Category: Article

The recently signed arms control treaty between the United States and Russia brings welcome reductions in deployed nuclear warheads and an agreed ceiling on the number of delivery vehicles that each side may possess. We applaud the new agreement and the acts of political leadership required in both countries to bring it about. The breakthrough is all the more welcome, coming just weeks before both the Washington Summit on Nuclear Security and the Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Across Europe, and at this moment of diplomatic opportunity, we have joined together to declare our unequivocal support for President Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons, to declare our desire to re-set the security relationship between Europe, the US and Russia, and to show strong European support for the measures necessary to deliver these goals.

Let no-one doubt the importance of this endeavour. The risks of proliferation are growing. India, Israel and Pakistan have already entered the nuclear club. If Iran gets the bomb, others certainly will follow.  We know that terrorist groups want to acquire nuclear materials, making the security of those materials an issue of truly global significance. Nuclear armed states inside the NPT have not been disarming fast enough, straining the confidence of their non-nuclear partners in the credibility of the NPT grand bargain. Without further action, there is a real danger that the world will be overwhelmed by proliferation risks and incidents of nuclear weapons use, with all their catastrophic consequences.

The strategic implications of this are profound. Nuclear deterrence is a far less persuasive strategic response to a world of potential regional nuclear arms races and nuclear terrorism than it was to the Cold War.

The circumstances of today require a shift in thinking. We must, through further multilateral agreement, reduce the role and the number of nuclear weapons in the world, deepen confidence in the non-proliferation regime, and improve the security of existing nuclear weapons and materials. We must achieve these goals while at the same time helping those countries that wish to go down the civil nuclear energy route do so safely.

The practical steps necessary to achieve our goals are clear. In Washington, we must demonstrate wider international ownership of the issue of nuclear security. This is not just a concern for those fearing a nuclear terrorist attack. Any major nuclear security incident anywhere is likely to derail the civil nuclear renaissance everywhere. Regardless of whether we as individuals support the idea of more nuclear power, this may ultimately undermine global attempts to meet the challenge of climate change, an outcome we all have a stake in avoiding.

The Washington Summit also must agree practical action on programmes to control and destroy nuclear materials and ready-made weapons within four years; and participants must agree to rationalise the many complex overlapping international conventions, initiatives and resolutions that are the current institutional architecture aimed at addressing this issue.

In May, at the NPT Review Conference in New York, the Treaty, for 40 years the foundation of counter-proliferation efforts, must be overhauled and reinforced. All signatory nations should accept the strengthened monitoring provisions of the Additional Protocol. The IAEA needs that strengthened inspection power if it is to provide effective monitoring of declared and undeclared nuclear material and activities. Nations wishing to develop a civil nuclear capability must first agree to proper verification procedures and unimpeded access for the IAEA.

Progress of this nature will not be possible without a credible process for nuclear disarmament. Beyond START follow-on we need urgent and more radical initiatives from the nuclear weapons states. Increasingly it is becoming more challenging to explain why some countries should have, and others should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.

All nuclear weapons, including tactical ones, must be included in disarmament talks. Where this necessitates discussion of conventional force imbalances, these too must be included. States that now possess nuclear weapons must work together to reduce their importance to national and international security.

The establishment of nuclear free zones in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia is very encouraging. By the end of the NPT Review Conference there must be a credible process for the discussion of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East.

After May, attention must also return to other issues. The countries that have not yet ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty including the US, China, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea should do so urgently, allowing it to come into force. The stalemate in the Geneva Disarmament Conference on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty must also be overcome. We need a treaty-sanctioned prohibition of the production of the basic materials required to manufacture nuclear explosive devices.

Europe, through NATO, is central to the security relationship with Russia and can influence it through NATO diplomacy and the ongoing revision of NATO’s Strategic Concept. The UK and France, working with other nuclear weapons states, can play their full part in discussions on disarmament, and in efforts to implement any internationally agreed and verifiable reductions in warhead numbers. In addition to that leadership Europe is a key player in civil nuclear power and nuclear security.

In short, Europe can and must play a vital role in building the cooperation necessary for meeting the global nuclear challenge. All our futures depend on it.

