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From a special report in The Economist:

Read more

Land Grab. From the Guardian:

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

Click on the map to enlarge.

The UK defence budget is tight. Defence spending plans are tighter still. While Alex has posted on what the credit crunch will mean for development and multilateralism I want to offer a quick thought or two on how the credit crunch may offer an opportunity to explore new missions for each of the three services. While the UK Government is committed to a replacement for Trident and two new aircraft carriers, both are likely to have an impact on the MoD’s procurement options in the future, unless… the three services adapt their missions and in doing so share the burden more between services and across Whitehall. Given the rapidly changing security environment is the Royal Navy’s future more likely to be in helicopters, hospitals and responding to hijacking on the high seas? Look at what’s happening over the pond.

Exhibit A:

The US Navy is trying to set a new course, embracing a shift in strategy that focuses heavily on administering humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and other forms of so-called soft power to woo allies to help the United States fight global terrorism. The Navy’s new maritime strategy, unveiled this fall and shared by the Marine Corps and Coast Guard, is a shift in tone that reflects a broader change in the Pentagon’s approach as it organizes itself for what many military officials refer to as a “generational conflict” against extremism. It’s a move away from the go-it-alone stance of the Bush White House and toward a new emphasis on building partnerships abroad and finding common interests. While the Navy says it will maintain its ability to use the “hard power” for which it’s known, the new focus represents an important change – the first major rewrite of strategy in more than 20 years. It puts greater emphasis on humanitarian aid, disaster relief, “partnering” with foreign navies also working to combat piracy, terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Exhibit B:

Hospital ships are, by design, multi-use vehicles that are capable of serving in command and control, educational outreach, or as virtual sea bases. A future hospital ship should be tied into some sort of modularized container system that may mirror the modules used by the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship. A ship that might be charged with high-tempo combat trauma care will need a flat deck that is able to withstand the heat and weight of large helicopters. A well deck also would be recommended, although it could be passed over if the ship is able to dock or maintains an organic docking system.  Under a two-tier system, smaller, cheaper ambulance-like platforms could work in tandem with a larger, more expensive command-and-control “trauma” platform or aid ship tenders where the crew of a smaller, low-endurance craft can take a breather or swap out crews.

Exhibit C

Piracy Map 2008

From the BBC: France has launched two operations already this year to free French ships and crew seized by Somali pirates. Pirates are still holding the Ukrainian ship, the MV Faina, and its cargo of tanks and military hardware, off the Somali coast. They demand $20m (£12m). The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said on Thursday that 63 of 199 incidents of piracy worldwide recorded in the first nine months of this year had taken place off east Somalia and the Gulf of Aden. This was double the 36 attacks blamed on Somali pirates out of 198 worldwide in the same period last year, the bureau added.

Comparisons below:
1. Guangdong (113 million) Germany plus Uganda (3)
2. Henan (99 million) Mexico
3. Shandong (92 million) Philippines
4. Sichuan (87 million) Vietnam
5. Jiangsu (75 million) Egypt
6. Hebei (68 million) Iran
7. Hunan (67 million) France
8. Anhui (65 million) Thailand
9. Hubei (60 million) U.K.
10. Guangxi (49 million) Burma/Myanmar

Brought to you courtesy of the ever excellent Strange Maps

Just spotted the following map in The Atlantic .

From The Atlantic

Riots and protests over food prices have broken out in 30 countries since 2007. Haiti’s prime minister was tossed out of office in April, largely because of protests over the price of food, and the Malaysian government is looking none too stable for similar reasons. In South Africa, discontent over soaring food and fuel prices provided the spark for violence that killed dozens of illegal immigrants last spring. Even in the United States, wholesalers such as Costco limited the amount of rice each person could buy, unsettling some consumers. It’s possible that the most consequential price spike of 2008 will be in food, not oil.

High food prices, like high oil prices, are partly the result of rising demand by a larger, wealthier world population. But food-supply problems have also contributed to the recent spike in prices, and food has become a source of international tension.

The growth of the global food market has meant more food for billions of people, yet it has also led to a greater concentration of supply. In 2006, the top five oil producers supplied 43 percent of the world’s oil. By comparison, the top five corn producers grew 77 percent of the world’s supply; rice producers, 73 percent; beef and wheat producers, 66 percent each. Because of this concentration, a supply disruption in even one place can ripple through the food market worldwide.

