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Author(s): Floyd, Rita
Article Title: The Environmental Security Debate and its Significance for
Climate Change
Year of publication: 2008
Link to published version:
http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/03932720802280602
Publisher statement: None
1
The Environmental Security Debate and Its Significance for
Climate Change
Rita Floyd ritataureck@hotmail.com
Rita Floyd is ESRC Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick and Associate Fellow at the
Institute for Environmental Security. The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for
their helpful comments, as well as Jonathan Floyd for numerous useful conversations about this article.
Environmental security emerged as both a concept and a set of policies as a
consequence of the end of the Cold War. As a corollary of this, new debates were
simultaneously opened up regarding the nature of the threat, the appropriate referent
object of security and also the meaning of security itself. There was, at the same time
and for the same reason, a need for a new set of “discourses of danger” on the part of
the United States security establishment. Environmental security quickly became one
of the more prominent issues in this new era of security studies. Although currently
sidelined by “the war on terror”, the possible linkage between global warming and
security gives renewed fervour to the environmental security debate. The present
article both revisits this debate and considers its significance for securitising the
climate; that is, making climate change a security issue.
Early advocates
Within the International Relations’ sub-discipline security studies, security is regarded
as being an “essentially contested concept”.1
The contestedness of security arises as a
function of the fact that the meaning of security is not an ontological given, but
changes across time.2
Since security has no constant meaning, the concept means
something different for every tradition within security studies. Consequently different
traditions within security studies conceive very differently of environmental security;
differing vastly in terms of who or what is to be secured, what is to be secured against
and also the nature of the threat itself. As a result, environmental security is not so
much a concept as it is a debate, with different approaches to environmental security
at odds with one another.
Although environmental security came into its own with the end of the Cold
War, a select number of writers had called for the redefinition of national security to
include environmental issues well before that time. Writing in 1983, International
Relations’ scholar Richard Ullman, for example, argued for the redefinition of
national security to include raw material shortages as well as natural disasters.3
Although in Ullman’s view there was little doubt about the rightful place of
environmental issues on the national security agenda, he realised that in the military
climate of the Cold War such a redefinition would be difficult to achieve and must
commence with enhanced public education about the threat potential of an ill-
1
Walter B. Gallie cited in Buzan, People, States and Fear, 7.
2
Wæver, “Peace and Security”.
3
Ullman, “Redefining Security”,19.
Deleted: i
Deleted: r
2
functioning environment. Arguably such public education was offered by the mostly
descriptive works of the prominent environmental scientist Norman Myers4
and then
Vice President of the World Resources Institute Jessica Tuchman Mathews,5
who
painted bleak pictures about the state of the environment and even bleaker ones of
possible future scenarios and on that basis called for the widening of national security
to include environmental issues. This focus on national security is especially
interesting because these writers were actually so broad in their interpretation of
environmental security that they can easily be positioned within the human security
discourse on environmental security. The reasons why they chose to advocate
environmental security as a national security issue instead, is that most of them
realised that their voices were more likely to be heard if they remained within the
traditional state-centric reading of security.6
The military and environmental security
Another prominent writer on environmental issues that clearly realised this need for
remaining with the tradition is Arthur Westing. Westing, himself convinced that
environmental security is a component of human security (the other being political
security)7
focuses in the vast majority of his writings on the detrimental role of the
military on the natural environment, both during the conduct of war and in preparation
for war. Compared to the short history of environmental security, this approach has a
long tradition and dates back to the 1960s and US engagement of environmental
warfare in the Vietnam conflict. Environmental warfare refers to the planned
destruction of the natural environment – be it through herbicides, chemical
bombs/agents, concussion bombs, forest fires or deliberate salinisation of arable land
or freshwater reservoirs, for example, by breaking dams – as an important part of the
overall military strategy. Outside of warfare, this approach criticises the
environmental misconduct of the military in training or in preparation for war which,
during the Cold War led to the toxic contamination of military bases and their
surrounding areas, as well as groundwaters and rivers throughout the US. Westing’s
focus on the role of the traditional security institution in the systematic destruction of
the natural environment is thus not only narrow in its focus, but has considerable
purchase as a critique of the armed forces.
