In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Dr C Raja Mohan, a longstanding and highly-repsected analyst, joins Professor Rory Medcalf to discuss India’s strategic direction. They discuss the future of India, its evolving relationship with the United States, China, Russia and Australia, and a South-Asian view of AUKUS. Dr Mohan’s visit to Australia has been made possible by the Asia Society Australia. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3SeQozx

Dr C Raja Mohan is a Senior Fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute in Delhi. He is a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore.

Professor Rory Medcalf is Head of ANU National Security College. His professional experience spans more than two decades across diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks, and journalism.

We’d love to hear from you! Send in your questions, comments, and suggestions to NatSecPod@anu.edu.au. You can tweet us @NSC_ANU and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes. The National Security Podcast is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

The post National Security Podcast: India’s strategic direction appeared first on Policy Forum.

Climate change is an extremely nuanced issue with global effects, but due to structural inequalities, it is women who are the most vulnerable to the consequences of inaction. Climate change exacerbates the inequalities women face, especially in the Global South.

But this also means that when women participate in climate action discourse, they can be invaluable agents of change.

In India, several initiatives exist across states that provide women with the right tools and education to take the lead in energy transition and the effects of climate change.

One non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Ahmedabad, for instance, showcases the approaches needed to tackle inequality and climate change. Through collective action, Mahila Housing Trust is empowering women from some of the most vulnerable communities to become leaders of change. The Trust spreads awareness and knowledge of the impacts and solutions to climate change in local languages.

Governments are taking similar steps too. Maharashtra, the second-most populous state in India, is taking a leading role in subnational climate action. At the start of 2022, in partnership with C40 Cities, it signed a Letter of Intent to launch a Women4Climate Mentorship.

More on this: Why India must make gender equity a top priority

In fact, across India, NGOs and government ramping up their cooperation on this issue.

In coastal districts of Odisha in India’s east, the effects of climate change are already disproportionately affecting women. To tackle this, the Regional Centre for Development Cooperation formed a local committee consisting of men and women in equal numbers, ensuring that the centre can hear the voices of women in community-based management and decision-making and implement their ideas.

Meanwhile, under the State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC), the government of Odisha is implementing various policies aimed at mitigating gender-based vulnerabilities to climate change.

In Kerala, in India’s south, is the Wayanad district. It harbours tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries that are crucial to India’s biodiversity. The district has introduced an ambitious women-led policy, the Meenangadi Carbon Neutral initiative, that aims to achieve carbon neutrality through a community-focused, bottom-up approach.

Women-led climate action is crucial to this, and as such the policy focuses strongly on the participation of women to ensure its climate policies are as inclusive as possible.

More on this: Is coal reliance a barrier to gender equality?

Finally, in India’s far-northern Jammu and Kashmir region, women living in rural communities are among the most affected by the adverse impacts of climate change. A women-led NGO there, the Swaniti Initiative, has been working for state governments across India on various sectors and themes, showcasing the ways that inclusivity is key to combating the climate crisis.

These examples leave no doubt – women’s leadership is critical to addressing the climate crisis, yet most decision-makers continue to be men with limited insight on gendered perspectives.

Leaving women out of the climate change discourse will create a vicious cycle of vulnerability, and will make avoidable future disasters inevitable.

India urgently needs women-led climate action. Across the globe, women are under-represented in the decision-making processes around climate mitigation and adaptation. Climate change requires intersectional, long-term solutions. Policymakers must acknowledge the significant role women play as decision-makers, stakeholders, educators, carers, and experts.

In India and elsewhere, there are already many women at the forefront of the climate crisis. Their invaluable work should be celebrated, but it also shows that the world needs more gender-focused climate strategies.

Disclosure: the author is an employee of the Climate Group, which works with a number of organisations and governments mentioned in this piece, including through the Under2 Coalition, of which Climate Group is the Secretariat.

The post The women leading India’s climate struggle appeared first on Policy Forum.

Come on a journey a hundred or so kilometres south of Kolkata, India, to an island in the Bay of Bengal’s Sundarban Delta.

Ghoramara Island is sinking. As the sea around it rises, people who call the island home are evacuating as the sea claims their homes and farmlands.

Ghoramara is one of many large and small river islands in the delta, formed over hundreds of years by clay and silt brought into the Bay of Bengal by the mighty rivers of South Asia – the Ganges and the Brahmaputra.

The delta is the world’s largest, and at its mouth lies the Sundarban mangrove forest. A remote region known for its beautiful tigers, those living there eke out a vulnerable living from fishing, honey collection, and some farming.

