To browse a list of all of the articles EXCLUSIVELY written for sustainablesecurity.org – follow this link
Category: Issues
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Competition over resources
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Marginalisation of the majority world
To browse a list of all of the articles EXCLUSIVELY written for sustainablesecurity.org – follow this link -
Global militarisation
Long-time and widely respected arms control watcher, Michael Krepon has written an interesting post on the Arms Control Wonk website about the perils of assuming that a negotiated outcome is always a good one. As the phrase goes, “the devil is in the detail” and looking very carefully at the relationship between militarisation and the provisions that get contained in treaties is all important.
Image source: UN.
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Global militarisation
The ‘New START’ agreement recently signed by the US and Russia is an important first step on the road to nuclear disarmament but much of the hard work in reducing and potentially eliminating the vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons held by nations across the globe is still to be done. Before any meaningful multilateral talks and possible agreements on abolition can seriously begin, the US and Russia will need to go much further in reducing their nuclear ordinance writes Andrew Futter, exclusively for sustainablesecurity.orgImage source: PhillipC
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Climate change
Many leading military analysts in the United States are increasingly alert to the link between security and climate change. Is international terrorism really the single greatest threat to world security? Read more » -
Climate change
Avoiding the coming catastrophic nexus of climate change, food, water and energy shortages, along with worsening poverty, requires a global technological overhaul involving investments of 1.9 trillion dollars each year for the next 40 years, said experts from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) in Geneva Tuesday.
“The need for a technological revolution is both a development and existential imperative for civilisation,” said Rob Vos, lead author of a new report, “The Great Green Technological Transformation”.
Article source: Terraviva
Image source: Paul Keller
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Marginalisation of the majority world
The Middle East and North Africa is a region of great diversity. It encompasses Arab and many other ethnic populations, theocratic and secular states, democracies and authoritarian regimes. A region of immense wealth and crippling poverty; it is blessed (some might say cursed) with vast resources, not least oil, but has not always proved able to manage them for the benefit of ordinary people. Read more » -
Marginalisation of the majority world
International Alert, together with the Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS) and the Regional Centre for Security Studies and the Peacebuilding and Development Institute in Sri Lanka, co-hosted an expert roundtable on the Security Implications of Climate Change in South Asia in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 29th-30th March 2010.The two-day event brought together experts from Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka for an important regional exchange on issues related to climate change and security. International Alert’s recent work on climate change, fragility and conflict has shown that the security implications of climate change are a very real but relatively unexplored issue worldwide and in this region. This event marked the start of a significant process, creating a space for a critical discussion on the interlinkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia.
Source: International Alert
Image source: Orangeadnan
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Global militarisation
- Purchase from Amazon:
- Losing Control: Global Security in the Twenty-first Century
- Author: Paul Rogers
- Publisher: Pluto Press ()
- Binding: Paperback, pages
- Price: £15.99
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Competition over resources
A new report that highlights Afghanistan’s extensive mineral deposits provides fuel for the United States’s military project. But it also signals the existence of a wider resource-competition that reflects the 21st-century’s emerging geopolitics.Source: openDemocracy
Image source: isafmedia
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Marginalisation of the majority world
The International Peace & Security Institute (IPSI), in collaboration with The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Conflict Management Program, hosted a high-level panel discussion and networking reception on Wednesday, August 17. The event, “Why Here, Not There? Investigating emerging nonviolent movements,” examined the dynamics that enable nonviolent movements to occur in some regions and not others at specific moments in time. The event was broadcast live nationwide and on the internet by C-SPAN.
Watch the video here: IPSI
Image source: Al Jazeera English
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Competition over resources
While the public debate about resource conflicts focuses on the risk of supply disruptions for developed countries, the potentially more risky types of resource conflict are usually ignored. As part of a two-year research project on behalf of the German Federal Environment Agency, adelphi and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy, and Environment have analyzed the risks of international conflict linked to natural resources in a series of reports titled Beyond Supply Risks – The Conflict Potential of Natural Resources.
