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U.S. intel office adds warming to warnings
Staff and wire reports, MSNBC
Report looking out to 2030 cites danger of water, food shortages
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A U.S. intelligence report coming out Thursday — and likely to grab President-elect Barack Obama's attention — is adding a new variable to the "traditional" mix of factors expected to destabilize the world into the near future.

Issued by the National Intelligence Council, the "Global Trends 2025" report includes warnings tied to climate change, the man behind the report said this week and in recent speeches.

The overall theme of the report is that the United States will have less influence across the globe at a time of growing climate, water and energy stresses, Thomas Fingar, chairman of the NIC and deputy director of national intelligence, indicated in recent weeks.
(19 November 2008)
The original report is available as a 5.75MB PDF: Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. Also available as HTML

Director of National Intelligence: Conflicts over resources (PDF)
Mike McConnell, Office the Director of National Intelligence (U.S.)
Remarks by the Director of National Intelligence
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... Let me finish my remarks by just forecasting a bit for the future. When we sat down to do this with some of our best and brightest on the inside, we made it a global enterprise. We invested time with academics, diplomats, and other governmental leaders around the globe to get their input and their observations. And this report will be released in a week or so. I would commend it to you. It will be on the web and it will be published in hard copy.

By and large, it says that the potential for conflict over the next 15 to 20 years is going up not down. That’s because of the competition for resources. That’s because of the explosion in global population. Over the next 15 years, we’ll add another 1.4 billion people. It just so happens that number, 1.4 billion, also coincides with a number of people in 36 countries that will not have access to water – water for drinking or water for agriculture. During this period of time, the price of food will go up 50 percent.

Production of oil in most of the countries that produce oil is currently on the decline. We will see a shift away from oil. But most likely, what we will see a shift to is coal and natural gas, unless there is a technological breakthrough that we don’t know about currently. So the pressure across the globe is going to change in the context of competition for natural resources. We’re going to see not only government groups compete for – governments compete for resources – we’re going to see nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and terrorist groups also have something to say about it.
(17 November 2008)
The original report is available as a 5.75MB PDF: Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. Also available as HTML

Germany's Courting of Oil-Rich Turkmenistan Prompts Criticism
Deutsche Welle
Turkmenistan's authoritarian ruler met with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin Friday amid keen Western interest in the former Soviet republic's rich oil and gas deposits and criticism from human rights organizations.

"Cooperation between our two countries is far from complete," Merkel said after her meeting with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, 51, who took over two years ago after the death of dictator Saparmurad Niyasov.

The one-party state has been criticized by exiled dissidents and human-rights watchdogs.

Merkel stressed that she welcomed Berdymukhammedov's offer to cooperate with Germany on both human-rights issues and liberalizing the Central Asian nation...
(14 November 2008)

Europe joins international contest for Arctic's resources
Ian Traynor, The Guardian
Europe took a step yesterday towards joining the scramble for the Arctic's vast mineral riches that are being opened up by global warming, declaring for the first time that the resources could help stem anxiety about Europe's energy security.

In what it said was "a first step towards an EU Arctic policy", a European commission paper spelt out Europe's interests in the Arctic's energy resources, fisheries, new shipping routes, security concerns and environmental perils. "We can't remain impassive in the face of the alarming developments affecting the Arctic climate," said Joe Borg, the commissioner for maritime affairs.

With three member states - Denmark, Sweden, and Finland - bordering the Arctic, the EU said it wanted "observer status" on the Arctic Council, a body made up of northern littoral states, in order to further its interests alongside the US and Canada, Russia, Norway and Iceland...
(21 November 2008)