Dear WRI Friends and Family,
 
A few weeks ago the WRI Board had a powerful and wide ranging  discussion of the events of September 11 and their aftermath.  We talked  about the concept of human security, and the connections among security,  environment and development.  The following are some observations flowing  from that discussion 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  future.  
 
Terrorism is hideous theater. Victims and audience are  one.  Information and images flow around the world without regard to  borders as barriers or the intentions of those who create them.  We are  compelled to respond, locked in the scenes of a tragic drama, a violent twenty  first century morality play, running round the clock on CNN.  In our minds  it began on September 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 more secure world?
 
We do not know what the men who hijacked the four planes on  September 11 and killed thousands of innocent people hoped to accomplish.   It does not appear that they were poor men, but there is reason to believe that  Osama bin Laden is bent on provoking a war in which the poor would be his  soldiers.  Neither violence nor hatred is a pathology only of the poor, but  the compound of misery, powerlessness and injustice is volatile - exactly the  mix that the terrorists who attacked us hope to ignite.  We cannot create  security only by striking at the flint; we must deal with the  tinder.
 
What if we capture the leaders of terrorist groups, seize  their resources, disrupt their networks, and deter their state sponsors, but act  with narrow 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  fundamental changes.
 
The squalid slums in the sprawling cities in the poorest parts  of the world are growing explosively, expanding by a million people a  week.  Three-fourths of the world's agricultural lands are degraded, and  the cities are filling with people driven from rural areas by expanding  population and failing lands.  There are about a billion teenagers in the  world, most of them 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 nowhere to turn, they will be tinderboxes of anger and  despair.
 
One-third of the world's people face water scarcity, and water  use is rising twice as fast as population. Three great rivers, the Amu Darya,  the Colorado, and the Yellow no longer reach the sea in dry seasons. The number  facing scarcity is likely to double in the next several decades creating a band  of scarcity around the middle of the globe.  70% of the water people use is  for agriculture, and it is used to produce half the world's food.  Water  scarcity is already raising tensions in many places including the Middle East,  the Mekong Delta, and between the United States and Mexico.
 
A billion people depend for food on wild caught fish, but  two-thirds of the world's fisheries are being harvested beyond sustainability,  and many have collapsed, taking with them people's livelihoods.  Half of  all jobs worldwide depend on fisheries, forests, and agriculture.  In  one-fourth of the world's nations natural resources directly produce more income  than industry.
 
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 just hotter weather, but more severe storms and  droughts.  It will intensify 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.
 
Terrorism and war are, in part, the more immediate  consequences of ever increasing oil consumption, particularly for  transportation.   Osama bin Laden has explained his terrorist acts  against the US as a response to the presence 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 represents the largest oil reserves in the world, about  25%. 
 
Many of the most insecure regions of the world are also the  least democratic.  People there are not only poor, they are  voiceless.  Dependent directly 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.
 
The notion that security, stability, and sustainability are  linked is by no 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 report last year.  Human ability to improve lives while we  protect the future has grown rapidly, however, and we must use these  capabilities as an alternative weapon in our war on terror.
 
Imagine if we determined not only to root out terrorism, but  also to deprive 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,  supporting a vast improvement in education, health, and micro credit to launch  small businesses.  We would support improved agriculture, community based  fishery management, and the dispersion of practical technologies to use water  many times more efficiently. We would work for greater access for more people to  sustainable energy resources. We would work to ensure that people have the  chance to participate in decisions about natural resources and  environment.  We would honor our commitments to ensure that poor women can  plan their families.  We would seek to broaden our anti-terror alliance  into a partnership for human security, abandoning unilateralism for broad  collaboration.  We would join the same allies whose help we now seek in  confronting terrorism, to combat global climate change, using our immense  technological capacity to reduce our use of fossil fuels, and diminish our  dependence on foreign oil.  
 
