Is ecological damage a national security issue?
Is ecological damage a national security issue?
By Anak Agung Banyu Perwita
BANDUNG (JP): The office of the Coordinating Minister for
People's Welfare together with the State Minister for the
Environment have announced recently that the haze stemming from
forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan is a national disaster
requiring national action (The Jakarta Post, September 16,
1997).
Consequently, many people believe that if Indonesia fails to
manage the situation it could affect the country's image abroad
as the haze also threatens neighboring countries such as Malaysia
and Singapore.
How should we approach this situation from the perspective of
security? As military threats have disappeared in the post Cold
War era, other threats, especially environmental issues, have
emerged with greater clarity.
The case for bringing environmental issues into the security
field rests primarily on evidence that there has been serious
degradation of natural resources such as forests and biological
diversity as well as vital life support systems such as the ozone
layer, climate system and atmosphere, all as a consequence of the
rapid acceleration of global economic activities. These global
physical changes could have far-reaching implications in the long
run.
The health of the global economy itself depends on avoiding
the depletion of renewable natural resources. The degradation of
cultivated land threatens to reduce agricultural productivity in
large areas of the developing world. It has been estimated that
11 percent of the earth's total vegetated surface has already
suffered moderate to extreme soil degradation because of
deforestation or unsound agricultural practices.
Developing countries have already suffered significant
reductions in productivity because of soil loss, deforestation
and other forms of environmental degradation. As reported by the
World Resources Institute, Indonesia's loss has been estimated at
4 percent of its GDP. If rates of economic loss from
environmental degradation continue to rise in some key developing
countries in future decades, the health of the entire world
economy will be affected.
Thus, it has become arguable that environmental degradation is
a potential, and even actual, threat to national and
international security. In other words, environmental threats are
a pivotal element of national/international security. The
increasing stress on the environment has profound implications
for human health and welfare as serious as those posed by
traditional military threats.
Conceptually, national security is the idea that a particular
set of problems is vitally important to the state and requires
the mobilization of a high level of material and human resources.
Environmental security represents a significant departure from
the concept of national security. It addresses two crucial
issues. First, the environmental factors behind potentially
violent conflicts. Second, the impact of global environmental
degradation on the well-being of societies and economies.
Environmental degradation is the result of impersonal social and
economic forces and requires cooperative solutions among states.
More broadly, environmental security is concerned with any
threat to the well-being of societies from external forces that
can be influenced by public policies. Others argue that
environmental security is inherently global rather than national
in character, since environmental threats affect all humanity and
require coordinated action on a global scale.
To sum up, environmental security deals with threats that are
not only the unintended consequences of social and economic
activities, but also develop very slowly compared to military
threats, thus requiring extremely broad policy planning. It
directs full attention to policy responses that are cooperative,
not conflictual, even when the focus is on environmental problems
which are the subject of international conflicts.
The writer is a lecturer at the Department of International
Relations, Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung.