Monitoring Environment and Security - Integrating concepts and enhancing methodologies

Full text

Monitoring
Environment
and Security
Integrating concepts
and enhancing
methodologies
Published by:
© BICC
Bonn International Center for Conversion -
Internationales Konversionszentrum Bonn
GmbH
An der Elisabethkirche 25
53113 Bonn
Germany
Phone: +49-228-911 96-0
Fax: +49-228-24 12 15
E-mail: bicc@bicc.de
Internet: www.bicc.de
ISSN: 0947-7322
Director: Peter J. Croll
Managing editor: Heike Webb
Editing: Manisha Samal
Layout: Svenja Bends/Katharina Moraht
Publishing management: Heike Webb
Picture graphics (title): Christian Kraft
brief 37

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations 4
Acknowledgments 7
Introduction, by Ruth Vollmer 8
1 Approaches to Security, Environment, and
Conict
Security. What Is it? What Does It Do? 13
by Marc von Boemcken
Reconceptualization of Security Strategies and 17
Political Processes, by Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf
Environmental Change, Natural Resources, and 20
Violent Conict, by Lars Wirkus and Jolien Schure
The Global Water Crisis—Are Water-related Violent 28
Conicts Becoming More Likely? by Lars Wirkus and
Janos Bogardi
2 Environmental Security- and Conict Risk
Assessments
Environmental Security Assessments: The IES Method, 35
by Jeanna Hyde Hecker
Quantifying the Risk of Armed Conict at Country 38
Level—A Way Forward, by Clementine Burnley,
Dirk Buda and François Kayitakire
Environmental Factors as Triggers for Violent 43
Conict: Empirical Evidence from the FAST Data Base,
by Heinz Krummenacher
Contents BICC at a glance
Research, Consultancy, Capacity-building...
BICC is an independent, non-prot organization
dedicated to promoting peace and development,
through the sustained and effective transformation
of military-related structures, assets, functions and
processes. Disarmament frees funds which can be used
to combat poverty. Conversion allows for a targeted
and best possible re-use of these nancial resources.
Both processes complement each other and contribute
to improving human security.
In doing this, BICC recognizes that the narrow concept
of national security, embodied above all in the armed
forces, has been surpassed by that of global security
and, moreover, that global security cannot be achieved
without seriously reducing poverty, improving health
care and extending good governance throughout the
world, in short: without human security in the broader
sense.
BICC’s services can be divided into the following
groups:
Applied research (scientic contributions, back- •
ground and evaluation studies, impact analysis,
development of indicators collection and analyses
of data) as well as work to accompany and
implement projects.
Consultancy (background analyses, recommen- •
dations for action, expert workshops).
Capacity-building by designing concepts and •
modules for education and training.
It is BICC’s mission to contribute to peace and
development by designing measures to prevent violent
conict and to foster constructive transformation.
It is in the eld of ‘conict’ that the importance of BICC
within the framework of the German research arena
is most striking. BICC is an applied research institute
whose work is characterized by a methodological and
topical ‘looping’ of applied research, consultancy and
capacity-building. BICC is in the process of reorienting
and systematically enhancing its focus on research
and consultancy, as can be seen in the elds of SALW
control, demobilization and reintegration of former
combatants, migration and diaspora, natural resources,
security sector reform and the security of failed states.
Along with conducting research, running conferences
and publishing their ndings BICC’s international staff
are also involved in consultancy, providing policy
recommendations, training, and practical project
work. By making information and advice available to
governments, NGOs, and other public or private sector
organizations, and especially through exhibitions aimed
at the general public, they are working towards raising
awareness of the key issues that drive BICC forward.
BICC was established in 1994 with support from the
State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The Center’s
Trustees include the two Federal States of North Rhine-
Westphalia and Brandenburg as well as the NRW.BANK,
and the Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft NRW (LEG).
About the editors
3 Treaty Monitoring Based on Geographic
Information Systems and Remote Sensing
Monitoring Multilateral Humanitarian Agreements, 47
by Stefan Schneiderbauer
Monitoring Environmental Agreements and 53
Conventions, by Peter Zeil, Hermann Klug, and Irmgard
Niemeyer
Effectiveness of Space-based Civil Remote Sensing 60
Satellites for Treaty Monitoring, by Bhupendra Jasani
Challenges in Treaty Monitoring, by Irmgard Niemeyer 64
4 Summary and Recommendations
Summary of the Seminar Discussion, by Ruth Vollmer 69
Suggestions for a Future Agenda for Research and 75
Practice, by Ruth Vollmer, Lars Wirkus and Peter Zeil
Annex
I Seminar Program 86
II The Contributors 89
Ruth Vollmer
is Project Assistant on Environment and Conict Research at BICC.
Lars Wirkus
is Senior Researcher at BICC and a Research Associate and Project
Manager at the Institute for Environment and Human Security
(UNU-EHS) of United Nations University.
The views expressed in section 1–3 of this brief are those of
the authors and not necessarily the views of the editors or
BICC. The views expressed in section 4 are those compiled
by the editors from the correspondence and discussion
among the individual participants and do not necessarily
express the views of any particular participant or their
organizations.

3
brief 37
Monitoring
Environment and
Security
Integrating concepts and
enhancing methodologies
Seminar documentation
Lars Wirkus and Ruth Vollmer (eds.)

4
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
AIACC Assessment of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change
ai Amnesty International
AOI Area of interest
BAR Basins at Risk
BCPR Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery
CDM Clean Development Mechanism
CEOS Committe on Earth Observation Satellites
CFE Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora
CJMC Ceasere Joint Military Committee
CNA Centre for Naval Analysis
COPINE Cooperative Information Network
COPUOS United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space
CSD Commission on Sustainable Development
CSPs Country Strategy Papers
CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
CWC Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and
Use of Chemical Weapons and their Destruction
DBMS Database Management System
DFID (UK) Department for International Development
DIIS Danish Institute for International Studies
EC European Commission
EEA European Environment Agency
EITI Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
ENP European Neighbourhood Policy
ENVSEC Environment and Security
EO Earth observation
EON Earth Observation for Natura
ESA European Space Agency
ESPA Environmental Security for Poverty Alleviation (IES)
ESS European Security Strategy
EU European Union
FAST Früherkennung und Analyse von Spannungen und Tatsachenermittlung / Early
Recognition of Tensions and Factnding
FOI Swedish Defense Research Institute
GAW Global Atmosphere Watch
GCC Global Climate Change
GCOS Global Climate Observing System
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GDRC The Global Development Research Center
GEO Global Environment Outlook
GEO Group on Earth Observation
GEOSS Global Earth Observation System of Systems
GIS Geographic Information System
GMES Global Monitoring for Environment and Security

5
GMOSS Global Monitoring for Security and Stability
GOFC Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover
GOLD Global Observation of Land Dynamics
GOME Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment
GOOS Global Ocean Observing System
GSE GMES Service Element
GSI Guiana Shield Initiative
GTOS Global Terrestrial Observing System
HDR Human Development Report
HMA Heterogeneous Mission Access
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
IDPs Internally Displaced Persons
IES Institute for Environmental Security
IGOS Integrated Global Observing Strategy
ILO International Labor Organization
INSPIRE Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
JDB Joint Defence Board
JMC Joint Military Commission
JRC Joint Research Centre
LHWP Lesotho Highland Water Project
MAB Man and Biosphere
MA Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
MCMC Markov chain Monte Carlo (method)
MDG Millennium Development Goal
MEA Multilateral Environmental Agreement
MICROCON Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conicts
NATO CCMS NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society
NGO Non-governmental organizations
NoE Network of Excellence
NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
NSS National Security Strategy
ODA Ofcial Development Assistance
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OSCE Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
PCCP from Potential Conict to Cooperation Potential
PCDMB Post-Conict and Disaster Management Branch (UNEP)
PRECIS Providing Regional Climates for Impact Studies
PRIO International Peace Research Institute, Oslo
RADAR Radio Detection and Ranging
RCM Resource Conict Monitor
RCM Regional Climate Model
REC The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe
RGI Resource Governance Index
ROD Reporting Obligations Database

6
RS Remote Sensing
RUF Revolutionary United Front
SACs Special Areas of Conservation
SAR Synthetic Aperture Radar
SPAs Special Protection Areas
SPIN Spatial Indicators for European Nature Conservation
SOE Status of the Environment
SRTM Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
SOFA Status of Force Agreement
TFDD Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Data Base
UN United Nations
UNAMIS United Nations Advanced Mission in Sudan
UNCBD United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertication
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
UNCHE United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
GRID Global Resource Information Database
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientic, and Cultural Organization
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNISPACE United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer
Space
UNITA União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola
UNODC United Nations Ofce on Drugs and Crime
UNOOSA United Nations Ofce of Outer Space Affairs
UNOSAT United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Programme
UNSD United Nations Statistics Division
UNU-EHS United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security
VHR Very High Resolution imageries
VMT Verication and Monitoring Team
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
WCED World Commission on Environment and Development
WCRP World Climate Research Programme
WSSD World Summit on Sustainable Development
WWDR World Water Development Report

7
First of all, we would like to thank all the contributors
to this brief and participants of the Seminar on
‘Environment and Conict’ for their ideas, input, and
cooperation. We are indebted to the European
Commission’s Directorate General Enterprise & Industry
for funding the GMOSS Network of Excellence in its Sixth
Framework Programme and making the Seminar and this
publication possible. We hope that this interdisciplinary
initiative will lead to more research and cooperation,
as these topics will be more relevant in the future.
In particular, we would like to thank Peter Zeil (Z_GIS)
for his continuous support in planning the Seminar, and
realizing this publication. We would also like to thank
Heike Webb (BICC) for her consistent support in the
organization and documentation of the Seminar and
Manisha Samal (BICC), who did a tremendous job
editing all these texts.
Acknowledgments

8
Introduction
The environment-security nexus is not a new topic in
academic and political discourse, but it has currently
gained new signicance due to a number of factors.
Growing concerns about global environmental change
including climate change and fears about increasing
demand and competition for natural resources caused
by population growth and economic development
both gure prominently among these factors.
This Introduction briey touches on some of the issues,
which are relevant in this context without discussing
them in detail.
Background
Very broadly speaking, one can differentiate between
two different aspects of the environment2-security
complex. The rst aspect is that ecosystem integrity is
crucial for the sustainability of people’s livelihoods.
Therefore, certain environmental conditions—often
resulting from environmental change, such as qualitative
(pollution) or quantitative (depletion) scarcity of
ecosystem services—and also natural disasters, can
pose an acute threat to security. Such a perspective on
security is based on a broadly understood meaning of
the term frequently referred to as human security, which
centers on the individual as the object of security and
considers vulnerability as a crucial factor. As there are
numerous denitions and approaches to security in this
context, they will not be elaborated here; a discussion
of security is given in the contribution by Marc von
Boemcken, p. 13ff.3
Besides this, there have also been attempts to link
environment to other security realms. After the end of
the Cold War environment has become top of the list of
new potential threats to national security.4 It was linked
to international security as it soon became evident that
national solutions to environmental problems would not
be sustainable in the long run and because of fears
about international tensions caused by environmental
issues. A very different perspective is taken by
Ruth Vollmer1
approaches, which focus on the security of ecosystems
(for an overview see, for example, Matthew, 1996 and
2002).
The second aspect is the question whether there
is a relation between environment and conict.
One assumption in this context is that a number of
environment-related factors such as environmental
degradation or depletion, access to, and management
of natural resources can lead or contribute to the
outbreak of violent conict.5 Such connections have
been explored scientically since the 1980s from various
perspectives and with different foci, i.e. international vs.
local conicts. Researchers typically worked on a case-
study basis and basically all of them emphasized the
role of different structural and other variables beyond
the environment.6 Overviews on how this branch of
research evolved and some criticism thereof are
provided for example by Dalby, 2008; Matthew et al.,
2002 and Fraser, 2002.7
However, the two aspects mentioned above are not
always clearly separated from each other.8 The notion
of environmental (in-)security is sometimes used to refer
to environment-related risks of violent conict or security
implications of environmental change for (northern)
states. Furthermore, a human security perspective
that centers on the rights and needs of marginal and
vulnerable groups and individuals, does not necessarily
exclude the possibility of environmentally-induced
conict potentials (Dalby, 2008). Recently, suggestions
about potential links between human (in-)security and
the risk of armed conict in the realm of environment
have been made by Barnett and Adger (2007).
Central to both of these aspects are the questions: What
exactly constitutes the relevant environmental factors?
Can they be measured, and if so, how? Recent theories
on environment and security/conict do not see a
simple relation between scarcity and insecurity/conict
anymore. One has come to realize that environmental
scarcity and its consequences are highly dependent
on governance and a broad range of structural
factors, which in turn determine the coping capacities,
adaptation potentials, and dispute settlement
mechanisms of societies.9 For informed policy-making
and sound research, one needs information on both
the state of the environment and socio-economic and
political data such as details about actual dependence
upon environmental services, access rights, adaptation
potentials, etc. Concerning the rst, satellite-based
sensors can provide a lot of the data required via
1 The author would like to thank Peter Zeil and Marc von Boemcken for
their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this Introduction.
2 Libiszewski, 1992 gives a denition of environment in this context,
which is centered on the ecosystem, which he denes as a “circular
feedback control system encompassing the living beings and their
biotic and abiotic environment in a certain space” (p. 3). He denes
human-induced environmental change as “destabilizing interference
in the ecosystem’s equilibrium”, a process that human beings tend to
perceive as degradation (ibid, p. 3–4). The main reason for referring to
his denition is that he differentiates between environment and natural
(non-renewable) resources, a distinction that is also maintained in this
brief and considered analytically important, especially with regard to
conict research (see contributions by Wirkus and Schure, p. 20ff and
Krummenacher, p. 43ff).
3 More details on this aspect of the environment-security nexus can be
found for example in Barnett et al., 2008 or Matthew, 2002.
4 In the academic discourse however, these attempts go back further.
Tuchmann Mathews, 1989 and Ullman, 1983 were two of the rst
protagonists.
5 This assumption is of course related to a more traditional and militarized
concept of security.
6 See for example Baechler et al., 1996; Homer-Dixon, 1999.
7 See also contribution by Wirkus and Schure, p. 20ff for details.
8 See Brauch, 2005 for a discussion of both.
9 For an example of research on these interactions see Wirkus and Swatuk,
2008.

9
‘remote sensing’ or ‘earth observation’.10 The data then
needs to be complemented and put in relation with
other relevant variables. This is a task, which rst requires
close and constant cooperation between the people
working at the various institutions who can deliver these
different types of information. Second, there has to
be a broad and scientically validated consensus on
the question, which information and indicators are the
relevant ones and how they interact with each other.
A BICC/GMOSS seminar on environment
and conict
This has been the background for this brief, which is
based on the proceedings of the Seminar ‘Environment
and Conict—Evaluating and strengthening the means
of interdisciplinary cooperation’, which took place in
Bonn from the 18–20 September 2007. This Seminar was
organized by BICC in cooperation with GMOSS (Global
Monitoring for Security and Stability). In the following,
there will be a brief introduction of this organizational
framework, as it had a major impact on the approach
taken and the goals pursued in the Seminar.11
GMOSS, an EU-funded Network of Excellence (NoE),
was launched in the aeronautics and space priority
of the Sixth Framework Programme of the European
Union in March 2004. The broader context for GMOSS
is a joint initiative by the European Commission and
the European Space Agency called GMES (Global
Monitoring for Environment and Security). GMES aims at
establishing a Europe-wide network for the compilation
and analysis of environmental data using both direct
and indirect or remote modes of measurement. The
specic background for the GMOSS initiative was the
perceived need for autonomous European security
research. Therefore, the integration of different
approaches of European civil security research became
one major goal of the network. The 22 GMOSS members
are located in 11 different European countries. Most of
them focus on earth observation (EO) and some on
political science (peace and conict research). GMOSS
was the rst NoE that covered the security aspect in
the policy framework of GMES. The application of
advanced scientic and technological tools has always
been at the core of GMOSS and there are mainly ve
areas of application. These are treaty monitoring, early
warning, estimates of static and dynamic populations,
monitoring of infrastructure, and borders and damage
assessments.
These concrete applications form the central pillar
of the GMOSS network and are framed by two other
pillars, which focus on supporting the integration of
research activities. The rst one is the development of
generic tools (feature recognition, data integration,
visualization, and change detection), the second
is about security concepts and comprises scenario
analysis, crisis response, and issues and priorities.
The Sixth Framework Programme was the rst research
funding program set up by the European Union to include
the concept of NoEs, that is “multipartner projects
aimed at strengthening scientic and technological
excellence on a particular research topic by integrating
at European level the critical mass of resources and
expertise needed to provide European leadership”
with the primary aim of “creating a progressive and
durable integration of research capacities” (European
Commission, 2002, p. 12). Thus, GMOSS members had
to develop completely new and concrete mechanisms
of cooperation right from the beginning. This meant
overcoming fragmentation and competition, which
so often hinder fruitful cooperation, exchange, and
the creation of synergies as well as developing joint
reactions to current developments beyond disciplinary
and other borders.
Despite these challenges, GMOSS can certainly be
called a success. Over the years, besides delivering
a number of products and proposals in very different
elds, it has attracted quite a number of additional
research institutes who have applied for status as
Associate Partners. Of today, there are 11 from six
different countries.
The Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC)
applied for Associated Partnership status in October
2006 and was soon granted it.
As the NoE was drawing to an end, this seminar was
launched with the perspective of setting the tone for
future research in cooperation with GMOSS members
and its partners.
The initiative for the seminar was rooted in three different
factors:
Environmental security and questions concerning •
the conict relevance of environmental change
have featured more signicantly than ever before
on the political agenda.
Environmental monitoring has been a classical •
application area of remote sensing (RS). However,
faced with the recent developments and insights
on global environmental and climate change,
GMOSS has initiated a new discussion on how the
application of available RS technologies can be
benecial to this area of research.
10 “Earth Observation” (EO) is “the commonly used name for satellites
that provide images of the earth’s surface.” “Remote sensing” is “the
process of acquiring images of objects on earth from space” according
to UNOSAT (see <unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/glossary.htm>). Both terms
stand in opposition to so-called in-situ data, which is collected without
physical distance from the monitored object.
11 A much more comprehensive account of GMOSS’ goals, tasks, and
activities can be found in Zeug, 2007. This presentation of GMOSS
activities mostly draws on information given in Zeil, 2007.

