Environment and Security

1
Environment and Security

• Lecture 14
• 2/21/08

2
Linking environment and security

• Wilson Center Environmental Change and Security
  Program event National Security and the Threat
  of Climate Change May 2007 Retired U.S.
  Generals speak out in favoring of addressing
  climate change as a national security threat
• Climate change can act as a threat multiplier
  for instability in some of the most volatile
  regions of the world, and it presents significant
  national security challenges for the United
  States. Accordingly, it is appropriate to start
  now to help mitigate the severity of some of
  these emergent challenges. The decision to act
  should be made soon in order to plan prudently
  for the nations security. The increasing risks
  from climate change should be addressed now
  because they will almost certainly get worse if
  we delay.

3
Linking environment and security

• Jessica Matthews argument (1989)
• Logic environmental decline ? economic decline ?
  political instability
• Threats to sovereignty from nature itself
• Sea level rise, depletion of resources
• Threats to sovereignty from indirect effects
• Environmental refugees, conflict over resources

4
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• Research question Does environmental scarcity
  cause conflict? If so, how does it operate?

5
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• Three sources of environmental scarcity
• Less resources reduce quantity or quality of
  resource faster than natural replenishment rate
  topsoil, forests, wetlands, species, clean air,
  etc.
• More people resources spread among increasing
  population
• Less equity redistribution of resources from
  poor to wealthy

6
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• Homer-Dixons claims
• Environmental scarcities are already contributing
  to violent conflicts in many places of the
  developing world
• These conflicts are early signs of an upsurge of
  violence in the coming decades that will be
  induced or aggravated by scarcity
• Violence will be subnational, persistent, and
  diffuse

7
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• Claims contd
• Poor countries will be particularly affected
  because they cannot buffer themselves from
  effects of scarcity
• Fast-moving, unpredictable, and complex
  environmental problems can overwhelm efforts at
  constructive social reform

8
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• Homer-Dixons hypotheses about the causal
  connection between environmental scarcity and
  conflict
• H1 decreasing supplies of physically
  controllable environmental resources (clean
  water, arable land) provoke interstate simple
  scarcity conflicts or resource wars

9
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• Hypotheses contd
• H2 large population movements caused by
  environmental stress induce group identity
  conflicts, especially ethnic clashes
• H3 severe environmental scarcity increases
  economic deprivation and disrupts key social
  institutions, which in turn cause deprivation
  conflicts, such as civil strife and insurgency

10
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon
11
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• Findings
• Little evidence supporting H1, but conflicts over
  non-renewable resources more frequent than over
  renewable resources
• Substantial support for H2
• Some support for H3, but more research needed on
  the effect of environmental scarcity on social
  institutions

12
Linking environment and security Homer-Dixon

• How important is environmental scarcity as a
  cause of conflict?
• it is important to note that the environment is
  but one variable in a series of political,
  economic, and social factors that can bring about
  turmoil (Homer-Dixon, 38)
• Is it a minor variable or a major one?
• Is it a deep or proximate cause?

13
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• Deudney asserts that there is a strong tendency
  for people to think about environmental problems
  in terms of national security and to assume that
  environmental conflicts will fit into the
  established pattern of interstate conflict
• His aim is to cast doubt on this linkage

14
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• Essentially, there are 3 problems with linking
  environment and security
• 1) Analytically misleading
• 2) Normatively counterproductive
• 3) Empirically wrong environmental degradation
  is not likely to cause interstate wars

15
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• Analytically misleading because
• 1) There is a link, but there are two directions
  to causality war also causes environmental
  degradation, e.g. Persian Gulf
• Preparation for war consumes resources and
  produces pollution
• Uses resources that could otherwise be used to
  help the environment
• War causes direct harm to the environment

16
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• 2) Both environmental threats and violence kill
  people, but not all threats to well-being are
  threats to national security
• 3) Precisely because environmental problems do
  not pose a threat to a single country, they cant
  be a threat to national security. There is
  nothing national about causes, harms, or
  solutions.

17
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• 4) Intentionality states attack other states
  with intention. Degrading the environment is
  done unintentionally, it is an externality, an
  unintended byproduct of another activity.
• 5) Organizations devoted to protecting the state
  against violence are not well-suited to protect
  against environmental degradation.

18
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• Normatively counterproductive because
• 1) Links are "not primarily descriptive, but
  polemical. It is not a claim about fact, but a
  rhetorical device designed to stimulate action"
  (Deudney 465). But stimulates to wrong form of
  action.
• 2) National security addressed by armed forces,
  but environmental problems require action by many
  sectors

19
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• 3) Emotional appeals to national security involve
  appeals to nationalism which runs contrary to
  thinking needed to solve environmental problems.
  National security relies on "us" vs. "them"
  mentality, but environmental protection requires
  world community, joint mentality and individual
  responsibility.

20
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• Empirically wrong because
• 1) the robust character of the world trade
  system means that states no longer experience
  resource dependency as a major threat to their
  military security and political autonomy
  (Deudney 269)
• 2) because it is increasingly difficult for
  states to exploit foreign resources through
  territorial conquest, they are unlikely to fight
  wars for access to resources

21
De-linking environment and security Deudney

• 3) advanced industrialization now allows
  countries to use the resources they have to
  create any resources they may need. We are in
  the age of substitutability.

22
Evaluating the arguments of Homer-Dixon and
Deudney

• Are they arguing on the same terms?
• Is Deudney an effective critique of Homer-Dixon?
  If not, is his critique still effective in
  general?
• Is there evidence to support Homer-Dixons
  claims? How would be know if he were right?
  Have conflicts due to scarcity increased since
  H-D wrote in 1994?

23
Saad and the South response

• "Some nations are redefining the environment as a
  territory-free, non-geographical issue in which
  supranational institutions may intervene. They
  seek to mediate when necessary between other
  nations, and to force them to follow particular
  policies. Apparently their aim is to impose the
  economic and political norms and lifestyles of
  the North on the rest of the world, instead of
  allowing other nations to develop their own
  norms. The outcome will be a still greater tilt
  in favour of those that already hold economic and
  political power.

24
Saad and the South response

• Is the environment/security debate, whether
  intentionally or unintentionally, simply one more
  way in which developed states impose their will
  and preferences on developing states?

25
Conclusion

• Is it useful to conceptually link environment and
  security? Why and why not?
• Even if the linkage does not give us analytic
  leverage or yield policy prescriptions, is still
  useful to promote the linkage? Does it help put
  environment on the agenda? Is using the linkage
  for that purpose morally right?
• Does the linkage provide a platform from which to
  challenge traditional notions of security?