This was never more evident than at the end of the Cold War when both the
US Department of Energy (DoE) and the Department of Defense (DoD) came under
increasing pressure from public opinion for their environmental misconduct. In
response to these developments, select members of Congress, including Al Gore,
became increasingly interested in reversing the military’s negative role and began to
promote the military as a good steward of the environment. This move was not as
selfless as it may seem, rather the DoD was concerned with creating environmental
conditions that could impair its ability to prepare for or carry out the National Security
Strategy.8
In addition, with the superpower conflict over, all security institutions were
hard pressed to find new “discourses of danger”9
that would provide them with
4
Myers, “Environment and Security”, throughout
5
Tuchman Mathews, “Redefining Security”, throughout
6
Dabelko, Tactical Victories and Strategic Losses..4.
7
Westing, “The Environmental Component of Comprehensive Security”,129.
8
Goodman, Military capabilities related to Environmental Security, 98.
9
Campbell, Writing Security,170.
3
raisons d’être and thus secure funding.10
Consequently, the idea that unique military
capabilities, such as the means of the defence intelligence community, could be used
to “analyse, predict and ameliorate international environmental problems”11
was a
welcome proposal, and with it, as Ronald J. Deibert has called it, the “military
environmental security complex” was born.12
This said, there is no question that the US defence environmental security
strategy (also known as the greening of defence) has had a number of positive
outcomes, including, amongst other things, the creation of a stable $5 billion dollar
annual budget (from 1994-2000), the introduction of a pollution prevention strategy in
1994 and successful cleanup missions abroad. Notable here, in particular, is the US
led clean-up and storage of spent nuclear fuel in the Murmansk area under the Arctic
Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC) programme. On the other hand, there is
little doubt that in the domestic realm defence environmental security was largely
tantamount to compliance with already existing federal, state and international
environmental legislation that offered little of truly novel value.13
In part because of
this defence environmental security has been heavily criticised. Environmentalists and
many within the security community were against the linkage of the military with the
environment from the start, the standard argument being that such a linkage may lead
to the militarisation of the environment, the process whereby environmental security
simply refers to the capacity of the military “to adapt themselves into the field of
environmental issues”.14
Relatedly, it has been argued that the institutions that
provide safety from environmental degradation (for example, the Environmental
Protection Agency) and the institutions that provide safety from violence (the
military) are fundamentally incompatible. The way they work and the means they
employ are in direct opposition to each other: the military operates secretively,
whereas the work of environmental protection agencies is open and deliberately
accessible as they actively seek to inform and educate the public.15
Generally
speaking, all critics of defence environmental security agree that this concept blurs the
fact that the world’s militaries are a leading cause of environmental degradation.16
Another such unifying criticism would be that it is questionable whether something
qualifies as a security issue simply by virtue of being of interest to the agencies of the
security establishment.
Environmental conflict
The security equation is more readily visible in the case of the environmental conflict
thesis, particularly if we accept that “[t]here are two ways of expanding the concept of
security. Either other fields link to the military, or they are equivalent to military
problems”.17
The idea that environmental issues may lead to violent conflict falls
squarely into the first of these definitions, where we find yet another role for the
military in the environmental security debate.
10
Floyd, “Typologies of securitisation and desecuritisation”.
11
Dabelko and Simmons, “Environment and Security”, 137.
12
Deibert, “From Deep Black to Green?”, 29.
13
Floyd, “Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security”, 345-6.
14
Käkönen, Green security or Militarised environment, 2.
15
Deudney, “The Case against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security”, 465.
16
Finger, “The military, the nation state and the environment”.
17
Wæver, “Concepts of security”, 45 (emphasis in original).