10
The political science-oriented framework provided •
by the research BICC and other invited institutions
have conducted in this eld was hoped to spark
initiatives for interdisciplinary cooperation.
The primary goal of the seminar was thus to locate
GMOSS thematically in the eld of environment and
security research. The focus was on (1) the identication
of research gaps in this eld and (2) the elaboration of
options for interdisciplinary cooperation, especially with
regard to how opportunities and benets of remote
sensing can be implemented in the framework of the
challenges posed by global environmental and climate
change. To this end, the Seminar provided a platform
for open discussion and exchange between experts
from various professional backgrounds. Particular
emphasis was placed on the possibility of reacting to
and commenting on presentations as well as moving
into real interaction and dialogue. This structure is also
reected in the organization of this brief. The rst three
sections consist of a number of contributions that are
based on presentations given at the Seminar. The last
section attempts to summarize the discussions and to
develop suggestions for a future agenda for research
and practice. Thus it collects important points and
shows where further research is needed and also where
and how cooperation is seen to be most important and
benecial.
Content
The contributions in this brief take very different
approaches to the main topic of monitoring environment
and security. Some appear to be merely touching
upon it, showing their relevance via their implications
for research and practice, while others tackle the
central questions directly, presenting however different
perspectives on them.
At the beginning of the brief, Marc von Boemcken
addresses the term security as such by discussing
two general questions: What is security? What does it
do? He then takes a look at how the discoursive link
between security and environment has been created
and for what reason. Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf continues
by analyzing how this link is reected in some security
strategies set up by governments and international
organizations. Although he focuses on a few select
documents, he comes to the general conclusion that
while environmental factors are increasingly mentioned,
comprehensive policy approaches are symptomatically
missing. Continuing on, Lars Wirkus and Jolien Schure
present an overview of research on the role of natural
resources and environment in relation to conicts,
followed by a discussion of this relation that focuses on
the example of water, presented by Lars Wirkus and
Janos Bogardi. The three subsequent contributions
elaborate on the complex issue of security assessments
for such uses as early warning and display some of the
different approaches to this. Jeanna Hyde-Hecker
presents a multidisciplinary methodology developed by
the Institute for Environmental Security (IES). Clementine
Burnley et al. evaluate the predictive power of macro-
structural indicators on conict-risk assessments and
conclude with a question regarding their usefulness.
Heinz Krummenacher nally presents the bottom-
up approach of the FAST-project conducted by
swisspeace. His contribution focuses in a very general
manner on the role of environmental factors in violent
conict and concludes that there is basically no causal
relation between the two. However, the contribution
does not differentiate between environment in general
and natural resources or between the different types
of resources or between domestic and international
events. All other contributions deal with treaty monitoring
and thus go one step beyond policy-making. They
explore how satellites can actually be used effectively
in the implementation and monitoring of international
treaties. Two of them concentrate on certain areas
covered by international treaties. Stefan Schneiderbauer
analyzes the opportunities and limits of remote sensing
for monitoring humanitarian agreements. In contrast
to this, Peter Zeil et al. give an overview of monitoring
options for environmental agreements. The two nal
contributions tackle general questions of effectiveness
and legal aspects, which Bhupendra Jasani illustrates
by using the example of conventional arms and aircraft
monitoring in Sudan while Irmgard Niemeyer identies
the major future challenges in the eld of civilian,
satellite-based, treaty monitoring.
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Security.” Foreign Affairs, 68(2), Spring, pp. 162–177.
Ullman, Richard H. 1983. “Redening Security.”
International Security, 8(1), Summer, pp. 129–153.
Wirkus, Lars and Swatuk, Larry, eds. 2008. Transboundary
Water Governance in Southern Africa: Examining
underexplored dimensions. Nomos Verlag.
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and Martino Pesaresi, eds. “Global Monitoring for
Security and Stability (GMOSS). Integrated Scientic
and Technological Research Supporting Security
Aspects of the European Union.” JRC Scientic and
Technical Reports. EUR 23033 EN, Ispra: European
Commission – Joint Research Center, pp. 377–380.
Zeug, Gunter and Martino Pesaresi, eds.. 2007. “Global
Monitoring for Security and Stability (GMOSS).
Integrated Scientic and Technological Research
Supporting Security Aspects of the European Union.”
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EN, Ispra: European Commission – Joint Research
Center.

12
Approaches to Security,
Environment, and Conict
1

13
Approaches to Security,
Environment, and Conict
Security. What Is It? What Does It Do?
In a world of uncertainty and danger, the desire
for security becomes a central concern of political
thought and action. Against the threatening forces of
unpredictability, rapid transformation, and complexity,
it appears to channel a diffuse longing for more
reliability, stability, and tangibility. Ironically, however,
the very term ‘security’ itself does not possess an in any
way stable or consensual meaning. Rather, it marks
the circumferences of a highly contested terrain. For
how is security to be achieved? Who is to be secured
against which dangers? And, moreover: what actually
happens when we ‘speak security’? To reect upon any
(in)security problem, it would be necessary to, rst of all,
locate our own position and argument vis-à-vis a careful
consideration of some basic questions pertaining to the
concept and nature of security itself.
For this purpose, I suggest that two broad avenues for
thinking about security may be distinguished from each
other. The rst perspective displays a preference for
the question as to what security is (‘What is security?’).
By contrast, the second perspective emphasizes what
security does (‘What does security do?’). In the following,
both questions will be addressed respectively. As it will
be argued, the two approaches differ considerably
in terms of their ontological, epistemological, and
normative assumptions. It is, however, not the purpose
of this contribution to identify the ‘best’ way through
which security can or should be encountered as an
object of analysis. Its objective is, quite simply, to
encourage explicit reection of the term in question,
thereby hopefully diminishing the chances for it being
applied in an ambiguous or somewhat vague manner.
What is security?
If one sets out to think about security, an obvious
starting point might be to ask: What is security anyway?
Posing such a question is anything but a trivial exercise,
for it already makes an implicit assumption about the
very nature of security itself: namely, that such a thing
as ‘security’ actually exists. Security, in other words,
refers to an actual condition of existence, which is
independent of its enunciation in day-to-day discourse.
This ontological condition of security has been imagined
in quite different ways. For example, in the great debate
between Realism and Idealism in International Relations
theory, security was either thought of as a relative
condition in the present or as an absolute condition
of the future. In both cases, however, references to
security sought to signify a certain objectivity. This way
of thinking has had at least two implications for the way
that we ought to go about and study it. First, security is
conceived as something that can be objectively known
and thus needs to be diligently measured, monitored,
and improved by means of reason and scientic inquiry.
Second, security attains a normative quality: it appears
as a ‘good thing’ we ought to actively aspire to.
Marc von Boemcken
From such a perspective, the general denition of
security is usually thought to be encountered in the
absence—or at least unlikeliness—of threats to a certain
object. For example, David Baldwin (1997) dened
security astutely as “a low probability of damage to
acquired values” (p. 13). Similarly, for Lawrence Krause
and Joseph Nye (1975) it was “the absence of acute
threats to the minimal acceptable basic values that a
people consider essential to its survival” (p. 330). Such
denitions of security seek to somehow capture the
underlying essence of the term. However, it may yet
be conceptualized in quite different ways. In order to
move from the essence to the concept of security in
the context of a particular academic and/or political
project, the most important question to be addressed
is: Security for whom? In most cases, the answer
would either refer to some or all individuals or to some
or all states. It needs to be remembered, however,
that security may be equally applied to such diverse
objects such as animal life, the biosphere or physical
infrastructure.
To further specify the object of security, it may be
necessary to not simply point to the actual entity in
need of security, but to also identify the endangered
values that this particular entity contains or represents.
For instance, a human being can be associated with
several values, all of which may be worth securing. In
such case, a concept of security needs to be clear
on whether it refers to corporeal integrity, economic
welfare, autonomy or psychological well-being. In the
end, different objects and values yield rather different
conceptualizations of security, the most prominent
of which are of course ‘human life’ and ‘state
sovereignty’.
Taken by itself, the idea of ‘environmental security’ is
therefore not an accurately specied security concept,
for it remains very much open who or what is to be
secured. Are we talking about the territorial integrity of a
South Pacic island state threatened by climate change
and rising sea levels or do we seek to address the decline
of individual human well-being and prosperity due to
desertication processes? Maybe our object of security is
neither the state nor the individual, but the environment
itself. But which part of the environment? A certain
endangered species or the entire biosphere? Naturally,
many of the different security concepts gathered under
the umbrella of ‘environmental security’ are closely
related. However, they may also oppose, even conict
with each other. This is aptly illustrated by the brown
bear that ravaged through the forests of Bavaria in the
Summer of 2007. Identied as a problem (“Problembär”),
for it threatened the life stock of surrounding farms, the
bear was eventually killed. This security measure clearly
overrode an alternative conceptualization of security,
which would have taken the physical integrity of the
animal itself as its principal object. To the extent that
different concepts of security may contradict each

