State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security

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• State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security
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Worldwatch Live Online Discussion

Michael Renner: Senior Researcher

January 13, 2005 - 3:00pm EDT

Security concerns are once more at the top of the world's agenda, but terrorism is only symptomatic of a far broader set of complex problems that require more than a military response. In State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security, the Worldwatch Institute explores how endemic poverty, large scale population movements, communicable diseases and recurring natural disasters constitute some of the most destabilizing forces impacting our world today.

Join Worldwatch security expert and State of the World 2005 project co-director, Michael Renner for a discussion that explores the non-military alternatives for lasting world peace.

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Welcome to the first of our State of the World 2005 Online Discussions. Worldwatch Senior Researcher and State of the World 2005 Project Co-Director Michael Renner joins us today for an overview discussion. Welcome Michael!

Michael Renner: Thanks, Steve, this should be an interesting discussion. I see that a number of questions are already lined up, so I'd better get started!

Fort Collins, CO: Mr. Renner: The presence and organization of large military forces within civilized nations is most likely a reality for the forseeable future (our lifetimes). These forces are used not only to fight terrorism (and other wars), but have been shown to be very useful in responding to world environmental security needs resulting from natural disasters (the Indian Ocean tsunami, etc.) and human induced environmental crises (desertification in Somalia, deforestation in the Amazon,etc). How do you view, assess and value these military contributions to world environmental security ? Thank you.

Michael Renner: Yes, the response to the tsunami has demonstrated once again that military establishments are the only human institutions that have the personnel, equipment, logistical capacity, and funds needed for quick responses. (And clearly, the individuals deployed to the affected areas are working extremely hard to provide assistance.) I suppose one could argue that our goal should be to transform (large) portions of the worldís armies into a sort of ìgreen helmetî force, akin to the blue helmets, aka the UN peacekeepers. Have them available in rapid response fashion whenver the need arises.

But ultimately, armies arenít built to provide compassion, but to prepare for combat. So it may be better to generate civilian capacities that can provide adequate disaster relief and similar assistance. But this comes down then to the need to shift budgetary priorities: spending less on the military, and more on civilian needs ñ including, importantly, investments in making human communities less vulnerable to disasters (at least those that are now worsened by human actions).

Santa Rosa, California: How can mankind ever expect to solve the equation for achieving sustainability as long as the world's most useful organic agricultural resource is prohibited? Cannabis (hemp) prohibition is fundamentally destabilizing to evolution of functional human values, based in respect for Nature.

Michael Renner: I suspect that personally, Iíd assign a somewhat less critical role to hemp per se than you seem to do. But I agree with you that we need to rethink our approach to agriculture across a broad range of issues, for sustainability to become more than a distant dream.

Montreal, Quebec, Can: For lasting world peace, humanity could engage in a a community water restoration project, revegetation starting by local watersheds, sources, creeks and rivers. Why is it so difficult to get financial resources for these urgent activities...

Michael Renner: There are many positive projects we can undertake to build a sustainable and equitable peace. Chapter 8 of State of the World 2005 addresses this question in some detail. There is a growing array of initiatives around the world, including peace parks, shared river basin management plans, regional seas agreements, and joint environmental monitoring programs. They seek to build peace through cooperative responses to shared environmental challenges. As is to be expected, the degree to which these efforts are successful varies, but it is an important learning process.

Why donít they get better funding, political support, and visibility? I suspect that at a certain level, they may not offer enough drama or sensationalism for the media. Sometimes, though, that's a good thing. Talks and negotiations among neighboring countries that are not on good terms with one another tend to be highly sensitive, and there's often a need to be able to conduct discussions and joint undertakings away from the limelight. The example of the southern Caucasus, highlighted in State of the World 2005, demonstrates this point.

Peacemaking through environmental cooperation is at times a hard sell, but with perseverance, these efforts can pay off.

cluj-napoca, romania: what is the role of religion in today's world, giving the fact that even terorism is justified by some through religion (especially islamic fundamentalists)? In the context of a globalizing world, does religion have something to say?

Michael Renner: Religion seems to play very contradictory roles. On one hand, we confront the very real specter of rising fundamentalist beliefs, including those that are at heart intolerant of other faiths (or those judged to be insufficiently adhering to a particular reading of theological beliefs).

Intolerant religious movements do pose a certain threat in terms of the much talked-about "clash of civilizations" and it seems that sometimes the most extreme forces on either side reinforce each other.