4
The idea that environmental issues may lead to violent conflict has received much
attention in the environmental security literature and today several competing
approaches to environmental conflict exist. The most prolific of these focuses on the
role of environmental scarcity as an independent variable in violent conflict. This
thesis has most prominently been developed by the so-called Toronto Group under the
leadership of Thomas Homer-Dixon. Since 1989, this group has conducted a series of
case studies (including in Mexico, Pakistan, Gaza, Rwanda and South Africa), and
developed the thesis that when scarcity of renewable resources (such as cropland and
river water) interacts with harsh social effects (for example, population displacement
or economic decline) it can lead to intrastate conflict.18
In this formulation, the
concept of environmental scarcity is very broadly construed. Thus Homer-Dixon
interprets, “all types of environmental depletion or damage as various forms of
scarcity of renewable resources. Deforestation increases the scarcity of forest
resources, water pollution increases the scarcity of clean water, and climate change
increases the scarcity of regular patterns of rainfall and temperature on which farmers
rely”.19
A key concept in Homer-Dixon’s work on scarcity-induced environmental
conflict is that of “resource capture”, the idea that “environmental scarcity encourages
powerful groups to capture valuable environmental resources and prompts marginal
groups to migrate to ecologically sensitive areas. These two processes in turn
reinforce environmental scarcity and raise potential for social instability.”20
The Toronto group’s scarcity thesis has been influential both inside and
outside of the academy. In 1994, after the well-known travel writer Robert Kaplan
used the Toronto Group’s thesis in an essay for The Atlantic Monthly that proclaimed
the environment as being “the national security issue of the early twenty-first
century”21
, Homer-Dixon was invited to brief Vice President Gore twice.22
The first
briefing was on the scarcity thesis in general, the second focused specifically on
environmental problems in China. Although Gore had both a long-standing interest in
environmental issues and – like others– a need to explain and understand the interstate
conflicts characteristic of the early 1990s, short of rhetorical implementation of
scarcity arguments, little was done in actual policymaking terms in response to the
environmental conflict thesis.23
In the academic world of environmental security, however, engagement with
the Toronto Group’s scarcity thesis is an ongoing process. Since it was first
enunciated, the Toronto Group’s theory has been criticised for offering little of novel
value for the role and definition of scarcity as an independent variable and for the
choice of case studies.24
The list goes on. Testimony to the contentiousness of the
18
Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 177.
19
Ibid,9.
20
Homer -Dixon, “The Project on Environment, Population and Security”, 46.
21
Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy”, 190.
22
It should be noted that Homer-Dixon had been in contact with policymakers in Washington before
February 1994. For example, already in 1992, he briefed a national security meeting under the auspices
of P.J. Simmons (who worked at that time at the National Security Council’s Global Environmental
Affairs Directorate and the National Security Archive and, in autumn 1994, went on to direct the
Center for Environmental Security and Change, created within the Woodrow Wilson Center for
Scholars). However, it was not till after the publication of Kaplan’s “The Coming Anarchy” that
Homer-Dixon was contacted by Al Gore’s staff. This information is taken from an interview by the
author with Homer-Dixon in July 2005.
23
Floyd, “Typologies of Securitisation and Desecuritisation”, 339.
24
Levy, “Is the Environment a National Security issue?”; Peluso and Watts, “Violent Environments”,
Gleditsch, “Armed Conflict and the Environment”
5
thesis are also the debates between Homer-Dixon and his critics in the pages of the
most renowned environmental security journal, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s
Environmental Change and Security Project’s annual report. Above all, the
contentiousness is visible in the fact that a number of rival environmental conflict
theses have emerged, all of which are developed in explicit opposition to the
environmental scarcity thesis.
One of these rival theses is the idea that it is not scarcity that leads to civil
conflict, but its opposite, resource abundance. The so-called “honey pot” thesis holds
that it is an abundance of valuable resources (such as minerals, gem stones or oil) that
makes people fight.25
Whilst the honey pot thesis seems intuitively compelling,
proponents of the environmental scarcity thesis point out that the resource abundance
thesis ultimately collapses into the scarcity thesis as locally abundant resources are
only valuable because they are scarce on the global scale.26
Related to that, they
emphasize that “the logic of the honey pot clearly applies more to situations in which
initially abundant resources become increasingly scarce over time. […] As natural
resources are consumed or degraded at unsustainable rates, their value increases and
rival social groups confront greater incentives to seize them.”27
Another rival theory comes from political ecologists who argue that “rather
than presuming or starting with scarcity or abundance, analysis of these cases of
violence should begin with the precise and changing relations between political
economy and mechanisms of access, control, and struggle over environmental
resources. Scarcity and abundance are historically produced expressions of such
relations, and as such should not be the starting point of analysis”.24
These scholars
take issue with the Toronto Group’s interpretation of environmental scarcity as being
so all-encompassing that it conflates distinct processes into one phenomenon. In the
words of one proponent, “by adding the social distribution of resources into the
definition of environmental scarcity, Homer-Dixon de facto creates a link to conflict,
since political conflict often revolves around issues of resource control. This is the
main tool by which he is able to force very disparate conflictual situations into his
universalizing model but the result is a model so inclusive as to be banal”.25
Needless
to say, scarcity theorists have objected to these assertions.26
Noticeable about this later approach is that, unlike other environmental
conflict theories, it is not concerned with finding triggers of environmental conflict;
rather political ecologists are concerned with “the production, enactment, and
representation of violence against humans in relation to environment”.27
As such,
these analysts move away from a concern with the security of states and towards a
human-centric interpretation of environmental security, emphasising that the state is
not always the appropriate provider of security, but can instead be the source of
insecurity and violence for human beings – a belief shared by a number of so-called
critical approaches to security.
