The G8 summit resulted in a number of statements about energy security, emphasizing diverse energy sources, especially renewables; safety and sustainability; and energy efficiency. It’s promising that G8 countries held energy with enough regard to address it directly following the statements on global economy, but at the end of the day, energy security is still on the back burner for alliances such as the G8 and NATO.  And really, there’s no reason it should be otherwise at this time.

Sure, the price of oil is sky-high compared with a decade ago, and the related issue of climate change serves as a somber backdrop, but energy security simply isn’t square in these alliances’ arena. Let’s look at the G8. For one, none of the G8 countries is experiencing a dire energy-security situation; they all have enough wealth to buy the energy they need, and none of them is completely dependent on one source. There is a lot of sentiment in the media that the U.S. is far too dependent on Middle Eastern oil, which may be true, but the U.S.’s top source of crude oil in 2011 was Canada, followed by Mexico – not exactly antagonistic countries. Compare that to central Eastern European countries that are practically chained to Russia’s oil and natural gas reserves, as a result of proximity and pipelines left over from the Cold War.

“We are an energy island in the E.U. We have, for the moment, limited options in terms of energy sources,” emphasized Audrius Bruzga, director of the Lithuania Energy Security Center. Comparatively, energy security in the G8 countries is far less an issue.

Another reason, sort of the flip side of the coin, why energy security is not hot on the G8’s radar is that even though some of the G8 countries can be net exporters of oil – notably Canada, Russia, and even the U.S. in 2011 (for the first time since 1949) – their economies are diversified. They are not petrostates such as Venezuela (though some find this arguable) and if something drastic happens on the energy front, they have other avenues on which to ride.

“The intent is there” to address energy security, said Kevin Rosner, senior fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, based in Washington D.C. However, “there’s so many other problems on the front burner.”

NATO plans to increase its role in energy security, and it’s making a sincere effort to do so. It runs workshops and aims at raising visibility of energy efficiency and smart energy, especially in the military. There is a sense that if the “ultra-conservative” military decides energy efficiency and clean energy is the right thing to pursue, it must be a smart, no-frills, no-drippy-feelings move – and the public is more likely to follow along.

“NATO has a legitimate role to play in energy security,” said Michael Rühle, the head of the Energy Security Section at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

But, he added, “energy security is not a military operation issue. NATO should not militarize the subject – it’s a market-centered subject.”

Gal Luft, adviser to the U.S. Energy Security Council, agrees. “I don’t think there are deliverables in NATO.” As he sees it, countries can make all the statements they want, but unless it comes with teeth, nothing gets done. “I think the key issue is what can NATO do to advance energy security – that’s the starting point,” said Luft. “Something you can do – not fluff.”

Ultimately, it’s up to the individual countries to interpret any statements G8 or NATO make. Though the G8 identified energy security as an important issue to tackle, each member country decides on its own how it will deal with the issue. Government programs, budget constraints, and economic outlooks all play into the decisions and actions a country takes. G8 and NATO are doing just about what they can do to address energy security – it’s up to other forces to determine what rest gets done.

A recent update on G-8 actions to improve food security left some international organizations calling for more. The Camp David Accountability Report detailed the progress of G-8 members on fulfilling commitments to the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative that began in 2009. The $22 billion program was created to help low-income countries decrease the vulnerability of their food and agricultural systems, as well as to halve hunger and poverty.

Each participating country is at a different stage of fulfilling its commitment before the deadline at the end of 2012, the report said.  And, although L’Aquila donors will commit 99 percent of the funds by then, the report and many organizations such as ActionAid, point out that disbursed funds are a better measure of progress. To have the most significant impact, some argue, the disbursements need to be sped up.

“The disbursed money is money that’s reaching people,” said Katie Campbell, a senior policy analyst at ActionAid. “Governments can commit money but it can take years to get to the field. There’s not necessarily a time frame on that commitment.”