Article source: The New Security Beat
Image source: Olmovich
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Global militarisation
The tragic events of September 11th 2001 propelled the western security agenda down a reactive, narrow, and self-defeating path defined by the ‘War on Terror.’ The eighth anniversary of 9/11 is marked by a groundswell of voices from policymakers and analysts acknowledging that the greatest threats to global security require moving beyond a limited focus on terrorism. This groundswell is partly a response to the multiple failings of the current approach, but has been given new energy by the global financial crisis and the increased prominence of issues such as climate change.
However, the specific policy recommendations arising from these new assessments still tend to be framed predominantly in terms of national self interest and preservation of the status-quo, rather than in terms of a more fundamental transformation of global relations in the direction of collective human security. Yet such a transformation is viewed by many as the only sure means of securing lasting security for the people of any individual nation. An emerging approach, which focuses on addressing the root causes of conflict, systemically, and collaboratively, to achieve long term change, has come to be known as; ‘sustainable security’. SustainableSecurity.org is a new platform for developing this approach, coming to understand its implications for policy, and promoting these implications to those who can act on them.
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Climate change
The World Development 2010 climate Change Report published in September outlines how a 2 degree centigrade rise in global temperature would likely cost Africa 4% of GDP whilst the impact on India would be %5 of GDP. Read more » -
Competition over resources
Ian Shields writes exclusively for sustainablesecurity.org:“The impact of the civil airline industry on the environment is well documented, but what is less well considered is the impact of the military sector. This article will identify three key areas where military aviation has a major impact on the environment, and suggest mitigation policies for each: hydro-carbon use, ground contamination and noise.”
About the author: Ian Shields is a retired, senior Air Force Officer and now a respected commentator on Defence and security matters, particularly with relation to Air and Space Power. He holds an MA from KCL, and MPhil from Cambridge and is presently undertaking a PhD in International Studies, also at Cambridge. He can be contacted via his web-site, www.ian-shields.co.uk
Image source: chanelcoco872
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Climate change
Roger Howard writes, exclusively for sustainablesecurity.org, that:‘The presence of valuable natural resources in the Arctic region, or even the mere possibility of finding them, poses a subtly different challenge to international peace than usually supposed. For instead of fighting over resources, governments could instead feel threatened by the heightened foreign presence that the search, or exploitation, of these resources will bring to places that are important for other, quite independent, reasons. This is potentially a recipe for international mistrust that could conceivably spill over’.
Image Source: psd
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Marginalisation of the majority world
This paper examines the context of the decision to go to war after 9/11 and the anticipated results. It goes on to analyse the actual consequences and seeks to explain why they have been so radically different to original expectations by the United States and its closest coalition partners such as the UK. The paper then updates the analysis of the major global challenges that Oxford Research Group has previously discussed and the need for a new paradigm focused on sustainable security. It concludes by assessing how the experience of the eight years that have followed the 9/11 atrocities might make a change of paradigm more likely.
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Marginalisation of the majority world
Writing for SustainableSsecurity.org, Elizabeth Wilke argues that a new conceptualization of insecurity and instability is needed in a world with greater and freer movement of goods, services and people – both legal and illicit – greater demands on weakening governments and the internationalization of local conflicts. The new insecurity is fundamentally derived from the responses of people and groups to greater uncertainty in an increasingly volatile world. Governments, and increasingly other actors need to recognize this in order to promote sustained stability in the long-term, locally and internationally.Image source: bass_nroll
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Marginalisation of the majority world
Writing for the New Security Beat, Schuyler Null discusses a recent event on creating a new national security narrative for the US held at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The event was based on a white paper by two active military officers writing under the pseudonym “Mr. Y” (echoing George Kennan’s famous “X” article). In “A National Strategic Narrative,” Captain Wayne Porter (USN) and Colonel Mark Mykleby (USMC) argue that the United States needs to move away from an outmoded 20th century model of containment, deterrence, and control towards a “strategy of sustainability.”
Image source: LizaP.
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Marginalisation of the majority world
Poor people want to feel safe just like anyone else. Security and access to justice for poor people are development goals in their own right whether in the midst of endemic violence, such as in parts of Somalia or Afghanistan, or in more stable countries where the police and judicial services may still be inadequate, unfair or abusive. Basic security and the rule of law are also necessary for other areas of development to take root and flourish.Image source: Demosh