The human security approach to environmental security
25
De Soysa, “The Resource Curse”; Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War.
26
Kahl, States, Scarcity and Civil Strife in the Developing World, 18.
27
Ibid, 19.
24
Peluso and Watts, Violent Environments: Responses, 93.
25
Hartmann “Population, Environment and Security: A new Trinity” 117
26
Kahl, Review of Violent Environments; Homer-Dixon, Debate on Violent Environments.
27
Peluso and Watts, “Violent Environments”, 26.
6
That the individual should be the focus of security is most prominently advocated in
the 1994 Human Development Report that laid the groundwork for the concept of
human security. “Human security can be said to have two main aspects. It means,
first, safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second,
it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily
lives”.28
In this definition thus, human security is about the daily insecurity of people
caused not only by conflict, but also by the sheer living conditions of the most
disadvantaged. In the academic literature, there is considerable debate whether human
security should be about the first of these, “freedom from fear”, only or whether it
should also include “freedom from want”. The UNDP report identifies some seven
different “domains” of human security – environmental security (often in the form of
the consequences of environmental disaster) is one of them. Here, clearly, the security
equation does not include issues linking to the military, but rather situations that are
so bad that they are equivalent to war.
That the individual is the appropriate referent object (that which is to be
secured) for environmental security has many proponents within the environmental
security literature. These proponents usually position themselves in direct opposition
to the various environmental conflict theses and also to the greening of defence and
argue that, because environmental threats know no territorial boundaries, true
environmental security can only be achieved if environmental security is moved out
of the state-centric threat and defence nexus. Proponents of the human security
approach to environmental security then focus on issues such as ecological
interdependence, human rights, the impact of globalisation and the effect of Northern
consumption patterns on the global South.29
For them, the nature of the threat stems
from the dangers of long-term environmental degradation, such as global warming,
ozone depletion, species extinction, pollution of air and water, and loss of biodiversity
which are non-violent in character. In this approach, environmental security can be
usefully defined as: “The process of peacefully reducing human vulnerability to
human-induced environmental degradation by addressing the root causes of
environmental degradation and human insecurity”.30
Development in a sustainable
form is a key issue of concern for proponents of this approach.
Despite the intuitive appeal of the human security approach to environmental
security, this approach – like human security in general – can be criticised for being
too all-encompassing and for offering few realisable policy-making
recommendations, therefore amounting to little more than a critique of the more
mainstream approaches.
Another still more damning critique can be extrapolated from the work of Ole
Wæver and his development of the influential securitisation approach, complete with
the concept of de-securitisation. The securitisation approach holds that security is a
speech act, that alone by uttering “security” something is being done. A securitising
actor, by stating that a particular referent object is threatened in its existence, claims a
right to extraordinary measures to ensure the referent object’s survival. The issue is
then moved out of the sphere of normal politics into the realm of emergency politics,
where it is handled without the normal rules and regulations of policymaking. In this
understanding then security is seen a self-referential practice that does not refer to
objective security threats outside itself. Because of this, Wæver rejects all alternative
28
UNDP, Human Development Report 1994, 23.
29
See, for example, Dalby, Environmental Security.
30
Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security, 129.
