Protective Pathways: Connecting Environmental and Human Security at Local and Landscape Level with NLP and Geospatial Analysis of a Novel Database of 1500 Project Evaluations

Localized actionable evidence for addressing threats to the environment and human security lacks a comprehensive conceptual frame that incorporates challenges associated with active conflicts. Protective pathways linking previously disciplinarily-divided literatures on environmental security, human security and resilience in a coherent conceptual frame that identifies key relationships is used to analyze a novel, unstructured data set of Global Environment Fund (GEF) programmatic documents. Sub-national geospatial analysis of GEF documentation relating to projects in Africa finds 73% of districts with GEF land degradation projects were co-located with active conflict events. This study utilizes Natural Language Processing on a unique data set of 1500 GEF evaluations to identify text entities associated with conflict. Additional project case studies explore the sequence and relationships of environmental and human security concepts that lead to project success or failure. Differences between biodiversity and climate change projects are discussed but political crisis, poverty and disaster emerged as the most frequently extracted entities associated with conflict in environmental protection projects. Insecurity weakened institutions and fractured communities leading both directly and indirectly to conflict-related damage to environmental programming and desired outcomes. Simple causal explanations found to be inconsistent in previous large-scale statistical associations also inadequately describe dynamics and relationships found in the extracted text entities or case summaries. Emergent protective pathways that emphasized poverty and conflict reduction facilitated by institutional strengthening and inclusion present promising possibilities. Future research with innovative machine learning and other techniques of working with unstructured data may provide additional evidence for implementing actions that address climate change and environmental degradation while strengthening resilience and human security. Resilient, participatory and polycentric governance is key to foster this process.

Rethinking the “State Security-Human Security” Nexus in the Face of COVID-19

It is the argument of this chapter that the COVID-19 pandemic created a need to problematize how we understand security, especially the contrast between state security and human security. This chapter argues that the pandemic has illustrated the importance of human security as well as the need to understand it as a precondition for, and not as an alternative to, state and international security. However, the study does not argue that the increased importance of human security translates into the protection of all humans. The crude reality that security is always at someone's and something's expense sustains vulnerabilities within societies. The study acknowledges that the changes in the security implications (both material and perceived) do not necessarily or automatically translate to changes in policies. Institutional resistance to change and general political trends among other factors affect the extent to which policies will evolve in a direction that would better meet the security implications of the pandemic.

Natural Phenomena and Youth Conflicts

The study conducted exploratively from an analytical desk review perspective sought to establish climate change-induced conflicts on the youths in Zimbabwe and how they may be addressed. This is against a background where most studies around climate change often fail to focus on its effects on the youth and how it drives the latter to engage in conflicts. Data was drawn from both archival material and policy documents. The study was guided by a concept of human security, which looks at climate change as a threat to the youth, resulting in conflicts. The study established what it calls climate conflicts. It also noted that climate change does not lead to conflicts. Rather it is the result of climate change complimented by other factors that the risk of climate-induced conflicts by youths may arise. It also concluded that all the climate change effects cascade to youths' opportunities for jobs and development.

Challenges to Afghan Refugee Children’s Education in Pakistan: A Human Security Perspective

Human security is an essential component of the contemporary intra-state conflicts; promulgating renewed understanding of the perpetuating nature of the Afghan problem. Afghanistan, from the Soviet invasion to the US’ long war, faces continued Human Security challenges, especially lack of education in around 80 percent of school-aged children of Afghan refugees. Pakistan, which itself has the second largest number of school-aged children out of school, faces illiteracy in children of Afghan refugees as the surmountable challenge that links down to the seven broader components of human security identified by Mahbub-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s former finance minister and economist, in the 1994 Human Development Report. The growing illiteracy in second and third-generation Afghan refugees is the product of poverty, socio-economic disparities, and socio-cultural restrictions, especially in regards to the relative discouragement of female education. In order to offset the gravity of challenges to the educational aspect of human security, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is continuously cooperating with the Pakistani government in enhancing educational infrastructure in terms of community and home-based schooling, vocational and technical training, and capacity building of Pakistan’s schooling system to accommodate Afghan refugee children. Therefore, the paper takes qualitative checks of the primary sources from the government of Pakistan and UNHCR and secondary sources to find the answers to three following questions in different four parts of the paper. The result of this study is that the main challenge for Afghan refugee child education in Pakistan is the poor quality of education. Therefore, UNHCR should work with the Pakistani government to develop investment programs and put in place solid surveillance and oversight of schools to improve their quality to an acceptable standard.