Some Insights from South Asia
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THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL INSECURITY: SOME INSIGHTS FROM SOUTH ASIA By Adil Najam Abstract This article presents the key insights that emerge from a regional research project that explored environment and security links in the context of South Asia. The project resulted in the recently published volume Environment, Development and Human Security: Perspectives from South Asia (Najam, 2003). This article focuses on what the South Asian experience can contribute to the larger literature on environment and security and, more particularly, to the literature on human security and sustainable development. It argues that chronic and structural impoverishment—rather than resource scarcity alone— forges the connection between environmental degradation and conflict. It also suggests that poverty and weak institutions of governance are the more immediate triggers of environmental insecurity. As such, analyses of environment and security need to focus more at societal levels and on evidence of social disruption, even where that disruption might not entail violent conflict. In focusing on South Asia as a region, the article reaches five general conclusions. First, for developing countries in general and South Asia in particular, environment and security are best conceptualized within the context of sustainable development. Second, the challenge of environment and security in South Asia is principally a challenge at the domestic level; but it is a challenge common to the region. Third, the challenge of environment and security in South Asia is, at its core, not only a problem of resource endowments or geography but also a problem of institutions and governance. Fourth, while the prospects of interstate violence in South Asia over environmental issues are slim, the region’s history of distrust and dispute suggests that environmental differences can add to existing tensions and apprehensions and perpetuate the general sense of insecurity that pervades interstate relations in the region. Fifth, there is a small potential for a new generation of security relations in the region—relations emerging around the nexus of environment and security and based on the principles of mutual trust, harmony, and cooperation rather than on legacies of distrust and dispute. n the last half-century, the term “security” could argue that the wrong end of a smoke- was primarily a matter of states and their stack can be as much of a security concern to Imilitary alliances and was principally humans as the barrel of a gun. A key applied to the “security” of borders and conceptual difference between the two institutions from outside threats. The bipolar approaches is that the traditional definition nature of world dynamics that prevailed of security presupposes that threats arising during the period intensified the emphasis from outside the state are more dangerous to on external threats. Although this definition the state than threats that arise within it. of security is considered minimalist by some Recent debates on whether and how the analysts, many others accept it as valid: concept of security might be expanded military threats to security are easily beyond issues of geo-polity, international identifiable and carry clear and often extreme power-balance, military strategy, and statecraft consequences. have been both intense and rich (Galtung, In contrast, non-military threats within 1982; Ullman, 1983; Mathews, 1989; Walt, nations—such as poverty, social vulnerability, 1991; Dalby, 1992; and Buzan, 1991). One or ecological resiliency—are generally not strand of this debate on non-traditional perceived as concrete and tangible. Yet one security issues focuses on connections between NAJAM, PAGES 59-73 59 environment and security. Scholarly discourse Broadening the Base: in this area has been prolific, though not Focusing on Human Security always conclusive (Westing, 1988; Gleick, 1991; Libiszewski, 1992; Myers, 1993; Levy, The literature on environment and 1995; Homer-Dixon, 1999; Deudney & security has evolved over the years: from an Matthew, 1999; Dabelko, Lonergan & early focus on incorporating environmental Matthew, 2000; and Diehl & Gleditsch, 2001). and related concerns into the definition of This article presents the key insights that “security” to a new focus on how emerge from a regional research project that environmental change can be a cause or explored environment and security links in amplifier of violent conflict. An emerging 1 the context of South Asia (Najam, 2003). trend within this evolution has been a move The article has neither the space nor the toward greater emphasis on the concept of mandate to present the detailed arguments, human security (Dabelko, Lonergan, & methodological modalities, or analytical Matthew, 2000; Elliott, 2001). particularities of the various cases; the goal Human security is not in opposition to here is merely to highlight the key lessons at the earlier trends of redefining security or of a conceptual level. Before presenting mapping the environmental roots of violent conclusions specific to South Asia, however, conflict. In fact, it is an outgrowth of these the article will introduce a conceptual trends. Indeed, many early attempts to framework for organizing environment- broaden the definition of “security” used security discussions, a framework that emerged language very similar to that found in today’s from the project. discussions on “human security.” For example, This conceptual framework will be consider the following definition from followed by a discussion of the nexus between Norman Myers’ Ultimate Security: environment, development, and human security in South Asia. South Asia and the … security applies most at the level of nations that comprise it have already been the individual citizen. It amounts to the subject of earlier research on environment human well-being: not only protection and security (Myers, 1989, 1993; Hassan, from harm and injury but access to 1991, 1992; Islam, 1994; Gizewski & Homer- water, food, shelter, health, employment, Dixon, 1998). Our focus here is on what the and other basic requisites that are the South Asian experience can contribute to the due of every person on Earth. It is the larger literature on environment and security; collectivity of these citizen needs— or, to be more precise, on sustainable overall safety and quality of life—that development and human security. What are should figure prominently in the nation’s some of the key regional lessons that can be view of security (Myers, 1993, page 31). drawn for South Asia as a whole? The article will focus particularly on the currently Those analysts who have focused on emerging interest in looking at environment explicating the environmental causes of and security issues from the perspective of violent conflict have also brought the debate human security and embedding those issues closer to the notion of human security—most within the concept of sustainable development. noticeably by focusing on intrastate (and often About the Author Adil Najam is an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He holds a Ph.D. and two master’s degrees from MIT and has published widely on international negotiation, environmental policy, nongovernmental organizations, international trade, global governance, and human development. He is co-author of Civic Entrepreneurship: Civil Society Perspectives on Sustainable Development (Gandhara Academy Press, 2002) and editor of Environment, Development and Human Security: Perspectives from South Asia (University Press of America, 2003), on which this article is based. 60 ECSP REPORT · ISSUE 9 · 2003 local) insecurities. In sum, they have each and conflicts that can…become a feature pushed the debate towards of state insecurity….If peoples and communities are insecure (economically, the concept of “human security” socially, politically, environmentally), [which] offers a third perspective that state security can be fragile or uncertain. allows us to move beyond conventional Environmental scarcity becomes a security thinking, appreciates both the distributive equity problem rather than local and global dimensions of the many one simply of market failure, externalities insecurities experienced by real or zero-sum calculations about access to individuals and groups, and identifies resources and environmental services useful ways of linking security and (Elliott, 2001, page 449). development policies (Dabelko, Lonergan, & Matthew, 2000, page 48). The primacy of state security is very While the concept of human security has earlier roots, its recent prominence comes The wrong end of a smokestack can be as from the 1994 Human Development Report much of a security concern to humans as the (UNDP, 1994) of the United Nations barrel of a gun. Development Programme (UNDP). Suhrke (1999, page 269) points out that, “while offering an imprecise and controversial closely associated with the notion of definition, [UNDP’s starting point was] sovereignty. In its historic meaning, poverty rather than war—but ‘security’ sovereignty implied the security of the suggested an escape from both.” The currency sovereign, or the “Prince.” The emergence of the human security concept was further of the democratic polity and the transfer of advanced by the importance given to it in primacy from the “Prince” to the “Citizen” the report of the Commission on Global have implied a rather interesting twist for our Governance (CGG, 1995).