The Environmental Security Debate - Assignment Example

I. Overview of the Environmental Security Debate The weakening significance of superpower conflict in the past decade has provided an impetus to theemergence of flexibility in the notions of national security. Previously constricted to a set of external military dangers, the concept nowadays frequently emphasizes the importance of concerns such as environmental protection, economic progress and global sustainability. The expression 'environmental security' is gradually more finding goodwill within both ordinary practices as well as governmental regulations (Wagner 1997). Environmental security is labeled as a relevant subject matter in international affairs and it is being exploited to define the motives of countries under an array of contexts. For instance, the Kyoto agreement which curtails global greenhouse gases has been disputed (Ashcroft 1998) and defended (Goodman 1998) on the basis of its influence on America's national security. Warren Christopher, the former Secretary of State, proclaimed in his 1996 speech at Stanford University the resolution of the Clinton administration "to put environmental issues where they belong: in the mainstream of American foreign policy" (Matthew 1996, 39). Subsequently, President Clinton has branded environmental security as one of the many concerns that America will be confronting in the contemporary times (Broda-Bahm 1999). The fundamental concept of environmental security signifies an attempt to put more emphasis on the issues of environmental degradation through openly fastening them to previous military notions of security. According to Lester Brown (1986), the new sources of hazards occur from depletion, soil erosion, inappropriate land use, deforestation, worsening conditions of grasslands and drastic climate changes (195). Moreover, Brown maintains that these dangers not merely threaten the national economic and political security but also the equilibrium in the globalized economy thereof. The advocates of the environment-security relationship strongly upheld the belief that the perils of environmental degradation are at least ruthless as the military menaces which most apparently are integrated under the security coverage and the materialization of these fresh threats would make people reflect on the concept of national security. Hence, Norman Myers (1995) argues that national security is no longer a matter of combat and military hardware alone; it relates progressively more to "watersheds, croplands, forests, genetic resources, climate and other factors" (258) which are seldom measured by military specialists and political heads, yet needs considerable attention in order to produce an effective combination of equally crucial securities, environmental and military. The argument for environmental security can either be explained in the assertion that environmental dreadful conditions may result in security threats, such as conflicts and hostilities, or in the declaration that environmental degradation practically represents a security hazard. Nevertheless, in both arguments, advocates call for enhanced attention to the national and international significance of eco-system wellbeing, yet the second circumstance holds singular interest for students of argument because it embodies an effort to elevate the relevance of a conventionally ignored sector through definition-association with reinforced traditional importance; the environment is positioned on the schema through classification with the customary state intentions in security (Broda-Bahm 1999). This point of classification propelled the argument for an environment-security relationship through its critics. Several intellectuals writing within the umbrella of peace research perspective have roughly criticized attempts to bind environmental objectives to the notions of national security. Daniel Duedney (1991) claims that the nationalist attitude and the war structure have a time-honoured feature that are expected to resist any "rhetorically conjured redirection toward benign ends" (28). Moreover, he asserted that the objective of the environmentalists and their core values will be obstructed once they coat their agendas and programmes in the ruthless dimensions of the war system. Also, as a supplementary to these philosophical discrepancies, adversaries also view practical predicaments with the venture. Richard Matthew (1996) asserts that environmental concerns have a deficient charisma that appeals to the majority of the members of the security, intelligence and political societies. Environmental setbacks are inclined to materialize gradually through the intricate communication of economic, political, demographic and scientific inconsistencies. Contrasting from the fixations of overseas policy, with regard to war and trade, they usually are unable to find solutions through greater force or the ratification of an agreement, and they infrequently provide an immediate or concrete compensation to legislators. On the other hand, the conflict between those who would take advantage of or prevent an environment-security relationship is primarily fraction not an argument over the actuality or the magnitude of environmental hazards. Neither plane in this argument refutes the fundamental claim that intimidates to the habitability of the planet are analogous to military perils in their consequence. To a certain extent, the argument has focused on the weight of a redefinition of security. The concern is whether the advantages of elevated consideration for environmental issues to be acquired through alliance with security deserve given the damages caused by inexactness and downbeat interpretation and effect. This is an argument with strategy repercussions as well as implications for the way people reflect upon the definitions and modifications in definitions. II. Advocates of Environment-Security Linkages Apparently, supporters of associating