Ghoramara Island is a small five square kilometre island, and rising sea levels have already submerged approximately 70 per cent of it. Predictions estimate that by 2050 the island will be fully under water.

More on this: Policy File: Climate refugees – where to next?

For the approximately 3,000 people on the island, the ravages of climate change are not a possibility to be avoided. They are a reality to be managed today.

Rising sea levels have meant that many have had to move out of their homes and live in makeshift tents on slightly higher land on the middle of the island. On top of this, the frequency and intensity of cyclones has devastated communities – it has been hit by four cyclones in the past couple of years.

After Cyclone Amphan in 2020, roughly 70 per cent of the island’s farms were destroyed. Then, Cyclone Yaas wreaked havoc on Ghoramara Island in May 2021, breaching embankments and flooding the entire island within 20 minutes.

Even for those who have escaped these two dangers, increased soil salinity has made it difficult for the many farmers on the island to produce viable crops.

The Government of West Bengal has agreed to relocate 30 families from Ghoramara Island to Sagar Island, but the other thousand or so families who remain need help too.

More on this: Protecting the Indian Sundarbans in a global health crisis

Furthermore, even the future of the 30 families proposed to be shifted to Sagar remains uncertain, as Sagar Island is also at risk of submersion. Many of the residents have few assets and depend on the wages of migrant workers to survive – they do not have the funds to simply buy land elsewhere.

With funding from the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions, we are undertaking a project on Ghoramara Island that will record the first-hand experiences of communities affected by climate change.

These residents need urgent policy solutions. While both the state and the national government in India have proposed short-term solutions, such as rebuilding the embankments protecting the island, ultimately governments need to dedicate funds to acquire land elsewhere for these residents to live.

Aside from revealing the harsh reality that the effects of climate change are already here, the experience of Ghoramara Island residents shows that both state and national governments must be more proactive in their policy responses to climate affected communities. That said, the international community has a responsibility to help.

The situation facing the people of Ghormara Island reveals the injustice at the heart of climate change. While the effects of climate change are felt everywhere, they disproportionately impact poorer people, despite the fact that the wealthy have been the main contributors to the climate crisis.

It shows that as well as providing direct aid to those most affected by climate change, the world must consider global climate reparations from wealthier countries that have caused the most damage to those who are bearing the greatest costs.

The post The climate crisis is already devastating communities appeared first on Policy Forum.

On 3 August 2022, the Indian cabinet approved India’s Updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to be communicated to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

For context, thanks to its size, India is the world’s third largest total emitter. However, it remains one of the smallest on a per capita basis.

India’s updated NDC is a welcome step, but is not sufficiently ambitious and weak on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Panchamrit’ – five concrete climate action promises he announced during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow last year.

The updated NDC addresses just two of his five promises: that 50 per cent of cumulative, installed electric capacity come from renewables by 2030, and that the Indian economy have a carbon intensity – a measure of carbon produced per dollar of gross domestic product – below 45 per cent by 2030.

It is silent or is unclear on the other three key climate targets the prime minister announced in Glasgow. These were that India achieve a renewable energy capacity of 500 gigawatts by 2030, that total carbon emissions reduction reach one billion tonnes by 2030, and that India would achieve net zero emissions by 2070.

On the second goal, the cabinet has revised the NDC to replace the term ‘renewable’ with ‘non-fossil-fuel’, giving the government scope to include large amounts of hydropower and nuclear energy in its goals.

One analysis showed that as of June 2022, India has already achieved roughly 40 per cent of cumulative installed power from non-fossil fuel sources. This one change of language makes the second goal far less ambitious and easily achievable.

More on this: Do coal exports to India have to go up before they can come down?

Few experts find the goal to be short of actionable targets, though some think it requires close attention and a careful implementation, particularly in the energy-intensive transport and industrial sectors.

India should have stuck to its previous target of 50 per cent installed capacity from renewables. The country has high potential to produce solar and wind assets and is among the four most attractive markets for renewables globally.

This more ambitious version of the second goal would enhance renewable energy uptake, generate employment, send a positive signal to major emitters and industries towards clean energy transition, and help achieve India’s ambitions faster.

The third goal – reducing total projected emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030 – would be a strong commitment by India, yet it goes uncovered in the updated NDC. Such instances reflect India’s doubts about its ability to achieve its most ambitious targets, which were made less ambitious for the sake of inclusion.

Given its eventual achievement is built on the others, the fifth goal – of net-zero by 2070 – is less clear-cut. According to government officials, it is not part of India’s NDC because it is instead part of a separate policy that will also be submitted at the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27).