Some disruptions are unavoidable. Last year, for instance, drought in Australia, a major wheat exporter, helped drive up wheat prices by nearly 100 percent. But some disruptions are the result of political decisions. For example, in response to the high wheat prices, India, then the world’s second-largest rice exporter, decided to rely on rice, not wheat, for its public food program—and instituted a ban on most rice exports. Vietnam and Egypt, fearing local rice shortages, quickly followed suit. The result was a seize-up in the global market for rice: prices rose from $333 a ton in 2006 to $963 a ton in May of 2008.

I know what you’re thinking. What are pirates going to do with 30 Russian T72 tanks? Not much probably but the rest of the cargo, a mixture of RPGs and the Zu-23 anti-aircraft guns will soon find their way into Somalia’s arms markets. The situation off the cost of Somalia is getting progressively worse. And while we will post more on piracy in the near future here’s a map outlining some of most recent attacks.

This passage from The Times gives you a sense of the scale and nature of the problem

Earlier this week the Danish navy freed 10 pirates it had captured at sea, saying they had insufficient evidence to prosecute them. But at the same time French officials have filed preliminary charges of hijacking and kidnapping against six suspected pirates captured earlier this month. Commandos snatched the six in a daring raid to free a French couple seized as they sailed their yacht along the Somali coast towards the Suez Canal. They are currently awaiting trial in a French prison. Six naval vessels are currently patrolling the waters around the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean as part of an international task force to tackle piracy. However commercial shipping companies have criticised the mission for failing to make a difference.

“This is an international problem and needs an international solution. It will take more than the six or seven ships we have in 2.4m square miles of sea.”

Meanwhile, the Canadian navy has said that it will continue to escort emergency shipments of food into Mogadishu. Its frigate, HMCS Ville de Quebec, was due to return to the Mediterranean tomorrow but will spend another month ensuring that desperately needed supplies can reach Somalia. The World Food Programme of the United Nations had given warning that its deliveries would cease if an escort could not be found.

Hurricane Gustav has already swept through Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. After Cuba, its projected path will take it over the Gulf of Mexico, before arriving on US shores. New Orleans has already begun a mandatory evacuation for coastal districts and parishes.

You can follow preparations for Gustav on the the Red Cross’ Twitter feed.

A wikipedia page for Gustav (2008) was created today and is being regularly updated.

The Eye on the storm blog is also offering a running commentay.

Update 1: The Gustav Information Center has been created for coordinating volunteer knowledge-sharing related to Hurricane Gustav.

Update 2: Predicted route of Gustav has been updated.

Update 3: New predicted route.

The new report on Humanitarian Implications of Climate Change: Mapping emerging trends and risk hotspots, which was carried out by CARE International, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Maplecroft is definitely worth a read.

The map below shows overall human vulnerability based on a combination of natural, human, social, financial and physical factors. Areas shown in darkest blue are likely to be most at risk if exposed to extreme weather, such as floods, cyclones and droughts, or other impacts of climate change.

From the report:

The study used GIS mapping to understand how the projected impacts of climate change will intersect with existing patterns of human vulnerability or so called disaster risk hotspots.

This allows the identification of current and future hotspots of climate change risk. The results illustrate the implications of climate change for humanitarian assistance so that policymakers can grasp the nature and scale of the challenge we face and humanitarian actors can begin adapting their response strategies to the realities of climate change.

It’s been a while since we last had a map on GD.

From Wired:

HealthMap … creates machine-readable public health information from the text indexed by Google News, World Health Organization updates and online listserv discussions. While aimed at public health workers, HealthMap is also usable by the general public. It locates the outbreaks on a world map and creates a color-coding system that indicates the severity of an outbreak on the basis of news reportage about it. Users of the site can then analyze and visualize the data, gaining unprecedented views of disease outbreaks.

By doing it all with publicly available news sources and low operating costs, the service itself remains free. After a small-scale launch in 2006, the site’s model and potential attracted a $450,000 grant last year from Google.org’s Predict and Prevent Initiative, which is focused on emerging infectious diseases

Over on ArmscontrolWonk they have been analysing the arc of crisis map from the recent French White paper on national security and defence. They’ve done a great job at distinguishing what all the shapes (originally plotted on the map by hand) mean:

Circles: Main naval areas of patrol/operations.
Dark stars: Bases belonging to the “Forces de souveraineté” category, on French overseas territories.
White stars: Bases on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
Grey stars: Djibouti and Abu Dhabi/UAE bases, on which the French forces will be relying more and more, due to the shift of priorities from Africa to Asia, also reflected in the arrow pointing to the Indian Ocean.

