America's Defense Monitor Interview with

Michael Renner, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

MR. RENNER: Certainly security, the concept of security has evolved of course very dramatically with the end of the Cold War meaning that for one thing we are no longer so much focused on just two key players on a world stage who everybody else has to more or less line up with one or the other hand or have some one with sort of an uneasy re between the two blocks. That I think is of course in itself a dramatic change and it certainly allows at least to open up more and to say what other issues have we sort of overlooked in all these years that the nuclear competition the threat of nuclear war has become so dominate that its been hard to really think of almost anything else. And I think that really has opened the door in a sense and has allowed I think both those people who professionally look at these issues, but also anybody who happens to be interested in foreign affairs and world affairs to say well now that the Cold War is over what's really driving, what should become concerned about and certainly there's a lot of discussion going on a lot of rethinking and I think one thing that has come to the surface very strongly is certainly the view that what happens to the natural environment to resources such as air quality, water quality, water availability, lands the ability of countries and people to feed themselves. That kind of thing has become much more important in recent years. That's certainly a very positive change.

INTERVIEWER: How has the issue of environmental change become intertwined with the traditional notion of a countries security?

MR. RENNER: Well what's interesting really, once we widen the horizon as it were and start looking at environment issues and other issues that really haven't been looked traditionally by national security planners and defense planners the question no longer is so much what a particular government do what kinds of weapons does it have deployed or pointed at somebody else, but rather what other launch or processes going on within society but also really across borders. Because you can no longer solidly talk about what happens in one country or another if you are concerned about what air pollution or water pollution or global climate change certainly and this is becoming of course a more and more important issue. Then we really have to realize that national boundaries often don't mean a whole lot or may really be almost entirely invisible. And that changes the whole game really from the ground up because if the issue is no longer what does my neighbor (a) do to me or what do I do to him, but rather what do we do to each other, not even intentionally, but once what happens simply by ongoing economic activities by what's happening day to day on a day to day basis and society then what becomes relevant really changes from the ground up.

INTERVIEWER: What are the underline factors that can cause environmental stress and the potential for violent conflict?

MR. RENNER: When we look at the various ways how environmental degradation and the depletion of resources affect societies and how that can become a someday security issue. There's probably two areas in particular that stand out. One is what happens with arable land with land that we use to grow our food. Both of course for domestic consumption but also certainly in the case of the U.S. for export purposes or to put it another way in other countries the question is partially of course to what extent can that country feed itself or to what extent or the trends of environmental degradation pointing in a direction where there will need to import more food and that can have an impact on are we able and willing to sell them more food are they able to buy more from us what does all of that mean? And so the issue of land degradation of which takes various forms of is one that really becomes more and more important and particularly of course for countries that rely more on agriculture than say on manufacturing or on surfaces. Though closely related to that is the issue of water availability and I should probably properly say that the issue of water scarcity that's really what it comes down to in a growing number of countries and I guess to really put that in a larger framework is there are a number of countries that are clearly water scarce and water stressed where this is already an issue on a day to day basis for people. But also of course there are many other countries where on the whole that isn't that much of an extreme yet and still you look at particular rivers that may be over exploited and yet sometime down the road either relatively soon or some years down the road that over pumping of water resources will clearly lead to some kind of trouble on the road. So those two since you cannot grow food without water land degradation and water scarcity I think are very very key for most of the countries in the world.

Key among environmental stresses in my view are two things. One is the issue of land degradation and the other is water scarcity. Land degradation obviously impacting directly on how much wheat you can grow, but related very closely to that if you don't have enough water it doesn't matter how good the quality of your land its how good the quality of your soil is you will still be in trouble. So both of them together needs to be seen as a package.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned that this water scarcity is already an issue can you give me some examples of where this is an issue right now?

