Responding to Environmental Conflicts: Implications for Theory and Practice

This article provides an overview on the general linkages between environment and security and the various policy approaches to this thematic. More importantly, this article summarizes the key contributions within this book volume and outlines key points presented during the workshop’s discussion. This article is also meant to provide an overview of the various topics debated in the workshop. At the same time, the article concludes with further suggestions for the development of a more comprehensive policy approach responding to environmental conflicts.

The concept of ‘environment and security’ has gained in importance on the international policy agenda since the end of the Cold War. Numerous international and regional organizations as well as national governments have responded to the environment and security debate with a diverse array of approaches. In particular, the need to manage environmental stress and its consequences for security has also been acknowledged by the principal European security organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, global environmental problems have placed a strong emphasis on sound foreign and security policy and also development policy in relation to crisis prevention. As environmental degradation and resource scarcity have the potential to contribute to violent conflict, more effective preventative policies and measures are needed. Since most of the environmental conflicts primarily occur in the developing world, results from global environmental change thus call for a shared responsibility on part of the global community. This includes integrating environmental concerns into the various policy sectors that could ensure that environmental protection and sustainable development would become an effective tool for conflict prevention.

This chapter examines models, issues and cases that can help to explain the nature and utility of negotiation approaches as preventive mechanisms in potential transboundary environmental conflict situations. It examines the various schools of thought that seek to explain the relationship between environmental problems and conflict. These models identify factors that are hypothesized to have the greatest impact on the emergence of conflict and, thus, how, when and where negotiation mechanisms might be used to best advantage to prevent the conflict from emerging. The chapter also turns to the preconditions for and processes of preventive negotiation — a reframing of the stakes, attitudes and tactics for preemptive problem-solving. The study examines various cases where negotiations were used to prevent the emergence of conflict concerning transboundary environmental problems. Various approaches to negotiation are addressed and their effect on early resolution of potential conflicts evaluated.

Drawing a link between environmental degradation and conflict has become quite common in the past few decades and particularly after the end of the Cold War. The idea that resource scarcity may lead to conflict is an old one, and the struggle for territory in particular is generally regarded as the most pervasive form of conflict. Environmental degradation depletes the resource basis and potentially exacerbates resource conflict. Most of the empirical evidence adduced for these views consists of case studies that suffer from selection bias. However, some statistical studies are also cited. This chapter discusses how various other factors that are associated with conflict interact with resource and environmental factors, notably regime type, economic development, ethnic fragmentation, and past conflict. The case for environmental conflict is also modified by a more balanced view of global scarcity, by the declining role of population pressure, and by the possibility of environmental cooperation.

The orientation of state institutions, including intergovernmental organizations, toward relatively short-term and specific interests stands against the relatively long-term and general nature of the threats raised by environmental change. Thus the concept of ‘environmental security’, if understood in environmental terms rather than state-security terms, is a fundamental challenge to state actors at the level of a value change rather than merely a change in state interests. It is not a new idea that scarcity leads to conflict, or that states and international organizations give attention to socio-economic issues for this reason, but the traditional security orientation towards conflict in the relative short-term reflects a set of underlying values which are in sharp contrast to the set of values underlying environmental concern which points to the need for cooperation in the relative long-term. Because a set of values must underwrite any political interests, it is more important to concentrate on environmental values than on environmental threats to national interest, since the former is what will determine the significance of ‘environmental security’. The concept may mean either the prospect of secured environmental benefits, or simply an extension of state security interests, or it may not mean anything at all, depending entirely on what set of values it is associated with.

National and environmental security tend to be integrated to the extent that cultural differentiation allows. Often, because of different ‘Weltanschauung’, conflict appears at different levels: community, national, regional and global. Transparency and mutual understanding are necessary in order to narrow cultural gaps in environmental conflicts. Resource, energy and biological security influence and are influenced by lifestyles and thus become often source of cultural conflict, given the different priorities existing in each society. There are no uniform rules of resolution, even for cases which appear to be almost identical. However, a win-win approach can help to resolve environmental disputes.