Further, this goal is the most complex. India’s energy and development will have to rely on coal for now to drive its transition. A policy that promotes energy-intensive manufacturing and then shifts into substituting energy sources and conservation efforts will be tricky to get right. It is understandable in this context to leave it out of the NDC.

Experts broadly approve of the 2070 goal, but it does demand that the Indian government have a clear roadmap to achieving it. It must consider its economic growth, identify feasible spaces for decarbonisation, prepare strong models, and implement a robust monitoring and implementation framework.

The country also needs a dedicated legal framework and a designated government body to govern decarbonisation specifically. A decarbonisation and development commission or agency is crucial for India if it wants to meet its commitments.

More on this: A multilateral forum is the spark South Asian energy trade needs

While the somewhat muted NDC shows there is much work for it still to do, the rest of the world should appreciate India’s efforts, especially considering its post-pandemic situation. Alongside its NDC, India has plans to create a national cap and trade carbon market for energy intensive sectors, which comes after the success of its first domestic carbon trading market in the state of Gujarat.

Yes, India’s updated NDC is not perfect, but this is not the whole story. To achieve stricter climate targets, India doesn’t just need more ‘ambition’. It needs international financial and technological support. Most of its existing climate actions have largely been financed domestically.

Developed countries often acknowledge the cost of loss and damage from climate change. They have also noted that it is not just the problem for vulnerable and developing countries.

2022 brought severe climate-based disasters across the world, including extreme heatwaves across Europe, the United States, Australia, India, China and Japan. Floods in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan continue to displace thousands, and the number of droughts continues to rise globally. Everyone, but especially the poor and vulnerable, urgently need support to adapt to climate change.

Yet the international community has still been unable to mobilise the promised $100 billion for climate finance to developing countries as part of the Paris Climate Agreement. According to one estimate, India alone will need one trillion dollars in finance to fight climate change in coming years. It cannot pay for this alone.

India could be more ambitious, but wealthy countries must also do more to drive adaptation, to set an example, innovate, and link countries that need finance with international adaptation funds.

India’s updated NDC is neither a disappointment nor an earth shaker. Rather, it reflects an emerging climate action leader who is committed with high aspirations, but is dealing with complicated problems.

Those watching India’s climate action should keep in mind that India’s desire to achieve, rather than set and forget, its climate targets best explain its currently modest ambitions, not a lack of commitment to the cause.

The post Judging India’s emissions ambitions appeared first on Policy Forum.

Most of the 2.1 billion strong workforce in Asia and the Pacific are denied access to decent jobs, health care and social protection, but there is an array of polices and tools that governments can use to remedy these deficiencies and ensure that the rights and aspirations of these workers and their families are upheld and that they remain the engine of economic growth for the region.

A new report released today, the Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific: The Workforce We Need, offers tangible solutions to immediately address alarming trends that both preceded the new coronavirus and were exacerbated by the pandemic.

While 243 million new people were pushed into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic, half of all people in our region already had been surviving without cash, a third without necessary medicine or treatment, and a quarter had gone without enough food to eat. This can lower productivity, which has fallen below the global average, but also tax revenues and future economic output.

With two-thirds of all workers in the region being employed informally, often with low wages, in hazardous working conditions and without a contract, half of our workforce are at the brink of poverty. People in our region are also at a higher risk of being pushed into poverty by health spending than anywhere else in the world, causing inequalities to widen further.

More on this: Creating a future without poverty

With more than half of all people being excluded from social protection, pandemics, disasters, economic downturns, or normal life events, such as falling ill, becoming pregnant or getting old, often have detrimental impacts on households’ wellbeing and life prospects.

The reality is harsh: our workers are generally ill-equipped to unlock new opportunities and fulfil life aspirations for themselves and their families, but also to face ongoing challenges emanating from megatrends of climate change, ageing societies, and digitalisation.

Climate-induced natural disasters cause businesses to relocate and jobs to disappear, disproportionately affecting rural communities.

Digital technologies are bringing disruptive change to the world of work and the digital gap is intensifying inequalities in opportunity, income, and wealth. Population ageing means that the number of older people will double by 2050, making policies to support active and healthy ageing ever more urgent.

None of these vulnerabilities are inevitable. With the right policies, our region’s workforce can become more productive, healthier, and protected.

First, active labour market policies, through life-long learning and skill development, can support a green and just transition into decent employment and improve access to basic opportunities and adequate standards of living. Harnessing synergies between active labour market policies and social protection can help workers upgrade their skills and transition into decent employment while smoothing consumption and avoiding negative coping strategies during spells of unemployment or other shocks.