MR. RENNER: This is very clearly an issue is large parts of South Saharan Africa and in the Middle East. To take one particular example. Water scarcity clearly is an issue many Sub Saharan African countries and also large parts of the Middle East. To give you a particular example, Egypt is a country that through the Nile River system, almost entirely relies on water flowing from beyond its boulders into the country. So what happens down stream, what happens in Sudan, Ethiopia and other upstream countries rather is really crucial for in a very basic sense for the survival of the Egyptian population because clearly there if very substantial amounts of water are withdrawn before the flow into Egypt then there's just no way that you can survive in a country that basically is a desert I mean there is a very narrow strip where most of the population is concentrated and basically the entire rest of the country is desert. The water the Nile is the life line of Egypt.

INTERVIEWER: What are some examples of environmental change that are on the horizon that might lead to conflict?

MR. RENNER: Well when we look at not only the environmental degradation that's already taking place but what may also come further down the road in terms of changes that we can now anticipate certainly one of the biggest issue is the impending by all implications, impending climate change which by and large means that the kinds of changes that are likely to occur if global warming precedes and abated that many of the issues that we already grappling with primarily again land degradation greater water scarcity more frequent droughts sea level rise less predictable weather patterns, all of that is likely to become in a sense even less predictable, the ups and downs will be more frequent the unforseen weather severe weather events will probably become more frequent so many of the issues that we are dealing with in effect will be magnified will be brought up several notches and become much more urgent than they are right now.

INTERVIEWER: Is conflict over access and control of resources really something new or is that or are we talking about more traditional root causes of the conflict?

MR. RENNER: We're talking about the issue of access to resources and I guess really by implication access to resources that have not been severely degraded or depleted. To some extent you could say it's not a new issue of course many, many past wars colonial imperial wars in a sense you could say were to a large extent based on the quest for resources. So in that sense you could say well, gee what's new this is just a new phase, but I think there is certainly one crucial change and that is that we're talking now days not so much about access to new resources, opening new frontiers but really we're talking about in a sense really a role that is getting ever smaller and that is getting ever more limited in it's resources. And so we're talking not so much about untapped resources but resources that are already being stressed and already being pushed to the limit. And so it matters to some extent less whether country A or country B wins this struggle over resources as may have been the case in the past. But it matters more whether they can get together and say can we find ways not only to share this resource but to also manage it in a way that we can actually let's say two years down the road but say 10, 20 hopefully 50 and longer more years down the road still actually draw benefits from it can we still have enough water, can we still have enough arable land or do we have forests in tact that we provide certain natural system services and by implication really it means that there is much more of a built in need to cooperate rather than to be competitive and to get to the resource first so I think in that sense it's a very traumatic change in terms of what the implications are for, for policy for national policy and for international policy.

INTERVIEWER: Can environmental scarcity alone for example, water scarcity alone cause a conflict?

MR. RENNER: If one were to try to in effect isolate environmental factors, environmental degradation as a sole or key source of disputes and potentially violent conflict my sense is that probably be hard to do because in the real world of course there are so many other factors that come into play. First of all we need to look at why are certain environmental trends toward greater degradation and depletion why are they set in motion, what's behind that, what are the social and economic reasons? What are the political circumstances that even worsen these circumstances further accelerate them or perhaps could actually put the break on this and help us get on a different path. And really very often you have to realize that under typical real world conditions the access to resources is not equal its highly unequal and that alone sets off certain dynamics that would probably worsen the environmental impact. To give you a specific example. In many countries particularly in Latin America you have highly unequal land distribution. Now what happens often with people who do not have enough land to feed themselves and their family they have a number of limited options they could become seasonal workers in a large agriculturally state that happens to some extent of course to a large extent they could also decide to take their family and move into steeper hills and try to farm and seek out a living there, that works sometime they could move into the rain forest or other forested areas through the same seek out a living from soils that are not well suited to farming. Now these are of course sort of strategies that work for a while but after a while they have to move on to get new areas, so what gets set into motion is a process by which people get more and more driven into agriculturally marginal areas and in the process do enormous damage to eco systems that if they are no longer in tact will have to be a repercussions for all of us in fact so that the social inequities and the political circumstance that go hand in hand with them have to be seen very closely in relation to the environmental factors.

