Environment assignment essay help: Environmental security
Theory of environmental security is gaining interest, significance and awareness globally. Yet, little consent exists with reference to define environmental security and who should take a policy leadership role to deal with environmental security threats (Barnett, 2011). Supportively, the main aim of this essay is to define the term environmental security. Moreover, it also attempts to investigate whether it has different meaning to different people. Lastly, essay analyzes the different interpretations and talk about their potential impacts.
Environmental security has emerged as the primary issues on the global agenda. Consensus has been counterfeited on the prospective for long-term economic, national security and societal harm from insecure energy supplies and environmental catastrophe, as well as the extreme need for technological advances that can provide low-polluting and secure energy sources (Chan, 2011).
Nevertheless, environmental security means different to different personalities and even to different nations sometimes. It refers to the maintenance of the physical needs of the society for its needs without diminishing the natural inventory. Moreover, environmental security is the upbeat minimization of anthropogenic threats to the functional reliability of the biosphere and therefore to its interdependent human constituent (Graeger, 1996).
Environmental security is a term used by scholars and practitioners to posit the linkages between the environmental conditions and security interests. However, contending notions of environmental security thrive, they usually fall into three sets of claims. First, states and non-state performers should guard against environmental dreadful conditions for the same reason they safeguard against organized violence; both kinds of threats can harm human, material, and natural resources on a large and distressing scale. Second, local and regional environmental deprivation and/or resource shortages which are intensified by population growth, unbalanced wealth distribution, and global environmental changes are a vital contributing factor to sub-national political insecurity and violent divergence. Last, military and security associations including intelligence agencies can and should play a superior role in environmental safety and security (Wagner, 2005).
In addition, when people don’t have enough food, water, shelter, or the natural resources required to live, that forms uneven situations. It has always been completely acknowledged. In the last twenty five years, it’s become more clearly understood, both in defense strategy as well as in the environmental society. Because of that, a convergence between established national security belief and environmental safeguard and policy development can be seen. Therefore, they have come together to create, perhaps, a new field of environmental security (Dodds & Pippard, 2005).
However, it can also be viewed that different people have different thinking perspectives for environmental security. In contrast, there is expanding consensus that environmental dreadful conditions can and does, elicit conflict and volatility, and a growing apprehension that environmentally-induced conflict might amplify. Moreover, to a large extent, the environmental concerns caused by human activities are essentially caused by quick development of human systematic technology. On one hand, science and technology has brought affluence to human kind, but on the other hand, it also has destructed the steadiness of the ecological system of the earth (Khagram, Clark & Raad, 2003).
Nonetheless, the concept of environmental security ignores the fortification of the environment for its own sake, for visual and similar reasons, or for its potential future values. It also does not take the environmental inheritance into account that left to future generations. In contrast, it entails that any perturbation disturbing public protection is a national security issue. It keeps different meaning to the people on the basis of its concept and issues. Different definitions can be presented based on the different perceptions. First, environmental security is the comparative public safety from environmental hazards caused by natural or human processes due to lack of knowledge, accident, unprofessional conduct or design and originating within or across national borders (Manwaring, 2002).
On the other hand, it is the state of human-environment dynamics that includes restitution of the environment spoiled by military actions, and amelioration of resource scarcities, environmental degradation, and biological threats that could lead to social chaos and conflict. Some considers that the term environmental security refers to a series of apprehensions that can be structured into three common categories (Wanekaya, Chen & Mulchandani, 2008).
First, it concerns about the unpleasant impact of human activities on the environment, and the prominence here is on the defense of the environment as a good in itself, for the sake of future age groups, as the framework for human life. Next, according to their perception, it mainly concerns about the direct and indirect effects of numerous forms of environmental change especially insufficiency and deprivation which may be natural or human-generated on national and regional security. Here the focus is on environmental change triggering, escalating or generating the forms of inconsistency and volatility relevant to conventional security thinking. Finally, environmental security concerns about the insecurity individuals and groups (both from small communities to humankind) occurrence due to environmental change such as water scarceness, air pollution, global warming, and so on. Here they made their focus on the material well-being of individuals and there is no assumption that this is a conventional security issue or that traditional security assets will be valuable (Timura, 2001).
Additionally, some of the potential impact of these differing interpretations can be noticed and discussed o the basis of research and analysis. Examples have been presented here in the essay describing the environmental security issues and concepts in different nations. Since every tree and the bush of great nature is no longer important body in the eyes of modern people and has nothing to do with continuation of human being in terms of moral value, but is nothing more than some mechanism for human being to use and to improve their material life (Xinbang, 2004).
