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Dear WRI Friends and Family, =20 A few weeks ago the WRI Board had a powerful and wide ranging discussion o= f the events of September 11 and their aftermath. We talked about the con= cept of human security, and the connections among security, environment an= d development. The following are some observations flowing from that disc= ussion that the Board suggested I circulate to WRI's friends and family. = With violent conflict underway, this is a difficult and uncertain time to = try to draw conclusions, but it is a critical time to think about the futu= re. =20 =20 Terrorism is hideous theater. Victims and audience are one. Information a= nd images flow around the world without regard to borders as barriers or t= he intentions of those who create them. We are compelled to respond, lock= ed in the scenes of a tragic drama, a violent twenty first century moralit= y play, running round the clock on CNN. In our minds it began on Septembe= r 11th, but in other minds it began perhaps a decade before with the Gulf = War, but now the awful question is when will it end? How do we create a m= ore secure world? =20 We do not know what the men who hijacked the four planes on September 11 a= nd killed thousands of innocent people hoped to accomplish. It does not a= ppear that they were poor men, but there is reason to believe that Osama b= in Laden is bent on provoking a war in which the poor would be his soldier= s. Neither violence nor hatred is a pathology only of the poor, but the c= ompound of misery, powerlessness and injustice is volatile - exactly the m= ix that the terrorists who attacked us hope to ignite. We cannot create s= ecurity only by striking at the flint; we must deal with the tinder. =20 What if we capture the leaders of terrorist groups, seize their resources,= disrupt their networks, and deter their state sponsors, but act with narr= ow focus, treating terror as a crime without a cause that we can address, = will our world be secure? A safe and stable world requires more fundament= al changes. =20 The squalid slums in the sprawling cities in the poorest parts of the worl= d are growing explosively, expanding by a million people a week. Three-fo= urths of the world's agricultural lands are degraded, and the cities are f= illing with people driven from rural areas by expanding population and fai= ling lands. There are about a billion teenagers in the world, most of the= m poor, jobless and struggling for shreds of hope. Within a decade or so,= if trends continue, there will be 27 cities in the developing world that = are bigger than New York. If they are full of jobless young men with nowh= ere to turn, they will be tinderboxes of anger and despair. =20 One-third of the world's people face water scarcity, and water use is risi= ng twice as fast as population. Three great rivers, the Amu Darya, the Col= orado, and the Yellow no longer reach the sea in dry seasons. The number f= acing scarcity is likely to double in the next several decades creating a b= and of scarcity around the middle of the globe. 70% of the water people u= se is for agriculture, and it is used to produce half the world's food. W= ater scarcity is already raising tensions in many places including the Mid= dle East, the Mekong Delta, and between the United States and Mexico. =20 A billion people depend for food on wild caught fish, but two-thirds of th= e world's fisheries are being harvested beyond sustainability, and many ha= ve collapsed, taking with them people's livelihoods. Half of all jobs wor= ldwide depend on fisheries, forests, and agriculture. In one-fourth of th= e world's nations natural resources directly produce more income than indu= stry. =20 Global warming caused by the industrial world's ever-increasing burning of= coal and oil is underway, and scientists predict that it will cause not j= ust hotter weather, but more severe storms and droughts. It will intensif= y the agony of dry regions, worsen the misery of the poor, and drive still= more refugees from the land. Meanwhile, two billion people still have no= access to electricity. =20 Terrorism and war are, in part, the more immediate consequences of ever in= creasing oil consumption, particularly for transportation. Osama bin Lad= en has explained his terrorist acts against the US as a response to the pr= esence of US military bases in the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia. The= US military is there to ensure access to Saudi Arabian oil, which represe= nts the largest oil reserves in the world, about 25%.=20 =20 Many of the most insecure regions of the world are also the least democrat= ic. People there are not only poor, they are voiceless. Dependent direct= ly on natural resources they have no say in how those resources are used, = but suffer the consequences when the decisions are corrupt and the use is = destructive. =20 The notion that security, stability, and sustainability are linked is by n= o means novel. Refugees have been driven from the land by the collapse of= natural systems for millennia. Nations have fought for access to scarce = natural resources. The CIA recognized the connection in an unclassified r= eport last year. Human ability to improve lives while we protect the futu= re has grown rapidly, however, and we must use these capabilities as an al= ternative weapon in our war on terror. =20 Imagine if we determined not only to root out terrorism, but also to depri= ve it of soil in which to grow. We in the United States might triple our = aid to the poorest nations from $17 to $50 per American per year, supporti= ng a vast improvement in education, health, and micro credit to launch sma= ll businesses. We would support improved agriculture, community based fis= hery management, and the dispersion of practical technologies to use water = many times more efficiently. We would work for greater access for more peo= ple to sustainable energy resources. We would work to ensure that people h= ave the chance to participate in decisions about natural resources and en= vironment. We would honor our commitments to ensure that poor women can p= lan their families. We would seek to broaden our anti-terror alliance int= o a partnership for human security, abandoning unilateralism for broad col= laboration. We would join the same allies whose help we now seek in confr= onting terrorism, to combat global climate change, using our immense techn= ological capacity to reduce our use of fossil fuels, and diminish our depe= ndence on foreign oil. =20 =20 The partnership for human security would make the world a safer place even= if it cannot remove all of the causes of conflict between peoples and amo= ng nations. Consider the alternative. If the United States takes direct = action but withdraws from collaboration on broader purposes any security w= e achieve will be ephemeral. If our oil use continues to rise we will hav= e fewer options in the Middle East. If we fail to invest in development w= e will have fewer friends and fewer customers. If we do not solve tomorro= w's problems today, we will still have today's problems tomorrow. =20 What is WRI's role? Do we matter? =20 There are organizations around the world, many of them WRI's partners, who= work to improve human security. Human security is at the heart of WRI's = work. Our mission is to "move human society to live in ways that protect = Earth's environment and its capacity to provide for?future generations". = Our work is to create solutions to global problems and vehicles for the co= llaboration necessary to implement them. =20 After the attacks on September 11th, WRI staff received several thousand m= essages of concern and outrage from our colleagues in more than 100 countr= ies. These were not the list serve exchanges of rumors and misinformation= that surged through the web, but affirmations from our partners in values=

Subject Line:
The Other Weapon In Our War Against Terror