Environmental Security and Conflicts: Concepts and Policies

International Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 3-21

  Vayrynen, Raimo ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84992815771     PISSN: 00208817     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0020881798035001002     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. In characterizing national security as a social fact, I have followed the terminology of John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York, 1995), pp. 18–25.
2. Barry Buzan, “Rethinking Security after the Cold War”, Cooperation and Conflict (London), vol. 32, no. I, 1997, pp, 5–28.
3. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (, 1995, pp. 20–3
4. See, e.g., Roger E. Kasperson et al., “Critical Environmental Regions: Concepts, Distinctions, and Issues” in Jeanne X., Roger E. Kasperson, and B. L. Turner II, eds, Regions at Risk. Comparisons of Threatened Environments (Tokyo, 1995), pp. 5–8.
5. This approach was visible in the first calls for a comprehensive definition of security and has been repeatedly used since then; see Lester R. Brown, “Redefining National Security”, Washington D. C., 1977, Worldwatch Paper no. 14
6. and Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Redefining Security”, Foreign Affairs (New York), vol. 68. no. 2, pp. 162–77.
7. On the concept of vulnerability, see J.M. Albala, The Political Economy of Large Natural Disasters (Oxford, 1993)
8. Ben Wisner, At Risk. Natural Hazards, Peoples Vulnerability and Disasters (London, 1994).
9. Cf. Mustapha Kamal Pasha, “Security as Hegemony”: Alternatives (Boulder, CO), vol. 21, no. 3, 1996, pp. 283–302.
10. This distinction is made by Dietrich Fischer, Non-Military Aspects of Security: A Systems Approach (Aldeshot, 1993), pp. 21, 25–6.
11. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd edn. (London, 1991), pp. 135–7.
12. Kenneth K. Keller, “Unpacking the Environment”, Report Environmental Change and Security Project (Washington, D.C., 1977), pp. 5–14.
13. The concept of “environment collective defense” is obtained from Marvin Soroos, “Global Change, Environmental Security, and the Prisoner' s Dilemma”, Journal of Peace Research (London), vol. 31, no. 4, 1994, pp. 324–5.
14. Different solutions to resource conflicts are explored in Orar Young and Gail Osherenko, “Arctic Resource Conflicts: Sources and Solutions”, in Oran Young, ed., Arctic Politics, Conflict and Cooperation in the Circumpolar North (Hanover, 1992), pp. 104–25.
15. Soroos, “Global Change, Environmental Security, and the Prisoner' s Dilemma”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 31, no. 4, 1994, pp. 324–5.
16. Helen Gregorczuk, “The Appropriateness of Mediation in International Environmental Disputes”, Australian Dispute Resolution Journal (North Ryde, Australia), vol. 7, no. 1, 1996, pp. 47–60.
17. Francisco A. Magno, “Environmental Security in the South China Sea”, Security Dialogue (London), vol. 28, no. 1, 1997, pp. 97–112.
18. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, “Environmental, Economic and Societal Security”, Copenhagen: Centre for Peace and Conflict Research. Working Paper (Copenhagen, 1995), no. 10, pp. 18–21.
19. Thus the World Commission on Environment and Development focussed in its report, Our Common Future (Oxford, 1987), on nuclear weapons, resource competition, and environmental stress as sources of security risks, pp. 290–307.
20. For a similar conclusion, see Daniel Deudney, “The Case against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security”, Millennium (London), vol. 19, no. 3, 1990, p. 46.
21. Simon Dalby, “Contesting an Essential Concept: Reading the Dilemmas in Contemporary Security Discourse”, in Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, eds, Critical Security Studies, Concepts and Cases (Minneapolis, 1997), pp. 15–18.
22. Stephen Dycus, National Defense and the Environment (Hanover, 1996), pp. 185–94.
23. Marc A. Levy, “Is the Environment a National Security Issue?” International Security (Cambridge, MA), vol. 20, no. 2, 1996, pp. 35–62 (the quotation is from p. 46).
24. For a follow-up debate, see Thomas F. Homer-Dixon and Marc A. Levy, “Correspondence Environment and Security”. International Security, vol. 20, no. 3, 1995, pp. 189–98.
25. The Commission on Global Governance speaks in its report Our Global Neighbourhood (Oxford, 1995), pp. 82–5 of “planetary security”. This choice is neither conceptually nor politically very sound. Both environmental and national security issues should be preferably discussed without rhetorical flourishes which too easily undermines the clarity of political analysis and the search for instruments to deal with problems.
26. Ole Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization”, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, ed., On Security (New York, 1995), pp. 48–52.
27. See also Ole Waever, Concepts of Security (Institute of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, 1997), pp. 32–41.
28. Waever' s choice is not original, however, but follows the suggestions made by Buzan, People, States and Fear, An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, 1991.
29. Robert Mandel, “What Are We Protecting?” Armed Forces and Society (New Brunswick, NJ) vol. 22, no. 3, 1996, pp. 335–55.
30. V. Spike Peterson, “Security and Sovereign States. What Is at Stake in Taking Feminism Seriously” in V. Spike Peterson, ed., Gendered States. Feminist (Re) visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, 1992), pp. 50–3.
31. Lothar Brock, “Peace through Parks: The Environment on the Peace Research Agenda”, Journal of Peace Research (London), vol. 8, no. 4, 1991, pp. 407–23.
