Redefining Security by Jessica Tuchman Mathews (1989) Summary
The line between foreign and domestic policy is blurred
Economic growth requires more energy, more emissions and wastes, more land converted from its natural state, and more need for the products of natural systems
Individuals and governments are beginning to feel the cost of substituting for the goods and services once freely provided by healthy ecosystems
For the first time in history, man is rapidly and inadvertently altering the basic physiology of the planet
Population growth lies at the core of most environmental trends
Policies, technologies, and institutions determine the impact of population growth; more importantly is the rate of growth
For many developing countries, continued growth at the current rates means that available capital is swallowed up in meeting the daily needs of people, rather than invested in resource conservation and job creation; such policies lay the foundation of a bleak future
Nonrenewable resources, such as coal, oil, and minerals, are inexhaustible; renewable resources can be finite; there are threshold effects for renewable resources that contradict the name given to them, with unfortunate consequences for policy
The most serious form of renewable resources decline is the deforestation taking place throughout the tropics; it impoverishes about a billion people (Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, much of Asia, and South America)
Species are being lost in the tropical forests 1,000-10,000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction; as many as 20% of all the species now living may be lost by the year 2000; The loss will be felt aesthetically, scientifically, and economically
These genetic resources are an important source of food, materials for energy and construction, chemicals for pharmaceuticals and industry, vehicles for health and safety testing, natural pest controls and dozens of other uses
Soil degradation is another major concern; a cause and consequence of poverty; it is causing declining agricultural productivity on nearly two billion hectares
The causes are over-cultivation, over-grazing, erosion, salinization, and waterlogging due to poorly managed irrigation
Patterns of land tenure have an immense environmental impact; the great mass of the rural population is pushed onto the most damage-prone land, usually dry or erodible slopes, and into the forests
Environmental decline occasionally leads directly to conflict, especially when scarce water resources must be shared; its impact on national security is felt in declining economic performance and, therefore, on political stability.
The underlying cause of turmoil is often ignored; instead governments address the poverty and instability that are its results.
The resulting economic decline leads to frustration, resentment, domestic unrest or even civil war
Human suffering and turmoil make countries vulnerable for authoritarian governments or external subversion.
Resource mismanagement, religious and ethnic conflicts, political repression cause mass movements of environmental refugees
Environmental decline occasionally leads directly to conflict, especially when scarce water resources must be shared; its impact on national security is felt in declining economic performance and, therefore, on political stability.
The underlying cause of turmoil is often ignored; instead governments address the poverty and instability that are its results.
The resulting economic decline leads to frustration, resentment, domestic unrest or even civil war
Human suffering and turmoil make countries vulnerable for authoritarian governments or external subversion.
Resource mismanagement, religious and ethnic conflicts, political repression cause mass movements of environmental refugees
Mankind is altering both the carbon and nitrogen cycles, having increased the natural carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere by 25 percent.
The production of commercial fertilizer has doubled the amount of nitrogen nature makes available to living things
Chlorofluorocarbons, has punched a continent-sized "hole" in the ozone layer at the top of the stratosphere over Antarctica, and caused a smaller, but growing loss of ozone all around the planet.
As emissions of greenhouse gases increase, the planet is warmed unnaturally.
Carbon dioxide produced from the combustion of fossil fuels and by deforestation is responsible for about half of the greenhouse effect. A number of other gases, notably methane (natural gas), nitrous oxide, ozone (in the lower atmosphere, as distinguished from the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere) and the man-made chlorofluorocarbons are responsible for the other half.
Achieving sustainable economic growth will require the remodeling of agriculture, energy use and industrial production after nature's example -- their reinvention, in fact.
A vital first step, one that can and should be taken in the very near term, would be to reinvent the national income accounts by which gross national product is measured. GNP is the foundation on which national
economic policies are built, yet its calculation does not take into account resource depletion. A second step would be to invent a set of indicators by which global environmental health could be measured
Development assistance also requires new tools. Bilateral and multilateral donors have found that project success rates climb when nongovernmental organizations distribute funds and direct programs. Such projects are more decentralized, more attuned to local needs and desires, and have a much higher degree of local participation in project planning.
Better ways must also be found to turn the scientific and engineering strengths of the industrialized world to the solution of the developing world's problems.
On the political front, the need for a new diplomacy and for new institutions and regulatory regimes to cope with the world's growing environmental interdependence
The developing countries especially will need to pool their efforts in the search for solutions
It will be necessary to reduce the dominance of the superpower relationship which so often encourages other countries to adopt a wait-and-see attitude
Among these new approaches, perhaps the most difficult to achieve will be ways to negotiate successfully in the presence of substantial scientific uncertainty
The new model will have to be fluid, allowing a rolling process of intermediate or self-adjusting agreements that respond quickly to growing scientific understanding, will require new economic methods for assessing risk, especially where the possible outcomes are irreversible, and may need to forge a more involved and constructive role for the private sector.
Future arrangements will require provisions for monitoring, enforcement and compensation, even when damage cannot be assigned a precise monetary value.
These are all areas where international law has traditionally been weak.
Four steps are most important:
- prompt revision of the Montreal Treaty, to eliminate completely the production of chlorofluorocarbons no later than the year 2000;
- full support for and implementation of the global Tropical Forestry Action Plan developed by the World Bank, the U.N.'s Development Programme, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the World Resources Institute;
- sufficient support for family planning programs to ensure that all who want contraceptives have affordable access to them at least by the end of the decade;
- and, for the United States, a ten-year energy policy with the goal of increasing the energy productivity of our economy (i.e., reducing the amount of energy required to produce a dollar of GNP) by about three percent each year.
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