Assessment of environmental impacts and risks associated with the implementation of public policy alternatives is a fundamental requirement in the selection of sustainable development strategies. Critical in this process is the identification of comparative risk measures that can be used effectively to communicate public risk, resolve conflict, and promote the selection of acceptable public policies. Under conditions of global market competitiveness, resource scarcity and degradation, and potential state conflicts, it is essential to provide comparative measures that permit policy design that balances socio-economic conditions with environmental stress.

Most environmental impacts are associated with the modification or intensification of land use inputs and practices in the broader context of economic development. Therefore, realistic risk assessment must be based on key indicators that effectively define comparative development potential, environmental constraints, and anticipated economic and environmental impacts. A comparative evaluation framework is discussed that defines the comparative advantage of the natural resource base and identifies fundamental capacities to sustain production rates of goods and services to promote societal well-being, while including measures of economic benefits and public risk.

Complex biophysical and socio-economic characteristics affect both the identification of critical policy issues and the selection of sustainable development strategies and their associated policies. In the newly emerging structures of economic integration and market globalization, it is critical to explore comparative measures of production opportunities and accumulative effects of environmental impacts. This will ensure improved production efficiencies, reduce environmental impacts, and enhance contributions to the quality of life of the country populations affected.

The identification of multilateral interests, challenges, and opportunities for economic development cooperation can be assisted by the systematic evaluation of policy initiatives. In this process, guidance by international organizations is critical in promoting international dialogue aimed at resolving perceived conflicts. Analytical approaches to identify key indicators are suggested to identify comparative policy strategies, resolve conflicts, and select and implement sustainable development policies.

It is also suggested that international environmental quality standards be identified and used to define standards of public risk tolerance limits, environmental carrying capacity constraints, and sustainability indicators.

It has been recognized that environmental conditions and events have the potential to undermine international stability. Although natural hazards are sometimes not considered in the arena of ‘environmental security’, these issues have some of the greatest impacts of any environmental threat. It will be argued here that human preparations (or lack thereof) for natural hazards have effects that can transgress national boundaries far more readily than is commonly recognized. Systematic assessment of disaster-causing processes can be the first step towards policies to reduce the major national and international impacts of these hazards.

Natural hazards vary widely in their effects and the best approaches for reducing damages. These differences can be illustrated best by examining hazards according to five criteria: 1) potential magnitude; 2) frequency; 3) avoidability of damages; 4) engineerability; and 5) what we call “Pandora’s Box” potential. Two case studies, earthquakes and flooding, illustrate two ends of the natural-hazards spectrum. Earthquakes represent relatively infrequent, diffuse, but potentially catastrophic events. Public policies in the USA, particularly in California, demonstrate that this hazard can be dramatically reduced by zoning and engineering guidelines. In contrast, floods are typically much more discrete events, but the history of flooding in the USA demonstrates that economic and political pressures tend to overwhelm the limitations of engineering protections, resulting in damage potential that has spiraled upward over time. Flooding also illustrates how a local hazard can be internationalized as a result of national policies and activities.

These observations lead to a blueprint for dealing with natural hazards. For hazards that are discrete, by far the best strategy is to avoid the hazard. The lesson from the USA is that encroachment into hazardous zones is almost inevitably a one-way process. For hazards that are diffuse but engineerable, and in societies with sufficient resources, then structural protection may be an appropriate and effective solution. Finally, scientists and planners must be aware of the potential for opening “Pandora’s Box”, whereby increases in hazard risk may result from human activities, because this phenomenon has the greatest potential for crossing national borders and thereby threatening international security.