Gas pipelines from Russia through Europe. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

BY ROSA LIN

Crude oil remains consistently above $100 a barrel, with intermittent spikes caused by unrest in the Middle East.  Rising countries such as China and India press their demands on the world oil supply. The most viable alternative to crude oil, nuclear power, took a blow from the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Despite all this, energy security likely won’t be on the agenda at the NATO summit this year.

“Energy security will not play a role in the Chicago summit,” said Michael Rühle, the head of the Energy Security Section at NATO headquarters in Brussels. The only contribution, he said, would be a classified report on energy that is submitted annually.

NATO countries source their energy from a wide variety of places, which is one of the reasons leaders are reticent to discuss energy policies.

Crude oil, natural gas, and coal remain the top energy sources worldwide, and will continue to be so, making up a forecasted 80 percent of energy consumption in 2040. However, where Allied countries obtain these products is where the interests divide.

“Allies come from very different angles” in regards to energy security, said Rühle. “The countries have very different levels of concern.”

While countries such as Canada are rich in natural gas, oil, and coal resources, other countries aren’t so lucky. Many central Eastern European countries remain tethered to natural gas pipelines from Russia, left over from the Cold War era.

“We are what is known as an energy island in the EU,” said Audrius Brūzga, director of the Lithuania Energy Security Center, based in Vilnius. “We have for the moment very limited options in terms of energy sources … we rely on 100 percent gas coming from Russia.”

Many European countries are heavily dependent on Russia, the world’s largest resource of coal, gas, and uranium. However, North American countries maintain very different energy sources, and so they are hesitant to create tensions with Russia, a non-NATO country.

”They (European countries) have to deal with the Russians,” said Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security based in Washington, and adviser to the United States Energy Security Council. “North American, and even some European nations, such as Germany, don’t have this issue … So why complicate things? Why get involved?”

Another reason energy security is low on the NATO agenda has to do with NATO’s structure. NATO is primarily a military alliance, and energy security is not a military operation issue.

“NATO has a significant role in energy security … we’re gradually developing,” Rühle said, but presently NATO only intervenes if an energy security issue becomes a security threat requiring military involvement.

Luft agreed that energy security is a commercial, rather than military issue. NATO can discuss the issue all they want, he said, “but until there are deliverables,” energy security is best left for the commercial arena.

Brūzga remains hopeful the energy security will come up during the summit. “I’m happy to observe that all NATO countries are increasingly interested in the topic,” he said. “NATO has a role in energy security, and NATO has to face that role and obligation … I think energy security will be discussed at the Chicago summit.”

Cybersecurity is a shared concern of all NATO nations but one that is almost impossible for them to discuss openly.

Not only are the issues highly technical, but talking about them in public is unlikely in diplomatic meetings or even among defense departments and ministries.

“This is a highly technical area. The people who count are maybe the intelligence communities of the countries, some quasi-governmental organizations, (and) some defense contractors” said Kenneth Dam, a former deputy secretary of the State Department.  “So how do you really get such a diplomatic conversation going?”

The alliance hopes to discuss improving their ability to prevent and recover from cyberattacks and developing norms of cyberspace behavior, according to its website.

Efforts by NATO and its members have acknowledged the importance to both public and private sectors, said Eric Chapman, the deputy director of University of Maryland’s Cybersecurity Center.

“NATO has really recognized that cybersecurity is an international problem with global implications,” he said. “The alliance has really taken important strides to move the ball forward in terms of getting to the point where there are common cyber defenses that each alliance partner will strive to maintain and possess.”

The United States, which has cybersecurity legislation in the Senate, should be careful not to position itself as the “world’s policemen” on cybersecurity but rather look to international alliances, Chapman said.

The comprehensive Cyber Security Act of 2012 establishes critical infrastructure protection obligations for the United States. Howard Schmidt, cybersecurity coordinator for President Obama, said that the country is concerned with international cooperation in addition to their internal legislation.

“Here is an opportunity to have a partnership that benefits all of us,” he said last month at a Chicago Council on Global Affairs panel on cybersecurity.

Terrorist networks and their recruiting efforts is one area where there is urgent need for cooperation in cyber defense.

