Environmental Degradation: A Threat to Global Peace and Security

Dr Irfan Ahmed Shaikh

The threats posed by environmental mangling are now widely acknowledged issues that challenge world peace and security. The impact of deforestation, pollution, and resource scarcity on ecosystems is devastating our planet. These environmental stresses worsen socio-political stresses, which themselves contribute to instability and violence in various locations around the planet. Environmental protection is, therefore, presented as part of the core strategy for global security.

One of those is deforestation, with its significant environmental and socio-economic impacts. Forests fulfill critical functions as carbon sinks and are essential to help regulate the climate, conserve biodiversity, and sustain the livelihoods of millions of people. At the same time, the pace at which areas are being deforested—main drivers include logging, agriculture, and urbanization—is overpowering the local capacity to provide these functions.

One of the significant effects of depleting forests is breaking the water cycle. Forests keep the water table: when cut off, they create drought and water shortages. This creates fierce competition and conflicts over water access, particularly in areas with little water, such as sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East. In Sudan, for example, the clearing of forests led to desertification. It contributed to fighting between nomadic cattle farmers and sedentary village farmers for limited water and space to pasture their animals.

Deforestation can also force indigenous communities to move elsewhere as forests are a source of their traditional way of life. This frequently results in the invasion of other territories and/or land disputes between neighboring communities and states (as can often be seen in the Amazon rainforest severely). In Brazil, Indigenous groups, for instance, have been fighting illegal loggers and miners or even government deliberate politics of deforestation in favor of agricultural expansion.

Pollution comes in many guises, but whatever form it takes, nothing threatens security and prosperity more than pollution. This includes air and water pollution, which, when severe enough, can cause health emergencies that, in turn, destroy nations.

The resulting respiratory and cardiovascular diseases cut life expectancy and labor productivity and significantly contribute to air pollution from industrial emissions, vehicle exhaust, and burning fossil fuels. Severe air pollution in highly populated cities in China and India has created public health crises, resulting in protests and civil unrest. These health crises not only stretch government resources but can destroy the fragile fabric of public trust. Thus, they have the potential to weigh down a nation politically.

Industrial effluent, agricultural run-off, and a lack of waste management lead to massive water pollution, which leads to contamination of drinking water supplies and marine ecosystems. Water pollution from contaminated rivers and lakes has triggered waterborne diseases in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, inflicting millions and incubating social unrest. Clean water becomes a bone of contention, particularly in places where water scarcity is a growing problem.

Natural resources, such as minerals, fossil fuels, and fertile land, are rapidly being mined and harvested to extinction on a global level. Competition for these increasingly scarce resources only gets fiercer—often violently so.

Exploiting lucrative minerals like diamonds, gold, and Colton has driven conflict in many African states. The reason they are fighting these so-called "resource wars" now is due to the lucrative mining activities in the region and the bribery of different armed groups and corrupt government officials. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - to offer a leading example - conflicts have been mineral financed for decades, leading to both human suffering and regional instability.

Likewise to pastures and climate mediation services - due often to overfarming, soil erosion, and climate change - arable land is in growing demand as it is also used unsustainably, contributing to land-use conflicts. In Nigeria, as in many places in the world, disputes have sprung up between farmers and livestock keepers over fertile common lands, leading to violent outcomes with hundreds displaced from their original homes and many communities destabilized.

Environmental degradation is a security concern, so environmental conservation is imperative to alleviate it. By conserving and restoring ecosystems, you prevent the loss of biodiversity, help maintain the functioning of ecosystems and ecosystem services, ensure the availability of renewable resources, and thus contribute to reducing the environmental drivers of conflict.

Environmental sustainability is beginning to be seen as more than simply an environmental issue, as it has already been written into many international treaties and directives. At the same time, it is increasingly being referred to in numerous security and military documents. The United Nations is now adopting environmental sustainability into peacebuilding by outlining that sustainable development is one of the critical ways of stopping conflicts before they start and has set the realization of the sustainable development goal as one of the means of achieving lasting peace. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has likewise established projects in environmental peacemaking and promoting peace through conservation.

Policies based on socio-economic principles showed that national governments increasingly implement actions to safeguard natural resources for sustainable development. One well-known example is Costa Rica, which has become an inspirational case of reforestation and biodiversity conservation, proving that environmental policies can lead to economic and social advantages.

The environment is a crucial challenge to world peace and security among natural resources conflicts and political discord that the casqued-headed tree frog, Rhacophorusvejcorhinos, calls for environmental depletion. There is an urgent need for the conservation of the environment in light of the depredation described above, not only for the sake of future generations but even more for the present. If we protect our ecosystems and promote sustainable development, we can reduce the security risks of environmental degradation and build a stable world. To tackle such deep-rooted causes, it is essential to incorporate economic and ecological sustainability in security strategies for the sake of global stability in the long run.

Author is Associate Professor & Head of the Department of History, University of Sindh, Pakistan.

He can be reached at:  irfan.shaikh@usindh.edu.pk