This paper presents a method called “security diagrams” for quantifying global environmental security. These diagrams integrate three concepts “environmental stress”, “state susceptibility”, and “crisis”. Environmental stress refers to a undesirable short-term departure from “normal” conditions, while state susceptibility is the degree to which a state can resist and recover from crisis brought on by environmental stress, and a crisis is an unstable time that requires extraordinary emergency measures to counteract. A security diagram is constructed for climate-related food crises and used to estimate where the high potential for food crises occurred in the world from 1901 to 1995. The diagram was then applied to the period 2001–2050 to investigate the effect of increased national income and climate change on the future occurrence of crisis. The percentage of countries facing high potential of food crisis decreased from 46% to 34% under the scenario of increasing national income, and increased to 65% when changes in precipitation and temperature due to climate change were included.

Analysis is given to identify the links between environmental change and security in Hungary’s different policy sectors, such as defense and security policy, regional and national environmental policy and foreign policy in Hungary. It is found that current discussions on the ‘environment and security’ debate, unlike in other Western European or North American countries, is not on the policy agenda as of yet in the case of Hungary. There is — instead — a gradual learning about the possible impact of environmental changes on security, both in the academic and the political sector.

NATO expansion has drawn renewed attention to regional security questions around the Baltic Region. Contemporary security debates raise, but leave answered, many questions of identity, membership and institutional configuration in the region. Fundamentally, the debate centers on what constitutes “security” in the Baltic region. Environmental issues have “made it onto the table” within the dynamic security debates in the Baltic region. Environmental change and security are increasingly, but often implicitly, linked around the Baltic. Only be exploring these links can both environmental issues and security issues in the region be properly understood. Foreign policy-makers, inside and outside of the region, are advised to better integrate their rhetorical “environmental” pronouncements with tangible policy actions that reflect their stated priority as security issues. A concern for stability as a primary goal of environmental security suggests that traditional political-military considerations continue to dominate interest considerations. Environmental remediation matters on many levels, but it has not achieved equal footing with stability goals. As illustrated by fears of the many ecological dangers emanating from Russia, “environmental” threats are increasingly recognized as critical factors affecting the desired stability. However, Russians and their interests are not yet well integrated into the regional environmental and security organizations.

Since the end of the Cold War, the changing relationship between the countries in the Black Sea region have provided both new opportunities for joint action as well as new complications. The region is presently defined by both political, social and economic instability (i.e. unemployment, migration, spillover of refugees from war-torn areas, increasing poverty, ethnic and religious rivalry, cross border crime and terrorism, growth in illegal activities and corruption, etc.) which has potential security implications. The Black Sea Region is also characterized by traditional disputes over fisheries and maritime shipping and disagreements over the development and protection of transboundary rivers. The effects of an oil and gas boom in the Caspian Sea and the resulting new routes for energy and transport and lines for communication are beginning to shape future economic markets and the security of the Black Sea region.

Within the past 40 years, the Black Sea has also been unable to cope with increased human demands and extensive environmental degradation. Today the Black Sea is in a state of environmental crisis and requires extensive policy action beyond existing technical and financial assistance at both the international and regional level to directly impact the political and economic future of the Black Sea Region. This paper elaborates on the linkages between environmental and security challenges in the Black Sea region; assesses the environmental degradation occurring in the Black Sea, highlights ongoing regional activities to respond to increasing environmental challenges in the Black Sea; and suggests policy developments that deserve further consideration for fostering environmental cooperation and peace building in the Black Sea Region.

Recently non-traditional threats to national security are gaining their importance in Russia and environmental security is among them. Since the 1990s, Russia elaborated new approaches to environmental security, as well as protective instruments. Some factors of the transition period in Russia influenced negatively the implementation of new concepts, and some environmental threats are accelerating. Standard instruments of environmental policy borrowed from the West and transferred to Russia without preliminary adaptation to specifics of transition period have resulted in non-standard outcomes while some instruments are blocked.