Terrorist have used the expansive nature of the Internet to find those who share their beliefs. The Internet allows individuals with the most extreme and socially unacceptable views to find an outlet with like-minded individuals.

“The internet has given [terrorists] a unique platform for identifying sympathizers for recruitment purposes. That is a very real problem that I think all alliance members need to confront,” Chapman said. “It’s a very delicate dance. It’s a very fine line that has to be walked because (in the U.S.) there are First Amendment protections that have to be dealt with.”

“In recruitment, the net is cast extraordinarily wide. There is always going to be someone who is going to take that bait,” said Florida Institute of Technology professor Richard Ford. “I don’t see an easy fix to that.”

But, he said, monitoring their online activity is more beneficial than shutting down websites.

“It’s like playing Whack-A-Mole,” Ford said. “I think the better approach is just to look at these sites and use them for intelligence leverage.”

Given the diplomatic difficulties, the mere fact that it will be discussed at the summit may be the alliances main achievement, Dam said.

“I think all that can happen here is put a mantra on the importance of NATO forces being protected.”

Biodiversity, once a strictly scientific concept, captured the limelight when G8 member countries meeting in Italy issued in 2009 the landmark Syracuse Charter, vowing to significantly reduce the disappearance of species. However, with the conflict in Afghanistan and global economic recession seeming more pressing concerns, biodiversity has a bleak chance of being addressed by either G8 or NATO this May.

Some scientists say both the cure to conflicts and the key to economic recovery lie in the variation of species. Jon Erickson, president of the United States Society of Ecological Economics, has called biodiversity “the very fabric of life” because it provides every essential material of development. Halting biodiversity degradation means richer food, cleaner water and better economic quality.

“We are in a crisis; we are losing biodiversity faster than any policies can keep up with,” he said. “None of these policies really has any teeth to reduce the tremendous loss we are losing on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. I am afraid the United States hasn’t provided much leadership.”

Conservationists say biodiversity loss is a potent threat to national security, especially to developing countries where economies rely heavily on natural resources. The depletion of species variation significantly increases risks of turmoil. One such example is the coral-reef countries of Southeast Asia where people depend on marine resources for a living.

“The livelihoods of many people depend on the reef. If you deny them these resources, where they are going to live?” asked Pavan Sukhdev, study leader of The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity, an international initiative founded in response to a proposal made by the environmental ministers of the G8+5 countries in 2007.

“Biodiversity is not a luxury for the rich. It is a necessity for the poor,” he said.

In fact, Sukhdev says developed countries are not exempt from the damage of biodiversity loss. In 2007, U.S. agriculture suffered a heavy loss from the death of millions of honeybees. A Cornell University study found more than $14 billion of domestic seeds and crops is pollinated by honeybees annually.

“Everyone depends on the services of ecosystem,” Sukhdev said.

A NATO official says NATO also recognizes the threat of environmental degradation, especially after the Kosovo crisis when radioactive chemicals in NATO’s bombs devastated regional ecosystem and haunted people to this day.

“It is very important for our military to protect the environment when they are in operation. If they ignore it, the population would be against them,” said Dr. Susanne Michaelis, with the Emerging Security Challenges Division. “There is a need to be careful about environment. What they do must be sustainable.”

However, she says doing environmental work in NATO is not without difficulties.

“A few allied nations don’t want NATO to discuss environmental issues,” she said. “They are afraid that if they gave the mandate to work more on the environment and have international staff dealing with it, we will discuss too much and diffuse national security.”

“They don’t want NATO to militarize environmental issues,” she said.

Ecological economists say the lack of government support is exactly why species are vanishing at such an alarming rate. They say leaders need to look beyond economic growth.

“We need to think about how we measure growth. If we simply measure growth in terms of circulation, money and GDP, then we are missing the elements of the well-being of humans,” Erickson said. “We need to measure what matters. We need to move beyond GDP and recession and growth.”

“It is beyond pity that NATO and G8 won’t address environmental topics this year. We are fundamentally depleting our assets. We are running our economy by depleting our assets. The most fundamental of asset is our natural asset.”

