21.3: Besides Environmental Sustainability, What Other Aspects of Human Security Need Improvement?
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Our discussion of future prospects for human security has so far shown a certain preoccupation with the dictates of sustainability, especially in its environmental sense, a priority that in our view is well justified but should not lead to the exclusion or neglect of other sources of human insecurity. This is where those organisations and projects come into their own that offer important contributions to human security but whose success does not much depend on addressing overshoot, nor do they necessarily recognise such a dependence. For example, in their 15th Global Risk Report, the World Economic Forum (2020) identified six global areas of insecurity: economic stability, social cohesion, climate, biodiversity, ‘digital fragmentation’, and health systems – covering approximately the four pillars, as well as addressing proposals from similar high-ranking bodies such as the Nobel Laureate Symposium (2011). While their estimations of likelihood and impact (measured in billion US$ only) seem somewhat questionable [14], their analysis of interconnections and current trends allowed them to address most of the risks that were discussed in the chapters of this book. In a similar vein, but with slightly different priorities, Table 21.2 summarises the major ‘risks to watch’ as identified in this book, as they concern the four pillars. The challenges to sustainability are not included as they were already covered in Section 21.1.
As we argued in the introduction, such analyses of specific risks and threats can allow governments to better facilitate direct intervention and provide better justifications for such action than can superficial efforts to promote ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’. They tend to be motivated by concerns for distributive justice, procedural justice, the minimisation of harm and suffering, and other values that inform grantable human rights (see Section here).
Economic security should no longer be measured in terms of daily income or per capita GDP (as done e.g. by the UN and its affiliates) but by means of other standards, such as gross per capita happiness (Lane, 2000; Kasser, 2006) or inclusive wealth (IHDP, 2014) . Because of overshoot, recommended measures must not rely on further net economic growth or GDP increase (Costanza et al., 2014) but should include efforts to redistribute existing resources more equitably, to increase the efficiency of resource use, and to decrease birth rates. Ronnie Hawkins presented this argument in detail in Chapter 12. Those imperatives form the basis for a steady-state economy which is characterised by zero growth at national and global levels (Daly & Farley, 2004; Rubin, 2012). Zero growth means that only productivity and the quality of products can increase, not the input of resources. This model would allow post-crash economies to avoid wasteful roller-coaster cycles and relapses into overshoot (Brown, 2001). There is ample evidence that this transition would neither necessarily compromise human happiness or the quality of lives, nor would it decrease human security—on the contrary (Rubin, 2012). After all, zero growth has been the default situation throughout most of human history.
| PILLAR | LEVEL | RISK | COUNTERMEASURES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economic Security | Global |
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| National, community |
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| Environmental Security | Global and most regional |
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| Health Security | Global | Pandemics and resistant pathogens (Chapter 17) | Immunisation, screening, prevention |
| National, community | Aging populations; growing demand and shrinking supply | Preventive, low-cost healthcare for all (Chapter 17) | |
| Sociopolitical Security | Global |
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| National, community | Weakening of central government; fragmentation |
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The Future of Health Security
Health security across a population, measured in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) as discussed in Chapter 5, can only be improved for the long term if current trends are taken into account in healthcare policy. Those trends include the following:
- As reproductive rates decrease, demographic profiles will shift towards older ages; different prevailing kinds of conditions will require a shift towards funding of different treatments.
- Demand for health care will rise as populations continue to grow and gentrify, and as environmental quality declines; as the range of pollutants increases (e.g. endocrine disruptors, carcinogens and mutagens) new disorders are likely to appear.
- Quality, safety, and availability of food will decline as problems with industrialised production methods (spoilage and contamination, toxicity of additives and packaging, rising costs of production, transport and distribution, economic decline) intensify. Organic and local production can help to some extent but preventive health care will need to take the forefront.
- As economies and state budgets shrink, costly high-tech treatments will be in shorter supply. The more affordable ‘ounce of prevention’ will dominate.