environmental protection to the contemporary concept of security are endeavouring merely such as re-strengthening of community meaning for a political objective. Whereas a number of promoters have appealed for a boosted appreciation of the underlying linkage between environmental problems and conventional security hazards others have struggled for a more elementary definition of the idea of security so as to encompass and incorporate these environmental perils. Particularly, three arguments from those disputing in defence of the linkage be worthy of criticism, namely, that the modern concept of security, in reality, does embrace the environment; that the contemporary notion of security is excessively narrow because it disregards the environment; and that reality is dynamic and that it has changed, hence the current definition must be modified as well (Broda-Bahm 1999). These arguments prospectively have good points, yet each of them also risks falling prey to an uncreative outlook of meaning. At the outset, supporters of an environment-security correlation have tried to incorporate environmental safeguarding within the contemporary formation of national security. Patricia Mische (1992) for instance, has maintained that security has customarily been visualized along holistic domains, which have integrated environmental motives. Furthermore, she argues that only comparatively recent in history has the notions of security assumed on a limited, military attribute. In totalling to finding a historical correlation, others have contested as a justification of the linkage founded on the core concepts enclosed in the contemporary meaning. For instance, Richard Matthew (1996) claims that the decisive objective of U.S. foreign policy is to safeguard and advance the wellbeing, affluence, security and independence of Americans and additionally argues that brilliant minds have thoroughly demonstrated that environmental adjustment is transnational, related to human engagements and menacing to human happiness. In simple terms, security, at least defined in its conclusive logic, would include issues which can be pragmatically associated to environmental change. The difficulty with mitigating definitional growth based upon core meanings is that the schema provides a contradiction for the proponents. If an individual believes that argument is essential in order to justify an established definition, then the argument can merely be viewed as indispensable if a given definition is at present not acknowledged. The argument for definitional growth founded upon a candid or elapsed core meaning aims to persuade an audience that the meaning of a concept is in reality more expansive than their outset of a term's definition. The argument eggs on people to search for a domain of precise meaning that is independent from the traditions of contemporary usage. In a political setting, nevertheless, the definitional argument supported by imagined precision is ineffective due to the deficiency of any yardstick of accuracy further than conventional usage. The correctness of meaning is recognized, in which case argument is insignificant, or it is otherwise, and in which case argument on the basis of precision is pointless. It is more efficient to appreciate meaning and definition as application, and to perceive efforts to modify meaning as obliging arguments based on another other than a genuine acknowledgement of the concept's meaning (Broda-Bahm 1999). A subsequent inclination in this attempt to concentrate on the actual definition of security can be located in the spherical argument that military formations of security are insufficient specifically because they do not encompass environmental origins. The assumption that a definition is limited since it does not incorporate a given feature, however, believes that the addition of that attribute is appropriate and inevitable to the meaning. That conjecture, nonetheless, is the definitional assertion that the argument appeals to advocacy. The argument that military security is extremely constricted because it fails to include environmental security typically creates the question; the military formation is exceptionally narrow simply if people have resolved previously that the environment is a security concern worth of substantial attention. Formulated rhetorically, the concern is whether the environment should be viewed as a security dilemma, and the evaluation of the narrowness of contemporary security issues reorganizes the paradigms of the debate, yet does not create a standard argument for development. (ibid). A conclusive and more widespread argument for a definitional relationship of environment and security concerns is the argument which states that those realities of security hazards have altered and the definitions should cope. The guidelines for proper soldiering is established to illustrate that while armed forces will carry on to be the safe keepers of national security, they too, like everyone else, will need to adjust to new responsibilities and to widen their definition of security. Security is cannot merely be classified in entirely military and political frameworks. Security has a broad-spectrum, encompassing in its broadest logic the entire breadth of human interactions such as economic, social, cultural and environmental relationships. In reality, military and political security recognition should not be perceived as being dominant but subsidiary to human security needs (Magno 1997). III. Arguments against Environment-Security Linkages Those who advice a denunciation of the construct of environmental security promotes a number of convincing arguments, yet they also depended much of their justifications on either a philosophical view of the impracticality of definitional change or a discharging of the insight that definitions should be mitigated based on their rhetorical consequence. Those countered to an environment-security linkage have claimed that it