Signed:

Kåre Willoch, Former Prime Minister of Norway

Kjell Magne Bondevik, Former Prime Minister of Norway

Oddvar Nordli, Former Prime Minister of Norway

Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Former Prime Minister of Norway

Thorvald Stoltenberg, Former Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway

Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Poland

Ruud Lubbers, Former Prime Minister of the Netherlands (author of “Moving beyond the stalemate”)

Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Prime Minister of Belgium and current MEP

Guy Verhofstadt, Former Prime Minister of Belgium and current MEP,

Lord Geoffrey Howe of Aberavon, Former British Deputy Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary

Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands

Jan Kavan, Former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic

Volker Rühe, Former Defence Minister of Germany

Elisabeth Rehn, Former Defence Minister of Finland, Former UN Under-Secretary-General, SRSG

Hans Blix, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden

Wolfgang Ischinger, Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Germany

General Bernard Norlain, Former French General, Former commander of the French Tactical Air Force and military counselor to the Prime Minister

Lord George Robertson of Port Ellen, Former British Defence Secretary and Secretary General of NATO

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Former British Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary

Admiral the Lord Michael Boyce, Former British Chief of the Defence Staff

Lord Charles Guthrie of Craigiebank Former British Chief of the Defence Staff

Lord Douglas Hurd of Westwell Former British Foreign Secretary

Margaret Beckett, Former British Foreign Secretary

Des Browne, Former British Defence Secretary

Lord Tom King of Bridgwater Former British Defence Secretary

Louis Michel MEP Former, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belgium

Mogens Lykketoft MP, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Niels Helveg Petersen MP, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Frits Korthals Altes, Former President of the Senate and Minister of Justice of the Netherlands

Michael Ancram, Former British Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Defence Secretary

Dr. John Reid, Former British Defence Secretary

Sir Menzies Campbell, Former British Leader Liberal Democrat Party and Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary

Shirley Williams (Baroness Williams of Crosby) Former Adviser on Nuclear Proliferation to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Charles Clarke, Former British Home Secretary

James Arbuthnot, Former British Chair of the Defence Select Committee

Adam Ingram, Former British Defence Minister of State (Armed Forces)

Prof. Ivo Šlaus, Former Croatian MP, former member of Foreign Affairs Committee and current Emeritus Professor of Physics

Francesco Calogero, Italian theoretical physicist & former Secretary General of Pugwash

Giorgio La Malfa MP, Former Italian Minister of European Affairs

Federica On. Mogherini Rebesani, Member of the Italian Parliament

 

Source: Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians For Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non Proliferation

Image source: BlatantNews.com

 

Copenhagen failed dismally to set firm targets either for greenhouse gas reductions and the aid offered to poorer countries to counter the impact of climate change was minimal. Scarcely anything was achieved other than most states accepting that the global temperature increase must be kept below 2ºC.

As world leaders try to minimise the scale of the failure we have to remember that this was the biggest ever attempt to respond to the potential disaster of climate change and it needed to have resulted in:

• Radical and legally-binding decreases in climate gas emissions, starting with the industrialised states where 40% cuts by 2020 are the absolute minimum required.

• Agreement to limit temperature increases to a world average of just 1ºC.

• Aid of at least $100 billion a year from 2011 to start preparing for the impact on the poorer countries of the South of climate changes that are already likely.

These were the minimum requirements for two main reasons. One is that poorer states have very limited capabilities for combating the impact of climate change and the second is that the recent modelling of climate change demonstrates repeatedly that its impact is asymmetric.

What is crucial here is that an average increase of 2ºC world-wide is likely to mean a much smaller increase for most of the oceans, apart from the Arctic, but very much larger increases for most of Central and South America, much of Africa and the Middle East and large parts of South and South-East Asia.

Anticipated temperature increases above 6ºC for Amazonia will mean the destruction of the world’s largest rain forests, with massive additional releases of carbon. Similar increases for the Arctic and near-Arctic will mean loss of icecaps leading to substantial sea level rises flooding heavily populated coastal cities in the tropics and inundating of some of the most fertile croplands in the world’s great river deltas. Release of carbon from thawing Arctic permafrost vegetation will accelerate greatly if there is a 6ºC rise, making matters even worse.

Copenhagen failed because of a lack of international leadership, determined efforts of trans-national corporations to denigrate the science of climate change and a world-wide failure to recognise that radical action is required in the next five years to prevent catastrophes in the coming decades.