More on this: Tackling the pandemic of inequality in Asia and the Pacific

Second, extending social health protection to all can significantly improve workers’ health, income security, and productivity. COVID-19 demonstrated the weakness of a status quo in which 60 per cent of our workers finance their own health care and receive no sickness benefits. A focus on primary health care as well as curative health protection is needed, also to support healthy and active ageing. People who are chronically ill or live with a disability must be included in health care strategies. Given the large informal economy across the region, extending social health protection is the key policy instrument for achieving universal health coverage in our region.

Third, building on the ESCAP Social Protection Simulator, a basic package of universal child, old age, and disability social protection schemes, set at global average benefit levels, would slash poverty in our region by half.

Our analysis also shows that social protection helps increase access to opportunities, particularly for furthest behind groups. This income security would improve the workforce’s resilience. Extending social protection to all means increasing public spending by between two and six per cent of gross domestic product — an investment well-worth its cost. The Action Plan to Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Social Protection in Asia and the Pacific can guide action towards broadening social protection coverage.

With this information at hand, there is a long overdue need for action. The policy recommendations set out in the Social Outlook are a priority for most countries in the region. These require bold but necessary reforms. For most countries these reforms are affordable but may require a reprioritisation of existing expenditures and tax, supported by tax reform.

Decent employment for all and an expansion of social protection and health care should form the foundations of a strong social contract between the state and its citizens — one where mutual roles and responsibilities are clear, and where our workforce is given the security to fulfil their potential and be the force for achieving the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific.

The post The right policies can protect the workers of Asia and the Pacific appeared first on Policy Forum.

For months, Sri Lanka has been rocked by political unrest. Ongoing protests have seen tens of thousands of demonstrators hit the streets across the country, especially in the capital of Colombo.

The background for this unrest is an economic crisis which reached a point of no return.

There are external factors and mismanagement at play. The 2019 Easter bombings and COVID-19 pandemic nearly completely halted crucial tourism revenue, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has caused shortages that have added yet more misery.

Then, when the state became unable to secure essential commodities like food, gas, and medicine due to massive debts and other failures, the people reached breaking point.

A primary demand of the protesters was the resignation of Sri Lanka’s controversial president, Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa. At first, he was in no hurry to resign, and this only escalated agony and unrest, with protesters eventually storming the presidential and prime ministerial residences, along with other state buildings. In the process, assets belonging to the Rajapaksa family and other leading political figures were set ablaze by angry protesters.

Finally, on 15 July, having fled the country, Gotabaya announced his resignation. Ranil Wickremasinghe, who had been sworn in as prime minister under Gotabaya, was elected interim president by Sri Lankan lawmakers.

This has not exactly been a welcome move, as Wickremasinghe is alleged to have had a rather close relationship with the influential Rajapaksa family – a main target of the protests.

More on this: India and China’s push for influence in Sri Lanka

Six weeks on, the island nation’s situation is still yet to normalise. While media outlets overseas may have grown bored of the story, it has not gone away. Anything is possible in the current scenario, from escalating protests to riots, and even military rule.

But how did this happen, and what comes next?

This crisis was triggered by financial disaster, but economics can’t tell the whole story. Although the economic situation was the rather large straw that broke the camel’s back, the ethno-nationalist ideology held by many of the country’s Sinhala Buddhist majority is at the foundation of the island nation’s current politico-economic instability.

This ideology goes all the way back to decolonisation, and past leaders like SWRD Bandaranayake and JR Jayewardene are crucial to that story. The former introduced the Sinhala Only Act in 1956, which officially segregated Tamil Sri Lankans, making them second-rank citizens and reducing their influence in the government and military.

As for Jayewardene, his ministers watched the Jaffna Public Library burn in 1981, having led a mob to the city days prior, and a faction of his party led the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom – a violent riot that saw thousands horrifically killed by ethno-nationalists while the majority Sinhalese police force watched on – in Colombo. These acts set the stage for Sri Lanka’s three-decades long civil war between the government and the Tamil Tigers.

Sadly, Sinhalese Buddhist ethno-nationalism is still rife. This ideology is the central barrier to Sri Lanka achieving its enormous potential as a developed and multicultural nation. While it remains dominant, the country will remain on thin-ice and risk a systematic collapse that will have tragic consequences.

Still, this crisis may be Sri Lanka’s tipping point toward a better political situation for one key reason. The participants of the ongoing protests are predominately Sinhalese who live in the south.

More on this: Preparing for the impact of climate change in Sri Lanka

Largely unaffected by the civil war and accustomed to a better standard of living, these communities were once the beating heart of Sinhala-Buddhist ethno-nationalism. It was this support that the Rajapaksa family used to endow themselves with increasingly authoritarian power.