- As population densities rise in many regions, and as previously undamaged ecosystems are increasingly invaded and their fauna traded worldwide, epidemics and pandemics become increasingly likely. The 2020 COVID pandemic was probably only the first, and relatively mild, example.
Taking those trends into account will necessitate a greater emphasis on preventive care (particularly immunization and removal of pollutants) and screening programmes as noted in Chapter 17. The latter has gained particular importance as major pathogens become increasingly resistant to antibiotics and emerge newly in globalised, modified environments inhabited by an aging population (Montagnier, 2001; Epstein, 2000). After the meltdown and explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant on 11 March 2011 public concern was alerted by reports claiming that initially officials underestimated and misrepresented the extent of the danger.[16] The fact that the country responsible (Japan) decided to abandon nuclear power (only to falter again weeks later) while the countries suffering most from the radioactive fallout (US and Canada) have not and their media remain mute on the subject, indicates that a sound assessment of some health risks does not yet prevail throughout the international community when it contravenes the interests of powerful industrial lobbies.
Corporate Irresponsibility and Human Insecurity: The Case of Canadian Asbestos Mining
Perhaps the most grotesque example of corporate influence on health legislation is the story of asbestos mining and export in the Canadian province of Quebec. Over the past century, evidence has accumulated to implicate all types of asbestos in the causation of asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma, and other conditions. The WHO and other international health organisations decry its use, and in Canada it is hardly used anywhere; yet its mining and export continued unabated for decades. Like the tobacco industry before it, the Canadian asbestos mining industry engaged in a prolonged public relations campaign to delay, deny, and distort scientific evidence on the harmfulness of their product, and to divide or discredit researchers involved (Leuprecht, 2011).
The government of Canada not only refused to allow asbestos to be put onto the Rotterdam Convention’s list of hazardous substances, it refused to give any reason either to the Canadian public in whose name it acted, or to the delegates taking part in the Conference of the Parties to the Convention (Soskolne & Ruff, 2012).
The export of asbestos threatened the human security of people in the receiving countries, particularly their rights to life and to health. This shows that threats to health security can arise from the complicity between states and non-state actors such as individuals, groups, and corporations. Finally, a legislative change prohibited all mining, use, manufacture, sale, import and export of asbestos in Canada from 30 January 2019, but exempting military and nuclear facilities as well as the chloralkali industry until 2022. The export market is now left to asbestos producers in Russia and Kazakhstan, and their hapless customers (primarily India).
One of many other case examples involves the pesticide DCBP. Its adverse health effects were proven in 1977 and it was banned from the US domestic market in 1979 while its export continued undiminished. Eventually its manufacturers were forced by a blockade of banana exports to compensate 5,000 Honduran farm workers who had contracted severe reproductive dysfunctions after prolonged exposure. The labour leader who organized the blockade was later assassinated (Bouguerra, 2001).
Corporate social responsibility and the responsibilities of corporations with regard to human rights rank high on the agenda of international institutions, especially the United Nations. As outlined in Chapter 5, non-state actors such as corporations and their leaders, as well as complicit governments, are accountable for human rights violations. Yet neither one are usually brought to justice.
The dubious influence of corporate powers on health security is evident in the industrialised production of foods and food additives. The pernicious side effects of some additives sometimes become apparent only after decades of use, and even then the manufacturer’s lobbying efforts may prevent their removal from the market. [17] Other areas where strong corporate interests influence health security policies include toxic waste processing, nuclear waste deposits, and hazardous chemical industries (see textbox above). Most genetically modified crop cultivars require hugely elevated levels of pesticides and fertilisers which are usually sold by the same companies that sell the seeds.