INTERVIEWER: Is there a profile for countries that are more likely to experience conflict as a result of environmental degradation?

MR. RENNER: If I were to look at what's predisposes as a country to perhaps being more vulnerable to environmental change to negative environmental change my sense is that looking at countries that depend much more strongly on agriculture, on depending on natural systems so therefore, peasants, pastoralists those groups of people in countries that are as a whole economically more dependent on these kinds of economic activities, I think there's where you will see the most immediate impacts because clearly in industrial countries that have a more diversified economic base there are ways to first of all insulate themselves from these impacts because agriculture counts for a much smaller part of GNP and fewer jobs depend on agriculture or on resource extraction so the impact is much less immediate and much less severe and of course these countries at the same time also have the economic To innocent cope with the challenges that are arising to find ways technically, economically and politically to devise new ways of responding to the challenges that are out there. There's most that the poor countries in developing world just do not have that much really of a fall back to go on.

INTERVIEWER: In your book you mentioned that environmentally induced conflict is more likely within an individual countries, what did you mean by that?

MR. RENNER: Looking at conflicts that is at least to an extent generated or worsened by environmental factors the question of course is let's just fall into the old category of conflicts between countries or something that is really something that is within a given society and it would seem sort of from the experience today that the interstate conflicts there would play a much, much more limited role if anything it's probably water resources that are shared by upstream and downstream countries, neighbors that could in some ways play a role in conflicts certainly in the Middle East relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors each of them some of the upstream countries, Sudan, Ethiopians and so on there's at a least a possibility that environmental degradation could play a role in generating conflict but really when we look around at what's happening in the world we find that most of these conflicts are really taking place within countries and I think the reason is that there are really very few ways within many societies to handle the competing interests say between small farmers and pastoralists and small farmers and large export oriented farmers the needs of rural areas and cities very often and what that brings into is the question of how well is the country governed how accountable is the government to it's people to its different regions its different ethnic groups and so a whole host of questions that often haven't been resolved all that well really come into play issues such as how well really do you run a country how democratic how accountable how well do different groups within a country get along with each other, very often I think unfortunately the answer is that a lot of these disputes or potential disputes have not been resolved and there is very little in place that would help us in coming years to better address them.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned earlier the two key factors arable land and water scarcity can you give an example of how those might lead to destabilization in a country or a region?

MR. RENNER: Yes, I mean the two key factors are land degradation and water scarcity I think there are a number of cases where we already know that severe changes in both areas are have indeed led to conflicts and perhaps there is no better example in a sense than what happened in Rwanda and Central Africa where the degradation of soils was quite severe this was a result of really over exploiting the land overburdening the land not allowing enough of a following pushing more and more into areas that were marginally of marginal use and what that led to was really in the late 80's and the early 1990's a very severe sudden drop in the agricultural yield actually how much food can grow on an acre of land that of course along with as in many neighboring countries of Rwanda the issue of water scarcity helps lead to a very severe drop in food production and that of course all has to be seen in a larger context again Rwanda at that time was already in a situation of civil war where an Starting invading from neighboring Uganda helped disrupt some of the agriculture production in Northern Rwanda took some of the arable land out of production sent people who would have ordinarily farmed the land fleeing into other parts of Rwanda so there were all these factors that helped bring about a tremendous disruption of a system that really is very fundamentally based on agriculture this at the same time that's Rwanda that saw the world market prices for its key product coffee plunge so that not only was there a tremendous crisis in the rural areas and virtually the whole population is really rural based but also whatever revenue it had gotten out of exporting suddenly plunged suddenly collapsed all these challenges along with the very deep animosities and hatreds between the two major ethnic groups in Rwanda helped bring about that dramatic collapse in 1994 when the Genocide happened.