is a rhetorical manoeuvring that it transgresses the true meaning of security, and that it conveys mechanical and inflexible interpretation brunt. One argument focusing on the fruitless nature of the relationship between environment and security is founded upon the effects that are probable to yield. A general concern is that seeking importance for environmental programmed through the traditionally military direction of security risks tarnishing environmental agendas with militaristic organizations and outcomes. The connotations of national might, power, force and sightless submission are perceived as among those linkages which are intrinsic in applying a term that is broadly used with absolutely barren implications. Security is viewed as closely related to status quo concept (Weaver 1984). Furthermore, the definition is viewed as producing the non-preventive effect of malpractice bolstering the nation-state as a way out to problems which are in reality trans-national (Finger 1994). Opponents such as Deudney (1995) maintain that a dependence upon a fabrication of environmental security can have the adverse effect of alleviating the probability of military clashes over pollution and resource exploitation. While it is apparently significant and required to meticulously put into mind the effects of definitional modification, there is a peril in viewing these effects as routinely fastened to the concept and afar from human control. As Wittgenstein (1958) has eloquently put it, "Let's not forget that a word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us... a word has the meaning someone has given to it (28). That definition may be approximately deep-seated, more or less defiant to change, yet it cannot be predictable and unpreventable. Definitions are constructed and preserved through human actions; rationally they can be adjusted in a similar manner. A number of critics of environmental security disclose the likelihood of definitional modification, yet believe that in this case such change is doubtful or dangerous. Recognizing that environmental security could play an important role to either the 'greening' of security concerns, or the 'militarizing' of environmental issues, detractors still are anxious that environmental forces would be defeated on set of scales (Brock 1992). While it is absolutely a threat that one alliance could bear out stronger than the other, critics do not appear to make available reasons explaining the forces for equilibrium would overwhelm the forces of change. Following this logic, it seems that critics of the environmental-security linkage are pointing an exceptional measure of presumption to the power of modern definitions (Broda-Bahm 1999). IV. Conclusion If the debate over the suitability of environmental security persists, critics would be counselled to direct their arguments toward the issue of political demand and deviated from stagnant and immobile perceptions of meaning. Those who support an environment-security linkage should protect its rhetorical influence in supplementing significance to environmental issues and should also respond to the allegation that security discussions brings about pessimistic connotations and traditions of application which will overpower these advantages. Those who oppose an environment security relationship should equally be anticipated to concentrate on political effectiveness and to expound on the reason why an effort to change people's reactions toward security is a disaster-prone enterprise. In summary, the concern of environmental security has been deliberated too frequently as a matter of fact when it should be discusses as a concern of policy. Therefore, the pressing question regarding this subject matter is, "Should individuals, who are meaning-producers, integrate environmental concerns within the paradigm of security'" Works Cited Ashcroft, J. 1998, "Forget Saddam, we'll fight the weather", Washington Times, A17. Brock, L. 1992, "Security through defending the environment: An illusion'" In Elise Boulding (Ed.), New Agendas for peace research: Conflict and security reexamined (pp. 79-102), Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Broda_Bahm, K.T. 1999, "Finding Protection in Definitions: The Quest for Environmental Security", Argumentation and Advocacy, 35 (4). Brown, L.R. 1986, "Redefining national security", In Linda Starke (Ed.), State of the World 1986: A Worldwatch Institute report on progress toward a sustainable society (pp. 195-211), New York: W. W. Norton. Duedney, D. 1991, Environment and security: Muddled thinking. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 47(3): pp. 22-28. __________. 1995, "The case against linking environmental degradation and national security", In Ken Conca, Michael Alberty, and Geoffrey Dableko (Eds.), Green planet blues: Environmental politics from Stockholm to Rio, Boulder, CO: Westview. Goodman, S.W. 1998, Kyoto treaty doesn't compromise our national security, Washington Times, p. C12 Magno, F.A. 1997, "Environmental Security in the South China Sea", Security Dialog, 28:1, pp. 97-112. Matthew, R.A. 1996, "The greening of U.S. foreign policy", Issues in Science and Technology, 13(1): 39-47. Mische, P.M. 1992, "Security through defending the environment: Citizens say yes!" In Elise Boulding (Ed.), New Agendas for peace research: Conflict and security reexamined (pp. 103-119), Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Myers, N. 1995, "Environmental security and how it works", In Ken Conca, Michael Alberty, and Georffrey Dalbeto, Green Planet Blues: Environmental politics from Stockholm to Rio, Boulder, CO: Westview Wagner, B. 1997, Slow the population growth, Detroit Free Press, p. 10A Weaver, O. 1994, "Securitization and desecuritization", In Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Ed., On Security, New York: Columbia. Wittgenstein, L. 1958, The Blue and Brown Books, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Read More