TABLE OF CONTENTS
WHAT TYPES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AFFECT HUMAN SECURITY?
WHAT REGIONS ARE MOST AT RISK?
WHAT TYPES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AFFECT HUMAN SECURITY?
The environmental forces which have been presented as contributing to insecurity are many. Environmental calamities such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and drought have always presented a threat to human existence and their human impact has increased considerably in scale as people have moved into disaster-prone areas. The pace of other, human-induced forms of environmental degradation and resource depletion (e.g. deforestation, desertification, land degradation, erosion, salinization, siltation, climate change), while often more gradual, has been growing rapidly in recent decades due to a combination of increased demand, improved technological means of exploitation, and the lagging pace of conservation and control. Meanwhile, often due to government and social change, the ability and perhaps also the inclination of people to adapt to environmental stress is increasingly challenged, particularly where resources and environment provide the principal basis of their livelihood, as is the case in much of the developing world.
Types of environmental change/degradation which may affect security include the following:
Natural Disasters
Natural disasters include floods, volcanoes and earthquakes. They are usually characterized by a rapid onset, and their impact (destructiveness) is a function of the number of vulnerable people in the region rather than the severity of the disaster, as such. Poor people in developing countries are the most affected because they are the most vulnerable. (Droughts, despite a slower onset, are also included in this category.) Recent earthquakes in Pakistan and flooding in many regions of the world indicates not only the destructiveness of disasters, but their ability to affect large numbers of people.
Cumulative Changes or "Slow-Onset Changes"
Cumulative changes are generally natural processes occurring at a slower rate which interact with — and are advanced by — human activities. The processes include deforestation, land degradation, erosion, salinity, siltation, waterlogging, desertification and climate change. Human induced soil degradation is one factor which directly affects economic sufficiency in rural areas (Figure 1 and Figure 2). Water availability is another factor which may affect human security, and Figure 3 notes countries which are experiencing — or will soon experience — conditions of water scarcity, where water scarcity is generally considered to be less than 1000 cubic meters per capita per year (this is a rough estimate only; many countries are able to supplement their water supply through expensive alternatives such as desalination [e.g. Kuwait] or imports of water [e.g. Singapore]). Do factors such as water scarcity and human-induced soil degradation in and of themselves affect human security? The linkage is much more indirect; in most cases, one or more of rapid population growth, economic decline, inequitable distribution of resources, lack of institutional support and political repression are also present.
Accidental Disruptions or Industrial Accidents
This category includes chemical manufacture and transport and nuclear reactor accidents. The two most obvious examples are the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, in the former USSR in 1986, and the Union Carbide accident in Bhopal, India, in 1987. Between 1986 and 1992, there were over 75 major chemical accidents which killed almost 4000 persons worldwide, injured another 62,000, and displaced over 2 million. Most of these displacements, however, were temporary.
Development Projects
Development projects — generally dams and irrigation projects — often involve forced resettlement and affect many aspects of human security. In India, for example, it has been estimated that over 20 million persons have been uprooted by development projects in the past three decades. The Three Gorges Dam project in China — expected to displace 1 million persons — and the Sardar Sarovar Dam project in India are the most notable present examples. Rapid urbanization in some regions of the world is also forcing people from their land; conversion of agricultural land to urban uses has long been a phenomenon in the North, and increasingly this is the case in the South as well.
Conflict and Warfare
Environmental degradation is considered by many to be both a cause and effect of armed conflict. Although the evidence of wars being fought over the environment is weak (except, of course, over land), there is an increasing use of the environment as a "weapon" of war or, as Gleick (1990) notes, as a "strategic tool." One obvious example in this category is the threat by Turkey to restrict the flow of the Euphrates to Syria and Iraq in order to pressure Syria to discontinue its support of Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Other examples include the purposeful discharge of oil into the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War and the destruction of irrigation systems during conflicts in Somalia. Such activities have similar — and, indeed, more immediate — consequences to the slow-onset changes noted above. But in these cases, it seems clear that the "environment" is merely a symptom of a larger conflict, and the root cause of any insecurity is the conflict itself, and the reasons behind it.