How can it all be turned round? The widespread recognition that Copenhagen failed is a start, as is the changing attitude of the United States – a McCain administration would have had little truck with the whole process. The spotlight on climate change provided by Copenhagen was also hugely welcome, and there was always the risk that a partial success might have lulled too many people into a false sense of security by covering up what really needs to be done.

The Copenhagen outcome shows the political state of the world as it really is, and this reality must form the basis for what is going to have to be a sustained and concerted effort to make up for lost time. The first decade of this century was largely lost but the second decade offers more hope. The physical evidence of climate change is increasing by the year, growing numbers of younger activists are determined not to see the future ruined, and in think tanks and civil society groups across the world new ideas and approached are being developed.

The blinkered political realities of Copenhagen may be discouraging but they remind us of how great the task is and we are beginning to get a clear idea of what has to be done. We have now to work intensively to make the second decade of this century the period of real change when we move decisively towards an idea of genuine security that is rooted in emancipation and environmental sustainability.

 

2012 was hailed as a potential landmark year in the push for greater regulation of the global trade in conventional arms. After more than a decade of advocacy to this end, negotiations took place throughout July towards the world’s first Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which is intended to establish the highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional weapons.  However, although significant progress was made during the month of intense negotiations, the ATT is not yet open for signature. The future of possible work towards a treaty now lies with the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, as discussions continue about the possibility of a second round of negotiations. As the Committee’s session nears an end, this article explores what role a potential treaty – if reopened for further negotiation – could play in a move towards sustainable security.

The scale of the arms trade is significant; it’s impact, devastating in many parts of the world. From 2006-10, the top five arms exporting countries – the United States, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom and France – delivered nearly 92 million major conventional weapons* . The recipients of arms transfers include countries such as Sudan, Yemen, Egypt and Libya, where the use of government stockpiles against civilians over the past two years has been particularly abhorrent. However, even as the volume of international transfers continues to increase – by 24 per cent from 2002-2006 to 2007-2011 – there is still no overarching global regulation of the trade. Instead, there exists only a patchwork of national laws and regional agreements that fail to impose any consistent international standard of trade.

This lack of comprehensive global standards to regulate transfers of conventional arms – which range from battle tanks, combat aircraft and missile launchers to small arms and light weapons – has allowed a flow of weapons to actors who use them in contravention of international humanitarian and human rights law, including terrorist groups and human rights abusers. This in turn prolongs conflict, undermining stabilisation and development efforts. Indeed, as 30 high-profile Oxfam and Amnesty International supporters stated in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in at the start of the July’s negotiation conference:

“Every year an average of two bullets for every person on this planet is produced. With so few global rules governing the arms trade, no one really knows where all those bullets will end up – or whose lives they will tear apart. Under the current system, there are less global controls on the sales of ammunition and guns than on bananas and bottled water. It’s a ridiculous situation. The deadly and poorly regulated trade in arms leads to serious human rights abuses, armed violence, conflict, poverty and organized crime around the world. The lack of clear binding principles governing decisions on international arms transfers combined with patchy, diverse and poorly implemented national regulations are inadequate to deal with the increasingly globalised nature of the arms trade. As a result, irresponsible users are allowed to violate international humanitarian and human rights law.”

If negotiated, the ATT would establish much needed internationally agreed norms of responsible state behaviour with regards to arms transfers; with criteria that aims to prevent the transfer of weapons to the aforementioned irresponsible actors.

What would this mean in practice? An ATT would act to ensure that arms-exporting states have an obligation to conduct comprehensive risk assessments in line with international humanitarian and human rights law before approving international transfers of arms. In so doing, an ATT would provide a crucial delineation of the circumstances under which transfers should not be allowed.

This has important implications. For example, following a government review of arms exports to the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, the United Kingdom revoked 158 licenses because the exports were found to violate two main criteria for the UK’s Consolidated Criteria for arms exports: respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and risk that the exported weapons might be used for internal repression. The impact of certain earlier UK export decisions had become clear in Bahrain in February 2011, when a British-supplied arsenal of crowd control weapons – including stun guns, shotguns, crowd control ammunition and canisters of teargas – was reportedly used by security forces in a brutal crackdown against popular protests**. Although some licenses were revoked, the UK has a further 600 extant licenses to countries such as Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, where rights abuses are notoriously continuing. The aim of the ATT is to ensure that exporting countries consider the dangers to civilians and human rights while deciding whether or not to transfer arms and to prevent transfers where abuse is likely. An ATT is therefore hoped to help stem the flow of arms to actors – state and non-state – who use violent action to undermine rule of law and the international humanitarian laws that seek to protect civilians and sustain security.

