Environmental degradation and damage: The neglected aspect of security

Security concerns worldwide have generally been confined to traditional aspects dealing with military issues and political conflict. In actual fact, environmental stress has emerged as a major concern over the past few decades, with ecological impacts leading to conflict of a different kind. There is, therefore, need to understand environmental security as an essential prerequisite for human wellbeing and peaceful progress. Environmental stress can lead to an increase in poverty and economic hardship which carries the potential of conflict. Globally there are 2.8 billion people who live at incomes below $2 a day, and they are therefore, highly vulnerable to threats arising out of environmental damage. TERI has carried out a major assessment of degradation that has taken place in India?s natural resources in the first 50 years of independence, and the trends are positively alarming. In aggregate terms the country is losing over 10% of its GDP annually on account of environmental damage. This includes the cost of foregone production of goods and services on account of environmental damage, the cost of health care for higher morbidity resulting particularly from air and water pollution and the cost of environmental cleanup wherever pollution abatement measures are being implemented. The country is losing 11?26% of its agricultural output on account of soil erosion, and around 2.5 million lives are lost annually as a result of air pollution ? mainly indoor air pollution, which is a consequence of cooking with poor quality biomass in inefficient cookstoves. Some of the most serious natural resource problems being encountered round the world relate to water scarcity and impoverishment of soil. The poorest sections of society become the worst victims of these trends, because their livelihoods depend on healthy natural resources, which when depleted or degraded reduce biomass growth. Food, fodder and fuel are then not available in quantities required for basic subsistence. But, the problems of water scarcity, deforestation and soil degradation are often regional in character. Hence, environmental security effects extend geographically beyond national boundaries. Nature recognizes no political borders, and does not in any way alter the flow of rivers, the movement of air or the effect of climate change based on political boundaries. A major project implemented by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank with the assistance of several research institutes evaluated the threat of acid rain in Asia. The study found that the northern and eastern parts of India would experience sulphur deposition exceeding permissible loads by the year 2020, such that there would be a major threat to ecosystems in these regions. Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka will also experience sulphur deposition, and a high concentration of airborne soot, sulphates, nitrates, organic particles and fly-ash would be spread over the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. In North America and Europe, international agreements have been reached to limit the emissions of pollutants in each country, which are likely to be airborne and create problems in other countries. The Asian landmass has major sources of air pollution such as the burning of coal in China, the large-scale use of automobiles in several countries with high sulphur content in petroleum products. The effect of acidification would be harmful to agriculture, soil quality, forests and all forms of life. This would impact seriously on the livelihoods of the poor and could displace millions of people who practise agriculture, often at a marginal level, on these soils. Perhaps, the most serious environmental threat in the future will be the impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, those responsible for this problem, namely the developed countries, emitting greenhouse gases cumulatively at unacceptable levels in the last 150 years, are reluctant to take effective action to solve the problem. The breakdown of negotiations in the recent Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Hague stems from the unwillingness of developed countries to reduce use of fossil fuels which produce carbon dioxide emissions, the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Yet, the impact of climate change would be most serious in the developing countries, including South Asia. The 10 million coastal inhabitants in Bangladesh would be seriously threatened as a result of sea-level rise and the Maldives completely submerged over time. One estimate of the number of environmental refugees foreseen in the year 2050 is 30 million for India and 15 million for Bangladesh. The world does not have to wait for sea-level rise to inundate those regions of the world that are threatened. Well before that, the impact of storm surges and extreme weather events would already have caused major disruption in human activities. The degrading environment could, therefore, become a major cause of conflict and human suffering in several parts of the world, including India.