(Hat tip Guy de Loimbard)

Readers of GD will note how similar the French arc of crisis is to the arc of stability - made famous by Tom Barnett:

A fantastically useful map created by RSOE EDIS, a nonprofit emergency services organization based in Budapest:

The live map or hazardscape is regularly updated from hundreds of sources- like the WHO, US Geological Survey as well as from emergency services (mainly, it has to be said, in developing countries) who report on live operations from around the world. The map is a useful reminder of the number of risks that rarely make the news; an epidemic hazard in Russia, forest fires in Greece, to flash floods in China and earthquakes in Mexico.

The Conservative foreign affairs spokesman William Hague issued a press release on Tuesday calling on David Miliband, foreign secretary “to take urgent action with regard to the Chinese ship, currently heading to Uganda carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe”.

From the FT blog:

Hague’s intervention sent the Foreign Office into a spin, as officials pored over atlases trying to work out how the Chinese vessel might achieve the unlikely task of offloading its weapons in a land-locked country in the heart of Africa. Perhaps he envisaged the ship heading up to the Mediterranean, taking a right turn down the River Nile and then making the tortuous journey through sub-Saharan Africa to Lake Victoria. Not sure whether the river is up to taking ocean-going ships though. “What is he talking about?” asked one government official. So far there has been no explanation from Mr Hague’s team about this strange Ugandan affair

Aware that readers of Global Dashboard are an imaginative, thoughtful and pragmatic bunch we want to know how you would best transport the shipment of arms onboard the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang from is current position (off the South Western coast of Africa via Uganda to Zimbabwe). A small prize will be awarded for the best post.*

* Very small…

‘Any attempt to map the internet is bound to fall frustratingly short of its true complexity, or to be so complex as to be illegible’. True - but by using the Tokyo subway map as a template the internet can be better understood.

The International Narcotics Control Board has published its report on narcotics in Afghanistan. The increase in opium cultivation which is taking place in the south of the country (Afghanistan is estimated to supply more than 90 per cent of the world’s illicit opium) the effects of the drug trade: an increase in organised crime, corruption and drug dependence (which is severe in Iran and has led to a major HIV epidemic in the NE of the country) and the impact on Iran, Pakistan and the central Asian republics all make for an increasingly familiar story and one that will come as no surprise to GD readers. The facts are still worth thinking about.

• Iran, the chief transit country for drugs from Afghanistan, now has the highest rate of opiate abuse in the world.
• More than half of inmates in Iran’s prisons have been convicted for drug-related offences, and seizures of opium, morphine and heroin have risen rapidly.
• Pakistan, through which an estimated 35 per cent of Afghanistan’s opiates are smuggled, faces growing problems, with seizures in 2006, the last year for which figures were available, rising 46 per cent.
• An estimated 21 per cent of Afghanistan’s heroin and morphine transit via central Asia, the report says, leading to large increases in seizures in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
• Drug trafficking and abuse in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, which have long borders with Turkey and Russia, will deteriorate further
• Drug abuse in Iraq appears to have risen dramatically and while opiate use in western and central Europe has remained stable or declined, it has increased in Russia and eastern Europe.
• The rise of cannabis cultivation in Afghanistan, including in some areas that have been declared poppy-free.

Aside from these devastating facts and the sense of powerlessness that comes with them the annual report is a timely reminder that Afghanistan’s drug addiction is a primary indicator for how well the Karzai Government, NATO and all the other international organisations are managing the stabilisation and reconstruction of the country.

The INCB report also clearly demonstrates the negative influences the drugs trade is having across a broad spectrum of issues. My concern, however, is that our conventional approach to countering narcotics in Afghanistan, a so-called wicked issue, remains hamstrung by a set of assumptions that is actually making it more not less difficult to manage. The Narcotics problem is only one node in a complex system. All of which reminds me of a saying from the gritty, realistic and addictive American TV series The Wire - ‘ follow the drugs, all you find are drug users and drug dealers, but if you follow the money, you don’t know what you’ll find’.

The Global Strategy Institute at CSIS has published a map of trends and events up to 2012. For those who travel on the London underground the map may look rather familiar.

Having analyzed 335 emerging diseases from 1940 to 2004, scientists have converted the results into maps correlated with human population density, population changes, latitude, rainfall and wildlife biodiversity. The data showed that disease emergences have roughly quadrupled over the past 50 years. Some 60% of the diseases traveled from animals to humans (zoonoses) and the majority of those came from wild creatures. You have been warned.

A new study in the Science Journal shows human activity has left a mark on nearly every square kilometer of sea, severely compromising ecosystems in more than 40% of waters. Scientists have produced a global map of different activities including climate change, fishing, pollution and other human factors. The map is the first attempt to describe and quantify combined threats  - the result is pretty harrowing.

Useful map for presentations.

Context