Time and time again, influential corporate groups with an interest in perpetuating the status quo have spent enormous resources to ensure that information about ecological overshoot, global warming and climate change, regional environmental problems or risks, or particular health hazards is delayed, denied, or distorted, and political opposition divided, bought or discredited (Beder, 2006). Those efforts included the co-opting of media conglomerates and of politicians. Examples include the tobacco industry, nuclear industry, oil companies, and pharmaceutical corporations (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Countries with a ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system (e.g. the US, Canada and the UK) seem particularly susceptible to such covert manipulation, as large numbers of votes are never represented in their parliaments.
Clearly it is not enough for society to leave corporations in positions of enormous power and merely hope that they will exercise corporate social responsibility—whatever that may mean in particular cases. Corporations cannot be expected to shape their policies according to the public good; it is neither their duty nor in their interest. It is rather the duty of societies to makes sure that corporations are not placed in positions where their exercise of normal day-to-day business causes harm. That duty extends also to reversing the privatisation of public services and the underlying prioritisation of market forces, that have become worldwide phenomena wherever the neo-liberal ideology dominates. Even though globalisation may directly result from the ‘worldwide domination of capitalism’ (Desai, 2001), that does not necessarily mould it into the monolithic form of development envisioned by the CDP; rather, the particular shape of globalisation remains subject to the political preferences of societies.
Socio-political Security: The Spectre of Fragmentation
Socio-political security includes the tentative and fragile system of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law as outlined in Chapter 6 and Chapter 18. Opportunities in those areas arise from the trend to make IHL more inclusive and to adapt it to changing conditions of violent conflict. With the help of the lessons from the UN’s questionable decisions in the cases of Rwanda and Kosovo it is to be hoped that a more effective framework can be developed to make global peacekeeping more reliable. Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, UN peacekeeping operations have increasingly taken on an enforcer function as a means to maintain and restore security, capacities for which they are ill-equipped and ill-prepared (Sloan, 2011). At the same time, weapons of mass destruction are proliferating and global terrorism shows no sign of abating (World Economic Forum, 2020). A connection between the two trends seems plausible. As in the health care field, preventive measures seem to carry the advantage (Langille, 2015).
As population densities increase and resources decline, new frictions between cultures and states will develop, and many will result in violent conflict (see Chapter 5). An intergovernmental mediation agency of the kind that Franke Wilmer suggested in Chapter 19 would be very helpful to assuage tensions before they build to critical levels. A second level of intervention could be added in the form of a UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) (Langille, 2015). The potential benefits go far beyond preventing wars. Terrorism cannot be defeated by counter-terrorism but only by eliminating its root causes, as Anna Hayes argued in Chapter 7. This means that mechanisms for conflict resolution will not only have to become more proactive, they will have to include everyone, most of all those sectors of society from which prospective and potential terrorists are recruited. To ward off the new threat of eco-terrorism this would require allocating more political power to communities as balance against the interests of corporate groups and centralised governments, especially at a time of economic recession. As Hayes asserts, some people become terrorists because they feel ‘alienated by what they perceive to be an unjust and unfair society or political structure’. This danger would become particularly serious if the peacekeeping framework developed towards a ‘Fortress World’ scenario (Raskin, 2016).
The opportunity in socio-political security lies in reaching an effective compromise between excessively forceful approaches and too much laissez-faire causing fragmentation. With the global influence of US policy waning and economies declining, some concern is emerging about a ‘retrenchment from globalisation’, defined by the World Economic Forum (2011, p. 39) as “restrictions to global movements of goods, people and ideas”. Their concerns about possible economic implications seem unjustified considering the possible benefits of eco-communalism; some of the present-day “insane trade” practices (Keller, 2019) cannot be abolished soon enough. [18] The greater danger from such a retrenchment into ‘Fortress World’ affects socio-political security through the spectres of nationalism, tribalism, and xenophobia. Less international cooperation on IHL and ICL could have disastrous consequences for human security, as Chapter 6 and Chapter 18 indicate. A decrease in international cooperation on law enforcement would also allow for transnational crime to expand, with all the associated human security threats explained by Wilson in Chapter 13. He argues that human security cannot be improved in that area without increased cooperation and coordination among countries. As the danger of global fragmentation has not yet been widely recognised, proactive countermeasures at the national level have not entered public discussion. One crucial requirement for the early prevention of intercultural conflict would be guaranteeing freedom of and from religion worldwide as Brown and Gehrmann recommended in Chapter 4; official precautions and provisions for cultural safety would be another (Lautensach & Lautensach, 2015). The dangers of intercultural conflict have increased in recent years with the waves of mass migration into Europe, the US and other countries.