14
other, it is thus of utmost importance that we specify
whose security we are actually talking about when
taking part in a discussion on security issues.
Once the essence and the concept of security have
been clearly delineated, it is in a third step possible to
think about the pursuit of security. Here, Baldwin (1997)
suggested a couple of additional relevant questions. First,
and depending upon the particular object of concern,
the actual threats to security need to be identied.
Second, we have to ask ourselves which means and
strategies ought to be employed in order to minimize or
even eradicate these threats. Do we revert to coercive
military means favoring strategies of surviving and/or
deterring danger or do we prefer civilian, for example,
developmental means directed against the root causes
of threats and thereby associated with strategies of
overcoming and transcending danger? Third, we ought
to consider how many resources should be devoted to
increasing security and how the resources spent should
be divided among different means and strategies.
Finally, Emma Rothschild put forward a further important
question, namely: Who is going to do the securing?
(1995, p. 55) Are state institutions always best suited to
provide security? Must state institutions play a dominant
role in providing security or can private and/or non-
governmental institutions play an equal role in providing
security?
Essence of Security
Objective condition
described by the
absence or low
probability of threats to a
certain object.
Concept of Security • Who is to be
secured?
• Which values are to
be secured?
Governance of Security
• What are the
threats to security?
• By which means
and strategies
is security to be
achieved?
• What amount of
resources should
be devoted to
security?
• Who is to do the
securing?
If we decide to perceive security, including
‘environmental security’, as both a normative policy
goal and a knowable and objective condition of
existence, then the procedure outlined above might
well serve as a useful guide in order to clearly specify
our object of analysis, distinguish it from alternative
conceptualizations of security, and conduct research in
a coherent and policy-relevant manner. Indeed, I would
suggest that the largest part of the debate concerned
with the ‘redenition’ of security following the end of
the Cold War can be traced along the lines of different
answers to the above questions. Many critiques of
traditional security studies do not therefore contest the
ontology of security itself, but rather denote tactical
variations within the overriding model of what might be
thought of as an ‘essentialist’ security paradigm.
What does security do?
Although the ‘essentialist’ perspective is by far the most
popular and mainstream approach to the study of
security, it is by no means the only way to analytically
engage in security issues. Instead of asking, “What
is security?” a very different and perhaps a more
interesting question is, “What does security do?” Posing
such a question does a lot more than simply adopting
a slightly different research angle. By departing
from the essentialist assumptions of security being a
somewhat objective, knowable, and positive thing, it
differs profoundly in ontological, epistemological, and
normative terms. Security and insecurity are thus not
considered as aggregate conditions of existence, which
are objectively ‘out there’ and present themselves to
us as unquestionable facts of life. Instead, they are
thought of as social constructs by certain actors and
for particular purposes. As Barry Buzan, Ole Waever,
and Jaap de Wilde (1998) noted in their inuential book
Security – A New Framework for Analysis, security needs
to be understood as an inter-subjective social practice
(p. 31) that is as something we do. In other words, it
is “a specic social category that arises out of, and is
constituted in, political practice” (ibid, p. 40).
Such a ‘constructivist’ perspective implies a certain
way of approaching and studying security. It would
not begin with a laborious effort to identify and dene
the underlying essential meaning of security, but restrict
its analytical scope to the discursive and practical
manifestation of the term in social and political life.
Security is, quite simply, no more or less, than what
people say it is. It is a self-referential practice that does
not refer to something ‘more real’ and attains visibility
only in deliberate social conduct. In the words of Waever
(2000), “(i)t is by labelling something a security issue that
it becomes one – not that issues are security issues in
themselves and then afterwards possibly talked about in
terms of security” (p. 8; my emphasis). Notwithstanding
the questions outlined in the previous section, we would

15
therefore have to ask, more fundamentally: What
happens when certain issues are treated as security
issues?
The most well-known response to this question is the
so-called ‘securitization’ theory developed by Buzan,
Waever, and de Wilde (1998). By securitization, the
authors mean a succession of authoritative claims or
statements wherein a particular issue (be it military,
political, economic, societal or environmental) is
successfully presented as an existential threat to a
referent object, in turn requiring emergency measures
exceeding “the normal bounds of political procedure”
by legitimizing the breaking of established norms and
rules (ibid, pp. 23–25). As they go on, securitization is,
but one albeit, the most extreme form of rendering an
issue a problem of governance. In this sense, it may be
differentiated from ‘politicization’, that is, the process
by which a problem enters an open public debate,
becomes part of a political bargaining process and
eventually may or may not receive certain resource
allocations (ibid, p. 23). By contrast, if an issue is
securitized it is presented as so urgent, existential, and
important “that it should not be exposed to the normal
haggling of politics” (ibid, p. 29). It is lifted beyond
politics and—by implication—beyond the mechanisms
of democratic control and oversight.
Securitization theory is a good example of the analytic
shift from ‘what security is’ to ‘what security does’.
Importantly, it highlights the profound change in the
normative orientation of analysis. Because threats are
not self-evident, but always subject to practices of
political representation, it is a conscious and deliberate
decision whether certain issues should be framed and
treated as security issues, namely whether they should
be securitized, or not. For Buzan, Waever, and de
Wilde, this decision should not be taken light-heartedly.
Indeed, to their mind, it is usually better to opt for ‘de-
securitization’, that is to switch out of emergency mode
and back into the open deliberations of ‘normal’
politics.
Obviously, the word ‘security’ may well be uttered in
political discourse without necessarily securitizing a
particular issue in the sense outlined above. Especially
on the domestic level, in the day-to-day proceedings of
internal security governance, security may not securitize
as much as it may order social relations in many other
ways. Whereas these more mundane ‘doings’ of security
remain largely unexplored, securitization theory is yet a
useful, though limited, tool for analyzing the function of
security in the international and global realm. A case in
point is, of course, the US-led War on Terror, securitizing
the issue of terrorism to the extent that it justies counter-
terrorist security measures, which violate human rights
and international law. However, securitization strategies
may also be encountered in far less obvious places,
employed in relation to threats other than military ones,
and adopted by actors other than states. For example,
it could be argued that Greenpeace goes some
way in securitizing environmental issues as existential
threats, thereby legitimizing actions outside the normal
boundaries of political behavior and in many cases
even conicting with the law.
More generally, it can be concluded that when thinking
about the relation between the environment and
security, it is important to keep in mind the question as to
what security does. Here, the strong military connotation,
which the term ‘security’ continues to carry in political
discourse, may also be of some relevance for analysis.
For to treat environmental problems as security problems
could thus either lead to a possible militarization of
environmental policy or vice versa, to a demilitarization
of the term security itself (cf. Brock, 1992). The discursive
effect of conating environmental and security issues
would need to be empirically established from case to
case. Finally, it is worth noting that to present an issue
as a security problem always serves the purpose of
instilling that issue with a particular sense of urgency. For
this reason, it might well be the case that the discourse
of ‘environmental security’ can be understood rst and
foremost as a deliberate strategy on behalf of certain
actors to elevate environmental issues higher on the
political agenda.
Conclusion
This contribution has suggested two very different
ways of approaching, thinking about, and analyzing
the term ‘security’, including ‘environmental security’.
One approach is not necessarily ‘better’ than the other
and the choice depends very much on the specic
research question that one sets out to answer. In any
case, I hope to have demonstrated that—regardless of
the perspective one eventually adopts—there is a clear
need to begin a security analysis with some reection
on the meaning of security itself. Such reection will
either serve the purpose of specifying the concept of
security that one intends to deploy when assessing an
objective security condition. Alternatively, it may also,
however, sensitize analysis toward the inter-subjective
function of security in political discourse.

16
References
Baldwin, David A. 1997. “The Concept of Security.”
Review of International Studies, Vol. 23, pp. 5–26.
Brock, Lothar. 1992. “Peace through Parks: The
Environment on the Peace Research Agenda.”
Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 28, No. 4,
pp. 407–423.
Buzan, Barry, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde. 1998.
Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder,
CO/London: Lynne Rienner.
Krause, Lawrence B. and Joseph Nye. 1975. “Reections
on the Economics and Politics of International
Economic Organisations.” In C. Fred Bergsten
and Lawrence B. Krause, eds. World Politics and
International Economics. Washington, DC. The
Brookings Institute.
Rothschild, Emma. 1995. “What is Security?” Daedalus,
Vol. 124, No. 3, pp. 53–98.
Waever, Ole. 2000. “Security agendas old and new, and
how to survive them.” Working Paper No. 6. Buenos
Aires: Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.