32. See Norman Myers, Ultimate Security. The Environmental Basis of Political Stability (New York, 1993), pp. 189–203.
33. See Hal Kane, “The Hour of Departure. Forces that Create Refugees and Migrants”. Worldwatch Paper, no. 125.
34. See Vaclav Smil, “China' s Environmental Refugees: Causes, Dimensions and Risks of an Emerging Problem”, in Kurt R. Spill mann and Günther Bächler, eds, Environmental Crisis: Regional Conflicts and Ways of Cooperation (Bern, 1995), pp. 75–91.
35. This basic approach has also been adopted by Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, “On the Threshold. Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict”, International Security (Cambridge, MA), vol. 16, no. 2, 1991, pp. 76–116
36. and Thomas F. Homer-Dixon “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict. Evidence from Cases”, International Security (Cambridge, MA), vol. 19, no. 1, 1994, pp. 5–40.
37. In a similar vein, Winnefeld and Morris stress that the analysis of environmental conflicts should focus on “discrete phenomena in specific conflict contexts” and encourage the “closure of the time horizon issue”; see James Winnefeld and Mary Morris, Where Environmental Concerns and Security Strategies Meet Green Conflict in Asia and the Middle East (Santa Monica, 1994), p. 14.
38. Such definitions are extensively criticized today as inadequate; see Simon Dalby, “Ecopolitical Discourse: ‘Environment Security’ and Political Geography”, Progress in Human Geography (Kent), vol. 16, no. 4, 1992, pp. 503–22.
39. Simon Dalby, “Security, Modernity, Ecology: The Dilemmas of Post-Cold War Security Discourse”, Alternatives, vol. 17, no. I, 1992 pp. 95–134
40. and Patricia M. Mische, “Ecological Security in a New World Order: Some Linkages between Ecology, Peace and Global Security”, in Non-Military Aspects of International Security (Paris, 1995), pp. 155–95.
41. Levy specifically excludes natural resources from his definition of the environment and thus of environmental security. See “Is the Environment a National Security Issue?”, International Security, vol. 20, no. 2, 1996, pp. 38–9.
42. Homer-Dixon, “On the Threshold. Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict”, International Security vol. 16, no. 2, 1991, pp. 104–14.
43. For an analysis of different national positions on environmental issues and their consequences for policies, see Detlef Sprintz and Tapani Vaahtoranta, “The Interest-Based Explanation of International Environmental Policy”, International Organization (Cambridge, MA), vol. 48, no. 1, 1994, pp. 77–105.
44. See Kern Conca, “Environmental Protection, International Norms, and State Sovereignty: The Case of the Brazilian Amazon”, in Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanduno, eds, Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore, 1995), pp. 147–87.
45. Robert T. Deacon, “Deforestation, Investment, and Political Stability”, in Michelle Garfinkel and Stergios Skaperdas, eds, The Political Economy of Conflict and Appropriation (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 131–55.
46. Robert L. Dunaway, Environmental Security Assistance as National Security. Helping the Former Soviet Union Find Solution to its Environmental Problems (Colorado, 1995).
47. See Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, “Environmental Economic and Societal Security”, 1995, pp. 21–5.
48. Also Winnefeld and Morris, “On the Threshold. Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict”, International Security, vol. 16, no. 2, 1991, pp. 14–15, see the link between the environment and conflicts to be strongest in their regional context.
49. Environmental regions are explored, for instance, in Kasperson, Kasperson, and Turner, eds, n. 4, and John D. Montgomery, “The Asia-Pacific as an Environmental Region”. Journal of Developing Areas (Macomb, IL), vol. 28, no. 1, 1993, pp. 3–12.
50. Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk, A Global View of Ethno Political Conflicts (Washington, D.C., 1993), p. 126.
51. This is the research strategy followed by Homer-Dixon, “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict. Evidence from Cases”, International Security, vol. 16, no. 2, 1991.
52. This point is further developed in Bruce P. Chadwick, “Fisheries, Sovereignties, and Red Herrings”, Journal of International Affairs (New York), vol. 48, no. 2, 1995, pp. 559–84.
53. See, Ronnie D. Lipschutz, When Nations Clash, Raw Materials, Ideology, and Foreign, Policy (New York, 1989).
54. Günther Bächler, “The Anthropogenic Transformation of the Environment: A Source of War?” in Kurt R. Spillmann and Günther Bächler, eds, Environmental Crisis: Regional Conflicts and Ways of Cooperations (Bern, 1995), pp. 11–27.
55. Günther Bächler, “Welche Rolle spielt Ökologie als Ursache und Medium von (zukunftigen) Gewaltkonflikten im internationalen System”, in Jörg Callies, ed., Treiben Unweltptableme in Gewaltkonflikte? Ökologischen Konflikte im internationalen System and Moglichkeiten ihrer friedlichen Bearbeitung (Rehburg-Loccum. 1994).
56. Joanna Macrae and Anthony Zwi, “Famine, Complex Emergencies and International Policy in Africa: An Overview”, in Joanna Macrae and Anthony Zwi, eds, War and Hunger, Rethinking International Responses to Complex Emergencies (London, 1994), pp. 6–36, esp. 13–19.
57. Kjell-Ake Nordquist, Peace after War. On the Conditions for Durable Inter-State Boundary Agreements (Uppsala, 1992), Report no. 34, pp. 36–7 and 73–8.
58. For analyses of environmental and resource security along these lines, see Robert Mandel, The Changing Face of National Security, A Conceptual Analysis (Westport, 1994), pp. 75–88
59. and Joseph J. Romm, Defining National Security. The Nonmilitary Aspects (New York, 1993), pp. 15–36.