The nightmare cyberattack scenarios: Hackers shut down electricity for millions of people. Hackers cause the banking system to collapse. Hackers manipulate the military’s global positioning system, disrupting communications in combat.

Even worse, it might be impossible for the U.S. to know who’s really behind the attacks—or how to respond.

Right now, cyberwarfare has no rules of engagement. Countries shroud their cyberweapons in secrecy, and cyber-strategy differs from nation to nation. In the absence of a uniform policy, NATO is focusing on boosting defenses of member countries, not retaliation strategy.  The result: A nebulous cyber-environment where few boundaries exist.

The cyberattacks in Estonia showed the first signs of what cyberwarfare might look like—and the difficulties of fighting back. For several weeks in 2007, hackers shut down government and business websites in Estonia. Estonia went to NATO and accused Russia, which denied it.

Thus, the first problem of deterrence in cyberwarfare: attribution.  In traditional combat, tankers and airplanes bear the flags of their countries. But cyberattacks are anonymous, clouding victims’ ability to trace them to their source. The Estonia hackers were indeed Russian, but it was impossible to prove that they were acting for the Russian government. Estonia couldn’t retaliate against Moscow.

“In the cyber world, individuals can launch attacks that can cause significant damage,” says Susan Brenner, professor of law and technology at University of Dayton. “Cyberweapons are much more democratic.”

Had Estonia been able to conclusively point a finger at Russia, how would it have retaliated? One view says an attack must be kinetic to be considered an act of war, Brenner says. In other words, something must “blow up.” The Estonian conflict doesn’t qualify. Therein lies cyberwarfare problem number two: the issue of proportionality.

“What did Estonia expect NATO to do?” Brenner says. “Bomb Russia?”

These questions become more important as attacks rise. In the U.S. alone, a recent report by the Government Accountability Office found that cybersecurity incidents in federal agencies, including malware and unauthorized access increased by 680 percent in the past six years.

Since the  Estonia attack, NATO has added more cybersecurity capabilities and a rapid-response team to boost reaction time and defensive infrastructure. But the “fortress model”— shielding computer systems behind a virtual brick wall—doesn’t work, Brenner says. Experts say that the best a country can do is to try to limit the damage. Retaliation requires rules of the road, and while academics are talking about the issues, international politicians and diplomats are not.

Jamie Shea, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges, says the idea of a cyberwarfare treaty is far off. The discussion process has not yet matured. Until then, he thinks nations should be more transparent about cyber policy, much like the transparency regarding nuclear weapons use or military doctrines more generally.

“You can’t have every international organization having its own separate and uncoordinated approach,” Shea says. “Like climate change, these things are not perfect. But you need one recognized global initiative around which we can organize these discussions.”

G8 leaders may duck serious discussions on controlling a major source of pollution that includes black soot from cooking fires, methane from dairy farms, and gases released from aerosol cans.  Such talk is uncomfortable because it can appear to shift responsibility for climate change away from industrialized nations and onto poorer, have-not countries.

These hazardous emissions, called “short-lived climate forcers,” are thought to account for nearly one-third of current global warming.  Discussions at the G-8 summit could be the catalyst for policy makers to address climate change and related fundamental international issues, but many scientists and government representatives believe the conversation won’t happen, because of the issue’s sensitivity and a perceived lack of immediacy.

Short-lived climate forcers first entered serious public discussion in February 2012 when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a global initiative to limit these pollutants and their negative effects on health and the environment. The international effort included the United States and its partners in The Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants: the United Nations Environment Programme, Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico and Sweden.

The reasons for eliminating these emissions go beyond the environment.

“Some of the interest in short-lived climate forcings is related to non-warming issues,” said Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University and contributor to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Reducing black soot from small cooking fires by switching to solar cookers can help the health of people who now breathe the soot,” Alley said. The World Health Organization estimates that 3 million premature deaths are caused by urban outdoor air pollution and indoor air pollution every year.

Emphasis on arctic vulnerability is another reason for action, said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program at the World Resources Institute. When black carbon lands on sea ice, the dark color causes heat retention and therefore faster melting.