17
This contribution discusses in brief whether security
strategies integrate environmental aspects and to
what extent. Here, pertaining issues will be approached
through the cases of the United States, the United
Nations, and the European Union.
United States
Driven by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2002 National
Security Strategy (White House, 2002) focuses on the
War on Terror and emphasizes a narrow military response
to the threat of terror by improved homeland defense
(creation of a “Homeland Security” department), law
enforcement, intelligence, and ‘vigorous’ efforts to cut
off terrorist nancing. Although the Strategy focuses
on these specic responses towards ghting terrorism,
it also touches upon other aspects of security and
underlines the security implications of poverty and bad
governance. As an additional precondition for security,
the Strategy refers to the importance of economic
development and environmental protection:
“[We will promote economic growth through free •
markets and free trade and integrate environmental
concerns into trade policies]. Economic growth
should be accompanied by global efforts to
stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations associated
with this growth, containing them at a level that
prevents dangerous human interference with the
global climate. Our overall objective is to reduce
America’s greenhouse gas emissions in relation to
the size of our economy by cutting such emissions
per unit of economic activity by 18 percent over
the next 10 years, by the year 2012. [Our strategies
for attaining this goal will be to co-operate with the
UNFCCC and make agreements with key industries
regarding renewable energies as well as nuclear
energy, research and development assistance
(although this undertaking will be in the frame of
economic policies quite detailed)] (ibid, pp. 19–20).”
“[In reference to • energy security the US will continue
to build alliances with partners and friends to ght
terrorism. In addressing regional conicts with
partners the US will deliver greater developmental
assistance] (ibid, pp. 19–20).”
As an update and revision of the 2002 Strategy, the
United States launched a new National Security Strategy
in 2006 which predominately rests on two pillars: (1) the
promotion of freedom, justice, human dignity, and
democracy and (2) international cooperation (White
House, 2006). In addition, the 2006 Strategy makes
explicit reference to energy security and climate
change. It mentions a newly initiated Asia-Pacic
Partnership that focuses on clean development and
climate change matters as an example for activities,
which aim at the enhancement of energy security and
clean development. Furthermore, a priority is placed
on a comprehensive energy strategy to reduce the
reliance of the United States on foreign energy sources.
A diversication of energy sources could alleviate the
‘petroleum curse’ or the tendency for oil revenues to
foster corruption and prevent economic growth and
political reform in some oil-producing states. However,
in the context of energy security, climate change is not
mentioned. In this respect, the ‘NSS 2006’ is less explicit
on climate change than the ‘NSS 2002’.
Although the US Security Strategies make remarkably
detailed reference to the environment and climate
change in comparison to other national security
strategies, such as of the United Kingdom or South
Africa, the Strategies fail to outline concrete measures
designed to address environmental aspects of conict
prevention. Accordingly, the Centre for Naval Analysis
(CNA) Report on National Security and the Threat
of Climate Change recommends that “the national
security consequences of climate change should be
fully integrated into national security and national
defense strategies. The National Security Strategy
should directly address the threat of climate change to
our national security interests” (CNA Corporation, 2007,
p. 7).1 In addition, it is recommended that the “National
Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy should
include appropriate guidance to military planners to
assess risks to current and future missions caused by
projected climate change” (ibid). At the political level,
the report recommends that “the U.S. should become
a more constructive partner with the international
community to help build and execute a plan to prevent
destabilizing effects from climate change, including
setting targets for long term reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions” (ibid).
United Nations
In April 2007, the Security Council held the rst ever
debate on the impacts of climate change on security.
The UK government, which initiated the one-day
debate, argued that global warming must be seen as
a global security issue as well as an environmental one.
It drew support from some governments, but others,
including China and leading members of the G-77
group of developing countries, disputed whether the
Security Council had the mandate to debate climate
change. The discussions referred partly to the security
implications of climate change, including adaptation
needs. However, they were often only a reiteration of
positions, which had previously been expressed already
in the context of United Nations Framework Convention
for Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations.
Reconceptualization of Security Strategies
and Political Processes Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf
1 Under the chairmanship of General Sullivan, 11 retired generals
and admirals produced this report, which is available at <http://
securityandclimate.cna.org/report/National%20Security%20and%20the
%20Threat%20of%20Climate%20Change.pdf>.

18
In 2004, the United Nations gathered the High-Level
Panel on Threats, Challenges and Changes. Its report
integrated the threat of ‘environmental degradation’
to one of the six clusters of threats, but contained
very little guidance on how security threats caused
by environmental degradation could be adequately
addressed. In addition, the 2005 summit reviewing
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) made
no reference to the environment when elaborating
on security issues, although MDG 7 is dedicated to
environmental sustainability.
At the operational level, the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) created the Bureau for Crisis
Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) for the following
reasons:
“To enhance UNDP’s efforts for sustainable development,
working with partners to reduce the incidence and
impact of disasters and violent conicts, and to establish
the solid foundations for peace and recovery from crisis,
thereby advancing the UN Millennium Development
Goals on poverty reduction.”2
It is interesting to observe that the main objective
of the BCPR is to connect the development work
of UNDP to both conict prevention/recovery and
disaster reduction/recovery. Yet, violent conict and
environmental issues do not seem to be considered
simultaneously.
The Post-Conict and Disaster Management Branch
(PCDMB) extends the United Nations Environment
Programme’s (UNEP) work in areas of the world in
which on the one hand, the environment is impacted
by conicts and disasters and on the other hand, the
environment is a factor in contributing to conicts and
disaster impacts.
PCDMB describes its ve core areas of operations as
follows:
Conducting environmental assessments; •
Mitigating environmental risk; •
Strengthening institutions for environmental gover- •
nance;
Integrating environmental considerations in recon- •
struction;
Strengthening international and regional environ- •
mental cooperation.
The PCDMB is one of the most concrete activities of
the United Nations on environmental security. The Post-
Conict Environmental Assessment for Sudan provides
an example for the PCDMB’s work:
“The linkages between conict and environment in
Sudan are twofold. On the one hand, the country’s
long history of conict has had signicant impacts on
its environment. Indirect impacts such as population
displacement, lack of governance, conict-related
resource exploitation and underinvestment in sustainable
development have bee the most severe consequences
to date. On the other hand, environmental issues have
been and continue to be contributing causes of conict.
Competition over oil and gas reserves, Nile waters and
timber, as well as land use issues related to agricultural
land, are important causative factors in the instigation
and perpetuation of conict in Sudan” (UNEP, 2007,
p. 8).
Although relatively concrete, the Sudan Assessment
also illustrates that the PCDMB’s work has not always
made specic recommendations on which measures
to take when addressing the root environmental causes
of the country’s numerous conicts.
European Union
The 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS) does not
stress the issue of terrorism, but rather afrms that “in
much of the developing world poverty and disease
cause untold suffering and give rise to pressing security
concerns. Almost 3 billion people, half of the world’s
population, live on less than 2 Euros a day. 45 million die
every year of hunger and malnutrition” (Council of the
European Union, 2003, p. 2). Security is understood as
being a precondition to development. Nevertheless, the
key threats identied next are terrorism, the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, regional conicts,
state failure and organized crime. The ESS recognizes
that “none of the new threats is purely military” (ibid,
p. 7), and each needs to be tackled by a mixture of
both civilian and military instruments spanning the wide
range of both development and security instruments
in the framework of EU external action. Even so, the
general denition of security remains very broad in the
ESS. The strategic objectives (key threats and response)
seemingly refer to a narrow and traditional conception
of security threats as mainly being human induced.
In addition, the Commission’s Communication on
Conict Prevention addresses the relation between
conict/stability and environmental factors. According
to this Communication, structural stability is promoted
through:
“Sustainable economic development; •
Democracy and respect of human rights; •
Viable political structures; •
A healthy environment; •
Social conditions; •
The capacity to manage change without resorting •
to conict” (European Commission, 2001, p. 10)
[Addressing the root causes of instability]. •
2 BCPR Mission Statement. Available at <http://www.undp.org/cpr/disred/
english/wedo/wedo.htm>