Yet this hasn’t led to unity. As the south trembles, the north is eerily silent.

The mostly Tamil-populated north of the country has been living in continuous protest of land-grabbing, deforestation, and socio-ethnic destabilisation in their traditional homeland for many years.

While they are continuing to demand justice for the heinous crimes committed against them and deep political transformation, many Sinhalese are seeking only a restoration of socio-economic stability.

Also, solidarity can be hard to show when Tamils are subjected to immense discrimination by the Sinhalese-dominated police and armed forces.

One could say the Sinhalese protestors in Colombo have been given a right to demonstrate that Tamils have long been denied.

There is no doubt that Tamil activists are happy to see the end of the Rajapaksa family’s influence, given they spearheaded the civil war’s bloody end in 2009, with final causalities reaching more than 100,000 and numerous allegations of war crimes.

However, they also recognise that complete political transformation is needed in Sri Lanka if the island nation intends to return to normality, not just a solution to the economic situation or a more stable government.

In the end, Sinhala-Buddhist ethno-nationalism must be replaced with a more inclusive and pluralistic state ideology. At the very least, it must grant equality of treatment and opportunity for all citizens regardless of their ethnicity and religion.

Although the new president has repeatedly reiterated his intentions to revive the economy as well as change the political scenario, he and other leading Sinhala lawmakers are by-products of ethno-nationalism.

Consequently, many can’t, or won’t, distance themselves from, nor challenge the status of, the influential monks and military chiefs who are the cornerstones of ethno-nationalist rhetoric and discriminatory policies.

In all, even if Sri Lanka overcomes this financial crisis, it would only be a short-term solution. The only permanent solution is a structural overhaul that brings Sri Lankans together in opposition to the status quo and banishes ethno-nationalism to the dustbin of history. Unless this happens, the turmoil will continue, and the world will never get to see Sri Lanka unlock its massive potential.

The post Transforming Sri Lanka appeared first on Policy Forum.

The United States-led reconceptualisation of the Asia Pacific as the ‘Indo-Pacific’ has been partly driven by the recognition that the Indian and Pacific Oceans are increasingly linked by the problems they face.

However, this process has been primarily shaped by American anxiety about its dominant military position in the region, with direct reference to China’s growing power. Countries that have subscribed to the concept, but especially the United States, have taken a reactive and military-centric policy approach that fails to account for the region’s complexities.

The most prominent example of this are the United States’ Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM)’s ‘spatial boundaries’. While there are practical reasons for the United States Department of Defense to have boundaries for its commands, these will be necessarily arbitrary. Unfortunately, adhering to these imagined, superimposed boundaries is inherently flawed for the purpose of building a coherent concept of the Indo-Pacific.

The lines dividing the Department of Defense’s INDOPACOM, African Command, and Central Command in the Western Indian Ocean Region (IOR) ignore the increasingly linked security and development of states in east Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the rest of the Indo-Pacific. Transnational issues like climate change, pandemics, crime, trade, and migration cross these bureaucratic borders, whether American systems recognise them or not.

Despite this, the Indo-Pacific white papers produced by the Trump and Biden administrations focus almost entirely on East Asia and Southeast Asia, with the notable exception of India, which officials view as pivotal to the new regional construct. Even the recent Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity exhibits these pitfalls.

More on this: Greening national security policy in the Indo-Pacific

It is impossible to hide from the fact these regions receive this focus because of their importance to competition with China. Such a close focus on East Asia and Southeast Asia at the expense of other regions while espousing an inclusive concept of the Indo-Pacific reveals its reactive, military-centric character.

Whole sub-regions are sidelined by American policymakers working on the Indo-Pacific construct. The American Indo-Pacific white papers completely ignore the South Pacific, for example. Apart from revealing American intentions, leaving holes like this in the Indo-Pacific construct creates vulnerability and undermines its legitimacy.

In contrast to the United States, China has increased its engagement with countries in the area for the past two decades.

Several countries in the South Pacific have signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative and China has sought to further strengthen relations through a Common Development Vision. However, it was only China’s security deal with the Solomon Islands that prompted American decision-makers to commit to opening new embassies and grow America’s aid presence in the region.

The South Pacific’s experience shows that as it stands, the United States neglects its partners in the Indo-Pacific until they become useful for geopolitical competition with China.

This competition-first approach ignores these countries’ hopes for their future. It is why when they call for investment or actionable commitments to climate change mitigation, so many of these countries view China as having listened better than the United States. China, at least, has provided a comprehensive development policy to these countries.