INTERVIEWER: How have traditional security institutions and experts reacted to the idea of environmental factors playing a role in causing conflicts?

MR. RENNER: Traditional analysts of security affairs I think have certainly when we look back over the last few years really the past 10 years about when the discussions first really started to come into full swing a lot of these analyst I think tend to do almost laugh it off almost to say look you can't be serious about this there are much more important matters here we're talking about missiles and tanks and a Of weapons lined up on opposing sides who cares about the environment interestingly that has changed that has clearly changed and I think partly in reaction to a lot of these realizing well the world is changing and our analysis has to change with it we have to come to grips with the new factors and the new dynamics that we are now driving between countries and within them. And so I think there has been a still I would it a fairly reluctant initial embrace of a lot of these arguments to say yes we have to look at new factors we have to look at environment and social factors and we also have to really change our orientation from purely at the interstate level to really look at what's happen within countries and can these very new factors well new factors in terms of we not realize they play a bigger role can they also lead to conflict within countries which I think the answer to is emphatically yes. I think in this context we also have to realize that already most of the conflicts of wars going on are no longer wars between U.S. and Iraq as was so prominent during the Gulf War and more and more really are being carried out between the government and an opposition group or different ethnic groups within a country and so more and more we have really a rising factor of civil wars and of internal wars and again environmental degradation does play a role in this context.

INTERVIEWER: There's been a keen interest at the Pentagon and other US agencies about environmental security, you know the Pentagon has their environmental security office -- a lot of the other agencies have programs related to that. Do these agencies have tools to deal with these environmental factors that can cause conflicts and how are they reaction to the issue?

MR. RENNER: Well it's interesting and encouraging to see that there have certainly been a fair bit of rethinking new thinking in several government agencies quite proximately in the DOD, State Department and various other agencies that I think is an encouraging development because a few years ago only you would have had a very hard time finding a serious discussion partner in any of these agencies to take these issues on and debate what does it really mean and for policymaking how should we react to this what could we do differently so there is this process in place now and it's a slow process but it's moving along the question of course is to what extent is this representative in addition of yet another item on a long list of concerns that these agencies have to deal with so that if you're lucky you'll find environment somewhere near the bottom or maybe half way some where along this list so the first question is and I'm not sure that I have a clear answer or a clear sense of what the answer is at this point I'm not sure that beyond environment being recognized that something one has to pay attention to that it has really risen sufficiently in officials and decision makers attention to say that we really are beginning to speak of a whole new era in terms of decision making and awareness among policymakers and I think part of the reason for this bit of skepticism that I'm expressing is that by and large I see that most people in these agencies and I say most certainly not all would probably tend to think about environment still in the fairly traditional framework to still see environment as perhaps as a new type of threat where before we were concerned with weapons deployment weapons proliferation now well gee here is yet another threat that needs to be addressed and its heard and so if you look at these issues in that context almost by default by definition you are likely to pull out different tools out of the foreign policy box so to speak you're more likely to say well how can I make sure that country x will not do things that can be harmful to my interests rather than say well this is not the way it works if anything we have to get together at an early point we have to figure out ways how can we cooperate how can we do things together at an early stage so that we can prevent a wide spread Deterioration of resources that is very hard to reverse later on. So the whole way of thinking one's tools one's approach is that the policy I think have to change along with the notion that yes environment is important.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that we will start to see the Pentagon and other agencies as role players as people within the security arena become more familiar with environmental factors as how they relate to conflict?