But religion of course also plays a very diferent role. The fundamental values underlying all the different religions have much to tell us in terms of creating a better world, including commandments not to kill other humans and to respect nature. We need to focus on what unites us, rather than on what divides us.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: How much of global hope and trust estimated remains to those who experienced alternative democratic systems as politically and socially successful comparing to western, while have been experiencing a systematic militant distruction organized by western democratic elites as opposition to its best merely on a basis of analysis which involve insufficient inteligence services in a purpose to gather anti-propagandistic material and bases of militant strategy? Since the end of 70' I presume we may conclude that a western total war against eastern Asian society has been provoked per definition. Isn't it strangely rather late to proclaim seeking for peacefull political alternatives now as to the victimized, as well intelllectuals educated in the east and of never utilized knowledge treted as not recognized by western academics) the war seems as needing to comefinally to its complexity end. When are WE (those intellectuials be invited to speak OUR opinion and knowledge and experiences as a basic science on the theritories of wars?

Michael Renner: If I understand you correctly, you are saying that it was the Western world that has victimized the rest of the world long before events like the September 11 attacks and other events that have led to a feeling of victimization on the part of the West. In that, I would undoubtedly agree with you.

We now face a situation where so-called weak and failed states are seen as a threat to the West. But the West needs to understand its own role in helping to create the underlying conditions, and the dominant rethoric surrounding the war on terrorism is not very helpful in this process.

Perhaps there is a silver lining in the South Asian tsunami, if I can even call it that: the disaster has brought home the lesson that there are many issues that Western and non-Western societies, rich and poor, confront. It is my hope that the world will conclude that better mutual understanding and cooperation is essential (and that includes a Western acknowledgment of past wrongs that in some ways still carry forward to this day).

Hilo Hawaii: I live in a community almost completely dependent on cheap oil. Tourism and the export (via air freight) of high value perishable agricultural products are the main sources of income for the island. The population imports 90% of what it consumes, and is almost completely dependent on private automobiles for all internal transportation. This system is extremely insecure from the most minor disruptions in global infrastructure (like peak oil production), and far more vulnerable to pandemics than it needs to be. Yet, almost all my neighbors can't see the problem and live content with an illusion of security. I have a pretty good understanding of the kinds of changes needed to secure my community, but with almost all my neighbors in deep denial, nothing is likely to change without some major catastrophy. I asume this is common in most affluent societies, an illusion prbably maintained for the benefit of those in power. Considering the media government are part of that conspiracy, how do we get our neighbors to recognize exactly how insecure their positions are? That's the first step towards real security, local self-sufficiency on the basics of life.

Michael Renner: The observation you offer rings equally true in the area I call home, which is eastern Long Island. Deep patterns of denial are clearly present. One task is to make the global connections, and the impossibility of sustaining our Western livestyles for long, much more transparent in ways that people can relate to in their own local settings.

But I also suspect that people would be less resistant to change if it became clearer that there are in fact alternatives to be pursued. It's not a question of an opulent lifestyle (for the relatively few on this planet) or utter destitution. but the longer we persist in considering our lifestyle as an unalterable fact and birthright, the harder the choices will get. The current US administration unfortunately seems insistent on not just maintaining energy- and materials-intensive choices, but further deepening them (and using force to secure "our" oil supplies). That complicates our task further.

Rockaway, NJ: Mixture of a country club and a beauty show Do you believe in the transformation of the UN? I would like to confirm my skepticism with my experience as an expert of the Hungarian Government at the UN Mission dealing with the sustainable development. (Itís a shame, when the Time Out/New York could deal with the scandal of the UN related to the Secretary Generalís son.) I took part on the Rio+5 and then some related events. Meanwhile I used to be an environmental editor as well I took part on the press briefing too. It was during the 90ís. My point of view the work of the UN wasnít more than the mixture of the life of a country club and a beauty show. There are many conceptual problem. Although the UN is the most significant NGO of the World, their diplomats have tenure job for all of their life with outstanding salary, celebrityís life style in Manhattan. They are very far from their countriesí problems. This system will always soak up the budget, and the world will struggle with the troubles supported by other, small NGO-s, private foundationís volunteer, etc. You canít expect any transition included the distinguished advisors from the affluent, fat, well-dressed diplomats who are sitting in their chairs as long as they would like. The UN would need young, modest, committed professionals who are able to work on the hot fields of the our poor World.

Michael Renner: I'm in principle a big UN Supporter. But, having worked as an intern at a UN office in New York in the late 1970s and having had other experiences with various UN offices over the years, I certainly see the validity of your points. The UN is essential, yet it is also at times maddeningly bureaucratic. The UN is the only true resonably representative global organization we have (the IMF, World Bank, and WTO don't fit that description), but it is also extremely dependent on its member governments, and of course one member in particular.

