HKH region is not the same as or embedded entirely within South Asia, thus begging the question is SAARC the appropriate structure for problems concentrated in the HKH? Given the high percentage of South Asias fresh water that originates in the HKH, this is an important question. There are, however, some critical building blocks that do bridge the two regions. For example, each of the countries of South Asia has a national conservation strategy as per the objectives agreed upon at Rio, and each has taken some steps to implement this. So there is some level of shared view and institutional convergence, at least in theory, that could provide continuity between South Asian regional governance and HKH regional governance, especially if the great power of India were to play a shaping role in both contexts. But the challenges within India itself could undermine its regional potential. For example, environmental issues are concentrated in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, established in 1985, which is the entity that developed the countrys National Conservation Strategy. Many other ministries and agencies, however, also play critical roles in this sector, such as the Ministries of Agriculture, Rural Development, Power, Non-Conventional Energy Forms, Water Resources, and Commerce. The various states and union territories within India also have agencies that govern or manage the environment, and many non-governmental environmental organizations are involved in environmental monitoring, conservation and natural resource management activities. The bottom line is that coordinating the behavior of ministries, agencies, institutes, and other groups at various levels of governance, as well as nonstate actors, has proven very difcult to date. Due to their smaller size, coordination might be easier in countries such as Nepal or Sri Lanka, but these countries have been hobbled by long periods of civil war. Pakistan and Bangladesh have large, poor populations, long histories of violent conict, and governments that have been corrupt and ineffective in this realm.

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Also promising is that all of the countries of South Asia are also members of many international environmental agreements. Typically, these include the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat Desertication, the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species, the Convention on Migratory Species, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the World Heritage Convention. But for the most part, efforts to meet obligations associated with these agreements have been structured at the national level, and so do not foster a regional sensibility or encourage regional cooperation. There are some other regional initiatives that further populate the governance space, such as South Asian Cooperation for Environmental Protection (SACEP), a body of environment ministers; the Global Tiger Forum (GTF), which focuses on issues such as the trade of tiger parts; and the South Asian Youth Environmental Network (SAYEN), which is linked to the UNEP as part of its effort to engage youth on environmental challenges. SACEP has adopted a new agenda focused on biodiversity and climate change, both potential issues of regional security, but its efforts in the past often have been considered somewhat typical of intergovernmental groupsthat is, more rhetorical and aspirational than problem-solving. The GTF could be a model for an HKH regional organization, in that it includes both South Asian and non-South Asian countries (i.e. Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, United Kingdom) as well as some NGOs (e.g. WWF, TRAFFIC). But as a strategic planning document authored by WWF and TRAFFIC argues, GTF has failed in many regards.35 In particular, it has not attracted key tiger-range states such as China and Indonesia, it has not mobilized much support from its members, and it has low global visibility on a high-prole issue, even though it is the only regional organization of its kind dedicated to tigers. In contrast, SAYEN is aligned with SAARC and also holds great promise. It links youth in the region, and hence the next generation of leaders, to UNEP and to the many debates about conservation and sustainability taking place in that context. It has an upbeat social media presence, and an annual meeting where youth discuss important regional issues. Here one can imagine the importance of climate change impacts on HKH water, and the security implications of failing to protect this vital resource, being discussed free of ministerial protocols and preexisting regional linkages. But how such discussions might play out in the years ahead is unknowable. According to senior experts from all of the countries of South Asia, the end result of all of this activity is complicated but, to date, has not been especially effective.36 It is not surprising that SAARCs recent report begins with the bleak statement that multiple stress of accelerating population growth rates, rising poverty and inequality, large scale rural to urban migrations and dwindling re35. WWF/TRAFFIC undated. 36. Based on personal communications with senior experts from all countries of South Asia.

