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While the world remains focused on the specter of international terrorism, warfare and drug trafficking, other challenges to human development have managed to slowly mushroom into potential hazards and threats.
A new book on some of the environmental challenges in the Mediterranean, North African and Middle Eastern regions explores how these potential hazards have an adverse effect on security concerns if left unchecked.
Non-Military Threats to the Environment of a Volatile Region
‘Security and Environment in the Mediterranean - Conceptualising Security and Environmental Conflict’ is the collaborative effort of many of the region's leading experts on desertification, climate change, water scarcity and rapid urbanization, and examines non-military threats to population growth and development. Each chapter outlines various challenges that face the environment and eco-system in the
Mediterranean
and Near Middle East and links them with regional and national security concerns.
"This is the first book on environmental security and on environment and security linkages that was written by experts from many disciplines from the South and North," says Hans Gunter Brauch, chairman of Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS) at the Free University of Berlin and one of the book's editors.
“In my own view, the book['s aim] is to point to longer-term non-military challenges affecting human beings in the region.”
The book's contributors, which include an international team (22 countries) of 52 well-respected security specialists, peace researchers, environmental scholars, demographers and urbanization specialists, are hoping to create an awareness of how environmental concerns are directly linked to security in the region.
One of the book’s goals is to promote, endorse and develop cooperative projects between nations of the region and to enhance the levels of communication between natural and social scientists and other specialists.
Published last June by Springer Press (
Berlin
–
New York
- London - Paris - Milan - Tokyo ), the combined works adopt
the position that the only way to overcome the aforementioned challenges is
through trans-Mediterranean and Euro-Arab cooperation that includes "all
peoples and religions in the region." The book focuses on issues that may
not have yet been perceived as security issues in Mediterranean countries;
Brauch explains that the core theme addresses issues that are crucial to
environmental, human and health security.
The most important issues that face the region and are in dire need of attention include desertification, water scarcity, climate change and food security.
"The book wants to contribute to an early recognition [of the issues] and agenda setting, adding these challenges to the scientific and also to the political agenda in both regions and [that] of the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue," Brauch confirms.
World Leaders Take Notice
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“The impact of global environmental change is
more severe in the arid and semi-arid regions of the Arab World."
Hans
Gunter Brauch
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The research and findings have caught the
attention of world leaders, two of which have contributed forewords. "NATO
allies are convinced that there is further scope for enhancing both political
consultation and practical cooperation with the seven nations that
currently participate in the [Mediterranean Dialogue initiative launched in
1994, which links European security to that of the Middle East and the
Mediterranean]: Algeria, Egypt,
Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia," says NATO Secretary
General Lord Robertson in the book's foreword. Arab League Secretary General
Amre Moussa, who welcomed a wide dissemination of this book to universities in the region, also stresses the importance of dialogue with
Europe
, but also highlights the adverse effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict on regional environmental concerns.
"Dealing with environment challenges through regional cooperation cannot be achieved under conditions of military occupation. In fact, as this volume shows, conflict within the region has generated additional sources for environment degradation in the
Eastern Mediterranean
, especially in
Palestine
. In view of this we believe that the role of the European Union in the
Middle East
is crucial for the establishment of a regional environment security," he says.
Palestine
: A Multifactorial Environmental Catastrophe
The human,
economic and environmental conditions in
Palestine
were previously discussed in a series of workshops at the Conceptualizing Security and Environmental Conflicts Conference in
Canterbury
,
England
in September 2001. The conference outlined six crucial environmental factors which may have contributed to armed military conflict in the
Middle East
and
North Africa
in the twentieth century: population growth, food and water supply, desertification, urbanization, and climate change.
"One outcome of our discussions in
Canterbury
was the idea of a desk study on the environment in the
Occupied
Palestinian
Territories
that was carried through by the Post-Conflict Unit of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). There is a close connection between this conflict, environmental degradation and health problems of the affected people," Brauch says.
The desk study can be downloaded from the UNEP website.
Environments Ravaged by War
This volume of work is certain to become a necessary reference guide to understanding the relationship between security and environment in the region. The authors also focused on the effects of warfare, wars of attrition and regional conflict. The latter half of the book chronologically analyzes environmental security and conflicts in the
Mediterranean
and environmental consequences of World War II, the Gulf War, the Balkan wars and the
Middle East
conflict.
The efforts in the volume will likely be extrapolated in a follow-up workshop on environmental, human, food and health security at
The Hague
in September 2004.
The Hague
workshop falls within the framework of the Fifth Pan-European Conference on International Relations for which a call for papers has been posted.
"These are common concerns for all human beings, but the impact of global environmental change is more severe in the arid and semi-arid region of the Arab World," Brauch says.
Further Links Of Interest:
Firas
Al-Atraqchi holds
an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication. He is a Canadian journalist with
eleven years of experience covering Middle
East
issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at
firas6544@rogers.com.
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