Should ecological security replace sustainable development as the organising principle of global environmental governance?

Résumé du document

In Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1990, 87, 105), both phrases of sustainable development and environmental security marked their entry into the international debates and were highlighted as important notions of the future global ecological governance. This could suggest that those two concepts are closely linked and perhaps even similar. Yet, sustainable development and ecological security are quite different, although each concept has many various definitions.

Sustainable development is a response to the 1970s concept of limits to growth in the environmental debates and appears for the very first time in the 1980 World Conservation Strategy, prepared by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (Ferguson 2011; Langhelle 2000). Nonetheless, it was first precisely defined by the WCED (1990, 87) as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

Extraits

[...] First of all, there are several crucial differences between ecological security and sustainable development, which could have very important consequences on the way of leading global environmental governance. It appears first that the notion of sustainable development attempts to address several issues about which ecological security has nothing to say To that extent, this point is the same as the difference between sustainable development and ecological modernisation highlighting by Langhelle (2000). Indeed, ecological security emphasises the focus on conflicts, threats and insecurity, but many others aspects are largely ignored in the ecological security discourse (Trombetta 2008). [...]

[...] Yet, it is widely argued that armed forces have quite different goals from environmental considerations (Barnett 2007; Eckersley 2007). In addition, they are major polluters and major consumers of resources, so the military seems to be rather a cause than a cure for environmental problems, and consequently this basis is also very problematic (Barnett 2007; Deudney 1990; Walker 2011b). Finally, security implies insecurity and therefore war, which suggests implicitly that climate change may be responsible for wars. Nonetheless, although Brown (2006) highlights an apparent logical mechanism which leads to the claim that global warming and resources scarcity will produce wars and chaos, many experts agree to maintain that environmental change is unlikely to produce wars between countries (Barnett 2007; Deudney 1990; Homer-Dixon 1991). [...]

[...] In addition, and perhaps more importantly, ecological security and sustainable development do not have the same central point. If it is focused on environmentalists‟ interpretation of ecological security, then the central point is certainly the same, sustainability (Walker 2011a); but if the most common interpretation of ecological security is taken into account, which corresponds to that is called environmental security, the central point is quite different. Indeed, in the framework of environmental security, the environment is considered as a threat and a source of risks for states and humankind security, and not as the entity to be protected, so the value at risk is security, and not sustainability (Barnett 2007). [...]

[...] One of the most persuasive arguments of this critique is the fact that national security mentalities involve a sense of urgency and a willingness to accept great personal sacrifice from everyone, and it may be difficult and even dangerous to engender those feelings for extended periods of time: „[c]rises call for resolution, and the patience of mobilised populace is rarely long ( ) motivated by a desire to return to normalcy‟, Deudney explains (1990, 466). Precisely, it has often been observed many desertions in history during long conflicts, for instance during World War I in all the armed forces in Europe after three years in trenches (Berstein & Milza 2005). Yet, solving all the environmental issues is unlikely to last so short time. [...]

[...] In this context, ecological security could be useful to fill the gaps of sustainable development concerning all the stakes and parts of the environmental issues to deal with. Moreover, as it has been argued previously, war as well as preparation of war may cause important environmental damages and if ecological security remains considered in the framework of traditional national security, then ecological security is not useful at all and may even 10 be dangerous for global environmental governance (Barnett 2007). [...]