Securitisation of environment

'Security' means the absence of threats. Emancipation is the freeing of people from those physical and human constraints which stop them carrying out what they would freely choose to do. War and threat of war is one of those constraints together with poverty, poor education political oppression and so on. Security and emancipation are sides of the same coin. Emancipation, not power or order provides true security. (Ken Booth)

Karu Paranawithana

In November 2003, United Nations Secretary General Koffi Annan appointed a high level panel on 'Threats, Challenges and Change' commissioned to report to him on security threats facing the world in the 21st century and how to respond them.

The Panel concluded relatively quickly that the threat faced was not a narrow one limited to international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

They opined that real and serious though these threats certainly are, there are wider issues including also the phenomenon of the failure of states often leading to major regional instability and conflicts and a whole range of issues that have not been considered as part of the peace and security nexus at all such as poverty, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases and the spread of organized crime to mention the most prominent.

This view is strongly articulated in the current debate on 'securitisation of non military issues'. 'Security' is a contested concept. There is a consensus that it implies freedom from threats to core values (for both individuals and groups). However there are major disagreements about the main focus and the referent object.

Traditional security studies based on state-centric political realism and scientific-objectivist epistemology still argue that the chief referent object of security should be the state and its military domain.

This realist aspect of security has been challenged by various academic developments especially after the end of the Cold War. These developments vary from alternative theories of traditional security studies to critical security theories.

Non-realist thinkers who subscribe to such positions have argued for an expanded conception of security outward from the limits of 'parochial' national security to include a range of other considerations such as those that refer political, economic, societal and environmental spheres.

Thus the securitisation of environment has been a salient feature of the post Cold War security discourse and widening of the security agenda to include environmental issues has generated a rigorous debate among academics and policy makers.

Global environmental Issues

Like the all other biological organisms humans also are vitally depend on the environment. Since the emergence of human life on earth they have been able to take as given the presence of environmental conditions such as clean air, being shielded from ultraviolet radiation, clean water, and fertile soil. The emergence of global environmental as an 'issue' itself shows us that all these natural conditions are now in jeopardy.

Summarizing the nature of this jeopardy is not a simple task. Most of the world's seas and oceans are over fished.

Soil is being degraded and eroded on a large scale throughout the world. Natural habitats are being destroyed. Tropical rainforest cover has been reduced by over 50 per cent since 1950. As a result tens of thousand of species of plants and animals are probably becoming extinct each year.

The dumping of waste products in to sea, air and land means that pollution-related problems are ubiquitous. Billions of people suffer the effects of air pollution on a daily basis. Acid rain, stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change are major regional or global problems arising from atmospheric pollution'.

In this context, it is clear that the term, 'environmental degradation' covers a whole range of issues. This degradation can be understood in various aspects. As pollution does not respect frontiers it has to be understood in the context of 'trans-nationality'. Localized environmental problems can become global problems. Some environmental problems are themselves global in scale.

Environmental issues are inseparable from global economic issues. Finally it can be observed that environmental issues are themselves threats to security. The concept 'resource war' is itself an indication that environmental issues can be understood as a source of political threat.

In his book, Resource Wars, Michael Klare contends that confrontations over resources will become increasingly evident in worlds politics.

Securitisation environment

Green points out that as International Relations scholars came to study international environmental politics; they not surprisingly brought their established theoretical perspectives and prejudices with them.

Such is the variety and complexity of the sphere of environmental issues that advocates of each such perspective can find plenty of evidence that support their case, be it realist, neo realist, liberal, liberal institutionalist, Marxist, social constructivist or feminist.

Each perspective provides important insights into aspect of global environmental change or international environmental politics.

However, when it comes to the very question of widening security to include the environment there are disagreements due to ideological antecedent.

As Sheehan points out, arguments about whether the environment should be seen as a security issue range from those who believe that the securitisation of the environment is the most important step to securing the survival of humanity, to those who believe that its advocates are simply environmentalists cynically attempting to grab part of governmental attention and spending that traditionally attaches to security issues.

Even during the Cold war there was a tendency to call attention to a wider security agenda of security concerns, encompassing more than the military preoccupations of the East-West Conflict. Barry Buzzan, an academic coming from the traditional security school reshaped this tendency by introducing non-military issues as a legitimate source of threats.

It marked the inception of progressive development of security studies because it influenced the introduction of non-static referent objectives such as individuals and groups into the discipline. Booth argues that we must begin our thinking about security from people, not from states: 'individuals are the ultimate referent.'

Theories that take environmental issues as security threats largely take the individual as referent object. However securitisation of issues including environment is not a simple task. It is not always politically neutral. Therefore it is important to look at the nature of securitisation before arriving at normative conclusions such as 'progressive' and 'regressive'.

