My Beat on Environmental Security

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2010 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

by Chester B. Cabalza

I believe that environmental issues should not only be regarded as fad or trend but a reality that the entire humanity must confront with. The emphasis on environmental security should not sugarcoat the core issues that each country with various ecological situations face up to and the universal ecological issues that everyone of us share with.

To wit, environmental security according to http://www.envirosecurity.org, is the relation between the environment and the security of humans and nature has been the object of much research and the subject of many publications in recent decades, but is only becoming an important focus of environmental policy.

In the readings on Locating Environmental Security, it traces back the emerging and sometimes elusive discipline of environmental security since the end of Cold War. Albeit, its definition is still unclear; has evolved only into an ad hoc manner with various interpretations vying for credibility.

It is true that awareness and cognizance on the ecology and its impact on environmental security are re-emerging into our consciousness due to continuous and stronger global catastrophes we are experiencing. However, I do deem that, as nature takes its course, we have more chances to care for the environment and mitigate with its wrath. Therefore, we must synergize to put together our best efforts to give emphasis on environmental security.

In the Philippines, environmental consciousness assumed prominence very little until we residents in Metro Manila suffered much during the fateful day of September 26, 2009 when tropical storm Ondoy with international name Ketsana, stormed us with torrential rainfall, causing floods and toll deaths in the metro and nearby provinces.

Certainly, Climate Change has become a fad word after that great catastrophe; the most googled word we searched in the net in order to learn from this environmental issue.

There are endless list of things to think which will be affected by climate change. The climate of the earth is always changing according to the documentary film of former US Vice President Gore on “An Inconvenient Truth”. Two of the most evident concerns are the increasing number of severe storms and droughts and climate-sensitive diseases. The impact of these two cases directly link to climate change that are unparralled according to the data presented by some of the world’s renowned scientists and environmental advocates.

Hence environmental effects to human society are truly devastating. Particularly to the common people whose livelihood sources come first-hand from the natural environment. Ironically, the common people are the ones who have very little access or none at all, to the information regarding environmental and ecological issues. Although, indigenous knowledge on the environment has been highly commendable among indigenous communities.

Because of this, our government reacted much with the need to strengthen our environmental laws. This pushed our legislators to pass, without doubt, the Climage Change Act of 2009 and the Disaster Management Bill to put more emphasis of environmental security.

In fact, last year a landmark case was decided on environmental law, in MMDA vs. Concerned Residents of Manila Bay and other concerned government agencies. In the Manila Bay case, the court has the power to evict any individual from his or her home without first giving notice.

Atty. Antonio Oposa, a renowned UP law professor, who made famous the “Oposa Doctrine” in the international legal circles, that ultimately gave him a Ramon Magsaysay Award (Asia’s counterpart of Nobel Peace Prize). He’s currently the prominent Filipino environmental attorney who sits as the Board of Trustees of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) to serve a three-year term on its board. In a landmark case he petitioned, this was a class action he filed in which forty-three minors asked government to cancel timber licenses on the grounds that rampant logging violated their constitutional rights to a healthy environment. In a 1993 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the principle of "intergenerational equity," affirming Oposa's argument that the interests of future generations could be protected in court. A triumph of principle, the case set a precedent for how citizens can leverage the law to protect the environment.

Now the next issue poses the question on should we treat the environment with the same degree of seriousness, analysis, and funding as we do in economic and military security or should environmental security have higher or lower priority?

It was reported in http://www.envirosecurity.org that the environment is the most transnational of transnational issues, and its security is an important dimension of peace, national security, and human rights that is just now being understood. Thus, over the next 100 years, one third of current global land cover will be transformed, with the world facing increasingly hard choices among consumption, ecosystem services, restoration, and conservation and management. Hence, environmental security is central to national security, comprising the dynamics and interconnections among the natural resource base, the social fabric of the state, and the economic engine for local and regional stability.

My contention is that environmental security must be given high priority since it does not only affect our self interests, or a country’s priorities, but the humankind and its institutions and organizations anywhere and at anytime. For example, after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, a hazy graying blanket of ash covered the Earth and the world temperature dropped.

The lessons learned from the Kyoto Protocol to the Copenhagen Climate Change Accord, where every countries of the world, participated on it, believed that we must protect the only planet earth we live in. There must be much regard and priority allotted for the protection of Mother Nature in preserving our human race. This is all our concerns as citizens of this world.

Present global institutions were established in response to two world wars fought in the last century. A cause for great concern is that the world's political, legal and economic institutions from the global to the local level operate on outdated concepts and trail behind in formulating and implementing preventive policies through improved and innovative institutional and financial arrangements. Global institutions need to be equipped for the 21st Century and resolve environmental security challenges by peaceful means.

This is to prevent wars and conflicts. Nations have often fought to assert or resist control over environmental resources such as energy supplies, land, river basins, sea passages, water, and more. Hence access to and control over natural resources has been a root cause of tension and conflict (Diehl and Gleditsch, 2001).

In my mind, this is the reason why we have to put equal degree of importance, seriousness, analysis and funding, the same as we give high-regard to economic and military security. In the end, environmental security must be tackled with strategic measurement given its significance for international understanding and global security. And in the academic sphere, environmental security is defined as the relationship between security concerns such as armed conflict and the natural environment.