19
Furthermore, the Country Strategy Papers (CSPs) play
an important role in ensuring a coordinated approach
to conict prevention. In practice this means that
when CSPs are prepared, risk factors are systematically
checked. For that purpose, the Commission’s
geographical services are using conict indicators.
Those indicators look at issues such as the balance of
political and economic power, the control of the security
forces, the ethnic composition of the government for
ethnically-divided countries, the potential degradation
of environmental resources and so forth.
EU policies on environmental security have evolved
over recent years. This evolution includes various ‘soft’
instruments, such as EU’s Aceh policies in addressing
illegal logging that has nanced the conict, the EU’s
work in the Congo in combating illegal trade in gold
and diamonds (Kimberley Process), and Palestine,
where water projects are under way. However, relevant
EU strategies do not foresee a comprehensive and
consistent response to the challenges of environmental
security. EU policies with implications for environmental
security are generally part of development policies
and/or specic projects.
Conclusion
Environmental Security has gained importance in the
current political discourse. The discussions in the Security
Council and some detailed reference to the links
between security and the environment give testimony
for this development. In general terms, it is recognized
in relevant strategies that the environment and security
can be interrelated. However, none of the strategies
or processes in question provide concrete guidance
on how their broad security objectives, which often
make reference to the relevance of environmental
degradation, can be made operational. There are
various reasons for the lack of concrete guidance.
Besides the nascent state of the debate, there is a limited
understanding in security circles on environmental issues
and vice versa. This gap in understanding needs to be
bridged through improved communication. A constant
and possibly formalized dialogue between security
and environment experts could help remedy these
shortcomings. Despite its shortcomings and limited
success, the EU Cardiff Process on the integration of
environmental aspects into other policy areas could
provide valuable lessons for an improved integration of
environmental issues into security policies. The existing
links between environmental degradation and security
should provide sufcient stimulus to engage in a fruitful
exchange of ideas on how to make objectives of
environmental security more operational.
References
CNA Corporation. 2007. “National Security and the
Threat of Climate Change.” Available via <http://
securityandclimate.cna.org/report/> (accessed 12
October 2007).
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www.consilium.europa.eu/cms3_fo/showPage.
ASP?id=266&lang=EN&mode=g> (accessed 12
October 2007).
European Commission. 2001. “Communication from
the Commission on Conict Prevention.” Available
via <http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/
cfsp/news/com2001_211_en.pdf> (accessed 12
October 2007).
UNDP Disaster Reduction Unit – Crisis Prevention and
Recovery. 2008. BCPR Mission statement. Available
via <http://www.undp.org/cpr/disred/english/
wedo/wedo.htm> (accessed 12 October 2007).
UNEP Post Conict and Disaster Management
Branch. 2007. “Sudan Post Conict Environmental
Assessment.” June. Available via <http://www.
unep.org/sudan/> (accessed 12 October 2007).
White House. 2002. National Security Strategy. Available
via <http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/
index.html> (accessed 12 October 2007).
________. 2006. National Security Strategy. Available
via <http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/>
(accessed 12 October 2007).

20
In the study of environmental security and violent
conict, the availability and role of natural resources
can be observed from two distinctive, but strongly
interconnected viewpoints:
Environmental change induces growing pressure on 1.
the availability of natural resources and increases
the vulnerability of livelihoods as well as human
insecurity.
Natural resources, including its exploitation, 2.
processing, and export, can be perceived as an
economic asset which has the potential to spark or
prolong a conict.
This contribution outlines these two perspectives on
‘natural resources’ in the context of conict: respectively
‘environmental change and natural degradation in
connection with stress and vulnerability’ and ‘natural
resources as the economic asset’. Following this, a few
key challenges will be dened.
Linkages between environment, security,
and violent conict
The environment-security-conict discourse
“The study of environmental security revolves around
the central idea that environmental problems—in
particular, resource scarcity and environmental
degradation—may lead to violent conict between
and among states and societies” (Swatuk, 2006, p. 203).
This contention was frequently taken as axiomatic. The
ideas have gained momentum since environmental
issues emerged on the international political arena in
the early 1970s (Gleditsch, 1998, p. 382). The debate
was driven by two groups, one group challenging the
interlinking of environmental problems with national
security studies (e.g. Deudney, 1990; Gleditsch, 1998;
Levy, 1995), whilst environment, for the other, cannot
be separated from matters of what is called “global
security”1 (Dalby, 2002, p. 95, 2006, p. 175; Worldwatch
Institute, 2005).
In the past years mainly three linkages between security
and environment were discussed:
Impact of wars on the environment; •
Impact of military activities in time of peace; •
Environmental problems leading to environmental •
stress, which could, under certain socio-economic
conditions, either cause or contribute to domestic,
bilateral, regional or international crisis and conicts
that may involve the use of violence and force.
This contribution focuses on the latter. Since the 1990s,
many security researchers and politicians have moved
away from narrowly militaristic understandings of threat,
vulnerability and response mechanisms, expanding the
concept of security to the concept of human security.
Environmental Change, Natural Resources
and Violent Conict Lars Wirkus and Jolien Schure
It is in this context that the issue of the linkages between
environmental change and violent conict became
part of the changing security debate. Two interrelated
discussions, one on the redenition of security (Baldwin,
1997; Buzan, 1991; Buzan et al., 1995 and 2003) and
the other one, which involved questions about how
environmental change threatens global, regional and
individual security, (Deudney and Matthew, 1999;
Ohlsson, 1999; Renner, 1989) are enriching the various
assessments of the nature of the linkages between
environment and security.
Renewable resource degradation and violent conict
The Homer-Dixon led projects on ‘Population,
Environment and Security’ and ‘Environmental
Change and Security’ pursued the linkages between
environment, scarcity and violence further by focusing
on the causal link between the depletion of renewable
resources, such as land, water, forests and sheries and
violent conict. The Homer-Dixon group identied ve
types of likely violent conicts that developing countries
will be less able to prevent:
Disputes arising from local environmental •
degradation;
Ethnic clashes or ‘group identity’ conicts arising •
from population migration and deepened social
cleavages caused by environmental stress;
Civil strife caused by environmental scarcity which •
affects economic productivity and people’s
livelihoods;
Scarcity-induced interstate wars, e.g. over water, •
due to decreasing supplies of physically controllable
resources;
Conicts between the developed and the •
developing world over the mitigation of, adaptation
to, and compensation for global environmental
problems like global warming, ozone depletion,
and threats to biodiversity.
The research by Homer-Dixon and his team rested upon
scarcity’s causal role, which was differentiated in three
ways: demand-, supply-, and/or structure-induced
as a result of unequal access to and distribution of a
resource.
After one decade of research, Homer-Dixon (1999,
p. 177) concluded, “that scarcity of renewable
resources … can contribute to civil violence, including
insurgencies and ethnic clashes” and he predicted that
1 Dalby (2006, p. 175ff outlines at length in his introduction to Part four of
the geopolitics reader what is understood as the new ‘Global Security’.
After the end of the Cold War new global threats, such as climate
change, radioactive fallout, ozone layer depletion, or bioterrorism, were
understood as threats to people’s well-being in the supposedly safe
domestic spaces of their lives and communities.

21
in the future “such violence will probably increase as
scarcities of cropland, freshwater, and forests worsen in
many parts of the developing world,” where the role
of scarcity will be “often obscure and indirect.” A key
nding of his research is that “environmental scarcity
is not sufcient, by itself, to cause violence; when it
does contribute to violence, research shows, it always
interacts with other political, economic, and social
factors. Environmental scarcity’s causal role can never
be separated from these contextual factors, which are
often unique to the society in question” (ibid, p. 178).
Maldevelopment, environmental transformation and
conict
The Environment and Conict Project (ENCOP), co-
directed by Baechler and Spillmann started from the
premise that environmental transformation does not
directly result in conicts but that it impacts on existing
socio-economic conict potentials, which can violently
escalate. By focusing on wealth-driven as well as poverty-
driven environmental degradation of natural resources,
by putting actors in the center of their research and
by concentrating on the key environmental factors
of land, soil, rivers, and mining, the ENCOP group
examined particularly the contextual links between
maldevelopment, environmental transformation and
conict, which have only been marginally touched
upon by the Homer-Dixon group. They also took a
somewhat longer causal chain into account for their
analysis. All conditions, including historical processes
and the role of the developed world, which gave rise
to environmental degradation, were key.
They paved the way for later governance-oriented
research2 on the interlinkages between conict and
environment by offering a synthesis of environmental
degradation, which also shows the potential for
a peaceful, cooperative solution of conicts.
“Environmental conicts become a catalyst for
cooperation, if political compromises are seen as
desirable and technical solutions feasible” (Baechler,
1998, pp. 37–38).
In the end, most scientists agreed upon the observation
that environmental stress acts in combination with other
economic and social factors; it was rarely considered
to be the sole factor in the precipitation of conicts.
According to Schwartz (2002, p. 139) there are “ve
pathways to indirect, internal conict that involve
environmental stress: economic decline, migrations,
social fragmentation, erosion of civil society and
curtailment of the state.”
Critical environmental security studies
The relationships of environment, security and violent
conict need to be understood in much broader
conceptualizations than those included in the narrow
empirical studies of the relationship of violence and
scarcity in the 1990s. In the past years, it has become
clear that the links between violence and environment
in cases of conict over resources are often matters of
political struggle over the control of natural resources.
De Wilde (2008, p. 599) rightly states that despite its
appearance, most environmental security debates are
not about threats to nature. He identied “the risk of
losing achieved levels of civilization – a return to ‘raw
anarchy’ and forms of societal barbarism – while being
able (or having the illusion so) to prevent this” as the
main referent object of environmental security. This
stems from the fact that environmental change relations
to insecurity manifest through conditions of inequality,
institutional weakening and impoverishment.
This applies not only in a national or societal context,
where struggles between different groups will rise, but
also in a geographical context. Global environmental
change is bearing unevenly across the world. Some
regions will be affected more directly and more severely
than others. Following de Wilde (2008, p. 600), “in the
short run the long list of environmental problems is more
likely to sharpen structural cleavages between haves
and have-nots, both on a regional basis and within
societies, (…)”.
Types of environmental change, which affect human
security
The ‘Homer-Dixon Group’ and the ‘ENCOP Group’
concluded in their empirical work on environment
and conict that the direct effects of environmental
degradation and resource scarcity on the probability
of violent conict are quite weak (Baechler, 1989
and 1990; Homer-Dixon, 1991, 1994, 1998 and 1999)
“Violence is by no means the automatic outcome of
conict. (…) Environmental stress plays different roles
along the ‘conict dynamic’: as structural source;
a catalyst; or a trigger” (Lietzmann and Vest, 1999,
p. 41). It is increasingly accepted that environmental
degradation is at least a contributor to conict and
insecurity. This is also due to the fact that many of
today’s researchers and politicians are using the wider
concept of security—human security—which includes
non-conventional threats in their scenarios.
Resource scarcity and environmental degradation
are increasingly understood to play an important
role in generating or exacerbating conicts. Talking
about environmentally-induced conict means talking
about what types of environmental changes affect
human security. Different environmental forces can
2 Such as Conca and Dabelko,1998, 2002; Global Environmental Change
and Human Security (GECHS) research project of the Internatial Human
Dimensions Program, for more information, see <http://www.gechs.
org/>.