7
formulations of security concerned with allegedly objective security threats and urges
us to “give up the assumption that security is, necessarily, a positive phenomenon”.31
Focus should be placed on de-securitisation instead; the process whereby
securitisation is reversed and formerly securitised issues once again become issues of
normal politics. To understand this emphasis on de-securitisation, it is vital to realise
that for Wæver the presence of security does not mean the absence of insecurity;
rather “insecurity is the situation when there is a threat and no defence against it;
security is a situation with a threat and a defence against it”.32
In other words, both
security and insecurity are inseparably tied to the threat-defence nexus and
maximising security does not mean less insecurity. The only way to escape the threatdefence
nexus is to achieve “a-security (a situation that has been desecuritised or
never securitised)”.33
Environmental peacemaking /environmental cooperation
Arguments for de-securitisation have been part of the environmental security debate
from the start. The prominent economist and cornucopian Julian L. Simon, for
example, maintained that the environmental security debate rests on false premises as
there is simply no shortage of natural resources, at least not one that cannot be
overcome by human ingenuity and technological innovation. A quote from his closing
statement in a published debate with Myers from 1994 captures his position well:
The standard of living has risen along with the size of the world’s population
since the beginning of recorded time. There is no convincing reason why these
trends towards better life should not continue indefinitely. The key theoretical
idea is this: The growth of population and of income create actual and expected
shortages, and hence lead to price run-ups. A price increase represents an
opportunity that attracts profit-minded entrepreneurs to seek new ways to satisfy
shortages. Some fail, at costs to themselves. A few succeed, and the final result
is that we end up better off than if the original shortage problem had never
arisen.34
In addition, Simon was a prominent sceptic of global warming and other, as he called
them, “cousin scares”, including acid rain and the destruction of the ozone layer. Not
only did he question the scientific evidence supporting these and/or their suspected
consequences for human well-being (for example, he queried the correlation between
increased risk of skin cancer and heightened ozone levels), he was also adamant that
“[…] we now have large and ever-increasing capabilities to reverse such trends if they
are proven to be dangerous, and at costs that are manageable.”35
Although Simon
himself died in 1998, his ideas live on in the debate surrounding global warming. In
particular, Simon’s work has been instrumental to that of the self-styled “sceptical
environmentalist” Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School Bjørn
31
Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization”, 57.
32
Wæver, “Securitisation: Taking stock of a research programme in Security Studies”, 13.
33
“A-security … is simply not phrased in these terms, it is not a question of being secure or not, and
there is not a perception of existential threats being present”. Ibid., 13.
34
Simon, “Closing statement by Julian Simon”, 159.
35
Simon, “Pre-Debate Statement: Julian Simon”, 19.
8
Lomborg who, in 2004, was included in Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most
influential people.40
In recent years, a different approach to environmental security that concerns
itself with de-securitisation has emerged. Thus an increasing number of scholars have
focused on environmental degradation’s potential to lead to environmental
cooperation and ultimately peace, instead of its role in triggering violent conflict.36
There are three ways in which environmental cooperation can be linked to
peacemaking.37
The first of these concerns the possibility of environmental
cooperation in areas with environmental conflicts. The idea is that environmentally
induced conflict can be turned around through transboundary natural resource
management/transboundary conservation initiatives. One example where a
transboundary protected area (also known as “Peace Park”) has successfully curbed
environmentally induced conflict and fostered conservation is that of the Cordillera
del Cóndor Peace Park established in 1998 between Peru and Ecuador.38
The second way in which environmental cooperation has been linked to peace
building is the idea that joint environmental concerns can lead to dialogue between
conflicting governments, which may then spill-over into other areas. One candidate
for proponents of this theory is the proposed “Siachen Peace Park” in the Siachen
Glacier region of northern Kashmir where India and Pakistan have been at war since
1984. The Siachan conflict zone is the highest war zone in the world, posing
unprecedented logistical, financial and physical strain on both armies. The conflict
itself, coupled with the presence of the military in the area, poses unprecedented
destruction to this unique ecosystem. According to retired Indian mountaineer Aamir
Ali, who first suggested this idea, a Siachen Peace Park
[…] would enable both armies to withdraw under conditions of honour and
dignity; it would not prejudice their positions on Kashmir as a whole; it would
stop further degradation of a magnificent mountain area; it would save thousands
of lives and billions of rupees; it would heal a running sore in the Kashmir
imbroglio.39
The third environmental cooperation thesis holds that sustainable development is a
necessary requirement for peace. This is the idea that even in conflicts where
40
According to Lomborg’s website (FAQs section,
http://www.lomborg.com/faq/?PHPSESSID=3a0ea70f8f278f3052997758b1645a6f ), his connection
with Simon came about as follows: “It all started in 1997, when Bjorn Lomborg read a Wired
Magazine interview with economist Julian Simon claiming that the environment – contrary to common
understanding – was getting better, not worse. Lomborg thought this had to be incorrect (“right wing,
American propaganda”). Looking for new ways to get his students involved, in the fall of 1997 he
organised a study group with some of his top students to prove Simon wrong. Much to everyone's
surprise, much (though definitely not everything) of what Simon said was right. Thus the group set out
to write about their results in op-eds in Denmark's leading newspaper, Politiken. They published four
lengthy articles with fifty footnotes in each, sparking a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in
all the major metropolitan newspapers. The articles led to the publication of a book in Danish later that
year and to The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001.”
