Web Sites

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The
falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall
apart the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world W.B.Yeats
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Web Sites

• www.carbonneutral.com
• www.climatecare.com

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Environment and Security

• A. Environmental Change and Conflict
• B. Types of Conflict
• simple scarcity conflict (water)
• group identity conflict (env. refugees)
• relative deprivation conflict (inequality)
• C. Env. Change and Human Security

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Environment and Security

• ...environmental degradation imperils nations'
  most fundamental aspect of security by
  undermining the natural support systems on which
  all of human activity depends.

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What is Environmental Security?

• Security of the environment (or security of
  services provided by the environment)
• Environmental degradation and resource
  depletion as potential causes of violent conflict
• Environmental degradation and resource
  depletion as threats to national welfare (and,
  therefore, to national security)
• Environmental degradation and resource
  depletion as two of many integrated factors that
  affect human security (a cocktail of
  insecurities)

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What is the Relationship Between Environment and
Security? Well

• Environment and Security have no useful
  operational definitions (they are social
  constructs and contested)
• Therefore, many feel that
• Cant be part of research programs
• Cant guide policy
• Cant make productive links to other themes
  (e.g. migration)

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Why the interest? Context

• Radical change in international security
  environment over the past decade
• Relative balance between domestic and
  international violence has shifted towards
  domestic violence (fragmentation of power)
• Relative importance of the South has increased
  (relative to Russia)
• Armed forces of many countries are being
  increasingly utilized in humanitarian and
  peacekeeping functions
• Increased importance of social factors (new
  threats)

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Institutional Factors

• Defense/Intelligence Establishment (NATO DND
  CIA) A greening of the military
• The Additional Protocol to the 1949 Geneva
  Convention on the Protection of Victims of
  International Armed Conflicts (1977 use of
  defoliants in Vietnam)
• UN Convention on the Prohibition of Military or
  Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental
  Modification Techniques (the ENMOD Convention
  1977)
• Other WWC (ECSP) Swiss Peace Foundation NATO
  IHDP (GECHS), etc.

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Migration and Refugees

• Immigration one of the key issues of the last
  decade (and will continue)
• The Camp of the Saints book
• FAIR and other anti-immigration groups (use
  environment)
• What about environmental refugees? (New
  Orleans Pakistan)

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Table 1. Estimates of environmental refugees.
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A New Phenomenon?

• Throughout history people have had to move from
  their land because it has become degraded through
  natural disasters, warfare or over-exploitation
• Many believe the irreversible destruction of the
  environment has the potential to cause large
  refugee movements (waves of environmental
  refugees, spilling across international borders
  with destabilizing effects)

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The Setting

• these people are the millions fleeing the
  droughts of northern Africa, the victims of
  Bhopal, and the thousands made homeless by the
  Mexico earthquake. They are environmental
  refugees. (Mustafa Tolba, 1985)
• Environmental refugees have become the largest
  class of displaced persons in the world. (Jodi
  Jacobson (1988)
• Environmental degradation is likely to produce
  waves of environmental refugees that spill
  across borders with destablizing effects (Tad
  Homer-Dixon, 1991)

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Evidence for Environmental Refugees

• UNHCR - Four causes of refugee flows
• political instability
• economic tensions
• ethnic conflict
• environmental deterioration
• Flooding in Bangladesh drought in the Sahel
  earthquakes Chernobyl deforestation in
  Thailand.
• But evidence is anecdotal, and simplistic

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Causes of Environmental Refugees

• Natural Disasters (vulnerability of the poor)
• Cumulative Changes (slow-onset)
• Accidental Disruptions
• Development Projects
• Conflict and Warfare (environment both a cause
  and effect?)
• Examples???

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Natural Disasters, 1986-1993 (total persons
affected)
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Slow-Onset Changes
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Accidental Disruptions

• Chernobyl (1986) Bhopal (Union Carbide, 1987)
• Between 1986 and 1992 75 major chemical
  accidents
• 4000 people died
• 62,000 injured
• 2 million displaced

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Development Projects

• Three Gorges Dam Project (China)
• Sardar Sarovar Dam Project (India)
• Over 20 million people have been uprooted by
  development projects in India in past two decades.

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Key Points

• 1) Generalizations about the relationship between
  environmental degradation and population movement
  mask a great deal of the complexity that
  characterizes migration decision-making.
• Push-Pull vs. Structural Theories
• No cause and effect model
• Movement can be a coping mechanism to deal with
  flood, famine, etc.

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• 2) It is extremely difficult to isolate the
  specific contribution of environmental change in
  many forms of population movement, especially
  those which are more voluntary in nature.
• El-Hinnawi notes three categories of
  environmental refugees
• those temporarily displaced due to environmental
  stress
• those permanently displaced due to permanent
  changes in habitat
• those permanently displaced for quality of life
  reasons.
• Movement usually takes place in response to a
  combination of factors

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• 3) An important question - often overlooked where
  the central preoccupation is with identifying the
  volume of the migratory movement - concerns the
  future intentions of environmentally-displaced
  persons, not least with regard to the duration of
  their sojourn.
• Stages of the movement process
• survival
• recovery
• improvement

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What about the FUTURE?

• Global Warming (sea level rise extreme events)
• Large Development Projects
• Water Scarcity (deforestation, soil erosion)

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Conflict and Warfare

• Environment as a weapon of war (UN Convention -
  ENMOD
• Little doubt that war causes major environmental
  damage and social upheaval together causes
  refugee flows.

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Relative Deprivation Conflict Increasing
Inequality

• Income and/or resource disparities between
  regions or groups.
• Worsened by discriminatory practices
• e.g., water pricing China watermelon problem

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What is Human Security?

• 1) Safety from chronic threats (hunger, disease
  and repression)
• 2) Protection from sudden and hurtful
  disruptions in the patterns of daily life
  (whether in homes, jobs or communities)

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Why Focus on Human Security?

• New threats to security
• Fragmentation of power both globalization and
  localization - national security may not, in
  turn, ensure the security of individuals and
  communities.

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Seven Categories of Human Security (UNDP)

• Economic security assured basic income
• Food security physical and economic access to
  food
• Health security
• Environmental security
• Personal security from physical violence
• Community security security from ethnic
  cleansing
• Political security protection of basic human
  rights and freedoms

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So, what can we do to ensure human security?
Where will the money come from?

• Transfers of resources from rich to poor
  countries or
• The peace dividend