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.