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establish security arrangements in transfrontier nature parks (chapter 10), enhance human security in Niger and Chad (chapter 1), understand and improve early warning systems and interregional cooperation for coping with droughts and other humanitarian emergencies in the Horn and East Africa (chapter 2).
Dr. Geoffrey D. Dabelko, director, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, and retired colonel Maxie McFarland, the senior Africa analyst and deputy chief of staff for Army Intelligence, served as discussants and offered comments and critiques of the papers. During the panel, Colonel McFarland noted that the U.S. military was already doing a lot of nontraditional, human security-type projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, but cautioned that just because the army (and other branches of the military) can do this type of activity, “doesn’t mean you want them to do it.” This cautionary comment echoed caveats found in several of the chapters in this volume regarding recommended future activities by AFRICOM, USAID, and other U.S. agencies. Maxie McFarland expands on his earlier comments in the concluding chapter of the volume (chapter 11).
The volume also includes several additional studies that provide in-depth case studies of specific conflicts or problem areas that have the potential to become larger African human and environmental issues in the future. Two of the studies use new interdisciplinary approaches to analyze and monitor infectious diseases (chapter 5) and public policies designed to manage problems created by climate change (chapter 6). Three chapters are policy analyses related to terrorism and the environment (chapter 7), the illegal exploitation of natural resources (chapter 8), and peacekeeping operations and the environment (chapter 9).
The organization of the volume reflects our shared view that an adequate understanding of complex human and environmental security problems requires high quality, case-specific knowledge, the application of multidisciplinary and multilevel conceptual approaches, and the ability to develop policy-relevant, practical recommendations from diverse bodies of knowledge. Part 1, “Human and Environmental Conflicts: Conceptualization and Case Studies,” contains Colonel Jebb, U.S. Army, et al.'s in-depth