36
Conca and Dabelko, Environmental Peacemaking; Ali, Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict
Resolution; Matthew, Halle and Switzer, Conserving the Peace: Resources, Livelihoods and Security.
37
Carius, Environmental Peacebuilding: Conditions for Success, 61-4.
38
UNEP, Global Transboundary Protected Areas Network, “Cordillera del Cóndor Transboundary
Protected Area”.http://www.tbpa.net/case_01.htm
39
Ali, “Siachen Peace Park: Solution to Half-Century of International Conflict”, 318.
9
transboundary environmental problems are not the source of the conflict, sustainable
peace cannot ensue without the resolution of these vital issues. The empirical example
often cited in connection with this third thesis is that of water in the Israel/Palestine
conflict, whereby it is believed that without a sustainable and joint water policy
sustainable peace in this water scarce region cannot be achieved.40
Noticeable about the environmental cooperation literature is that although
proponents are clearly excited about the possibilities for environmental cooperation
leading to peace, all seem wary of overstating the casual linkages between
environmental cooperation and peace. Much of the environmental cooperation
literature is thus conceived as a normative effort. In the words of one proponent:
As scholars, we must identify the pieces missing from the environment conflict
and cooperation puzzle and examine the gaps that inhibit political responses. We
must move beyond the false dichotomy between scarcity and abundance. We
must push forward with the growing effort to invert the conflict thesis and look
at environmental pathways to confidence building and peacemaking. […] Instead
of merely reacting to the symptoms of environmental-conflict linkages, they
should proactively extinguish hotspots by bolstering confidence and building
cooperation.41
Although, the case of environmental peacemaking suggests that de-securitisation can
be a more apt solution to environmental problems then securitisation, this is not
always and necessarily the case, after all, de-securitisation does not always lead to the
politicisation of environmental issues. Instead, after being de-securitised,
environmental issues may drop from the mainstream policymaking agenda altogether.
A case in point would be the fate of US environmental security under the current
Bush administration, which saw the rolling back of its predecessor’s environmental
security initiatives, without any politicisation of said issues.42
Climate security
The connection between global warming and security has given renewed impetus to
the environmental security debate. Far from having had a unifying effect, however,
the divisions between proponents of environmental security remain and “climate
security” has simply become integrated into the various approaches of environmental
security. In 2007, for example, eleven retired US army generals and admirals, plus
former Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security (1993-2000) Sherri W.
Goodman, issued a report titled National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.
This publication sits squarely with the old “greening of defence” approach. Thus, on
the one hand, it highlights the role of the defence and intelligence community in this
new area, for instance, through environmental disaster prevention and relief; it even
suggests a linkage between climate change and the manifestation of terrorism. On the
other, it focuses on the consequences of climate change for the US national security
establishment; for example, there is concern for DoD installations situated in areas
that would be affected by sea level rise. The message is clear, climate security should
40
Carius, “Environmental Peacebuilding: Conditions for Success”, 62.
41
Dabelko, “Next steps for Environment, Population, and Security”, 4.
42
Floyd, “Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security”, 47-8.
10
be recognised as a threat to national security and the military has an important role to
play in it.
Climate change also features prominently in the environmental conflict
literature and within the human security approach to environmental security. The
former is concerned with climate change’s potential to bring about violent conflict.