More on this: Understanding competing visions of the Indo-Pacific

Rather than helping its case, the United States’ renewed focus in the South Pacific in response to a security deal actually further highlights its reactive and inadequate approach.

Until the Indo-Pacific construct involves real trade and climate change policies that address the needs of the broader region, and pursues development for its own sake rather than for its geopolitical objectives, these patterns will continue.

Furthermore, viewing China’s activities in the region through a purely military lens denies South Pacific countries the very agency and sovereignty the United States claims to protect, all while appearing profoundly hypocritical to the parties they’ve neglected.

The idea of the Indo-Pacific only makes sense if officials genuinely account for the intertwined nature of the security and development dynamics that span its various sub-regions.

Doing this requires working beyond the INDOPACOM spatial boundaries, in recognition of these dynamics. For example, a functional Indo-Pacific policy cannot ignore the role that east African and Persian Gulf countries play in the IOR and the Indo-Pacific at large.

While military issues will always remain important, the security needs of most of the region are intrinsically linked to economic development and the effects of climate change. These are the issues that will decide their future and their biggest security concerns.

What this approach shows is that the United States is likely to overplay the challenges that China poses and underplay how much cooperation is possible. It is committing itself to promoting a status quo that no longer exists at the expense of its own, and the region’s, long-term interests.

Ultimately, an Indo-Pacific policy that serves primarily to protect American power, rather than solve these problems, is not fit for its espoused purpose – to contribute to ‘cooperation, stability, prosperity, development, and peace within the region.’

The post Why America’s Indo-Pacific strategy is flawed appeared first on Policy Forum.

Republic of Maldives Defence Minister Uza Mariya Ahmed Didi, in her remarks on the opening day of the Indo-Pacific Environment Security Forum, held in Malé, Maldives on 1 August 2022, has said that Maldives is in the process of greening its defence sector services to reduce its carbon footprint. She outlined how the country is looking to lower the emissions cost of its defence operations and infrastructure development.

As noted in her early engagement at the Special Session on Climate Security and Green Defence at the 19th IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, held in Singapore from 10 to 12 June 2022, the Minister also reiterated that the government is in the process of finalising a Defence White Paper which reflects their goal of ‘greening’ the defence sector.

Rather than securitising (or militarising) climate change, their objective is to frame the issue in a way that is more closely aligned to the general strategic interests of the state, including combating climate change.

Meeting carbon zero-emission targets and improving energy efficiency are primary targets under the Maldives government’s initiatives, which it launched under the Climate Emergency Act – 2021.

This approach to defence strategy to progress these goals is crucial for national plans to build resilience against the effects of climate change.

More on this: What growing resentment in Maldives means for the Indo-Pacific

The country is especially vulnerable to sea level rise and ocean-related catastrophic events, but will also face loss of land, marine livestock, and other climate impacts in years to come.

Rising sea levels can potentially destroy military and defence facilities or inundate a low-lying island nation like Maldives and threaten their security and territorial integrity.

Along with many other nations, Maldives is keenly aware that climate change is a national security issue, as well as an environmental issue.

In the Pacific, the Boe Declaration on regional security declared in 2018 that climate change is the ‘single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific.’ Like their fellow islanders in the Indian Ocean, Pacific nations are driving policy change to secure islands constantly challenged by the changing climate, and the rest of the region must do the same.

In both the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the interplay of the climate and the rest of island life multiplies threat factors and affects the capacity of these nations to meet their security and development potential.

More on this: Australia and Maldives – chances for co-operation

But these countries cannot go it alone. The global community must look to them and take action at the national, regional, and international level to help and emulate their enthusiasm.

If other countries in the region reached out, they would find willing partners. Keeping on the democratic track and committing to climate action, countries like Maldives are eager to promote climate security. Implementing a green defence strategy, as Maldives is doing, is something regional and global partners must consider.

Maldives is a resilient island nation built on its stewardship in the Indian Ocean ambitiously adapting to the changing currents in the regional environment – but it needs continued support from its development partners.

There is much to gain in this space. Better climate security for Maldives matters as it engages with the rest of the Indo-Pacific in search of even closer defence, security, and development partnerships.

Military, defence, and security agencies are the keys to a more secure Maldives, but this cannot come at a cost to the climate. This is why Maldives is taking the step to broaden the scope of its understanding of security to incorporate multifaceted challenges associated with climate change.

The complex nature of these threats and opportunities is a compelling reason to consider a broader meaning of security across the region. If countries of the Indo-Pacific want an approach to security problem solving that incorporates the climate challenge, they need only look to Maldives’ choice to focus on a greener security sector to see the opportunities at hand.

The post Greening national security policy in the Indo-Pacific appeared first on Policy Forum.