The consequences of irresponsible arms transfers reverberate further than governmental misuse. For example, the 2008 Final Report of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan stated that arms originating from the stockpiles of Sudan, Chad and Libya had been used in attacks by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) forces in Sudan, a militia group included in the UN Security Council arms embargo on Sudan (Darfur region) from 2005 onwards. In the case of JEM attacks on the city of Omdurman in 2008, chain-of ownership tracing by the Panel identified numerous weapons manufactured in Spain, Belgium and Bulgaria, which had originally been legitimately shipped to Libya . Although many of the weapons were formerly exported to Libya in the early 1980s, the report stood as a clear sign of the danger of legitimately transferred arms leaking into the illicit market from irresponsible end-users. By assessing the responsibility of end-users before transferring arms, the ATT might go some way towards encouraging states to stem the flow of weapons to illicit markets from the back-doors of irresponsible end-users. In turn, it is hoped that it will work against the militarisation of societies that threatens the stability of the majority of civilians. 

Treaty negotiations keenly acknowledged the disproportionate impact of small arms and light weapons (SALW) on civilian populations during and after violent conflict and accordingly, SALW are covered in the scope of the treaty. As noted by the UN office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) ‘small arms are cheap, light, and easy to handle, transport and conceal. A build-up of small arms alone may not create the conflicts in which they are used, but their excessive accumulation and wide availability aggravates the tension. The violence becomes more lethal and lasts longer, and a sense of insecurity grows, which in turn lead to a greater demand for weapons…They are the weapons of choice in civil wars and for terrorism, organized crime and gang warfare.’  Including these weapons type in the treaty’s scope – and therefore extending beyond the UN Register of Conventional Arms – will increase the number of disarmament tools available to tackle the prolific spread of these weapons and their devastating impact and threat to sustained security during and following armed conflict.

Each of these aims seeks to counter a pattern of increasing spread of arms and trend towards militarisation which, far from protecting societies, drives insecurity around the world. This is true for states – with the aforementioned trend towards increased spending for conventional arms and annual increases in world military expenditure from 1998-2010 – but also for civilian society. Around the world, millions of people face the direct and indirect consequences of increased militarisation on a daily basis, whether living under the constant threat of weapons held by local gangs or criminals, or direct trauma, injury or fatality as a result of use of weapons in conflict or terrorist action. In the face of these situations, both where the state abuses civil rights or where the state is unable to protect communities from armed non-state groups, communities often choose to seek further weapons as a means of protection, and so cycles of increased militarisation and violence continue to threaten the stability of societies. By stemming a downwards flow of weapons, and making assessments about the likelihood of irresponsible or abusive use of transferred arms, a treaty of this nature may serve to prevent violent conflict and/or help to make conflict less deadly.

The current draft text does much towards these goals, by including provisions related to record keeping, international assistance and implementation, as well as creating a Secretariat to help signatory states implement the treaty, especially those who may lack the bureaucratic capacity to do so right away. More importantly, it clearly outlines the obligations that signatories would have to conduct comprehensive risks assessments in line with IHL and IHRL before approving transfers and effectively underlines the circumstances in which transfers should not be made.

However, there are still a number of issues with the draft treaty, which at present leaves loopholes in regulation that would allow for on-going abuses as a result of arms transfers if it is used as a base for further negotiations. As outlined efficiently in Control Arms’ recent briefing ‘Finishing the Job: delivering a bullet-proof ATT’ , at present the draft treaty text falls short in a number of ways. Necessary improvements to the draft include: addressing the exclusion of ammunition from the scope of the treaty; the lack of a provision that requires state reports on transfers to be publically available; lack of provisions for states to consider risks that transferred arms may be diverted or used for corruption, against development or in gender-based violence; and current ambiguity about controls when dealing with states not party to the treaty. It will also be vital for key exporting nations such as the United States to be on board with the treaty for it to be effective. If negotiations are re-opened, negotiators must once again carefully navigate the need to sharpen the treaty scope and criteria with a need to have the participation from a majority of states.