In the introduction we also mentioned that worldwide economic decline and deterioration of infrastructures could seriously destabilise the coherence of large countries. To what extent would that compromise human security? Might the opportunities for regional self-determination not present some benefits? The efforts of many international organisations have been motivated by the tacit assumption that the cohesion of a nation-state is always a good thing. Although ‘balkanisation’, the fragmentation of a federal state along ethno-cultural lines, often leads to bloody civil wars, its forceful prevention can create more harm than good – as the Balkan precedent showed (Pringle, 2012). The forceful attempts by Serbia in 1991 to preserve Yugoslavian integrity caused much suffering without ultimately halting the disintegration. An illustrative counterexample would be the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia in 1992. The recipe for disaster seems to be a multiethnic federal state ruled by a dominant ethnic minority (Chua, 2003; Hale, 2004). Despite the commonly pejorative use of ‘balkanization’ we suggest that the concept bears the opportunity for a peaceful, ordered disintegration but within the context of a vigilant and helpful international community.
What muddles this issue is that norms of human security are often mixed with trite nationalistic ideals and old-style national security, and also with justified concerns about the effects of patriotic fervour (see Chapter 19). When a country peacefully divides into two, as in the case of Czechoslovakia, this does not automatically compromise the human security of the inhabitants – actually, the results of the Czechoslovakian referendum suggested that the majority believed the opposite would ensue. When the breakup went ahead without any violence, the international community commended Prime Minister Václav Havel for his dedication to human security in a situation where other leaders might have let their anachronistic adherence to nationalistic ideals and so-called ‘realist’ values tempt them into reacting oppressively. The extent of political fragmentation distinguishes Raskin’s (2016) two ‘civilised’ scenarios of ‘Eco-Communalism’ and ‘New Sustainability Paradigm’; in the latter, sustainable policies are coordinated and arbitrated by a central global governing body, which many would regard as the preferable scenario. Again, the opportunity lies in finding and implementing the right compromise.
Whether the fragmentation of large countries can somehow be reconciled with the consolidation of a global governing authority will have to await the test of history. The World Economic Forum (2011) considered the failure of global governance to be one of the two central risks to human security (the other one being economic disparity). To be sure, in the absence of adequate global or super-regional security regimes and arbitration authorities the threat of rogue states, cyberconflict, WMDs, transnational crime, nationalism and terrorism will persist, no matter how ecologically sustainable the world may have become. Of particular concern in a politically fragmented world would be the future of human rights, especially for groups that are already disadvantaged such as women. [19] As explained in Chapter 15, human rights depend on civil society, which benefits greatly from networking, international monitoring and enforcement, and communication. A retrenchment from globalisation could spell disaster for many world citizens. These pitfalls of a ‘de-globalisation’ trend are the reason why the latter of the two ‘civilised’ Raskin scenarios is to be preferred from a human security perspective.
Avenues towards such responsible global governance are proposed by Klaus Bosselmann in Chapter 16 and by Katy Gwiazdon in Chapter 20. Those approaches need to surmount several challenges. The first lies in the transition from the presently existing kind of global hegemony exerted by corporate interest groups and subservient governments towards a form of governance that is inclusive, democratic, and sustainable. Secondly, national sovereignty needs to be reigned in—through nothing less than a consensus of sovereign governments! This would include a change from the dominant ethic of ‘realism’ to ‘enlightened self interest’ which would then allow for an empowerment of the UN or some other global governing framework. Morton and Maesel present a convincing argument for this in Chapter 18. Gwiazdon in Chapter 20 emphasises the diversity of levels and modes that can contribute to a compelling consensus towards global governance (which in her sense includes all local levels). Many of those mechanisms for consensus building on supporting human security are still quite ineffective and undeveloped (see Chapter 6); bringing them up to task constitutes an additional challenge.