So as a complex (and in some ways convoluted and internally somewhat contradictory) organization, it has many faces. And I see the well-dressed, disconnected diplomats as much as I see highly-motivated UN professionals (young and old), some of whom I have the privilege of calling friends or colleagues, and they ultimately make this organization work despite the odds.

So I have to say that I am more optimistic about the UN and the chances for reforming it to make it more like the organization we'd like it to be and need it to be. Kofi Annan's high-level panel recently came out with a number of good proposals in this regard. The ball is in some ways in the member governments' court, but we need civil society everywhere to step up pressure on their respective governments to make reform meaningful.

Rockaway, NJ: I would like to join to the tole of the relgion question and refer to Bill Moyers speech at the Harvard. The churches have a very negative role to combat the environmental degradation, because they consider them as part of the creation.

Michael Renner: I'm aware of Bill Moyers' speech, and he raises many very important, and disturbing points. We do need to be on guard against the more retrograde aspect of organized religion. But it would be unfair to regard everyone within the many and diverse religious communities as part of the problem.

Hilo, Hawaii: Do the benefits of international trade and tourism justify the comprehensive costs, especially considering their potential contributions to spreading epidemics, invasive species, and increased consumption of non-renewable resources?

Michael Renner: We haven't really applied any honest "cost-benefit" calculations because for too long the automatic assumption has been that more trade is better. But the evidence is mounting that high, and sometimes irreversible, costs come with what is known as "free trade".

Hilo, Hawaii: Granted the Bush administration makes a good "whipping boy" for unsustainable energy and other resource exploitation policies, but don't local governments have much more control over how these resources are consumed (eg. car-based planning vs pedestrian-transit)? Thus controlling overall demand. So doesn't real security begin at the level of local governments?

Michael Renner: Good point indeed. Yes, state and local governments, down to town councils, need to be taken to task as well. In my neck of the woods, local decision-making has been nothing short of atrocious, leading to the dramatic loss of farmland, encroachment of remaining "wild" areas, ever-growing traffic, the death of downtown, and on and on. Clearly, views long accepted within the environmental community very often are still foreign concepts among many local goverments.

But there are examples to the contrary as well. Consider wind energy. While the Bush administation is not interested, many states have begun to embrace this option, including Texas. California in many ways has been in the vanguard of change (with regard to boosting car fuel efficiency, for instance).

Fort Collns, CO: Mr. Renner: In 1906 the American moral philosopher, William James, spoke of then modern society's relation to war and theorized that war is inevitable because societies and nations have neither found or proposed a moral equivalent to war. He goes on to say that "war is the strong life" and that war taxes are the only ones we never hesitate to pay,as the (military) budgets of all nations show us. How can Environmental Sustainability in the 21st century be organizationally and functionally proposed as a moral equivalent to war amongst civilized nations ? Thank you.

Michael Renner: I'm a bit hesistant about the "moral equivalent of war" perspective. But you are right that we need a different key motivating and organizing principle. Part of the solution, I think, has to be in creating different institutions.

Professor Seymour Melman of Columbia University, who just recently passed away, used to refer to the "war-making" institutions. Among them are central governments who regard the building of military muscle as the way to increase their power in the world. Weapons-manufacturing corporations see a large military budget as the best way for making huge profits.

So what we need is an equivalent -- "sustainability-creating" institutions. A vibrant civil society (particularly on the grassroots level) is part of the answer, but I think we also need a reformed and reinvigorated United Nations. Generally, we need institutions and individuals who can rise above the divisions that have divided humanity and thus facilitated warfare as an institutionalized activity.

Finland: Seeing the climate change as a huge thread to all human security, I would like to ask: Do you see it possible (and important) that WTO and Kioto protocoll could co-operate in climate negotiations? Without that kind of co-operation it seems impossible to get on in those negotiations and specially in implementing regulations. (my personal opinion is however, having worked as an intern in WTO, that it seems quite far-fetched that officers in WTO would pay more attention for environment and climate since those are very unpopular and difficult subjects inside the house)

Michael Renner: As it stands, environmental considerations are typically made to bend before trade rules. That needs to change. As long as the WTO has far more political power, and greater resources than the UN Environment Programme, we will continue to see an imbalance between environment and trade.

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: I would like to extend thanks to today's guest, Michael Renner, and to everyone who joined us in today's discussion!

Michael Renner: Thanks, Steve, for moderating, and thank you all for participating and asking probing questions. I know I probably haven't done real justice to your questions in the allotted time, but I want you to know that always immensely enjoy these Web chats because they make think in different ways.