MR. RENNER: I think this really one question is whether traditional agencies have a task with foreign policies or security policy whether they are indeed properly equipped in terms of I guess both the resources that they have but also in a sense their own sort of mental faculty I don't mean to say that people don't understand what's going on but how they can respond and creatively generate a different kind of policy whether just in terms of s Institutional setup and history of an agency that the way an agency approaches the problem whether one can really expect a fairly dramatic change that the kind of dramatic that I think is required or whether one would really have to turn to either different agencies or have to say well maybe somebody else has to take the lead and maybe some of these agencies should in a sense sort of almost take a step back a bit and then sort of take their cue as it were from people who were very, very closely and deeply involved in the environmental issues. I think that is an important point to make there is at the very least a very strong learning if all your life long you were trained to analyze issues relating to missile deployment how fast can a tank Travel across the plains of western Europe then obviously you have to go some period of time of reorientation retraining just understanding issues that have now arisen in place of the old ones and one could argue that it might be more effective to actually bring in people who have really studied these issues for a long time at least in terms of advising what is workable what kinds of policies are worth trying and to in a sense really help, help reorient the overall discussion.

INTERVIEWER: What are some actions that can be taken to reduce the potential danger posed by environmental stress and who should be involved in that effort?

MR. RENNER: What is interesting about this whole notion of environmental security is that it's really part of a larger redefinition, reorientation of what security really means now a days and various, various people have picked up on the term human security which I think really first came out of the United Nations development program meaning really that we have to look at a broad array of human concerns, concerns of how well individuals and communities are doing economically how well they are taking care of socially how much inequity or equity there is in societies and of course in which ways environment impact on these kinds of issues either positively or negatively so there's a whole packet as it were of issues that have now begun to come to the surface which for the past decades have just not gotten any real visibility.

INTERVIEWER: Is there anything you would like to add?

MR. RENNER: I don't know if it makes sense but I was gonna add I had initial intended to in a way go a bit over this whole issue of here we are more concerned in a sense about our communities and not so much about say the security of the government or state it just has different implications all together. As we really get more and more into this notion of both environmental security and a larger frame of human security what it really also means if we are to take this concept seriously if it's more than just a new slogan it really means that we have to reorient what security policy is all about and what it's designed to accomplish As opposed it was perfectly fine in a sense to be a foreign threat the threat of a foreign invasion of making sure that no other country would force you to take actions that you would rather not take so that was very largely addressed in a sense to security of a particular state a government a regime in a sense but what we are concerned about with if we talk about environmental issues about human security its really not alone the security of a particular government but really a going through all the levels of societies and making sure that different communities feel secure that relations within and between these communities are such that everybody feels secure and that's really gets us into a whole different area where we have to be much more concerned about governmental civil society relationships , relationships between different communities different ethnic groups and again by implication this really means that the kinds of policies that we need to do the job properly to address these concerns is very, very different from traditional security policy where obviously the military factor was very much central.

INTERVIEWER: What would you say to someone who is sitting at home in his lazy boy and wondering how these environmental problems relate back to the US?

MR. RENNER: Now in the first place of course when we talk about environmental degradation and how that impacts on peoples security and well being the most severe examples of course that come to mind are often found in developing countries that of course does not mean that people in industrialized countries and the US should say well this doesn't effect me anyway why should I possibly care there are a number of in a sense following effects repercussions that I think really should concern people in this country clearly if environmental and other factors lead to a situation in a country where you have growing instability growing chaos where you can also have really a clear inability on the part of the government to deal with the situation to ameliorate these conditions Things can spin out of control there will be increase violence most likely there will be people displaced, uprooted people becoming refugees seeking refuge that's in the US or neighboring countries clearly the interest of people companies who may have invested in their country or neighboring countries are in a way at stake as well because any investor will tell you that it only makes sense to go into a market if you a certain sense of stability and a certain sense of well not only is there a market today but there will be one tomorrow, so in a number of ways environmental factors can impinge on other concerns that may seem remote and unrelated so we should certainly conclude that something that does not directly effect us will not somehow indirectly perhaps to a very big Must come back to haunt us in different ways and I think the other in a sense the other We have to look also how do we impact on the situation in a country that do to environmental and other factors becomes destabilized we certainly have to look at how do our own consumption patterns play a role, clearly US and other western countries consuming an inordinate amount of the roles energy helps intensify the amounts of carbon dioxide that we pump into the atmosphere therefore helps really generate a drive towards the phenomenon of global climate change so industrialized countries I think really bear a very heavy burden in terms of having cost the preponderance of global warming and climate change if it comes to past the same true really in other ways too when you look at the percentage of minerals being consumed of the logging that's going on the smelting really any of the very polluting activities a lot of this really goes to the benefit of western consumers not a lot of these activities may take place in a developing country and so we could say about 41 this is taking place somewhere in Asia somewhere in Africa we have nothing to do with it but of course the mining that's going on the smelting operation whatever the operation may be it may take place somewhere far removed on the other side of the globe and yes these materials once they're extracted once they're processed make their way into our markets and so we I think play a very, very important role in helping accelerate some of the environmental degradations that we see happening