By both its own record and current global comparisons, Australia is doing poorly at learning languages.

Australia ranked second-last among 64 countries in the most recent OECD survey of second language study by 15-year old students. As of 2018, only 36.4 per cent of Australian Year 10 students were studying a second language in school.

These numbers aren’t improving either. In 1982, 16.1 per cent of Australian Year 12 students were studying a second language. By 1992 12.5 per cent did so. Two decades on, in 2012, 10.9 per cent of Year 12 students nationally were studying a second language.

According to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), as of 2020, the number of Year 12 students enrolled in languages in Australian schools had declined to 9.5 per cent – or roughly 22,000 of Australia’s 230,000 Year 12 students.

Study of key Asian languages including Japanese, Mandarin, and Indonesian is at its lowest level in at least a decade among Australian Year 12 students with 4.2 per cent of Year 12 students studying one of these three languages as of 2020, down from 5.1 per cent in 2010. The number of students studying Korean and Hindi at Year 12 level remains extremely small too.

Predictably given the decline at upper secondary level, the level of language learning at Australian universities is similarly disheartening.

National student data from the Commonwealth Department of Education indicates that the study of languages by Australian domestic university students was at 20-year low in 2020 with only 2.3 per cent of the nearly 1.1 million domestic students studying a language as part of their degree in 2020. This is down from 3.8 per cent of the national domestic student cohort in 2010.

The decline of Asian language learning by Australian students is particularly dispiriting.

In 2020, just one per cent of Australia’s 1.1 million domestic university students were studying an Asian language – down from 1.75 per cent in 2005.

The decline observed over the past two decades is especially sad given the lofty ambitions and substantial efforts of past Australian governments to increase the study of Asian languages by Australian students.

Between 1995 and 2002, the then Prime Minister Paul Keating initiated the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (NALSAS) strategy that saw $207 million – worth $337 million in today’s dollars – invested in the project.

More on this: Podcast: Language barriers

NALSAS aimed to have 15 per cent of Australian Year 12 students studying a ‘priority Asian language’ – Japanese, Mandarin, Indonesian or Korean – by 2006. This was discontinued by the Howard government in 2002.

The Rudd government partially resuscitated NALSAS in 2009 in the form of the National Asian Languages and Studies in School Program (NALSSP), investing a further $62.5 million – $73.5 million in today’s dollars – between 2009 and 2012. NALSSP was discontinued by the Gillard government in 2012.

Insofar as language learning by school and university students is a measure of Australian curiosity in, and fitness for, engaging with its regional neighbours, the country is in poor and worsening shape.

The reasons for this decline are manifold and complex, but the lack of durable government policy focus bears much responsibility for the failure to shift Australia’s monolingual mindset.

Building Australia’s language capability doesn’t need to, and really shouldn’t, be ideological. This is a discussion, after all, about competence and capability.

The argument for better, more broad-based Asian language literacy among the Australian population is strong. Regardless of who is in power federally, or whether Australia’s external environment is currently benign or more challenging, Australia needs a pool of talented, trained Australians well-versed in the languages and cultures of the region.

Languages deepen understanding of a culture and people with irreplaceable effectiveness. Whether it’s among graduates or staff in Australia’s diplomatic corps, defence department, military, and intelligence agencies, business leaders, or journalists and media professionals, Australia needs experts with language capabilities.

Only with these language skills and the connections they bring can Australia explore new markets, navigate changing global economic conditions, and crucially for government, understand and convey to the public the oscillations of public discourse in China, Indonesia, Japan, India, or Korea with depth and flavour.

More on this: Australia and Asia in business and boardroom

Australia needs to start treating its language capability, particularly its Asian language capability, as a strategic asset, crucial to safeguarding its place as a trusted power in the region – which, among other things, it is.

The commitment to building this capability — by necessity of the timeframe involved — requires bipartisan support. Without it, governments are a destined to repeat a boom-and-bust cycle of public investment that has prevailed for the past 30 years. These policy efforts need to be underpinned by an understanding of national security that is broad enough to encompass both traditional military capabilities on the one hand and linguistic competence and cultural understanding of our region on the other.

Australia should, of course, buy or build the military kit required to defend itself. It is just as important to also invest in a properly funded 30-year national Asian language capability plan.

A revived NALSAS of a similar scope, allowing for inflation and growth in the size of the Australian school population since 2002, would cost the Australian Government something like $71 million per year or $2.1 billion over 30 years.

This would be a modest investment, given it would grant the Australian population the discernment to know when its vital interests are actually in peril, and the ability to differentiate actual threats from imagined ones. It would make Australia capable, as a population, of calibrating its national anxiety appropriately.