This essay concerns Czechoslovakia’s (later, Slovakia’s) and Hungary’s disagreement between 1988-2000 over a joint hydroelectric dam system on the river Danube. The conflict threatened bilateral relations and the overall stability of the East Central European region especially during the early 1990s. The case represents a major international environmental, political and legal dispute between two newly democratizing countries in the East Central European region. This paper offers a systematic framework for the analysis and interpretation of the roots, causes, strategic actors and outcomes of the conflict. The following factors leading to the conflict are analyzed: the different scenarios and pace of democratization in the two countries; the emergence and role of independent ecological movements, NGOs, and their perception of environmental threats; the lack of a regional conflict resolution mechanism; the nationalist framing and political uses of the issue by post-communist elites; the underdevelopment of civil society; the low level of transborder communication; and the dependence of scientific institutions and think tanks on the state in both countries.

This paper also offers a framework for systematic political science and international relations/ environmental security analysis and interpretation of the causes, strategic actors and outcomes of the conflict. The paper offers conclusions about 1) anti-environmentalist nationalism; 2) the role of international institutions in maintaining peace and security in East Central Europe; 3) the role of domestic political actors in framing international environmental conflicts; 4) the role of NGOs in such conflicts; 5) joint monitoring of the environment and transborder dissemination of monitoring data as integral part of conflict prevention and resolution. Finally, it offers conclusions relevant for understanding the dispute in particular and environmental security in East Central Europe in general.

Considerable progress has been achieved in international policy, but serious problems concerning rule-making, implementation and inter-policy coordination remain. Proposals for improvement range from the pursuit of incremental changes to a fundamental restructuring and the creation of a world organization. Despite the fact that environmental problems can even lead to violent conflict, the creation of new institutions would hardly constitute an effective response to the existing challenges as it would leave the root of the problem, the lack of political will of states, untouched.

Environment and security has only recently been discussed within the framework of the European institutions. This mirrors the development from a purely economic community to the wider vocation of the European Union (EU) which is now beginning to create a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Work has already been done in many areas relating to environment and security, particularly in policies which address resource sharing, and in assistance to third countries, including work on conflict prevention. The questions raised are global ones and should be addressed at that level. For example, the work which is already being done within the UN system to which the EU also contributes.

The main features of UNECE environmental conventions are described against the background of the environmental and political legacies of the past in Europe. The conventions addressing issues of water, environmental impact assessment and industrial accidents in the transboundary context are discussed in greater detail, in particular their provisions and mechanisms that can be used to promote conflict prevention and settlements of disputes in transboundary environmental issues. Applications of these conventions, and their role in enhancing transboundary cooperation in Europe, are highlighted. Finally lessons are drawn from managing transboundary waters in Europe.

The role of international institutions in environment and security issues in general and positive dispute prevention in particular is especially relevant in the field of environmental regulation and, development and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. In this respect, monitoring compliance and the need for capacity building as a major part of a strategy to combat environmental threats to security are recognized as crucial issues.

The article explores the role that the United Nations Environment Programme, historically as well as in the present, plays in the issue of positive dispute resolution. Firstly, the article clarifies the concept of environmental dispute, showing the complex dynamics around potential environmental disputes and conflicts. The concept strives to clarify the different types and levels of conflicts in various socioeconomic and political contexts. These “definitions” then also serve as matrix to identify a few real-world examples and lead to the clarification of the role, the United Nations Environment Programme can play.

Particular examples of UNEP’s involvement in finding solutions to otherwise competing or confrontational situations, related to environment that are discussed in the Article include the development of the Mediterranean Action Plan and the Zambezi River System Action Plan. In addition, UNEP’s role in the following areas is explained and assessed:

The article ends with outlining the borders of UNEP’s mandate for action, stressing that international organizations such as UNEP can best contribute to the prevention of environmental disputes instead of taking an active role in solving existing disputes. A pragmatic way forward is suggested on how international institutions can best focus their efforts in this process. The areas of monitoring, assessing, reporting, developing action plans, initiating new legal instruments and providing assistance to build environmental capacity in developing countries are listed as priorities.