22
be identied, which contribute to such insecurity and
conict:
Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanic •
eruptions, oods;
Slow-onset changes such as deforestation, •
degradation of arable land, erosion, salinity,
siltation, water-logging, desertication;
Depletion of water resources; •
Overexploitation of sheries; •
Growing interference in ecosystems from forests •
to wetlands to coral reefs, which are among
the principal processes of human-induced
environmental change.
An encouragement for environmental security
researchers to work more closely with earth observation
specialists is given by Simon Dalby (2008, p. 165), who
stated, “In so far as humanity does face a common
future, it is one in which global climate disruptions
may well cause much more damage to poor peoples
than any locally caused environmental disturbances.”
Global climate change further augments the already
aforementioned observable challenges. By reducing
access to, and the quality of, natural resources which
are important to sustain the livelihoods of people, it will
further undermine human security and increase the risk
of violent conicts (Barnett and Adger, 2007). A lot of
reports have presented the expected consequences of
global climate change as a macro driver of many kinds
of environmental changes, such as:
Rising sea-levels; •
Shifting vegetation zones; •
Dwindling natural habitats; •
Changing precipitation patterns; and •
More frequent and more intense storms, oods, and •
droughts.
These effects pose a serious threat to human security,
especially for the rural poor, because they are likely to
undermine the capacity of (often already weak) states
to provide the opportunities and services needed by
the poor and other local disadvantaged groups to
sustain their livelihoods. The more people depend on
natural resources or ecosystem services, the greater
their vulnerability. Barnett and Agder (2007, p. 641)
correctly state, “the way climate change can and
does undermine human security varies across the world
because the entitlements to natural resources and
services vary across space, and social determinants of
adaptive capacity are similarly varied.”
Resources and conict: Being cursed or in
control?
The link between natural resources (diamonds, gold,
cocoa, coltan, timber, and oil) and civil wars has
gained increasing attention in the past decade when
a proposed link between natural resources and civil
wars has become more widely accepted, and studies
and reports that were being published on this topic
have gained increasing weight. The violent conicts,
for example in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, and Sierra Leone, were mainly studied in the
context of a so-called ‘resource curse’ paradigm. Only
recently have scholars begun to adopt more complex
analyses in the study of the presumed ‘resource–
conict’ dynamic. The following will see a brief outline
and highlight some important factors regarding the
debate on ‘resources and internal conict’ with a
special emphasis on the role of resource governance;
the key topic of BICC’s recently developed ‘Resource
Conict Monitor’.
Historical overview
The link between resource abundance and the onset
or duration of civil wars gained increased attention
in the end of the 1990s. Warring parties, which before
depended on the support of one of the super powers,
now, in post-Cold War times, had to look for new means
of sustaining themselves and found high-revenue natural
resources, such as timber and diamonds, a viable
alternative. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
exposed this phenomenon, as became illustrated
by the issue of ‘blood diamonds’ that were being
traded for weapons by UNITA (União Nacional para
a Independência Total de Angola) in Angola (Global
Witness, 1998; Human Rights Watch, 1999) and the RUF
(Revolutionary United Front) in Sierra Leone (Partnership
Africa Canada, 2003).
In 2000, the World Bank reported that countries with
a higher percentage of natural income from primary
commodity exports have been more prone to civil war
(Collier and Hoefer, 2000). This nding very much shaped
the public debate and policy-making on the topic and
attracted scholars from different academic disciplines
to study the resource-civil war phenomenon in more
detail. Eventually, the latter brought strong queries on
the outcomes of the Collier and Hoefer study, when
efforts to replicate the primary commodity-civil war
correlation showed different outcomes. Arguments
used to question the study mainly targeted
The quality of data sets that were used •3, and
The lack of •specication on the type of resources.
Many authors argue that different resources have
a different impact on civil wars (see Basedau, 2005;
Fearon, 2005; Ross, 2004). Important characteristics that

23
dene whether a resource could be a potential factor
for conict are:
The mode of extraction or assumed ‘lootability’ of •
a particular resource (high with artisanally mined
resources, low with oil and gas) (Ross, 2004; Snyder
and Bhavani, 2005; Fearon, 2005),
The vulnerability of the resource to price uctuations •
and market access that determines the rents
(Basedau, 2005),
The specic location and concentration of resources •
since they dene who has better access to potential
revenues (Le Billon, 2001 in Ross, 2004, p. 350), and
The degree of dependence of resources for a •
country’s economy/ per capita income (Basedau,
2005).
The Collier and Hoefer study, including the many
controversial questions raised, kick-started the debate
on the link between natural resources and civil war.
Much of the discourse on the economic dimensions of
civil war now began to concentrate on the question:
Are civil wars the result of ‘greed’ or ‘grievances’?
Collier and Hoefer’s initial work endorses ‘greed’ as the
major cause of civil wars. The ‘greed thesis’ holds that
(measures of) economic motivations and opportunities
show more correlation with the start of civil war than
(measures of) ethnic, political or religious grievances.
‘Grievance’ was referred to as (legitimate or not) justice-
seeking behavior by rebels. ‘Greed scholars’ stress that
grievances were often unrelated to the objective truth
and that in a conict situation, one could nd just about
any explanation of grievances that could form the
basis of ‘the cause’ for a conict. Some scholars raise
serious concerns regarding the greed thesis because it
builds upon presumed statistical correlation and does
not take into consideration that ‘individual motivations’
can differ and also change over time.4 Moreover, the
greed thesis holds, “The unexplored assumption that
rebels- not state actors cause conict, leading to a pro-
state bias in analysis and policy action” (Ballentine and
Nitzschke, 2005, p. 4). This labeling of combatant groups
as merely criminal organizations instead of possible
politically motivated actors also excludes the possibility
of considering diplomatic solutions. Furthermore, it
is not only the rebels that are the actors, it is also the
governments,‘[r]ather, critical governance failures
[which] are the mediating variables’ (Ballentine and
Nitzschke, 2005, p. 5).
Over the past few years, the analyses of the resource-civil
war correlation developed considerably, from treating
resource and conict linkages as a stand-alone issue
to a more inclusive approach where “the predatory
exploitation of natural resources and the criminal trade
in lucrative commodities by armed insurgents and
criminal networks” are “visible symptoms of a broader
systemic problem” (Ballentine and Nitzschke, 2005,
p. 447). “Civil war and resource dependence might as
well be independently caused by completely different
variables, such as the weak ‘rule of law’ or property
rights” (Ross, 2004, p. 338). Case studies on a number of
African countries conducted by Brzoska and Paes (2007,
p. 4) illustrate that factors motivating civil wars cannot
be simply reduced to resource exploitation. The wars in
Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
and Angola are too often considered as primarily a
resource conict while also in these countries, the link
between resources and conict is far more complex,
differs from case to case, and is often difcult to lter
out from other factors in the war. By contrast, in some
conicts, such as in Somalia and Côte d’Ivoire, the role
of natural resources has mostly been ignored or poorly
understood. A more differentiated conict analysis
remains a crucial precondition for effective conict
resolution strategies (Brzoska and Paes, 2007).
The role of the state and governance has been an
integral part of the studies on ‘natural resources and
economic effects’ from the 1960s onwards. Corruption
and/or mismanagement of natural resources, so-called
‘rent seeking’ for example is much related to the quality
of the state and its institutions (Mehlum et al., 2006).
The role of the state and institutions also became an
integral topic in the analyses of the so-called ‘resource
curse’ thesis, introduced by Richard Auty in 1993,
which offered a further conceptualization of reasons
why many resource-rich countries are not able to use
the natural resource wealth to boost their economies.
The appreciation of the real exchange rate (‘Dutch
disease’)5, rent seeking, and high price uctuations are
part of the reason. 6 Auty and Gelb (2001, in Auty, 2003)
look for further explanations by examining the reverse
causation—‘the superior performance by resource
poor countries’ and construct two main reasons: First,
states lacking rich natural resources are more successful
at developing legitimate political systems that “pursue
coherent policies and the aim of raising the welfare
of the entire population”. Second, resource-poor
countries diversify their economies earlier than resource
rich countries do and are therefore more competitive
in terms of the manufacturing sector (Auty, 2003,
pp. 4–5).
In the analysis of the resource-conict dynamic,
experts initially paid great attention to the ‘greed vs.
grievance’ dichotomy as described in the Collier and
Hoefer study. This study placed a predominant focus
on illegal resource exploitation and suggested cutting
nances of rebel groups. Consequently, the focus
4 See Ballentine and Sherman, 2003; Ballentine and Nitzschke, 2005.
5 This so-called ‘Dutch disease’, named after the decline of the
manufacturing sector in the Netherlands in the 1960s following the discovery
of natural gas, creates pressure on the real exchange rate, which in turn,
can trigger domestic ination (Ernst, 2007; Collier, 2007 and 2004; Corden,
1984; Corden and Neary, 1982).
3 See Fearon and Laitin, 2003, 2005; Basedau, 2005; Ross, 2004.