Responding to the question regarding on what really makes something a security problem, Waever says places the burden on the state authority. According to him in naming a certain development, the state can claim a special right, one that will in the first instance, always be defined by the state and its elites.

Trying to press some kind of unwanted fundamental political change on the ruling elite is similar to playing a game in which one's opponent can change the rules at any times he likes.

Power holders can always try to use securitisation of an issue to gain control over it: by definition something is a security problem when the elites declare it to be so.

Securitisation of environment also can be an elite project aimed at maintaining the status quo. Analyzing the securitising agriculture by Agricultural Fordism during the agricultural revolution of the 1960s Warner implies that the securitisation of environment has served a hegemonic project.

According to Warner presentation of environmental issues under a security flag promotes a low politics issues to high politics.

This helps exact the commitment of exceptional political action and resources. And given that knowledge is never value neutral, the thinking, theorizing, and evidence used in support of environmental security arguments end up underpinning political arguments for hegemonic strategies which tend to serve some groups more than others or even to the exclusion of others. Apart from this kind of Neo- Gramscian critique there are other scholars who see a danger in securitising the environment.

Deundney; one of the foremost criticizers of securitising environment cites three key arguments for not extending the reach of Security Studies. First he argues that it is analytically misleading to think of environmental degradation as a national security threat, because the traditional focus of national security-interstate violence- has little in common with either environmental problems or solutions.

Second he argues that the effort to harness the emotive power of nationalism to help mobilise environmental awareness and action may prove counterproductive by undermining globalist political stability. Thirdly he argues that Environmental degradation is not very likely to cause interstate wars.

Hough contends that Deundney's arguments come from a sincere belief that securitising the environment undermines rather than enhances the likelihood of finding appropriate political solutions to environmental problems.

Deunndney's third point can be cited as a direct criticism against the Homer Dixon led approach which suggests that the environmental problems can be a source of political conflict within and between states.

In his article,' 'On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict" Dixon provides an extensive overview and analysis of the connection between environmental problems and political threats. Dixon securitises environment and considers the state as the referent object. On the other hand.

It is argued that the threat to human security posed by environmental change is mainly an indirect one, by heightening vulnerability to other threats like disease, or a long term potential one. Hence threats from environmental problems are widely interpreted as 'soft threats.

Prins interprets these threats as 'threats without enemies'.19 In falling line with this approach Gleick a argues that environmental problems are linked with the other sectors including the military and societal sectors, where security thinking embraces problems of population growth, transnational pollution, poverty, and inequitable social systems.

20 Rejecting the state-centred approaches, Dyer argues that global environmental change is "seen as external to the international system, rather than an internal variable which can be addressed in terms of familiar political structures and their supporting social values".

Progressive or regressive?

The environment issue has probably attracted more attention than any of the other domains in the broadened security concept. Both cases; against and for securitisation of environment; are certainly reflected in the relevant scholarship.

However, there is a strong trend against this domain expansion. Sheehan contends that there is a case for not securitising environmental issues at all because it would force environmentalists to contradict their appropriate methods and goals if they were to confirm to state-centred national security approaches.

He also points out that despite this opposition, the reality of the situation is that the debate over securitisation has been won by the proponents of widening.

Thus environment is now seen as a security issue by governments, international organisations, and significant sections of the general public. Measuring this development as a progressive or regressive one is a normative judgment. Security is a socially constructed concept. It has deferent meanings in different contexts.

Broadening security agenda to include environmental issues can be a radical and progressive exercise but this is not always the case. It can be done in pursuit of a conservative and backward political project. Progressiveness is predicated on whether the objective of widening is to capture the concept for a radical, emancipatory political agenda which is discussed in Critical Security Studies.

In this essay I have briefly discussed the nature of global environmental issues and securitisation of the environment. It is observed that there is a growing literature that reflects both sides of divide - against securitisation and pro-securitisation.

Some of the literature has been referenced in order to understand this diversity. Since security is a socially constructed concept it is noteworthy to look at the context in which the environment is securitised.

If the securitisation of environment takes the individual and people as its referent object it can be seen as a progressive development in widening the security agenda. Such an agenda can be a part of an emancipatory project.

If the securitisation of environment takes the state as its only referent object it can be considered as a regressive development. Such an agenda can be part of an oppressive and hegemonic project.

The writer is the CEO of Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation and a former editorial director of ANCL.

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Threats and vulnerabilities can arise from many different areas, military and non military, but to count as security issues they have to meet strictly defined criteria that distinguish them from the normal run of the mere political.

They have to be staged as existential threats to a referent object by a securitising actor who there by generates endorsement of emergency measures beyond rules that would otherwise bind. (Barry Buzzan)