In the annual threat assessment he presented last week to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, new Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair named the global economic crisis—not terrorism—the primary near-term threat to U.S. national security, prompting accusations of partisanship from the Washington Times. Yet as the U.S. Naval War College’s Derek Reveron notes, “the economic turmoil of the early 20th century fueled global instability and war,” and today’s economic collapse could strengthen extremists and deprive U.S. allies of the funds they need to deploy troops or increase foreign assistance to vulnerable regions.

Further down the list of potential catastrophes—after terrorism, cybersecurity, and the “arc of instability” that stretches from the Middle East to South Asia—the assessment tackles environmental security threats. The four-page section, which likely draws on sections of the recent National Intelligence Council report Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, summarizes the interrelated natural-resource and population challenges—including energy, food, water, demography, climate change, and global health—the U.S. intelligence community is tracking.

The world will face mounting resource scarcity, warns Blair. “Access to relatively secure and clean energy sources and management of chronic food and water shortages will assume increasing importance for a growing number of countries. Adding well over a billion people to the world’s population by 2025 will itself put pressure on these vital resources,” he writes.

Drawing on the conclusions of the 2008 National Intelligence Assessment on the impacts of global climate change to 2030, Blair portrays climate change as a variable that could place additional strain on already-stressed agricultural, energy, and water systems: “We assess climate change alone is unlikely to trigger state failure in any state out to 2030, but the impacts will worsen existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions.” Direct impacts to the United States include “warming temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and possible increases in the severity of storms in the Gulf, increased demand for energy resources, disruptions in US and Arctic infrastructure, and increases in immigration from resource-scarce regions of the world,” writes Blair.

Africa, as usual, is the last of the world’s regions to be analyzed in the assessment. Blair notes that “a shortage of skilled medical personnel, deteriorating health systems, and inadequate budgets to deal with diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis” is threatening stability in sub-Saharan Africa, and explains that agriculture, which he rightly calls “the foundation of most African economies,” is not yet self-sufficient, although some countries have made significant improvements in infrastructure and technology. He highlights ongoing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, and Somalia as the most serious security challenges in Africa. He fails to note, however, that all four have environmental/natural resource dimensions (see above links for details).

“Climate change is an important issue that can be addressed by all three elements of the national security equation: defense, diplomacy, and development,” says Kent Butts, in this short expert analysis from the Environmental Change and Security Program. Kent Butts, professor of political-military strategy at the Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College, makes the case for considering global climate change a nontraditional threat to security and discusses how the U.S. military is reacting to a changing climate.

“The countries in which terrorism could gain a foothold contain vast areas that are poverty-stricken and lawless. The common denominator within these areas is the absence of human security for the local population,” argues Major John Bellflower in “The Soft Side of Airpower” in the Small Wars Journal. “[A]dopting a human security paradigm as a counterinsurgency strategy could generate positive effects in the war on terror, particularly within AFRICOM,” and the Air Force could play a significant role in bringing human security to vulnerable populations, he claims.

When we picture the Air Force as an instrument of soft power, we tend to think of planes airlifting humanitarian aid into impoverished or disaster-stricken areas. But Bellflower argues that the Air Force could also help fulfill the longer-term health, food, economic, environmental, and community aspects of human security. For instance, the Air Force currently provides short-term health care in Africa through MEDFLAG, a biannual medical exercise. Bellflower suggests MEDFLAG “could be expanded to include a larger, centrally located field hospital unit that could serve a number of dispersed clinics.”

Bellflower also advocates deploying the Air Force’s Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers (REDHORSE) into impoverished, unstable areas to build airstrips, drill wells, and employ local labor to construct “clinics, schools, police stations, community centers, or whatever is needed for a particular area. Additionally, these units could repair existing facilities to allow electricity, water, and other needed life support systems to become functional or construct earthen dams or the like to protect against natural disaster and meet environmental security needs.” Employing young men to build this infrastructure “results in a lower chance of these individuals succumbing to the lure of terrorist group recruiting tactics,” asserts Bellflower.

Bellflower joins a growing cadre of academics and practitioners arguing that the Department of Defense (DoD) should be more involved in peacebuilding and international development. He makes an original contribution in detailing how the Air Force—typically viewed as the most hands-off branch of the armed forces—could help stabilize poor, volatile regions. Yet his vision would likely attract objections from both sides. Many humanitarian aid groups would resist what they view as DoD’s repeated incursions into an area in which it lacks expertise and has ulterior (i.e., national security) motives. On the other side, many military personnel would view this as an example of mission creep, and would hesitate to send soldiers into risky areas simply for humanitarian reasons.

Photo: A U.S. Air Force Europe airman from the 793rd Air Mobility Squadron moves humanitarian supplies into position for loading in support of the humanitarian mission to Georgia in August 2008. Photo courtesy of Captain Bryan Woods, 21st TSC Public Affairs, and Flickr user heraldpost.

“Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that there can be no development without security—and no security without development,” says the miniAtlas of Human Security, a global atlas illustrating international and civil conflicts, as well as human rights abuses. The atlas explains that human security comprises the broader pillar of freedom from want (for basic necessities like food, water, shelter, education, employment, and health care) and the narrower pillar of freedom from violence. Although freedom from want is vital to sustainable development and long-term security, the atlas only maps instances where freedom from violence has been marred by inter- or intrastate conflict.

While the atlas openly admits its exclusion of the broader pillar of human security—which notably includes environmental issues—it nevertheless misses the opportunity to acknowledge that the environment can span both pillars of human security. Though the atlas notes that the environment can be used as a weapon of violence—by poisoning wells, for instance—it never explains the role of the environment as a cause of violent conflict—in land disputes, local conflicts over water, or by spurring climate change-induced migration.

The authors of the miniAtlas of Human Security argue that today, most violent conflicts are rooted in poverty and politics. “Poor countries, unlike rich ones, lack the resources to address the grievances that can spark armed uprisings,” the report explains, and “poor countries tend to have weak security forces and so find it difficult to deter rebellions and to crush those that cannot be deterred.” In addition, dictatorships and “anocracies—regimes that are neither dictatorships nor full democracies—are the most prone to armed conflict” and human rights abuses. Though generally speaking, both of these statements are true, there are other causes of violent conflict that are just as important and have serious implications for human security.

For instance, the environment has helped spark conflict in many parts of the world. Competition over natural resources—whether diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone, timber in Liberia, or coltan in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo—has been a source of violent conflict between warlords, governments, and civilian populations. Getting policymakers to recognize that the environment is a cause of violent conflict is an essential step to preventing conflict, as well as conducting successful post-conflict environmental and disaster management. Until we recognize that the environment can increase the risk of violence, global security itself will suffer.

Photo: The Zambezi (Chobe) River borders eight African states: Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In an effort to improve governance and prevent violent conflict from erupting, these eight states are working for the establishment of a commission to govern this vital water resource. Courtesy of Flickr user Mara 1.

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“Governance is key. If you don’t have a competent government after the war, you’re not going to solve the problems that weren’t solved before the war because of incompetent governance,” said Charles Kelly at “Sustaining Natural Resources and Environmental Integrity During Response to Crisis and Conflict,” a November 12 event.

The University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health recently received $15 million from the Fred H. Bixby Foundation to expand the Bixby Program in Population, Family Planning & Maternal Health into the Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability. The Bixby Center will highlight population’s impact on global public health, climate change, poverty, and civil and international conflict. “I think the huge challenge for the human race in the 21st century is whether we can move to a biologically sustainable way of life on this planet,” said Malcolm Potts, chair of the Bixby Center. “Population plays an essential role in that,” he added. The Bixby Center will also address the well-documented unmet need for family planning around the world.

Although it will be housed within the School of Public Health, the Bixby Center will partner with the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the Berkeley Center for Global Public Health, the Berkeley Population Center, and other initiatives.

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated two restrictions on the Navy’s use of sonar during submarine training exercises off the coast of southern California. The restrictions had been designed to protect whales and other marine mammals.

Sierra magazine features letters to the next U.S. president from international environmental leaders, including Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, founder and CEO of Ugandan NGO Conservation Through Public Health and recent author of “Sharing the Forest: Protecting Gorillas and Helping Families in Uganda.” “As we become increasingly aware of the great threat of climate change to life on Earth, we must not forget the other immediate threats of poverty, disease, and population growth,” writes Kalema-Zikusoka in Sierra. “These threats are interrelated and need to be addressed simultaneously.”

The Pacific Institute has released an updated version of its popular Water Conflict Chronology. The earliest entry is from 3,000 B.C.; the most recent occurred last month.

Representatives of Arab and Mediterannean governments met in Tunis this week to discuss strengthening their collaboration over environmental security, reports China Daily.

“NATO’s current conceptualization of environmental security needs to be broadened and deepened,” argues Janelle Knox-Hayes in Oxford International Review.

Health in Harmony is promoting conservation and providing access to health care in West Kalimantan in Indonesia through an innovative development project, reports New America Media.

“When looking at what we need to do, I think stabilizing climate, stabilizing population are the two big ones. If we fail at either of those…civilization is in serious trouble,” warns Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC, in the latest podcast from the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). Following a recent event, “Thinking Outside the Grid: An Aggressive Approach to Climate and Energy,” co-sponsored by Wilson Center on the Hill and ECSP, Brown elaborated on the themes of his latest book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, and addressed climate change’s impact on natural resources, food security, and energy independence. He argues that the United States must critically re-examine its energy infrastructure and invest heavily in alternative energy technologies.