There is clearly quite some way to go before the treaty could come into force and be implemented effectively. The ATT clearly cannot act as a panacea for conflict-affected countries, nor will it hinder inter-state arms trade or domestic controls. However, if successfully negotiated and implemented, it could be an effective filter to curb the worst of irresponsible and illicit arms trading. The ATT may currently seem abstracted from the real impact of the arms trade, but in the end, as stated by the Control Arms Campaign, ‘the ATT will be judged according to its success in preventing transfers that risk contributing to or facilitating human suffering’. As UK Ambassador Jo Adamson said at the opening of the First Committee session, with the ATT ‘we have a real live example of where we can make a real difference in the real world to real people.’

 

*(data on conventional weapons exports and military expenditure derived from SIPRI Yearbook 2012: http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2012/06)
**All information in this paragraph can be found in the UK Parliament Committees on Arms Export Controls report ‘Scrutiny of Arms Exports (2012)’  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmquad/419/41902.htm 

 Image source: Oxfam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aid agencies say that weather in the region has become more erratic and years of war leave populations especially vulnerable

Prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa is the immediate cause of the severe food crisis already affecting around 10 million people in parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Rains have failed over two seasons, with a strong La Niña event having a dramatic impact across the east coast of Africa. Now this year’s wet season has officially ended, there is little prospect of rain or relief before September.

How far the current conditions, classified by the UN as “pre-famine” – one step down from “catastrophe” – can be attributed to climate change is not clear. The last intergovernment panel on climate change reportsuggested that the Horn of Africa would get wetter with climate change, while more recent academic research has concluded that global warming will increase drought in the region. However, according to aid agencies, the weather has become more erratic and extreme in recent years. The same area suffered a drought in 2006 as well as flash floods.

The structural causes of the crisis go deeper. The Horn of Africa has long been one of the most conflict-riven areas of the world and a focus of geopolitical struggles from the days of the British empire, through the cold war, to today’s the “war on terror”.

Read the rest of the article here.

Image source: Oxfam International 

Both in countries where fragility is widespread and in those that are more stable, there is a moral case for ensuring aid effectively addresses the insecurity many poor people face.

To date, the international community has had only mixed success in this regard and so the recent focus on conflict and security within the development agenda is to be welcomed. But many worry that the attention being given to these issues is motivated less by a concern for ordinary people and more by the perceived security interests of donors, one aspect of what is often referred to as the ‘securitisation’ of aid.

This briefing is aimed at the UK’s development community and does two things:

Firstly, it distinguishes between the potential for ‘securitisation’ to influence, on the one hand,where and why aid is allocated and, on the other, how that aid is used.

Secondly, it sets out a ‘developmental’ approach to meeting poor people’s security needs and calls on the UK’s development community to champion such a positive vision through its advocacy and programming.

Read the report here

Image source: Demosh

For some years, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) has been analysing the likely underlying drivers of global insecurity over the coming years, and ways to develop sustainable responses to these threats. This analysis has focused on four trends that are expected to foster substantial global and regional instability, and large-scale loss of life, of a magnitude unmatched by other potential threats. These are climate change, competition over resources, marginalisation of the ‘majority world’ and global militarisation.

What has become known as a ‘sustainable security’ paradigm rests on an understanding that we cannot successfully control all the consequences of these threats, but must instead work to resolve the causes. 

 The current security discourse in the West is dominated by what might be called the ‘control paradigm’: an approach based on the false premise that insecurity can be controlled through military force or balance of power politics and containment, thus maintaining the status quo. Such approaches to national, regional and international security are deeply flawed, and are distracting the world’s politicians from developing realistic and sustainable solutions to the most pressing threats facing the world.

Sustainable security focuses on the interconnected, long-term drivers of insecurity, including: 

• Climate change: loss of infrastructure, resource scarcity and the mass displacement of peoples, leading to civil unrest, intercommunal violence and international instability. 

• Competition over resources: competition for increasingly scarce resources – including food, water and energy – especially from unstable parts of the world. 

• Marginalisation of the majority world: increasing socio-economic divisions and the political, economic and cultural marginalisation of the vast majority of the world’s population. 

• Global militarisation: the increased use of military force as a security measure and the further spread of military technologies (including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons). 

In a globalised world in which no nation’s security is independent of their region or of the wider international community, the opinions of the majority world can no longer be neglected by global powers who seek to dictate global security policies. The likely future drivers of insecurity do not respect national boundaries, and will not be sustainably addressed by unilateral approaches. For example, as competition over energy resources increases with depleting supplies of fossil fuels, it will become more vital that positive collaboration between consumer nations in  the West and resource-rich nations in the South occurs. 