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source base are contributory factors causing destruction of fragile ecosystems. The report goes on to underscore the regions heightened vulnerability to adverse climate change impacts.37 The picture that emerges is one in which regional environmental governance makes sense from a distance because the river systems, which provide much of the regions fresh water, ow across political boundaries, as do forest cover and biodiversity; because the entire region shares vulnerability to climate effects such as drought, ooding, and other severe weather events; because much of the region has a valuable and threatened interface with the ocean; because the entire region faces similar aspirations and challenges related to development, energy, and food security; and so on. Moreover, environmental trends for the region are deeply alarming. Climate change, for example, is not likely to create many winners in South Asia, in the sense of opening up vast new tracts of arable land or encouraging more moderate weather, but rather a lot of losers buffeted by drought, ood, and uncertainty. But as attractive as regional environmental governance might appear, the factors mitigating against it are considerable and have so far proven decisive. In this regard, three obstacles stand out. First, the region has a curious political structure in that, with the exception of Afghanistan, the political borders link all of the other countries of South Asia directly to India but not to each other. The situation, then, is less like the European Union, which is often used by South Asian experts as a point of reference, and more like North America, in which Canada and Mexico have little in common other than their shared dependence on the vast market and powerful security apparatus of the United States. Canada and Mexico do not cooperate to balance the will of the United States or nudge its policies in certain directions. North American politics are bilateral politics and it is hard to imagine how regional politics could be any more robust than what one nds in the lackluster institutions created to serve NAFTA. Of course, bilateral relationships may be thought of as one form of regional governance. In this case, regional governance in South Asia would be achieved through bilateral arrangements, all of which would have India as their common denominator, and perhaps as their point of harmonization. For this model to advance, bilateral relationships, especially with Pakistan, have to be transformed. Related to this, a second constraint has to do with power differentials. Here again, the case of North America is instructive. Except in terms of territory (Canada is bigger than the US or Mexico), the US dwarfs its neighbors on virtually any conceivable parameter. With a population of 1.2 billion, the same is true of India. Even if geography encouraged a much higher density of interaction among the other South Asian states, they would still constitute only 20 percent of the regions population and economy. But India has yet to emerge as a regional hegemon. Finally, there is the burden of the regions violent contemporary history,
37. SAARC and UNEP 2009.

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which reects deeply rooted sectarian strife and reinforces low stability and weak capacity in the regions states. Historically, this is not unique. The US has fought wars with both of its neighbors (although not recently), and all European states, with the exception of Switzerland, have fought other European states (although this has declined dramatically since 1945), and both of these regions have transformed into peaceful, relatively cooperative, and highly integrated places. But tensions among South Asian states, and especially between India and Pakistan, remain acute, and there is no obvious basis for suggesting these tensions will subside soon. The combined effect of territorial constraints, sharp power differentials, and a violent recent history underscores the great challenges facing regional environmental governance. Consequently it is not likely that the regional environmental governance needs of the HKH region can be simply addressed through existing institutional arrangements. The ICIMOD report does, however, identify a few mechanisms that might serve as a platform for the elaboration of regional governance in the HKH region. Specically, in 2011, government representatives from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal developed a 10-year road map for adaptation to climate change in the Eastern Himalayan sub-region that ensures food, water and energy security while maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.38 Secondly, ICIMOD itself, established in 1983, is a regional knowledge development and learning centre that supports regional transboundary cooperation through partnership with regional institutions and which facilitates networking among regional and global institutions.39 The importance of ICIMOD, and a belief that after struggling to nd a role for several years it was developing along a very promising trajectory, were sentiments frequently expressed at the 2011 NRC workshop. Logical next steps for the region, perhaps emanating from ICIMOD, would be to rene the analysis of climate change impacts and to assess and clarify the regions mitigation and adaptation capacities and needs. On this basis, PES programs could be designed, hooks into REDD, REDD and other global mechanisms could be crafted with a higher level of condence, and perhaps interest could be catalyzed within SAARC to strive toward a few concrete goals.

Conclusions
Deep tensions exist in South Asia between the spatial dimensions of environmental change and the territorial borders of states, between the logic of ecology and the jurisdiction and practice of governance. To overcome this tension will require the bolstering of some regional governance mechanisms, and the path of least resistance may be to start building on what exists within the HKH region itself, rather than working through SAARC and other larger institutions, al38. Singh et al. 2011, 61. 39. Singh et al. 2011, 62.

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though crafting a bridge between the HKH and South Asia may be important. A number of viable mitigation and adaptation strategies ought to be implemented, or at least piloted, in the region. However, there are signicant challenges to regional governance within the HKH and South Asia, including the lack of stability and capacity in states essential to regional initiatives, such as Pakistan; a lack of leadership by the regions great power, India; and widespread and ongoing violent conict. Certainly some progress could be made at the national and subnational levels, but it seems this would tend to be inadequate. Even though the security implications of climate change are hard to predict and not fully understood, there are many compelling reasons to take regional action. Some three billion people depend on fresh water from the HKH, and climate change could disrupt the availability of water as well as cause ooding and drought. Changes in water availability could threaten poor economies still based largely on agriculture; place enormous pressure on the regions rapidly growing urban areas; undermine economic development; intensify and add new public health challenges; force governments to divert scarce funds to manage disasters; and contribute to corruption, institutional breakdown, and violent conict at many scales. The window to act is open now, and regional organizations such as ICIMOD are, fortunately, available and poised to provide critical input into regional governance.

References
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