What If the Law Is Wrong?
In Chapter 13, John Wilson explored how the rule of law can promote human security nationally and internationally, working on the assumption that state authority always has automatic legitimacy. Likewise, Katy Gwiazdon in Chapter 20 emphasises the rule of law in environmental governance. To be sure, many states derive adequate legitimacy through democratic representation in their legislative bodies and reasonably equitable sharing of power. Equally obvious are the exceptions. One kind of exception is the hybrid political order in ‘fragile’ states that Clements discussed in Chapter 8; from a human security perspective, argues Clements, such hybrid orders are as legitimate as the typical Weberian state. Thus, in any country where power relationships are deemed too inequitable or state benefits too weak, local communities and traditional orders can legitimately contribute toward systems of secure governance, but with some modifications to what is commonly considered the rule of law.
A very different kind of exception arises from situations where a state abuses its power or where the law does anything but promote human security. The authors’ male ancestors served in the German armed forces during two world wars under regimes of dubious legitimacy which at times were engaged in crimes against humanity. Under such circumstances it becomes a moral duty for the soldier or citizen to disobey orders, to ignore such laws as seem unjust in one’s own judgment, and to thwart the designs of state authority wherever one deems the risks acceptable. Numerous scenarios popularised in the media involved families giving refuge to Jewish refugees during the holocaust, not only breaking the law of the land but risking their own lives in the process. They did so because they refused to regard Jews as “guilty or beyond hope” or themselves as helpless (Oliner & Oliner, 1988). Other examples come from East German border guards defying their shoot-to-kill orders when encountering compatriots fleeing across the Iron Curtain into the West. Surely we can agree that those people acted virtuously defying the absolute authority of an inhumane and brutal state, even if not all of us might have had the stamina to act likewise in their places.
In such unequivocal cases personal moral judgment and possibly a moral consensus among families and communities must override state authority for the sake of human security. But this raises some questions about situations in the moral grey zone where the relative legitimacies of the two opposing positions are less clear, where Clements (in Chapter 8) would note an incompatibility between modern state agenda and customary approaches, but where a decisive moral imperative may not be so easily identified. The situation that US citizens find themselves in under the Trump regime provides a poignant contemporary example.
Clements suggests another reason why reconciliation of such conflicts is important to human security: Countries that succeed in establishing effective hybrid orders of governance tend to be more resilient in emergency situations. The global crisis is bound to present us with plenty of occasions to test this hypothesis. Hybrid modes of governance can also help stabilise the cultural identity of indigenous peoples and address their legitimate claims for political self-determination. The goal of effective hybrid governance lends a new meaning to the concept of sustainable development, far beyond its often overemphasised and questionable economic dimensions. Its significance reaches from international regimes through national governance to the building of secure local communities. One problem area where hybrid governance might be unable to help is the endangerment of environmental security by government inaction on pollution and climate change; civil disobedience is bound to increase in this area.
