BANGI, 30 June, 2010 - Climate change has been identified as one of the security threats facing human lives in the 21st century. Unlike, war the threat of climate change is more insidious.
It
includes the consequences of natural disasters which posed a threat to
life like in floods that causes deaths while the lack of clean water
jeopardises those who survive the floods.
It
does not help when world leaders put environmental issues in the back
seat of their agenda as that only perpetuate the situation.
This was the consensus of a forum entitled “Facing Global Environmental Change : Security in the 21st Century” organized by the Institue of Occidental Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia on Monday, June 28.
Panel
members were Prof. Dr. Jamaludin Md. Jahi, Principal Research Fellow of
Institute of Malay World and Civilisation, UKM, Prof Dr Hans Gunter
Brauch from Free University Berlin, Germany, Prof Ursula Oswald Spring
from National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)and UKM’s Associate
Research Fellow, Prof. Dr. Carolina Lopez. It was chaired by the Principal Research Fellow of the Institute of Malaysian International Studies UKM, Emeritius Prof, Dato’ Dr Abdul Rahman Embong.
Environmental
change calls for urgent attention that needed to be dealt with as a
threat to human lives as some natural disasters had led to the depletion
of much needed resources and often time causes conflicts when
neighbouring countries fight to secure those resources such as rivers.
One example is the Golan Heights which Israel refused to return to Syria because it has much needed water resources.
Prof.
Dr. Jamaludin Md. Jahi said that humans are part of the physical
environment and their use of the physical environment leads to
environmental quality deterioration that threatens human security.
“Deforestation,
soil erosion, silting, flooding, drought, air pollution, water and
marine pollution, solid and hazardous wastes, all are affecting human
security,” he said.
Thus
the definition of security has been broadened to include climate
change. This realisation began to pick momentum since 1990s according to
Prof Dr Hans Gunter Brauch. He pointed out that though the definition
of security has been broaden to include climate change the political
will over it was still lacking.
“For
22 years a group of scientists had tried to put environment as one of
the possible security threats that would affect America but that was
opposed by various interest groups who wanted to protect their
interests,” said Dr Brauch
The
Copenhagen school which monitors discussions showed that there seldom
were follow up actions. He attributed this to legislators being
politicians who were interested only on short term results.
Prof
Ursula Oswald Spring was of the view that there was a need to formulate
an integrated security solution which covers the environment. The
future “I generation” needed to co-exist with the environment instead of
exploiting it.
Prof. Dr. Carolina Lopez said work on solutions were being carried out on an experimental basis in a project called consciencetization
in Mexico. It aims at educating the public in areas where there was
conflict because of the struggle to survive like getting hold of
resources, like food. Thus those exploiting the environment will always
gain the upper hand.
What consciencetization does is to educate the people on how they can manage their limited resources and maximise it so that it can benefit everybody.
The massive volume covering over 1500 pages, laid out details from a research about climate change as a security threat.
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