These pollutants also threaten food security, as they reduce the growth rate of crops like wheat and maize, added Kaveh Zahedi, climate-change coordinator at the United Nations Environment Programme, who is optimistic about potential dialogue.

“My understanding is that short-lived climate pollutants have generated quite a lot of interest and may well come up in the G8 summit,” he said.

For discussions about these pollutants to be successful and well-received, however, the United States must emphasize the continued threat of CO₂ emissions to global warming. Otherwise, the G8 host could be seen by other summit partners as a continued drag on international efforts to address climate change. Its allies in Europe, for instance, have worked hard to reduce “all kind of gases that cause climate change,” said Issac Valero-Ladron, spokesperson for Connie Hedegaard, the EU Commissioner for Climate Action.

“We are talking about the U.S. being the second largest polluter in the world,” he said “I think it’s important that they take their share of responsibility.”

After all, the short-lived nature of climate-forcers means we can deal with them at any time, Alley said. While “delaying action on CO₂ now means much sharper cuts in CO₂ in the future.”

Zahedi said this is well understood by coalition partners.

“We have to deal with both,” he said. “If we don’t act on CO₂, in the long term we will not have made a difference to temperature increase.”

Understanding short-lived climate forcers:

To understand how these pollutants influence the atmosphere, you can think of cooking a bratwurst on a barbecue heated by matches and charcoal briquettes, Alley said.

“The matches flare up fast, but burn out fast; the briquettes last longer,” he explained. In this scenario, the matches are the short-lived climate forcers, while the briquettes are CO₂. Like the matches, the methane’s influence is short-lived, while the briquettes (symbolic of carbon dioxide) last much longer.

In reality, the methane and the CO₂ have much larger time scales. Short-lived climate forcers stay in the atmosphere between a few days and a few years, while carbon dioxide can influence climate for roughly 100 years.

President Obama may have nudged a few eggs down the South Lawn during the annual Easter Egg Roll, but outside the White House, advocates from ActionAid, a nonprofit organization working to eliminate poverty and injustice, gave the U.S. leader a not-so- subtle push of their own.

A life-size cutout of the president humorously depicted as a “Hunger Hero” stood next to a large poster emblazoned with, “Obama: Find the will to be a hunger hero at the G8 summit.”

Food security is defined by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization as “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

Whether the President will rise to the occasion and address food security is still up in the air, but considering how charged the issue of food and agricultural security will be in Washington D.C.’s political climate that weekend, there’s a good chance the issue will be discussed at Camp David.

As it turns out, the timing is ripe. The L’Aquila Food Security Initiative, a $20 billion financial commitment that was to be disbursed over three years from the 2009 G8 summit, is to expire this year. The agreement outlined measures to reach global food security by focusing on sustainable agricultural development while keeping a strong commitment on ensuring adequate emergency food assistance.

“L’Aquila created huge expectations, especially in Africa,” said Richard Mkandawire, former leader of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program, which aims to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development. “Naturally, these expectations need to be addressed.”

But foreign budget austerity may challenge talks of establishing a new food security initiative with financial backing.

“If countries can’t pledge in terms of monetary investment at this point because of fiscal constraints, which we understand, then we’re pushing for an impact target, said Katie Campbell, a senior science policy analyst at ActionAid. “We are saying that countries should commit to pulling 50 million smallholder farmers out of poverty over the next three years through agricultural development.”

The Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, which will be convened in Washington by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs the day before the G8, will highlight the need to incorporate more private-sector investment and increase the role of African leadership.

“The development agenda has been orchestrated in the past from outside the countries,” Mkandawire said. “Countries in Africa really need to see that this is their own agenda, and we need to commit our own resources.”

Critics of private-sector investment say the profit motive is inherently problematic when addressing food security and poverty alleviation due to conflicting incentives. Yet, increasing reliance on non-governmental players is fast becoming a reality.

“In a nutshell, there’s no alternative,” said Keith Wiebe, the deputy director of the agricultural development economics division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “We always think of large-scale commercial enterprises, but the biggest private sector is farmers themselves.”