The Crisis of Governability
The trend, particularly noticeable in North America, of news media and journalism prioritising goals of entertainment rather than public education represents a threat to human security. Even political programmes seem to “provoke more than they inform” (Kupchan, 2012, p. 65). The explosive expansion of social media in recent years added another dimension to that trend. It leaves the public, who is already often woefully undereducated, uninformed about current affairs of significance to their security. At the same time it perpetuates and increases the influence of corporate groups and their agents over public opinion and consumer choices, and it relieves governments of a considerable portion of their accountability obligations (Kaplan, 2007). It raises serious questions about the merits of that sacred principle of democratic liberalism, ‘giving the people what they want.’ Clearly some of the societal outcomes suggest this principle to be unsuitable for the media and entertainment sector, on grounds of human security. [20]
This predicament applies with equal significance to the marketing of consumer goods in general, to food security, to health care, and to governance and the definition of welfare. Welfare is created, firstly, by the satisfaction of needs. It is the objective of marketing to create human wants and then to make people perceive those wants as needs, no matter how tenuous their connections might be to determinants of happiness (Lane, 2000). It seems clear that ‘giving people what they want’ does little towards ‘freedom from want’ or ‘need’ as long as the same companies who do the giving also advise people what to ask for. But to what extent does this concern extend to governance? Recent political developments in the US, the EU, and Japan suggest that those governments that most closely adhere to the democratic ideal of electoral appeasement are encountering severe problems with economic decline, rising poverty and inequity, ideological polarisation and political paralysis (M’Bokolo et al., 2001).
This problem has been recognised in the mainstream literature as the ‘crisis of governability’—a ‘mismatch between the growing demand for good governance and its shrinking supply’ (Kupchan, 2012, p. 62). Good governance can be regarded as a limited resource when one defines it as government giving the people what they demand in terms of basic needs, justice and protection and to perpetuate its ability to do so. A world in overshoot clearly cannot fully meet that need any further, but that argument is not recognised among the adherents of the conventional development paradigm. Instead they focus—with some justification – on the global phenomena of decreasing governing leverage in democracies, lack of international consensus and solidarity, and the inability of democracies to apportion sacrifice. Most interesting are the recommended remedies, as exemplified by Kupchan (2012): better strategic planning of national economic policy, gaining electoral support through populist appeasement and ideological galvanisation, and counteracting widespread tendencies towards protectionism and isolationism. These remedies do not seem to promote democratic ideals; instead they could spell a general transition towards less democratic governance such as plutocracy or state capitalism, perhaps even a benign dictatorship of some form—which brings us to our closing question.
The two essential characteristics of a democratic society are equitable representation and equitable participation. Most societies in the globalised world aspire to those ideals, but how sustainable are they in the social sense? The ‘crisis of governability’ points to this question most poignantly. Yet, if they are not sustainable, what good are they for human security?
These are important questions that concern us all because, as has been suggested throughout this book, many current trends, practices and policies in general render the goal of sustainable flourishing less and less attainable for humanity. Aside from Kupchan’s (2012) analysis described above, a major reason is our persistent collective inattention to overshoot, to the fact that our demands cannot be sustainably met by the source and sink functions of the Earth’s ecosystems. But in this section we focused on social and political sustainability, specifically of forms of governance – and here, too, the emergence of undemocratic or antidemocratic popular movements raises the question how politically sustainable democratic systems will turn out to be in the Anthropocene.
In order to turn this trend around, the authors of this book suggested numerous measures that we summarised in this concluding chapter. It is unclear how much time or latitude remain in order to avert a catastrophic crash that would endanger much of what we value as civilisation. This renders the problem even more important. While much of the challenge of sustainable human security can be described in economic terms (i.e. the allocation of scarce resources), it does include many non-economic issues such as how to evaluate determinants of ecosystem health or how to allocate the right to reproduce in the midst of a population explosion. In this context the question is, to what extent can these issues be solved at the present time through democratic means? (See Extension Activity 5.)
Discussing the limitations of democratic principles is never a comfortable undertaking within the context of Western liberal tradition and its epistemology. Yet we suggest that a genuine effort to ensure human security cannot succeed without questioning the ideological cornerstones that influence human security, and democracy is one of them. Raising those important questions, beyond merely transmitting information, has been among the unifying agendaof this book’s authors. It is our fervent hope that the reader will have developed the habits of raising pertinent questions and of challenging dominant assumptions throughout their future professional endeavours.