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 among nations.  Consider the alternative.  If the United  States takes direct action but withdraws from collaboration on broader purposes  any security we achieve will be ephemeral.  If our oil use continues to  rise we will have fewer options in the Middle East.  If we fail to invest  in development we will have fewer friends and fewer customers.  If we do  not solve tomorrow's problems today, we will still have today's problems  tomorrow.
 
What is WRI's role?  Do we matter?
 
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 collaboration necessary to implement them.
 
After the attacks on September 11th, WRI staff received  several thousand messages of concern and outrage from our colleagues in more  than 100 countries.  These were not the list serve exchanges of rumors and  misinformation that surged through the web, but affirmations from our partners  in values-based networks that rise above the differences of place.  They  form the links that are essential to maintain understanding in moments of  violence.
 
WRI uses the technologies of the Global Era to create  connection among people, and we use connection to provide information and  voice.  For example:
 
? Global Forest Watch supplies space based data and  Information Age tools to local groups on the ground in the world's last frontier  forests.  They collect information on who is doing what and whether it is  legal which Global Forest Watch uses to create a real time, on-line, map based  early warning system of threats to the forest, a system that enables companies  to avoid purchasing wood from unsustainable logging, and consumers to hold  companies accountable.  The groups on the ground are empowered.
? Earth  Trends provides people with the world's best source of information about their  environment and natural resources, and the tools to use that information to  influence decisions.  Information is power.  Earth Trends enables  people to find and use it.
? The Access Initiative has built a global  alliance of groups and institutions to hold governments publicly accountable for  their compliance with their commitments to open environmental governance  articulated in the Rio Declaration and the Aarhus Convention.  The  initiative will strengthen people's claims to information, voice, and  justice.
? New Ventures creates opportunity and hope.  It identifies and  supports a new generation of entrepreneurs in Latin America who are seeking to  create sustainable enterprises in their communities.  New Ventures provides  business mentoring, visibility, and access to venture capital for ideas that use  local resources and capacity sustainably, and has mobilized millions of dollars  in investment capital even during a strong economic downturn in Latin America.  
? Oil for a Finite Future demonstrates how long term deployment of more  efficient, non-fossil fueled vehicles such as hydrogen or electric cars powered  by renewable energy resources can alleviate the underlying long-term security  issues of oil depletion and global climate change, not to mention terrorism.  Since non-Persian Gulf oil production is nearing its peak we show that we cannot  drill our way to energy security.  
? SafeClimate provides tools for  individuals, businesses, and institutions to reduce their impact on climate  change by taking low cost steps to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses  that they cause, making climate protection as easy as putting out the recycling  bin.  Americans are hungry to do something that helps.  When they do,  their government will follow them.
? Climate and Developing Countries - WRI  has been a leading voice of reason about the role of developing countries in  addressing climate change, developing widely used indicators, and policy  proposals that have helped create the basis for a dialogue more constructive  than the sloganeering of many American political leaders.
? Digital Dividends  explores the opportunities for development, empowerment, and improved management  of natural resources on the other side of the digital divide, and has linked  leaders in the digital industry to hundreds of innovative projects created by  local entrepreneurs and activists worldwide.
 
We have done innovative and influential work on energy,  agriculture, and water resources.  We have sought to engage businesses and  investors in creating strategies for sustainability.  We believe that work  that connects people across the boundaries of region and sector is the most  powerful antidote to the toxins of misery, mistrust, and disempowerment.   We will continue to be advocates of the proposition that protecting the web of  life that connects and supports us all is essential to long term  security.
 
Violence is not new.  Brutality and hatred have afflicted  humanity for as long as the capacity to do good has elevated us.  We  learned the knowledge of good and evil only when both entered our hearts.   Do we have the occasion to do good as well as justice in responding to the  terrible evil that was committed on September 11th?
 
The modern violent evil is both terrifying and shocking not  only because it occurred on American soil, but also because it was so sudden and  powerful.  The force of evil has been amplified, its reach extended, its  speed accelerated like so many things in the global era, by technology and  connection.  The jetliners that were the instruments of destruction are  among the forces shrinking our world.
 
Jonathan