Monday, May 12, 2008

Food for Thought...

Global Security at Stake

By: Felix Dodds, Stakeholder Forum

Forty years from the first UN Conference on Human Environment (1972), twenty years from the Rio Earth Summit on Environment and Development (1992) and ten years from the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002), many of the promises made by international decision-makers have still not been implemented. To take just one example, between the Rio and Johannesburg summits, developed countries did not fulfill their promise to provide aid that would enable developing countries to develop sustainably. Instead, aid fell in real terms by over a quarter after the summit, despite strong growth in the world economy.

In consequence, many economic and environmental issues have become so acute that many believe they now constitute a threat to human security.

In September 2005, the World Summit attempted for the first time to address Human and Environmental Insecurity at the global level. In preparation for the World Summit, the Secretary General prepared a report entitled In Larger Freedom that addressed security concerns in unison with sustainable development issues. Despite this ambitious starting point, the Summit failed to deliver a clear roadmap on any of the issues.

The challenges of environmental degradation and excessive consumption patterns by industrialized countries pose a threat to both the developing and developed world, and they are getting greater. Our present rate of material consumption is simply not sustainable. ‘If everyone in the world lived as we do in the UK, we would need three planets to support us,’ (One Planet Future, WWF). We are currently seeing a converging of the environment and security agendas. Last year, the UN Security Council debated climate change for the first time.

However, it is not the only environmental topic that is being discussed as a security issue. Over the coming years, we could potentially see conflicts over such issues as energy, water, biodiversity, migration, food security, consumption patterns and rapid urbanisation. Climate change will only exacerbate these issues in the future.

Within this new paradigm, threats such as global climate change, water scarcity, migration and security merge into a new landscape, namely that of Human, Economic and Environmental Insecurity. Any discussion on sustainable development will be sidelined if it is not viewed from this paradigm. Many are urging governments to consider a new UN summit for 2012 on the theme of Human, Economic and Environmental Security. Perhaps called the Summit on Global Security or Global Change. Such an event will be the defining agenda of the next twenty years. It will also define our political leaders. The next generation need not become a generation of crisis, it need not be a generation of fear - it could be a generation of hope and solidarity.