Resource Guide:
- Violence-climate change interactions in cities
Articles:
- Urban life in the COVID-19 space of emergency: field notes from Karachi
Arsam Saleem and Nausheen H. Anwar, Karachi Urban Lab, Pakistan
https://www.identitiesjournal.com/the-viral-condition-virtual-symposium/urban-life-in-the-covid-19-space-of-emergency-field-notes-from-karachi
- Why the COVID-19 crisis is an urban crisis
Karachi Urban Lab
https://www.dawn.com/news/1544933/why-the-covid-19-crisis-is-an-urban-crisis
- Karachi – housing without a future
Arsam Saleem, Mohammed Toheed and Maheen Arif
https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/621740-karachi-housing-without-a-future
- Urbanisation and Climate Security: Towards Integrated Approaches for Cities – Policy Brief
Arabella Fraser, Gulnaz Anjum, Vera Bukachi, Nuha Eltinay and Amilcar Kraudie
https://www.planetarysecurityinitiative.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/PB_Urbanisation_Climate_Security_5eproef_0.pdf
- Without water, there is no life': Negotiating everyday risks and gendered insecurities in Karachi's informal settlements
Nausheen H. Anwar, Amiera Sawas and Daanish Mustafa
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098019834160?journalCode=usja
- Innovating pathways for safe and sustainable urban futures
WUF10 Brief
Podcasts and Videos:
- Women in Kibera: Climate Warriors by Vera Bukachi at Hague Talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a327WIkjH2w
- High Urbanization and extreme weather: a dire mix for the Caribbean – Interview with Amilcar Kraudie
https://www.planetarysecurityinitiative.org/video/psc-interview-amilcar-kraudie
- Infrastructure's Inequalities: A Conversation with Nikhil Anand and Nausheen Anwar
https://edgeeffects.net/anand-anwar-infrastructures/
Our Newsletter of November 2020
The GCRF Climate Change and Urban Violence Global Engagement Network (CCUVN) aims to promote new understanding and learning about the interactions between climate change and urban violence in the Global South, with a focus on non-conflict violence.
NETWORK’ SENGAGEMENTS
The CCUVN held its first webinar series from June 24 – 26, 2020, examining the challenges of climate change and violence, displacement and development, Covid-19 and securitization through three focussed seminars with panel speakers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Moderated by Prof. Dr. Nausheen Anwar, Director, Karachi Urban Lab (KUL) and Dr. Arabella Fraser, University of Nottingham, the three-day workshop revolved around generating and exchanging knowledge among academics and practitioners working towards violence and climate change in South Asia.
Highlights of Webinar
The first day of the workshop brought forward issues of “Gender, Climate Change, and Violence”, with the panel including Dr. Farhana Sultana, Associate Professor of Geography at the Syracuse University USA, Dr. Nichola Khan, Reader in Anthropology and Psychology Director, Centre for Research in Spatial Environment and Cultural Politics at the University of Brighton, and Dr. Imran S. Khalid, Research Fellow and Head of Environment and Climate Change at Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad.
The theme outlining the second day of the workshop was “Cities, Climate Change, Displacement and Development”. To speak on the matter, the workshop invited Dr. Danesh Jayatilaka, Chairperson of the Centre for Migration Research and Development (CMRD), Sri Lanka, Fatima Tassadiq, doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, and Rashee Mehra, Senior Associate at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, New Delhi.
Diverging from the format of the first two days, the final day of the workshop saw a closed discussion between Nirmani Rillapala Liyanage, Program Manager, Search for Common Ground, Colombo, Dr. Mirwais Khan who heads the Healthcare in Danger Initiative of ICRC, Dr. Adnan Rafiq, Country Director, United States Institute of Peace (USIP), and Dr. Robert Farnan. The primary focus of the third day was “COVID-19, Securitization and Climate Change”, and the conforming discussions served to consolidate the overlapping ideas brought forward on previous days and contextualize them under the current pandemic. Details of the workshop, footage and press coverage of the events can be viewed online at our website https://ccuvn.com/
Forthcoming webinars
The Network has planned a roundtable discussion on Connecting Urban Violence and Climate Change in African Cities on December 2 at 2 pm GMT with a follow up event in 2021. The Network is also planning similar style events for Latin America in Spring 2021. To participate in our workshops.
Please write to us at sahmad@iba.edu.pk
Visit our website https://ccuvn.com/
CONTRIBUTION BY MEMBERS
The United Nations is one of the organizations charged with developing and promoting international human rights law. One of the primary ways that the United Nations tries to do that is by regularly reviewing the human rights practices of member states and then recommending new policies for that state to implement. Although this expends considerable resources, a number of obstacles have made it difficult to empirically assess whether the UN’s review process actually causes countries to improve their human rights practices. To study this topic, Gulnaz Anjum, Adam Chilton and Zahid Usman conducted an experiment in Pakistan that tested whether respondents were more likely to support policies aimed at improving women’s rights when they learned that the reforms were proposed by the United Nations.
To read this article click on the link
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343320912839?journalCode=jpra
Nausheen H. Anwar and Arsam Saleem explore urban life in the pandemic-induced lockdown of Karachi and offer some observations about the rapidly changing urban terrain. Based on their earlier research on land displacements in income poor informal settlements spread across the city, they consider COVID-19 as a force that not only affects the politics and governance of everyday life, but also lays bare the socio-spatial inequalities that have been central to the workings of Pakistan’s postcolonial governance.
To read this article click on the link
GENERAL RESOURCES
ARTICLES
This report looks at the evidence on the links between violent conflict and climate-related hazards, disasters and natural resources. It explores the relationship between conflict and short-term, extreme weather events (such as tropical storms), and other natural hazards (such as earthquakes) that can trigger humanitarian disasters. It also considers slow-onset and long-term changes in natural resources related to the climate (such as drought and land degradation), their impacts on people and livelihoods, and the incidence of violent conflict
To access complete report, click on the link
Climate change is one of the most pressing political issues of our time. Science is uncovering the unprecedented nature and scale of its impacts on people, economies and ecosystems worldwide. One critical dimension of these impacts is their effect on international peace and security.
This report summarises the state of knowledge regarding security risks related to climate change. To this end, it synthesises and contextualises the existing scientific evidence. It does not reflect all aspects of the debate that have emerged across social science but focuses on those that are particularly relevant at the political level.
To read full text of this report, click on the link
This commentary first documents the ways in which President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration has evoked securitized discursive strategies that frame Brazil’s national response to COVID-19 as a matter of defense instead of public health. It argues that the Bolsonaro administration has framed the COVID-19 pandemic as an extra-territorial threat in an effort to create internal stability while failing to handle the matter effectively.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2043820620924880
This paper investigates the mutual relationship of genderbased violence (GBV) and cyclone disasters. Evidence is sparse on this topic, especially indepth research attending to the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of locality. The research reported here is a case study of a coastal region in Bangladesh, carried out shortly after Cyclone Roanu (2016), that aimed to shed light on the mechanisms linking GBV to cyclones through the eyes of survivors.
To access the paper, click on the link
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/disa.12441
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has so far been reluctant to tackle climate change. But as the impacts of climate change on peace and security become more and more apparent, questions of whether the UNSC should and will address the security implications of climate change more directly in the future become increasingly pertinent. While recognising the limits of UNSC action, this publication serves as a backgrounder to examine how climate change and security risks trigger the UNSC’s mandate for action, and what action the Council could and should be expected to take in response.
https://www.adelphi.de/en/publication/what-can-un-security-council-do-climate-and-security
EVENTS
2020 Understanding Risk Forum
https://understandrisk.org/events/