One of the impacts of these explanations of environmental security has been noticed in Southern Africa that shows its practices in the country. For state-makers it means the principal threats pretended to the self-governing states by environmental change. This directed state makers in Southern Africa to regard new ways of sustainably managing natural resources, most importantly the potential role of the military in that nation. Many of the projects such anti-poaching units and technical expertise in drought monitoring were established to manage the environmental security in Africa. However, several questions had been raised regarding beneficiaries of environmental security after the implementation of these projects. As such, environmental security in practice replicated the consistent hegemony of the statist standard. Reason being is not the theoretical agenda is more persuasive, but that it better provides foremost interests (Swatuk, 2004).
In sum, one of the major impacts with respect to environmental security has been observed in West Africa, where the potential and constraints presented the progressive growth concern for ecosystem management, biodiversity conservation and ecological limits of land use therein (Kauffman, Koning & Heerink, 2000).
In contrast, Australia also embodied its ecological footprint and represented the positive impact by exploring the meaning of environmental security and also attempted to research the proceeding steps. It suggested the key areas where footprint reductions may be achieved in terms of environmental security. First, one should have the healthier diet and then housing regulations should be intended to achieve better energy efficiency including the use of recycled materials and renewable energy. Similarly, Australians considered the area of mobility helpful through amplified use of bicycles, walking and buses (Lenzen, Dey & Foran, 2004).
As the security of individuals, societies, nations and the entire global community is progressively endangered by inadvertent, non-military environmental threats, these threats are considered to be self-generated. Human beings carry out them on themselves, by stinking the air and water, and overharvesting their land. These threats are not felt uniformly around the world. Southern countries face relentless problems from desertification, while northern industrial countries address acid rain and Polar Regions see huge evidences of constant organic chemical pollutants. Despite these universal connections, environmental problems are still not towering on the national security agenda (National intelligence council, 2000).
Afterward, more impact of human’s interpretations in terms of environmental security has been viewed in the Aral Sea basin. The ecological situation in the Aral Sea basin is referred as one of the most intricate in Central Asia. But the natural discrepancies and human activities led to vital ecological changes in the Aral basin during past time. It was noticed during the quaternary period, that the variations in the level of the Aral Sea basin patently reached thirty-six meters. Most significantly, some of the environmental changes were established in the Aral Sea basin over the past thirty years (Glazovsky, 1995).
One of them was river runoff that means the runoff from source areas in the mountainous areas of Central Asia and Kazakhstan during 1911-1960 amounted to 116 km3 per year. Second was the hydrographic change, which showed that the Sarykamyush Lake in the south-eastern portion was formed as a result of discharging the drainage runoff from the left-bank irrigated massifs to the lower reaches of the Amu Darya River. Moreover variations and climate changes have also been seen in the Aral Sea basin as a result of human activities for environmental security. The problem of Salinization and desertification decreased from fifty percent to twenty five percent. In contrast, pollution also reduced up to some extent in the said area. Additionally, Social and economic changes were also noticed in terms of increases in morbidity, changes in agricultural production as well (Glazovsky, 1995).
Next, a strong and potential impact was noticed in Singapore, there human beings started using tap and flushing water that will move the nation nearer to water self adequacy. Consequently, planning to drink recycled tap and flushing water have taken on insightful importance in Singapore. Initially, Singapore forecasted to use Newater for industrial use-selling it to the many wafer- fabrication plants on the island and the water into the country’s basins and water supply and transport it as tap water (Sayell, 2002).
Moreover, it is vital to caution that the future may not reflect the past or the present because rapid population growth in the states of the Euphrates, Jordan and Nile basins and the mounting world more usually, means that the demand for water will augment. Therefore, people need to consider some of the bleaker environmental structure to highlight the importance of, and potentials for, the generation of ideas to resolve resource constraints (Lowi, 1999).
However, changes with reference to environmental security also intended that American has to be convinced that it belonged beside traditional hard foreign policy concerns. Therefore, the Clinton administration took environmental security more critically. In addition, He talked about a big deal about environmental issues, and it made a great impact in this regard. But the work of Clinton was not that much up to the mark as everyone had expected in US. Then, Bush administration came into existence with portentous policy declarations on the environment and combined it into US foreign policy (Harris, 2002).
Apart from this, USA has done work over the years on the requirements with reference to quickly deployable water supply and water sanitization systems and using military engineers to perform training and technical assistance for water infrastructure and management to avert conflicts (Glenn & Gordon, 2002).
Combining these it can be concluded that the condition of environmental security is one in which social systems work together with ecological systems in sustainable ways, all personnel have fair and evenhanded access to environmental goods, and mechanisms exist to address environmental catastrophe and conflicts. Moreover, different nations and people have the different meaning of environmental security. Therefore, essay talked about some of the impact of their differing interpretations. It explored the environmental and agricultural changes in Singapore, Southern Africa, West Africa, Australia, Aral Sea basin. All these examples clearly defined and discussed the potential impact of human activities and their environmental perceptions.
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