Understanding global security - Peter Hough

ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS TO SECURITY
Deforestation, seen for a number of years as a problem for forest-dwelling
wildlife and humans, was cast in a new light by the discovery of the ‘carbon-sink
effect’: the fact that trees absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere above a certain level is poisonous to man and at a lesser level contributes
to global warming. The realization that the net loss of tropical rainforest
could, ultimately, harm North American and European urban residents as well
as Amazonian Amerindians helped bring this issue to the global political agenda.
Similarly, seemingly localized ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ issues such as desertification
have repercussions beyond the most directly affected peoples since the world
food supply will be influenced by the removal of once-fertile land from production.
The increased economic globalization of the world can bring external environmental
problems into the domestic arena. Harmful organochlorine insecticides may have
been virtually eliminated from use in developed countries by the 1980s, but their
continued use, promoted by northern MNCs, deprived of a domestic market, was
seeing them return to their places of origin in imported foodstuffs.
Some environmental problems are global in scale
The securitization of certain environmental issues on the global stage has tended
to occur when full realization dawns among governments that the problem is genuinely
global in its scale. Deforestation and desertification have not been securitized because,
ultimately, they are still seen as localized problems with some wider implications.
By contrast, it is widely accepted that ozone deletion and global warming are not
problems that governments can protect their citizens from by domestic legislation
or by regional political cooperation with likeminded neighbouring states. In addition
they are not problems caused by LDCs that are being exported northwards. They are
problems that are principally caused by northern democracies with potentially dire
consequences for the whole world, or ‘global security’ in its full sense.
Environmental issues are inseparable from global
economic issues
The vast majority of environmental problems are related in some way to the processes
of economic development and growth, which have dominated how governments
frame their policies both domestically and in the global marketplace. Industrialization
and urbanization, the classic ingredients of development, put increased strain on a
country’s resources, while changing its pattern of land use and altering nature’s own
‘balance of power’. Increased industrial and agricultural production invariably brings
more pollution as well as more raw materials, food and wealth. The fundamental
paradox of how to reconcile economic security with environmental concerns was
apparent at Stockholm though sidestepped through the desire to demonstrate
solidarity but, by the 1980s, it could no longer be ignored. By then it had become clear
that global environmental policy was being stymied because, although the developed
world was coming to terms (albeit partially) with the need to embrace a ‘limits to
growth’ approach, LDCs would not compromise economic security since the stakes
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