E3G

Environment and Security: An inventory of policies and practices

By Nick Mabey

It is perhaps unsurprising that the identification of a new threat does not by itself result in an effective response. It takes time for countries to understand the strategic importance of new threats on their vital interests, and to reorder existing priorities. It takes even longer to develop effective instruments to respond. Security systems formed in the strategic certainties of the Cold War have struggled to respond to a new fluid strategic environment where the source of threats is constantly shifting.

But this is changing. The lessons of the past decade and in particular the Balkan Wars, Rwanda and 9/11 have radically transformed national security priorities. Across the major powers these now focus less on the strength of other countries, and more on the need to tackle instability and failing states; to achieve energy security; prevent the development of “ungoverned spaces” open to abuse by terrorists and organised criminals; and address the internal conflicts which can breed and support international terrorism.

Tackling these threats requires a very different type of security apparatus typified by three core approaches:

Preventive: greater emphasis on effective governance, prevention of conflict, and stabilisation of countries after conflict and crisis have emerged.

Integrated: the need for “whole government approaches” which combine military, diplomatic, developmental and justice system capabilities.

Convergent: ensuring the complementarities between different policy objectives and instruments are assessed when in setting priorities; for example, the economic, developmental and security benefits of tackling illegal logging.

These principles are also familiar as forming the core of “sustainable development” policy approaches, and in many ways security policy is becoming more like other areas of international policy. At the core of the challenge is how to motivate consistent investment of financial and political capital into long term prevention of conflict and reduction of instability.

This is a major task of strategic and public sector reform, and will take years to complete. There is also a chance that the emergence of more traditional military threats could reverse this progress. Assuming this reversal does not happen, these trends will make it easier to incorporate environmental and resource issues into security policy, but only as one driver of future risks. Security strategies also need to better integrate other rising structural risks of instability driven by HIV/AIDs, religious fundamentalism, economic dislocation from trade shifts, rapid urbanisation and drug trafficking and use. Understanding how these different issues interlink and re-enforce vulnerability to crisis and conflict is at the core of defining effective responses. For example, how will commodity dependence, trade liberalisation, organised crime, youth unemployment and climate change evolve to impact the stability of the Caribbean? How will this affect organised crime and the drug trade, and what can be done to lower the risk of crisis?