[Nasional-e] Environmental security risks

Tue Nov 26 09:48:12 2002

Environmental security risks

By BRAD GLOSSERMAN

HONOLULU -- The United States has become acutely aware of "new security
threats" since 9/11. Transnational terrorism does not fit neatly within the
mind-set that has guided U.S. national security thinking throughout the 20th
century. The move to create a homeland security department is proof of the
need for a new approach in this field.

East Asian security planners have long grappled with such nontraditional
threats. For most of the postwar era, their chief concern has been internal
instability rather than explicit external threats. They have focused on the
sources of domestic unrest -- which is, unfortunately, an ever-lengthening
list. When those governments look beyond their borders, they have discovered
that unregulated population movements, drug-trafficking and transnational
gangs, to name a few, take precedence over overt military threats from
neighbors. (Of course, they are not blind to arms acquisitions and defense
modernization. Still, clashes between states are considered a low
probability.)

One of the most slippery elements of this "extended security" paradigm is
the relationship between the environment and security. In the abstract, it's
easy to see a connection between the two. States have gone to war over
contested resources such as water, fishing grounds or energy rights. But the
real nexus is much wider.

Take deforestation. About 50 percent of Southeast Asia's forest cover has
been destroyed. The Food and Agricultural Organization puts the annual loss
at about 1 percent, and the World Bank estimates that forest cover
throughout East Asia is shrinking by about 1.4 percent yearly, a rate
considerably higher than any other developing region. By one estimate,
Indonesia's 120 million hectares of forest is shrinking at a rate of 1.5
million hectares a year. Since 1985, about 25 to 30 percent of Indonesia's
forest cover has disappeared.

According to Alan Dupont, a former Australian security analyst who has done
extensive work on new security threats, "at current rates, the primary
forests of the Philippines, Cambodia and Malaysia are expected to disappear
in the next decade, and those of Indonesia, which has half of Asia's
remaining forest, will no longer exist by 2030."

The impact of deforestation goes considerably beyond the loss of a valuable
resource. It diminishes a state's "capacity" -- its ability to meet the
basic needs of its people. Dupont notes that "removing trees often triggers
a cycle of flooding . . . substantial soil erosion and sometimes
desertification." It can also cause flooding across borders and contribute
to pollution or climate change leading to food shortages, population
movements, economic damage and death.

Through that lens, it's easy to get equally worried about air pollution,
water pollution and the forest fires that create the brown haze that has
become a regular feature of Southeast Asian summers. The links between the
environment and security look pretty solid.

The problem is the length of the chain. Environmental destruction has a
powerful impact on state capacity and, therefore, national power. A country
that can't provide drinking water to its citizens or doesn't have sufficient
arable land to feed its people is a weakened nation. But how significant are
those factors? And what does this logic exclude as a national security
threat?

Conference participants last week at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security
Studies, or APCSS, a Honolulu-based think tank associated with the United
States Department of Defense, tried to pin down this sometimes elusive
relationship. They agreed that security planners needed to take a more
expansive view of the challenges ahead.

In dealing with China, for example, one expert pointed out that a map of
China shows almost every province is predisposed to natural disaster, often
as the result of too much or too little water. Flooding is an age-old
problem, and has prompted the Three Gorges Dam project. Today, however,
water scarcity is a rising concern. China has per capita water resources of
less than 2,300 cubic meters, one-fourth the world average. About 60 million
people in China have difficulty getting enough water to meet their daily
needs. Water shortages are exacerbated by pollution, which increases
disease, cuts farm yields and has a cumulative impact on industry, livestock
and fisheries. China's total annual losses due to environmental degradation
are put at 18.9 percent of the aggregate annual income. At least 6 million
Chinese are thought to be environmental refugees within the country.

Yet even if the problem is plain and quantifiable, it is still unclear
whether this constitutes a "security" problem. As one expert noted, "there
is no direct causal link between water distribution and conflict." Thomas
Homer-Dixon, who has written extensively on the subject, concludes that
scarcity has "insidious and cumulative social impacts," and argues that
disasters can trigger conflicts by giving groups opportunities for action
against a government whose legitimacy and authority have been eroded by
civil war, corruption, economic mismanagement, rapid population growth or
deteriorating renewable resources. But this is a complex interaction and
identifying causes and effects is difficult.

The Koreans are concerned about the pollution that has turned the Yellow Sea
into a "brownish-red sea." The poisoning of the waters has been exacerbated
by the overexploitation of marine resources by China and both Koreas. They
also must deal with air pollutants and massive storms of yellow dust that
blow east from China. On the worst days, visibility can be cut to almost
zero and residents are forced to don masks to breathe. Schools and factories
may shut down. Thus a clear impact on human health and national productivity
exist, but are these security threats?

Identifying "threats" is considerably easier than responding to them. What
can the Koreas realistically do to minimize the yellow dust and acid rain
that they face with increasing regularity? What does a government do when a
"threat" is the byproduct of its other policies? China faces acute dilemmas
when deciding how to allocate water. Agriculture uses 80 percent of the
country's water, so programs that divert water to boost employment and
development clash with the government's attempts to create food security.

In some cases, "extended security" can help national security planners
better prepare for contingencies. A better understanding of the factors that
contribute to conflict will allow diplomats to prevent situations from
boiling over. As one speaker at the APCSS conference noted, a wider lens can
help avoid the trap created by "too much clarity" -- an apt warning as the
world tries to deal with the phenomenon of terrorism.

Brad Glosserman is director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, a
Honolulu-based think tank.