• Security concepts

Security concepts

This briefing paper looks at monitoring environment and integrating security concepts. It uses a recent seminar on environment and conflict as background to the content. The paper focuses on the links between security and environment, and also looks at conflict risk assessments and monitoring treaties based on geographic information systems and remote sensing.

The paper identifies two different aspects of the environment-security complex. The first aspect is that ecosystem integrity is crucial for the sustainability of people’s livelihoods. Therefore, certain environmental conditions - often resulting from environmental change, such as pollution or depletion scarcity of ecosystem services and also natural disasters, can pose an acute threat to security (a human security perspective). The second aspect is whether there is a relation between environment and conflict. One assumption in this context is that a number of environment-related factors such as environmental degradation or depletion, access to, and management of natural resources can lead or contribute to the outbreak of violent conflict. Overall, it is argued that an integrated approach to security is necessary. An ‘either-or perspective’, which strictly separates security as a social object or social construction may be misleading or even dangerous, because security related events occur independently of being defined.

The document concludes with suggestions for a future agenda for research and practice. Key among these are -

• there is a need for profound empirical research on the exact nature of the proposed relation between environment and conflict
  
• one should carefully consider the consequences of treating environment as a security issue - given the extensive debate on new threats and new approaches to security which entail different implications for action, it is advisable to define the ‘kind’ of security one is referring to
  
• Remote Sensing (RS): radar images can be used to monitor humanitarian agreements, however, one potential flaw in RS is that certain events or areas might be monitored just because they can be monitored, independent of their actual relevance while others, which might be relevant cannot be
  
• there are a number of future challenges ahead. Some emanate from, existing global problems and challenges which have not yet been resolved such as actual data availability (for use), capacity-building, and international cooperation / North-South dialogue.
  
  
  
  

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