24
on the resources and conict link seemed to move
governance factors temporarily out of sight. Over
the past few years, different studies on the possible
resource-conict links started to focus (again) more on
the underlying mechanisms. Important work that goes
beyond the ‘rebel-greed-hypothesis’ has been carried
out by Humphreys (2005), who catalogues six possible
mechanisms that imply a number of possible underlying
factors in the relationship between natural resources
and conict7. These additional explanatory frameworks
and other recent studies specically stressed that
there should be more consideration of the role of
governance (see Dunning, 2005; Snyder and Bhavnani,
2005). “[The] main assumption [is] that natural resources
in Africa are more than just a ‘curse’. There are complex
and dynamic interplays that include numerous non-
resource variables, and fairly different outcomes [… A]
more cautious label of ‘resource politics’ seemed more
appropriate to us” (Basedau, 2005, p. 325).
Stevens (2003) calls for an analysis of countries that
benet from resource abundance. His ndings show that
the occurrence of natural resources does not necessarily
lead to armed conict. “Even in Africa, the region with
perhaps the highest incidence of armed conict since
the end of the cold war, half of the continent’s ten
signicant producers of alluvial diamonds did not have
civil wars during this period” (Snyder and Bhavani, 2005,
p. 564). Stevens argues that the focus should be on the
mechanism behind the ‘curse’ and states that “there is
a growing consensus that essentially it is something to
do with governance” (Stevens, 2003, p. 24).
Concluding this overview of recent studies, the resource-
conict dynamic cannot be simply attributed to the
occurrence of natural resources or the dependency
of a state on the revenues from these resources. While
political and institutional decits have been widely cited
as sources for economic failure and violent conict,
there is still a lack of understanding and empirical study
on the impact of governance factors on the resource-
conict dynamic. More efforts are needed to look into
broader rather than one-sided explanations and focus
more on how governments try to address (or ignore)
the problems related to natural resource abundance.
In response to this gap BICC initiated the ‘Resource
Conict Monitor’ study as will be outlined in further detail
in the next paragraph.
The Resource Conict Monitor (RCM) (see Figure 1),
which was initiated by BICC in 2007, builds upon the
premise that the issue of resources and conict has to
be seen in the wider context of resource governance.
‘Resource governance’ describes the way in which
governments regulate and manage the use of natural
resources as well as the redistribution of costs and
revenues deriving from those resources. The Resource
Governance Index (RGI), which was developed as one
of the integral measures, combines general indicators
of good governance (regime type, political rights,
civil liberties, press freedom, freedom of assembly and
association, and workers’ rights) with resource-specic
governance indicators (nationally protected land
as percentage of total land area, resource regime
compliance index, wealth redistribution, and resource
independence).
All in all, the RCM combines secondary data (on a
total of 198 variables) for 90 low- and middle income
countries over an 11-year time period (1996–2007) in
order to study how resource-rich countries manage,
administer and govern their natural resources and more
specically, to test the impact of the quality of resource
governance on the resource-conict dynamic.
The analyses from the Resource Conict Monitor study
show that the relationship between natural resources
and violent conict is shaped to a large extent by the
quality of the governance of those resources, which
in turn is a correlate of good governance in general.
The analysis conrms that resource abundance as well
as resource dependence positively correlates with
both the risk and the duration of violent conict. The
risk of violent conict appears as signicantly higher
in hydrocarbon-rich countries than in countries rich in
other natural resources. Good resource governance
indeed diminishes the risk of violent conict. Moreover,
the results conrm the assumption that good (resource)
governance increases state stability and, in countries
that had experienced violent conict, the duration of
peace (see Figure 2).
Based on the research outcomes, BICC concludes
that improving resource governance should be a key
focus of development assistance, “Strenghtening good
governance in general and good resource governance
in particular are concrete measures the international
community must take to reverse the resource curse and
build sustainable peace and development” (Franke,
Hampel-Milagrosa, Schure, 2007, p. 2 ).
BICC trusts that by constructing the Resource Conict
Monitor it has provided an empirical measure of
resource governance that could be of service to
organizations and individuals working on this topic. By
this means, BICC hopes to contribute to the discussion
on new policy options and instruments that can be
developed, geared at understanding, perceiving and
6 In addition, prolonged dependence on primary resource exports tends
to delay competitive industrialization and slow the absorption of surplus
rural labor (cf. Auty, 2007). The effects of the Dutch disease are magnied
in fragile developing states characterized by weak state structures,
corruption and predatory interests of governing elites.
7 Gylfason (2001) discusses four channels from abundant natural resources
to stunted economic development: a) Dutch disease, b) rent seeking, c)
overcondence, and d) neglect of education.
8 See Humphreys, 2005, for an explanation on the study of the six
mechanisms: ‘greedy rebels’, ‘greedy outsiders’, ‘grievance mechanism’,
‘feasibility mechanism’, ‘weak states mechanism’, ‘sparse network
mechanism’.

25
www.Resource-Conict-Monitor.org provides free access to the Resource Governance
Index for 90 low- and middle- income countries over the past decade. Visitors to the
website can directly see a graph and enter the data for country-specic resource
governance trends and how this may correspond with a change of conict intensity
and the resources available. Also, there is an overview of the three country groups
sorted according to their respective scoring on the Resource Governance Index (high,
medium or low).
Figure 1: BICC, Resource Conict Monitor acting upon the conict-relevant aspects of natural
resource endowment and to improve and support
good resource governance in developing countries.
Key challenges
Following the previous two points on the role of resources
as either an economic asset or a factor of stress and
vulnerability, we can now dene a few key challenges.
These key points are:
Growth vs. development and reconstruction1. . A
recurrent question which is being asked is: How can
high revenues from resource exploitation be used for
sustainable development which enhances stability
and reconstruction of former conict areas? It is
likely that commodity prices will drop again at one
stage. At the same time, pressure on resources is
increasingly due to population growth in developing
countries and new booming economies.
Resource governance, but no blueprint. 2. Resource
governance and global policy solutions should take
into account that context-specic factors (and
past experience) make ‘blueprints’ a less favorable
solution.
Poor international solutions/ more conducive 3.
markets. The range of non-military options, which
can inuence the behavior of external economic
actors and international rules and regulations,
such as UN Sanctions, the Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative, the Kimberley Process, the
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Companies, the
Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights,
the ILO conventions, and the Equator Principles
for private banks has increased signicantly in the
last few years. However, an effective mechanism,
which ensures that resource exploitation contributes
to sustainable peace and development is missing.
How can current regime laws and standards be
broadened and international markets become
conducive and inclusive to a just distribution of
identities, power, and resources?
Monitoring, new technologies, GMOSS.4. How can
new technologies assist in monitoring the risk factors
which exist in the resource sector? Who will have
access to this information and what does this mean
in terms of power relations and effective use?
Figure 2: Resource Governance Index

26
References
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Models and Sustainable Development.” Discussion
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Baechler, G. 1998. “Why Environmental Transformation
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________. 1999. “Environmental Degradation and
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Baldwin, D. 1997. “The concept of security.” Review of
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