Homer-Dixon, for example, warns that, “Climate change will help produce the kind of
military challenges that are difficult for today’s conventional forces to handle:
insurgencies, genocide, guerrilla attacks, gang warfare and global terrorism.”43
Proponents of the human security approach, on the other hand, stress ecological
interdependence and climate change’s potential to impede development, thereby
increasing inequality. For instance, the 2007-08 UN Human Development Report,
Fighting Climate Change: Human solidarity in a divided World, argues that
climate change is a massive threat to human development and in some places
it is already undermining the international community’s efforts to reduce
extreme poverty. […] So we must see the fight against poverty and the fight
against the effects of climate change as interrelated efforts. They must
reinforce each other and success must be achieved on both fronts jointly.44
Despite differences in opinion, proponents of all these approaches
unquestionably promote climate change as a security issue. But, are they right in
doing so? If we extrapolate from the regional examples analysed by proponents of
environmental cooperation to the global level of analysis, then (greatly needed)
cooperation on climate action seems much more likely in the absence of
securitisation, and elevating climate change beyond the democratic realm loses its
appeal. In order to consider all facets of the environmental security debate, it may be
useful to make the case against climate security. One way of doing this is to highlight
that climate change is not only an environmental security concern, but also an issue
for economic security. As an economic security concern, climate change is addressed
by the label “energy security”. Proponents, notably the Bush administration, concern
themselves with energy supply in the face of resource scarcity (e.g. finite oil
resources) and with continuous energy sufficiency in a less carbon tolerant world.
Although these issues are connected to the realisation that something needs to be done
against climate change, the motivation for this does not arise from an interest in the
environment or indeed human well-being; rather it is based on economic interests.
Because of this, the solutions put forward are often far from environmentally friendly,
and some, such as biofuels, even counterbalance reductions in green house gas (GHG)
production. This counterbalancing can be both direct in that “changes in the carbon
content of soils, or carbon stocks in forests and peat lands related to bioenergy
production, might offset some or all of the GHG benefits”45
, or indirect, for example,
through the clearing of healthy forests to make way for biofuel plantations.46
In
addition, it has been increasingly recognised that the Global North’s amplified
demand for biofuels is having adverse affects on food security in the Global South
43
T. Homer-Dixon, “Terror in the Weather Forecast”, The New York Times, 24 April 2007; see also
Schwartz and Randall “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario”; Walker and King, The Hot Topic, 47-8.
44
UNDP, Human Development Report 2007/2008, v & vi.
45
UN-Energy, “Sustainable Bioenergy a Framework for Decision Makers”.
46
Friends of the Earth Netherlands, “Policy, Practice, Pride and Prejudice”, July 2007.
http://www.foeeurope.org/publications/2007/Wilmar_Palm_Oil_Environmental_Social_Impact.pdf
11
and that this, coupled with social effects, increases the likelihood of environmentally
induced conflict.47
In summary, the securitisation of climate change is a double-edged sword. On
the one hand, addressing climate change in the security mode raises one of the most
pressing issues of our time to the top of the policymaking agenda and into individuals’
consciousness. On the other hand, it can have adverse effects on both the natural
environment and on the most disadvantaged members of international society.
Conclusion
“Environmental security” has a variety of meanings. Approaches to environmental
security can complement one another, as do defence environmental security and the
environmental conflict theses, when intelligence capabilities such as spy satellites are
used to provide environmental data in conflict prone areas. But they can also be at
odds with one another as are, for example, defence environmental security with its
focus on national security and military readiness, and the human security approach to
environmental security with its focus on sustainable development and the plight of the
most disadvantaged.
The linkage between climate change and security has been readily integrated
into the existing dichotomies of the environmental security debate. As a result, for all
those interested in climate security, it is vital to be aware of the connotations of this
debate. This is not only because the literature might already hold some of the answers
to the questions asked on the consequences of climate change, such as, do the
environmental repercussions of climate change (drought, environmental migration,
etc) lead to violent conflict? It is also because the literature shows that those that
speak security to climate change often mean entirely different, even opposing things,
and that – from an environmentalist perspective – climate security is not always a
desirable concept as it may inhibit much needed cooperation between countries.
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