It is in the interests of all parties, including Western superpowers, for the voices of the majority world to be brought to the table. To this end, ORG initiated four consultations to explore the reactions of analysts in the global South to the sustainable security framework: one each covering Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Australasia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper synthesises the results of these four consultations, uncovering areas of commonality, and highlighting issues peculiar to their regional context.

Read the full article here.

Author: Hannah Brock

Image source: WorldIslandInfo.com

As we turn a watchful eye toward COP16 it’s tempting to get sidetracked by other major events going on around the world. There are, after all, a host of developments which stand to have an impact on security in the immediate future and arguably, many of us have become perhaps too accustomed to placing economic and energy woes ahead of the environment on our individual lists of urgent priorities. We are, after all, in the middle of the worst global financial meltdown since the Great Depression and as banks stop lending, governments cut spending, unemployment rises, public outcry gathers momentum and as we’ve already seen in Ireland and Britain recently, even in highly-developed economies social unrest can translate into violence toward governments. We’re also running out of cheap and easy access to oil, which is “the lifeblood of modern civilization,” according to the 2005 Hirsch Report – not to mention modern militaries – and as developing countries continue to rapidly industrialise, Western governments grow weary of asymmetries in energy demand per capita as well as huge demographic shifts in population size and age, which tend to favour the East. That said, it helps to be reminded that economic and energy woes go hand-in-hand when it comes to addressing climate change. Therefore, in order for activists and government representatives alike to find common ground on which to build lasting and constructive partnerships for addressing major security threats, an interdisciplinary approach is needed that can help to elucidate how environmental, energy and economic dilemmas are deeply intertwined.  

On April 11^th, in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, the announcement was made “that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years” and by 2015 “the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day.” While the Department of Energy has shied away from making similar assessments, it’s significant to note the possible relationship between declining rates of extraction, erratic fluctuations in oil prices and volatility in the wider market. At the height of the financial crisis, oil prices swung from $147 in July 2008 to $32 in late December 2008 and then back up to $70-80 from late August 2009. Chris Skrebowski, adviser to the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas’ (APPGOPO) has said that “the credit crunch, the collapse of oil prices and uncertainty about the length and depth of recession” require investors to examine “how the recession stands to impact the trajectory of oil demand growth.”

In his keynote address to the Chatham House Conference in London on February 1st 2010, OPEC Secretary General, Abdalla S. El-Badri highlighted the link between oil scarcity and economic recession as one in which government “concerns over security of supply” may come into conflict with “the need for a low-carbon future.” According to OPEC projections, demand for OPEC crude could be anywhere between 29 million and 37 million barrels per day by 2020. In response, El-Badri noted: “This translates into an uncertainty gap for upstream investments in OPEC Member Countries of over $250bn. There is therefore the very real possibility of wasting financial resources on unneeded capacity.”    

How does a decline in cheap and easy access to oil coupled with an economic recession stand to impact the environment? Well, we all remember how COP15 failed to live up to the hype and while serious climate change practitioners and academics were and are perhaps too seasoned to expect miracles, Copenhagen served as an important reminder that the emergence of a legitimate international regulatory regime for GHG emissions is as far off as one to regulate cross-border capital flows or commercial and domestic fuel efficiency standards. The implications are that if leading governments and NGOs can’t broker a deal to cut carbon emissions and create incentives for renewable energy investments, private firms are left with the responsibility for generating a colossal $160 billion in capacity investment that will be required to meet rising global energy demand by 2015 and another $150 billion needed for capacity maintenance and replacement of lost capacity. Renewable energy, for many, holds the promise of a greener and brighter future in which coal, natural gas and even nuclear can be phased out. But in the context of economic stagnation in the West and rising energy demands in the East, it isn’t hard to imagine a large percentage of investment moving in the direction of what are at the moment and by comparison, low-risk endeavours.

Whether or not ‘low risk’ to readers, can be ascribed to mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia, deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico or tar sands and oil shale extraction in Alberta, depends largely on one’s list of urgent priorities. If we can’t reach an intergovernmental deal to regulate GHG emissions and incentivise renewable investment (or by virtue of the same deal establish at least a regionally-competitive price for carbon that will help boost finance and innovation in carbon capture and storage), then firms are left with few options but to continue investing in fossil fuels in order to meet demand. If we can’t reach an intergovernmental deal to regulate speculative trading and irresponsible lending, then we can expect more erratic boom and bust cycles to follow after we’ve recovered from this one, standing to stifle what will become even more crucial investments in renewable technologies. Yet the present course of discourse, if you will, tends to view these issues as separate and distinct.

