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[Paper 1]Can Disaster and Conflict Early Warning (D/CEW) systems be networked to untangle the multiple but interdependent crises that characterize complex emergencies, particularly in response to climate change? In other words, can high quality and continuous information gathering identify the ecological ingredients of complex crises before they are exploited for perverse political purposes by exacerbating environmental insecurity? And if so, can early warning methodologies based on events-data analysis provide the common platform for networking D/CEW? The purpose of this paper is to explore these questions from the perspective of a scholar-practitioner engaged in the development of field-based conflict reduction systems. The Conflict Early Warning and Response Network (CEWARN) in the Horn of Africa serves as the primary case study. The paper is structured as follows: the first section considers the confluence of climate change and complex emergencies. The next section presents CEWARN as an operational methodology being adapted to network D/CEW. The final section outlines how networked warning systems can remain effective in response to climate change.[Paper 2] Added with ISA permission and available by email: patrick.meier@tufts.edu"For every thousand pages on the causes of war," historian Geoffrey Blainey writes, "there is less than one page directly on the causes of peace." The same may be said of early warning and early response, with the latter (early response) often occupying little more than an afterthought in the mainstream literature on "operational" conflict prevention. While the gap between warning and response has been the subject of intense debate, the decades long Quixotic quest to bridge this gap is largely instituted on the hope of discovering a general pattern of conflictual interactions that point to the outbreak of armed conflict. Indeed, the "enormous academic scholarship on the causes of conflict" is basically founded on the dream of finding the 'silver bullet' or 'smoking pistol' of early warning. And so, despite the fact that "billions of dollars have been invested in developing sophisticated data banks and early warnings, we have to note that even the most expensive systems have shown a striking inability to forecast political events," not to mention early response. While this observation was made 20 years ago, few would dispute its validity today; and this in spite of the revolution in information technology and the many more billions invested since. In this paper, we argue that the warning-response gap is institutionalized in the very structure of Western institutions. We first draw on simple insights from complexity science to exemplify the structural source of this gap. Adopting a systems, or networksperspective, "offers some very rich and interesting insights on where power comes from." We then use two case studies based on operational conflict early warning (CEW) systems to illustrate our point. In closing, we consider a people-centered approach to early warning as a strategy to "rewire" the critical link to timely and effective response. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The severity and extent of human insecurity and the consequences of environmental degradation are as great in the Horn of Africa as in any other region. Drought, water shortages, and desertification have produced famine and other forms of human insecurity, as well as weakened states, conflict and support for Islamic extremism and terrorism. Environmental degradation and resource scarcity have been largely demand-driven, especially among growing populations of land- and water-hungry pastoralists and farmers. Famine has been the result of the interplay of growing populations, environmental degradation and drought, as well as conflict and the lack of capacity of states to react. Horn governments, donors, UN agencies and NGOs have devised a range of policies and programs, including food security, early warning, and integrated population, health and environment programs, which have slowed but not reversed environmental degradation and human insecurity. Greater state capacity and local participation are needed to achieve sustainable development and human security. US efforts to bring sustainable development and human security to pastoralists in the Horn have the larger aim of winning hearts and minds in order to prevent support for Islamic extremism and terrorism; the success of these efforts is to be determined. The structural scarcity of Nile River water, a result of Egypt's insistence on a monopoly, has deterred riverine states and peoples from utilizing the water for irrigation and hydroelectric power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]