Understanding global security - Peter Hough

ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS TO SECURITY
We want the islands of Tuvalu, our nation, to exist permanently forever and not to be
submerged underwater merely due to the selfishness and greed of the industrialised world.
Saufatu Sopoanga, Prime Minister of Tuvalu, at the 2002 World Summit
on Sustainable Development (Sopoanga 2002)
Security threats emanating from the ‘environment’ present humanity with a number
of political dilemmas. First, the threats are usually less clear-cut and direct than the
other types of threat considered in this study. They are, as Prins describes, ‘threats
without enemies’ (Prins 2002: 107). The potential threat posed by issues like global
warming and ozone depletion may be profound but they are still long-term creeping
emergencies when set against imminent disasters and attacks. Second, countering
the threats is usually costly and requires significantly compromising economic
interests. Third, the threats can often only be countered by globally coordinated
political action. The scale of the human security threat posed by environmental
change is difficult to quantify but it is undoubtedly significant and, to a large extent,
avoidable given the political will. Global warming and ozone depletion, in the main,
represent massive potential threats to large proportions of humanity but have not yet
come to rival other human security threats. In contrast, however, it has been
estimated that between a quarter and a third of all deaths in the world by disease
have environmental causes, such as air and water pollution (Smith et al. 1999: 573).
Environmental threats, thus, are not just theoretical future scenarios of apocalypse,
they are a ‘clear and present danger’.
Some domestic political systems have evolved to a position where the first
and second of the aforementioned dilemmas can be overcome. Pressure group
advocacy and government learning have gradually led to long-termist policies being
developed mitigating against threats to both human and non-human state residents.
Environmental policies in Western Europe and North America have seen economic
interests compromised to limit uncertain threats posed to human health and to
wildlife. The third dilemma is, of course, beyond governments acting in isolation and
is slowly coming to be addressed by an evolving global polity. Transnational pressure
groups and scientific communities are simultaneously pushing governments to
rethink the first and second dilemmas and provide the means for achieving the third.
Central to this process is the slow but inexorable realization by governments that
environmental threats are ‘real’ and the ‘national interest’ may not always serve their
citizens’ interests. Political dilemmas can always be resolved when this is understood.
The three dilemmas presented here are not, in fact, unique to environmental politics.
For most states very similar compromises have been made in the name of military
security, since military threats are usually not immediate and require great expense
and international diplomatic cooperation to deter. Global political action is necessary
for the enhancement of human security in all the issues considered in this study, but
it is most crucial in the realm of environmental security.
The rise of environmental issues in global politics
Global environmental politics is a relatively ‘new’ dimension of international relations,
and of politics in general, but that is not to say that problems of environmental change
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