Environmental Security

1. Environmental Security

2. One Form of Environmental Insecurity

3. “The Environment as Geopolitical Threat”Chapter 2 of Environmental Security Simon Dalby: Let’s examine the use of specific geopolitical assumptions to frame the demographic and related environmental dimensions of post-Cold War security thinking.

4. Environmental Degradation

5. Environmental Marginalization

6. “The Coming Anarchy” (1994) The Atlantic Monthly: Nations will break up under the tidal flow of refugees from environmental and social disaster. As borders crumble, another type of boundary is erected—a wall of disease. Wars are fought over scarce resources, especially water, and war itself becomes continuous with crime, as armed bands of stateless marauders clash with Robert Kaplan the private security forces of the elites. A preview of the first decades of the 21st century. Kaplan 1994 - Coming Anarchy

7. Kaplan’s Themes • Neo-Malthusianism: Human population growth + scarcity of resources + collapse of Cold War bifurcation of power + environmental degradation → fascist-tending mini-states, totalitarianism, and road warrior cultures. • Bifurcated world: 1. Impoverished South: excessive environmental degradation and division along cultural and tribal fractures. 2. Affluent North: must practice a politics of containment and exclusion to protect itself. • The environment itself (“nature unchecked”) is a hostile power and is the national security issue of the 21st century.

8. Problems with Kaplan’s Analysis • Doesn’t really explain the causal mechanism of how the environment itself becomes a hostile power. • In terms of political economy, his analysis obscures or ignores: 1. Legacies of colonialism. 2. Role of the international food economy in shaping agricultural infrastructures and available levels of nutrition. 3. Impacts of debt crises and structural adjustment policies. 4. Patterns of subsistence production and urbanization. 5. Reasons for the migrations of peoples. 6. How affluence in the global North contributes to poverty and environmental degradation in the global South. • Gives further reasons to justify more Northern hegemony. • Advocates zoning the planet and abandoning large parts of it. • Taken too seriously by the United States.

9. Ecology of War and PeaceFour Historical MomentsFirst Moment: 1950s-1960s Nuclear winter effects of a thermonuclear war between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.

10. Ecology of War and PeaceSecond Moment: 1960s-1970s Widespread use of defoliant Agent Orange by the U.S. in the Second Indochina War.

11. Ecology of War and Peace:Third Moment: 1980s-1990s Ecocide effects of armed conflicts against peoples, waterscapes, and landscapes in Central America.

12. Ecology of War and PeaceFourth Moment: 1991 Oil fires and oil pollution of the Persian Gulf War.

13. Ecology of War and PeaceFifth Moment: 1991-2007 Use of depleted uranium in Iraq, Kuwait, and the former Yugoslavia.

14. Negative Environmental Impacts of Conventional Wars and Military Activities 1. Formation of craters and the compaction, erosion, and contamination of soils by bombs, missiles, and military vehicles and their hazardous and toxic residues. 2. Other forms of land pollution ranging from latrines and garbage dumps to landmines and unexploded ordnance. 3. Defoliation, deforestation, and land degradation. 4. Contamination of surface waters and groundwater. 5. Atmospheric emissions and resulting air pollution from military equipment and vehicles. 6. Direct and collateral killing of animals and plants and loss of habitat. 7. Degradation and destruction of protected areas and biodiversity. 8. Noise pollution of 140 decibels or more from weapons and low-flying aircraft that can lead to long-term hearing impairment in people and other animals.

15. Further Direct Environmental Harms for People 1. Damage and destruction of water storage and distribution systems, waste and wastewater treatment facilities, and sewer systems. 2. Damage and destruction of croplands, pasturage, and marine fisheries, and the resulting loss of agricultural products and other foodstuffs. 3. Damage and destruction of other human structures ranging from buildings to power grid systems and entire towns.

16. And Still More Indirect Environmental Impacts and Harms for People 1. Disruption or destruction of the social and economic infrastructures of human communities. 2. Dislocation of human populations that result in displaced peoples and refugees. 3. Creation of new opportunities for pathogenic microbes and the spread of infectious diseases. 4. Further negative impacts as demographic and economic frontiers expand into remaining natural areas and fragile land and waterscapes after conflicts end.

17. International Law:First Environment-Specific Treaty ENMOD Convention United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques of 1976 Article I: Prohibits using environmental modification techniques that have widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects that destroy, damage, or injure other state parties. Article II: Environmental modification is the deliberate manipulation of natural processes such that they are used as weapons of war.

18. International Law:Second Environment-Specific Treaty Protocol I (1977) Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts Article 35(3): Prohibits methods or means of warfare intended or expected to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment. Article 55(1): Adds a prohibition against damaging the natural environment that prejudices the health or survival of human populations. Article 55(2): Prohibits reprisal attacks against the natural environment.

