Category: Issues

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines food security as “all people at all times having both physical and economic access to the basic food they need”. However, due to a complex range of interconnected issues from climate change to misguided economic policies, political failure and social marginalisation, over 2 billion people across the world live in constant food Insecurity. It is important to take a sustainable security approach to look at the importance of “physical and economic access to basic food” by exploring the links between food insecurity and violence.

Image source: Bioversity International

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The 2010 Joint Operating Environment report, recently released by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, rightly recognizes climate change as one of 10 trends “most likely to impact the Joint Force” writes Laura Conley.

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‘The sheer scale and chaotic construction of the favelas, which became home to hundreds of thousands of migrants, made them the ideal milieu for drug gangs to hide from the police and set up initially paternalistic, de-facto governments, albeit without any concrete political aims.’

This report explores the human insecurity issues that stem from rapid urbanisation, poverty, cultures of violence and ineffective governance.

Attach PDF: 

TomorrowsCrisesToday-Chapter6.pdf

New Wikileaks releases today have shown the Arctic oil rush is not just a threat to the environment and our climate, but also to peace. The documents show how deadly serious the scramble for Arctic resources has become. And the terrible irony of it is that instead of seeing the melting of the Arctic ice cap as a spur to action on climate change, the leaders of the Arctic nations are instead investing in military hardware to fight for the oil beneath it. They’re preparing to fight to extract the very fossil fuels that caused the melting in the first place.

Article source: Greenpeace UK

Image source: U.S. Geological Survey

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The recently held  Indian Defexpo 2010 (described as “Asia’s biggest arms bazaar”) illustrates the increasing levels of militarisation both in India but also globally writes Nitasha Kaul.

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This case study explores the potential impact of climate change on security and conflict in Bangladesh. As international researchers have started to make the link between climate change, insecurity and conflict, they have raised concerns that Bangladesh’s extreme vulnerability to the environmental effects of climate change may create conditions that put it at risk of greater insecurity and possible conflict.

Attach PDF: 

Climate Change and Security in Bangladesh.pdf

Food security will remain out of reach for many people, especially women and children, in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, or Laos, if the country continues to emphasize commodities and resources development at the expense of the environment and livelihoods while ignoring global trends for food and energy. Read more »

From the Center for American Progress:

“If we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades,” argues Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, then our “country must strengthen other important elements of national power both institutionally and financially, and create the capability to integrate and apply all of the elements of national power to problems and challenges abroad.” Gates’s experience leading our armed forces under two presidents underscores the importance of not relying solely on our unquestioned military might to protect our shores and national security interests around the globe. Instead, Gates maintains, we need to adopt the concept of sustainable security—a strategy that embraces the need to slim defense spending, bringing our own fiscal house in order while investing in nonmilitary economic and social development programs abroad to combat the conditions that breed poverty and political instability.

Article and image source: Center for American Progress

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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.

Read the full article here.

Author: Hannah Brock

Image source: WorldIslandInfo.com

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In a paper exclusively written for sustainablesecurity.org, Serena Joseph-Harris (former High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago) focuses on competition over natural resources, the role of maritime routes in the Caribbean, and the importance of multilateral approaches to finding sustainable solutions in the Caribbean.

Image source: Len@Loblolly

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