Some analysts, representing both governmental and non-governmental organisations, appear convinced that economic matters have little to do with climate change and that the politics of energy supplies is not the domain of environmentalists. But if we take into consideration the myriad factors which tie energy supply and demand for fossil fuels in with rising GHG emissions and a recession that has stifled investment for much-needed innovation, then the case for a more interdisciplinary approach becomes readily apparent. From a national security standpoint, a lack of investment and innovation in renewable technologies challenges both the US and UK governments to make do with existing fossil fuel-intensive technologies, while under pressure to reduce overall expenditures. The US military in particular as the “largest single user of petrol in the world” according to BP, faces an overwhelming uphill battle in fighting two already costly wars. Meanwhile, the Joint Operating Environment report also reminds us of what has happened historically on occasions when there is serious economic upheaval: “One should not forget that the Great Depression spawned a number of totalitarian regimes that sought economic prosperity for their nations by ruthless conquest.”

To complicate matters, a recent paper published by the Harvard Kennedy School cites ‘Mega Catastrophes,’ that may ensue in the event that average global temperatures increase by more than 4 degrees – putting pressure on both climate activists and government representatives to work more closely together in pursuit of a coordinated response. According to their most recent assessment, “melting and collapse of ice sheets in the West Antarctic or Greenland leading to drastic sea level rise (several meters over time)” could have significant and perhaps even irreversible consequences for vulnerable populations. The report goes on to note that: “Traditional responses to the risk of extreme events are of limited value in mitigating risks of a mega-catastrophe. The underlying changes in the climatic system could not be reversed over any time scale relevant for decision makers, limiting the efficacy of traditional recovery measures… Impacts could be difficult to smooth over time, even for governments.”

Whether it’s the economy, energy or the environment which you value most, when it comes to security, each holds equal weight. If security can be defined in terms of what is or isn’t sustainable, then it must evolve to incorporate additional elements that transcend more traditional views on geopolitics. Depleting oil supplies and price volatility, vulnerability to economic shocks and climate change are all issues which are deeply interrelated. Any government in the West or the East that wishes to protect its citizens from further and/or ensuing trauma should devote ample time to coming up with more holistic models and methods for understanding the causal factors which interconnect all three. As such, I propose a new slogan for sustainable security: the three Es – ‘environment, energy, economy.’ In terms of priority, all are of equal importance to the future of modern civilizations.

Phillip Bruner is Founder of the Green Investment Forum and a guest lecturer in global political economy at the University of Edinburgh

Image source: NCPA Photos

In the current military air strikes against Libyan forces, nations that once supported Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime are now—based on sanction by the United Nations—attacking the forces they were marketing and delivering arms to only weeks before. As the violence escalates and the international community examines how to respond to internal conflict and human rights violations, arms supply should be analysed as it implicates the international community as complicit in the violence it is now trying to end. 

The United Nations Security Council has responded to the violence in Libya with remarkable speed and determination. Within two weeks of the start of the uprising in February, the Security Council unanimously denounced the gross and systematic violation of human rights by the Libyan regime and imposed sanctions, including an arms embargo. Contrary to past decisions on UN sanctions relating to internal conflicts, Russia and China did not delay in voting to support sanctions against Libya, thereby responding, in particular, to calls from regional organizations. More remarkably, in March Russia and China decided not to veto a Security Council resolution allowing the use of force to protect the civilian population, again counter to their usual votes. 

Whatever the final impact of the UN sanction, the swiftness of the decisions and their wide international support distinguishes the Libyan response from earlier failed attempts to quickly enforce broad UN sanctions to protect civilians from political violence. For example, in 2007 and 2008 the Security Council could not agree on sanctions against Zimbabwe and Myanmar in response to human rights abuses. The key objections by Russia and China in these cases were that international sanctions were not appropriate to address internal situations. The unanimous condemnation of Gaddafi’s regime, however, contrasts starkly to the previously good relations it enjoyed with many governments. 