19. International Law:Third Environment-Specific Treaty International Criminal Court Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998 Article 8.2(b)(iv): Causing widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment is defined as a war crime.

20. International Law:Practical Problems 1. Environment-specific treaties seem to have little real bite—no international treaty has ever been actually invoked to protect the environment. 2. There is much scientific and economic uncertainty about enforcement and punishment of offenders. 3. International treaties govern only interstate, not intrastate, conflicts. 4. International treaties govern only the actions of signatory parties.

21. International Law:Conceptual Problems 1. Defining “widespread, long-lasting, and severe damage.” 2. Defining “civilian property.” 3. Military necessity loophole.

22. “Environment, Conflict, and Violence”Chapter 3 of Environmental Security Simon Dalby: Now let’s examine some of the scholarly literature about the links between environmental degradation and violence or, more broadly, environmental security.

23. Historical Development Moments in the Field of Environmental Security • Our Common Future (1987): World Commission on Environment and Development claims that a cause and effect of political tension and military conflict is environmental stress. • End of the Cold War (late 1980s to early 1990s): International relations and political science scholars begin to rethink the relationship between the environment and national security. • Establishment of the Field of Environmental Security (early to mid 1990s): Different schools of thought emerge that attempt to explain plausible linkages between environmental change and conflict. • Human Security Discourse (mid to late 1990s): Many scholars and NGOs begin to rethink national security. • Political Ecology/Economy (mid to late 1990s): Environmental security discourse becomes situated within larger critiques that seek to explain environmental change, environmental access, political and economic exclusion, and social upheavals. • And Sustainability for All? (2007): You study environmental security!

24. The Environmental Conflict Thesis Increasing scarcities produced through resource enclosure or appropriation by state authorities, private firms, or social elites accelerate conflict between groups (gender, class, or ethnicity). Similarly, environmental problems become “politicized” when local groups (gender, class, or ethnicity) secure control of collective resources at the expense of others by leveraging management interventions by development authorities, state agents, or private firms. So too, existing and long-term conflicts within and between communities are “ecologized” by changes in conservation or resource development policy. (Political Ecology by Paul Robbins, p. 173)

25. The Project on Environment, Population, and Security (Toronto Group)led by Thomas Homer-Dixon Thesis: Scarcity of renewable resources can contribute to civil violence.

26. Toronto Group: 5 categories of dispute that could plausibly be caused by environmental scarcity Start by assuming environmental (resource) scarcity. Do the following types of disputes lead to violent conflict? • Site-specific concerns such as logging or pollution. (No) • Ethnic clashes caused by migration and social cleavages caused by environmental scarcity. (Yes) • Civil strife caused by environmental scarcity that affects economic activity, livelihood, behavior of elites, and state responses. (Yes) • Scarcity-driven interstate wars over resources such as water. (No) • Large-scale North-South conflicts related to global problems of climate change, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, and over-fishing. (No)

27. Toronto Group (Homer-Dixon): Environment, Scarcity, and Violence 1. Scarcity of Renewable Resources. + 2. Resource Capture: when powerful groups shift the distribution of resources in their favor. + 3. Ecological Marginalization: when powerful groups prevent less powerful groups from accessing and using scarce resources. + 4. Contextual Factors: physical characteristics of a given environment and localized human social relations and institutions. ________________________________________________________ Violent Conflicts in the Third World

28. Environment and Conflicts Project (ENCOP), Switzerlandled by Günther Baechler Thesis: Violence can occur in specific places when groups are discriminated against in situations of environmental and renewable resource degradation.

29. ENCOP: Environmental Violence Violence can occur when some combination of the following occurs: • Group dependence on degraded resources for which there is no substitute. • Scarcity of regulatory mechanisms and poor state performance. • Instrumentalized use of the environment by a dominant group, such that environmental discrimination becomes an ideological issue of group identification. • Opportunistic alliance-building situations. • Spillovers from historic conflicts.

30. ENCOP: Environmental Conflicts Environmental conflicts are also more likely: • When intractable poverty exists. • When intensive environmental transformations occur. • Within particular geographical zones, especially arid plains and mountainous areas. • Between highland and lowland producers, rural and urban dwellers, and rural producers and central state forces. • When state elites make their own sub-populations insecure and/or impose top-down development. • During larger transitions from feudal-style and agricultural cultures to industrialized societies.

31. Resource Wars:Michael Klare Thesis: The global distribution of resources, particularly oil and freshwater, will play a key role in shaping the military policies of nation-states and other political actors in the 21st century.