The history of Australian foreign policy is littered with misjudgements and overreactions underwritten by mistrust of its regional neighbours.

Sure, policymakers could spend the next 30 years spending more national resources on ever more elaborate alarm systems and insurance policies. Indeed, currently there is bipartisan support for just this course of action.

Or they could spend these resources on getting to know their region better. They could make an act of faith in their neighbours and invest in teaching the population how to communicate with them. In the process, they might just find Australia becomes a more trusted and responsible member of a regional community in which it feels increasingly comfortable and at home.

The post Australia needs to learn to listen in Asia – literally appeared first on Policy Forum.

In India, Indigenous forest-dwelling groups officially documented as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ or ‘Adivasis’ have historically been dispossessed and excluded from their traditional homes in forests.

The passing of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dweller (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 in India – the Forest Rights Act (FRA) for short – was meant to tackle historical injustices by recognising Indigenous people’s rights. These included rights to certain land, rights to access, use, and dispose of minor forest products, and rights to manage and conserve forests.

The FRA has the potential to be a powerful piece of environmental justice legislation, but its abysmally slow implementation continues to threaten Indigenous people’s survival, as does its lack of gender responsiveness.

Indigenous women are at the forefront of the fight for their community’s forest rights. They often take this massive responsibility without substantial policy support or incentives.

Within India’s decentralised environmental legislation, there are few gender-specific provisions in forest policies and laws, and the regulations are not sufficiently gender-responsive.

Some forest policies attempt gender inclusivity, but even these limit themselves to a nominal representation of women.

For instance, the FRA does contain gender-aware provisions such as a mandating that one-third of members in decentralised institutions be female. It also accounts for joint land titles and the recognition of women’s land claims in single-headed households.

More on this: India’s women are the key to its future

However, these are surface-level fixes that struggle to affect deeper problems, like inequity, participation, agency, and long-term effective involvement in forest decision-making.

The policies remain highly male-centric and often disregard young women, especially those who are separated from their husbands or widowed. Without land rights, they are marginalised and put at the mercy of other social actors.

Because the FRA is the most significant law covering forests, its shortcomings mean that Indian forest policies more broadly lack gender responsiveness. Policymakers must do more to offer Indigenous women opportunities to influence and engage with forest policy.

Additionally, they must do more to address entrenched socio-ecological gender inequities that affect women’s livelihoods and their ability to care for the forest. Falling short in this space is a no-win situation, leading to the FRA failing at both of its goals – of achieving socio-economic progress and protecting ecological sustainability.

Still, despite a lack of policy support and unfavourable conditions, many women are fighting to reclaim their forest rights.

The Van Raji people are a small forest-dwelling tribal group that inhabit remote, isolated, and ecologically fragile areas of Uttarakhand, a northern state located in the foothills of the Himalayas.

With critical support from a progressive local non-government organisation and active local leadership, Van Raji women have been able to raise their concerns to state authorities.

More on this: Millions of women in India are on the brink of poverty

Indigenous women participate in decision-making bodies such as a sub-divisional forest committee and Gram Sabha (village assembly) level Forest Rights Committee, where they get the chance to vocalise their concerns and protect their rights and entitlements.

However, currently their participation comes at the cost of their daily livelihood and household and care responsibilities. The physical and emotional hardships these duties bring is a major hurdle to their opportunities. This makes participation an economic risk that carries with it social and emotional challenges.

These risks don’t always pay off – even having made sacrifices, their voices are often ignored by dominant social and state actors with their own scheme of interests and goals.

The Van Rajis’ experience shows that women’s fight to protect the forest is unnecessarily gruelling in the absence of policy support. The biased socio-economic and political environment entrenches unequal power and, despite the FRA’s good intentions, prejudice often squashes and disables Indigenous women’s efforts to achieve its goals.

To tackle this issue, policymakers must engage with local decision-makers to reform their processes, giving particular attention to marginalised Indigenous groups. Present gender-responsiveness efforts are simply inadequate, and do not do enough to redistribute the responsibilities and benefits associated with having a voice in forest policy-making.

With India celebrating the historic election of its first tribal woman as president on 21 July 2022, a great deal of attention must now be devoted to including Indigenous women in local decision-making processes in forests.

Further efforts must be extended to invest in training and capacity building – not only to support Indigenous women’s efforts, but to assure Indigenous communities’ entitlements in forest-related decisions more widely.

Hopefully, such an approach could foster more gender-responsive forest policy in India into the future. Then, it could achieve socially just and ecologically sustainable outcomes in the face of the mounting challenges of living in a changing climate.

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