INTERVIEWER: What are some examples where competition for dwindling resources have almost lead to conflict between industrialized countries?

MR. RENNER: Certainly the issue is not always one that is located in developing countries or primarily effect developing countries one particular issue where it's clear that industrialized countries are drawn into potential conflict over environmental issues is the whole question of fishing, fishing on the high seas where we have seen repeated instances where fishing boats fishing vessels from different nations have innocent clashed on the high seas and in at least a number of these cases the both sides then brought in innocent reinforcements sent in paddle boats sent in boats actually certainly in one case where boats from Canadians and Spain were involved in a tussle in the North West Atlantic we I think came very, very close to actually in a sense of a shootout on the high seas still that would have been a very minor affair, a very minor kind of conflict in the scheme of things but I think it does show that we have come to the point with many fisheries around the world where they're so over stressed, so over fished that the issue really only to one extent is well who gets to the remaining resource first and more and more the question really becomes what do we have to do to make sure that we don't continue to over fish the resource so much that we have a collapse of the fishery and nobody wins everybody loses I think that is the real issue that is the issue not just in fisheries but to every other environmental issue we have to be very very careful not to push the environmental resources to the limit where it becomes very hard or impossible to really sort of step back and say well gee what did we do how can we possibly regenerate this resource how can we find ways to benefit from it in the long run and not just right now.

INTERVIEWER: In the past when we've had security issues that have risen to an alarming level typically and then there have been treaties imposed or international laws passed for example to prevent and limit nuclear weapons, the arms trade, land mines. Is there a sense that we can do that with environmental issues too and that would also help protect some of these countries that may get dragged into conflict because of environmental factors?

MR. RENNER: On one aspect there's sort of an ire similarity between negotiating treaties in the nuclear era, arms control is in the nuclear era and trying to negotiate the agreements with regard to environmental resources environmental cooperation because in both regards it is clear or became clear after some time that you have to find a way that works for both parties or sides involved you cannot just get your way because even if you do you still remain insecure or you still only address part of the question, so in essence there's a similarity but I think where it ends is simply that during the Cold War you could have the American President and the Soviet leader sit down and hammer out some kind of agreement and find a way to stabilize the situation fully realizing that if one side pushes the button both lose now of course there are two big sides But it's really a much, much larger range of nations of people that have to become involved, but I think at the same time that can be seen as both a drawback and a strength, and I think the strength in a way comes in when we realize that not only are there governments involved, more countries involved but really there's more and more non-governmental organizations involved and very often these are the ones that are leading the way in the sense of coming up with new ideas new policy suggestions functioning as public watchdogs to make sure that not only yes governments come to realize we have to act to protect the environment we have to sign certain conventions we have to negotiate and sign them first we have to follow up we have to implement them and that I think is probably really in the key area where NGO's will continue to play a very, very important role to hold the governments to their solemn pledges to make sure that not only is there a piece of paper that got signed and then filed away but this is a living meaningful document and this is something that's governments will be held accountable for.