Prior UN and European Union (EU) sanctions on Libya including arms embargoes were lifted in 2003 and 2004, after Libya announced that it had ended its nuclear, biological and chemical weapon programmes and had agreed to compensate the families of those who died in Libyan acts of terrorism. Libya’s return to the international community was welcomed owing to its oil resources, its geographical position as a buffer against unwanted migration from Africa to Europe and its potential role in fighting al-Qaeda related groups. 

However, part of the process of inclusion was acceptance of Libya as a buyer of arms, which has implicated the supplier countries in the sustained oppressive military rule. After more than a decade of being cut off from arms supplies, Libya was expected to spend billions of dollars to modernize parts of its large arsenal of outdated arms. In anticipation to a lucrative market, many companies eagerly competed to supply arms to the wealthy state. In November 2010 the Libdex 2010 arms fair in Tripoli reportedly attracted 100 companies from at least 24 countries. Such sales efforts were often politically supported, with the leaders of France, Italy, Russia and the United Kingdom visiting Libya accompanied by representatives of arms companies. Competing with several EU countries, Russia laboured to sell combat aircraft and advanced S-300 long-range air defence systems and clinched deals for the overhaul of tanks and fast attack craft.

Despite EU embargoes and arms supply restrictions having been imposed following human rights abuses in, for example, China, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, several EU states have until now seemingly overlooked Gaddafi’s 41-year track record as an authoritarian and unpredictable ruler with a well-documented lack of respect for human rights.  

Although Italy is now a main base for operations against Libya, it had previously cornered the Libyan market for advanced border security and surveillance equipment. French President Nikolas Sarkozy was one of the first to reverse his position from actively supporting arms sales to denouncing the regime and calling for military action. This decision came immediately after the return from Libya of the last French engineers who had been working on military contracts with Libya. French Rafale combat aircraft, which France had been eagerly trying to sell to Libya, have now bombed Libyan howitzers, which an Italian company had planned to refurbish under a contract signed in 2010. The UK, also at the forefront of the military action against Libya, marketed advanced Jernas short-range air defence systems and supplied an advanced communication system for Libyan T-72 tanks which are now being targeted by UK combat aircraft. Over half of the exhibitors at Libdex 2010 were from the UK.

Libya has also procured large quantities of small arms and light weapons. These are likely to proliferate throughout Libya, prolonging the violence, or they may leak to conflicts or armed groups elsewhere. In 2007–2008 Ukraine supplied over 100 000 rifles to Libya. Russia reportedly signed a major contract for small arms in 2010 and probably also delivered several compact Igla-S advanced anti-aircraft missiles. In 2009 an Italian company supplied about 10 000 handguns, and authorities in Belgium allowed the supply of a first small batch of high-tech rifles. The latter argued that the weapons were intended for use by Libyan troops protecting humanitarian aid convoys to Darfur. The UK did not allow an arms dealer to export 130 000 Kalashnikov rifles because of the risk that they would be diverted to Darfur, but it allowed the marketing of sniper rifles to Libya. 

Despite the relentless sales efforts by arms companies, Libya held back on contracts for new major arms. Therefore, it is possible that restraint in supplies of major arms may not have stopped the current bloodshed. 

However, it can also be argued that the eagerness of many states to supply weapons and so-called security equipment—symbols of power and tools of repression—signalled support of Gaddafi’s regime. Furthermore, if the violence had started later or if suppliers had succeeded earlier in convincing Gaddafi to procure advanced arms, the presence of these weapons in Libya could have complicated the decisions about and enforcement of the current UN sanctioned actions against Libya. In particular, if Russian S-300s and British Jernas Surface to Air Missile systems had been delivered, they would have been major obstacles in enforcing the no-fly zone.

Soon after the First Gulf War, the international community reviewed their arms trade policies, realizing that supplying arms to Iraq may have strengthened Saddam Hussein’s belief that he could invade Kuwait without punishment. Guidelines for arms exports were formulated, and transparency in international arms flows increased. The role of arms supplies to Libya in the present conflict must be similarly examined. The swiftness with which an arms embargo was imposed as a first action is encouraging. However, to inform the debate on arms trade controls, a critical evaluation of arms supply policies towards Libya is paramount in order to assess how such policies risk emboldening authoritarian regimes and how commercial and national interests may blind governments to the repercussions involved in arms trade.

Image source: B.R.Q.

This article was originally published on SIPRI